Mungo took the coat into the castle kitchen, the true arcanum of Doom,
where he and Annapla solved the domestic problems that in later
years had not been permitted to disturb the mind of the master or his
daughter. An enormous fireplace, arched like a bridge, and poorly enough
fed nowadays compared with its gluttony in those happier years of his
continual bemoaning, when plenty kept the spit perpetually at work, if
it were only for the good of the beggars who blackened the road from
the Lowlands, had a handful of peat in its centre to make the yawning
orifice the more pathetic to eyes that had seen the flames leap there.
Everywhere the evidence of the old abundant days--the rusting spit
itself, the idle battery of cuisine, long rows of shining covers.
Annapla, who was assumed to be true tutelary genius of these things, but
in fact was beholden to the martial mannikin of Fife for inspiration and
aid with the simplest of ragouts, though he would have died sooner than
be suspected of the unsoldierly art of cookery,--Annapla was in one of
her trances. Her head was swathed mountainously in shawls; her wild,
black, lambent eyes had the look of distant contemplation.
“Lord keep 's!” said Mungo, entering, “what are ye doverin' on noo?
Wauken up, ye auld bitch, and gie this coat a dight. D'ye ken wha's ocht
it? It belangs to a gentleman that's no' like noo to get but this same,
and the back-o'-my-haun'-to-ye oot o' Doom Castle.”
She took the coat and brushed it in a lethargy, with odd, unintelligible
chanting.
“Nane o' your warlock canticles!” cried Mungo. “Ye gied the lassie to
the man that cam' withouten boots--sorrow be on the bargain! And if it's
cast-in' a spell on the coat ye are, I'll raither clean't mysel'.”
With that he seized the garment from her and lustily applied himself.
“A bonny-like hostler-wife ye'll mak',” said he. “And few'll come to
Mungo Byde's hostelry if his wife's to be eternally in a deevilish
dwaam, concocting Hielan' spells when she should be stirring at the
broth. No' that I can blame ye muckle for a want o' the up-tak in what
pertains to culinairy airts; for what hae ye seen here since ye cam' awa
frae the rest o' the drove in Arroquhar but lang kail, and oaten brose,
and mashlum bannocks? Oh! sirs, sirs!--I've seen the day!”
Annapla emerged from her trance, and ogled him with an amusing
admiration.
“And noo it's a' by wi't; it's the end o' the auld ballant,” went on the
little man. “I've kept auld Doom in times o' rowth and splendour,
and noo I'm spared to see't rouped, the laird a dyvour and a nameless
wanderer ower the face o' the earth. He's gaun abroad, he tells me, and
settles to sit doon aboot Dunkerque in France. It's but fair, maybe, that
whaur his forbears squandered he should gang wi' the little that's to
the fore. I mind o' his faither gaun awa at the last hoved up, a fair
Jeshurun, his een like to loup oot o' his heid wi' fat, and comin'
back a pooked craw frae the dicing and the drink, nae doot amoung the
scatter-brained white cockades. Whatna shilpit man's this that Leevie's
gotten for her new jo? As if I dinna see through them! The tawpie's taen
the gee at the Factor because he played yon ploy wi' his lads frae the
Maltland barracks, and this Frenchy's ower the lugs in love wi' her, I
can see as plain as Cowal, though it's a shameless thing to say't. He's
gotten gey far ben in a michty short time. Ye're aye saying them that
come unsent for should sit unserved; but wha sent for this billy oot o'
France? and wha has been sae coothered up as he has since he cam' here?
The Baron doesnae ken the shifts that you and me's been put to for to
save his repitation. Mony a lee I tauld doon there i' the clachan to
soother them oot o' butter and milk and eggs, and a bit hen at times;
mony a time I hae gie'n my ain dinner to thae gangrel bodies frae
Glencro sooner nor hae them think there was nae rowth o' vivers whaur
they never wer sent awa empty-haunded afore. I aye keepit my he'rt up
wi' the notion that him doon-bye the coat belangs to wad hae made a
match o't, and saved us a' frae beggary. But there's an end o' that,
sorry am I. And sorry may you be; ye auld runt, to hear't, for he's
been the guid enough friend to me; and there wad never hae been the Red
Sodger Tavern for us if it wasnae for his interest in a man that has aye
kep' up the airmy.”
Annapla seemed to find the dialect of Fife most pleasing and melodious.
She listened to his monologue with approving smiles, and sitting on a
stool, cowered within the arch, warming her hands at the apology for a
flame.
“Wha the deevil could hae tauld her it was the lad himsel' was here that
nicht wi' his desperate chiels frae the barracks? It couldna' be you,
for I didna' tell ye mysel' for fear ye wad bluitter it oot and spoil
his chances. She kent onyway, and it was for no ither reason she gie'd
him the route, unless--unless she had a notion o' the Frenchman frae the
first glisk o' him. There's no accoontin' for tastes; clap a bunnet on a
tawtie-bogle, wi' a cock to the ae side that's kin' o' knowin', and ony
woman'll jump at his neck, though ye micht pap peas through the place
whaur his wame should be. The Frenchy's no' my taste onyway; and noo,
there's Sim! Just think o' Sim gettin' the dirty gae-bye frae a glaikit
lassie hauf his age; and no' his equal in the three parishes, wi' a leg
to tak' the ee o' a hal dancin'-school, and auld Knapdale's money
comin' till him whenever Knapdale's gane, and I'm hearin' he's in the
deid-thraws already. Ill fa' the day fotch the Frenchy! The race o'
them never brocht ocht in my generation to puir Scotland worth a bodle,
unless it micht be a new fricassee to fyle a stamach wi'. I'm fair bate
to ken what this Coont wants here. 'Drimdarroch,' says he, but that's
fair rideeculous, unless it was the real auld bauld Drimdarroch, and
that's nae ither than Doom. I winna wonder if he heard o' Leevie ere
ever he left the France.”
Annapla began to drowse at the fire. He saw her head nod, and came round
with the coat in his hand to confirm his suspicion that she was about to
fall asleep. Her eyes were shut.
“Wauken up, Luckie!” he cried, disgusted at this absence of
appreciation. “What ails the body? Ye're into your damnable dwaam again.
There's them that's gowks enough to think ye're seein' Sichts, when it's
neither mair nor less than he'rt-sick laziness, and I was ance ane o'
them mysel'. Ye hinnae as muckle o' the Sicht as wad let ye see when
Leevie was makin' a gowk o' ye to gar ye hang oot signals for her auld
jo. A bonny-like brewster-wife ye'll mak', I warrant!” He tapped her,
not unkindly, on the head with the back of his brush, and brought her to
earth again.
“Are ye listenin', ye auld runt?” said he. “I'm goin' doon to the
toon i' the aifternoon wi' this braw coat and money for Monsher's inn
accoont, and if ye're no' mair wide-awake by that time, there's deil the
cries'll gae in wi' auld MacNair.”
The woman laughed, not at all displeased with herself nor with her rough
admirer, and set to some trivial office. Mungo was finished with the
coat; he held it out at arm's length, admiring its plenitude of lace,
and finally put off his own hodden garment that he might try on the
Chamberlain's.
“God!” said he, “it fits me like an empty ale-cask. I thocht the Coont
looked gey like a galo-shan in't, but I maun be the bonny doo mysel'.
And I'm no that wee neither, for it's ticht aboot the back.”
Annapla thought her diminutive admirer adorable; she stood raptly gazing
on him, with her dish-clout dripping on the floor.
“I wonder if there's no' a note or twa o' the New Bank i' the pouches,”
said Mungo, and began to search. Something in one of the pockets rustled
to the touch, and with a face of great expectancy he drew forth what
proved to be a letter. The seal was broken, there was neither an address
nor the superscription of the writer; the handwriting was a faint
Italian, betokening a lady--there was no delicate scrupulosity about the
domestic, and the good Mungo unhesitatingly indulged himself.
“It's no' exactly a note,” said he, contracting his brows above the
document. Not for the first time Annapla regretted her inability to
read, as she craned over his shoulder to see what evidently created much
astonishment in her future lord.
“Weel, that bates a'!” he cried when he had finished, and he turned,
visibly flushing, even through his apple-red complexion, to see Annapla
at his shoulder.
“It's a guid thing the Sicht's nae use for English write,” said he,
replacing the letter carefully in the pocket whence it had come.
“This'll gae back to himsel', and naebody be nane the wiser o't for
Mungo Byde.”
For half an hour he busied himself with aiding Annapla at the
preparation of dinner, suddenly become silent as a consequence of what
the letter had revealed to him, and then he went out to prepare his boat
for his trip to town.
Annapla did not hesitate a moment; she fished out the letter and hurried
with it to her master, less, it must be owned, from a desire to inform
him, than from a womanly wish to share a secret that had apparently been
of the greatest interest to Mungo.
Doom took it from her hands in an abstraction, for he was whelmed with
the bitter prospect of imminent farewells; he carelessly scanned the
sheet with half-closed eyes, and was well through perusing it before
he realised that it had any interest. He began at the beginning again,
caught the meaning of a sentence, sat bolt upright in the chair
where Annapla had found him lolling, and finished with eagerness and
astonishment.
Where had she got this? She hesitated to tell him that it had been
pilfered from the owner's pocket, and intimated that she had picked it
up outside.
“Good woman,” said he in Gaelic, “you have picked up a fortune. It would
have saved me much tribulation, and yourself some extra work, if you had
happened to pick it up a month ago!”
He hurried to Olivia.
“My dear,” he said, “I have come upon the oddest secret.”
His daughter reddened to the roots of her hair, and fell to trembling
with inexplicable shame. He did not observe it.
“It is that you have got out of the grip of the gled. Yon person was an
even blacker villain than I guessed.”
“Oh!” she said, apparently much relieved, “and is that your secret? I
have no wonder left in me for any new display of wickedness from Simon
MacTaggart.”
“Listen,” he said, and read her the damnatory document. She flushed, she
trembled, she well-nigh wept with shame; but “Oh!” she cried at the end,
“is he not the noble man?”
“The noble man!” cried Doom at such an irrelevant conclusion. “Are you
out of your wits, Olivia?”
She stammered an explanation. “I do not mean--I do not
mean--this--wretch that is exposed here, but Count Victor. He has known
it all along.”
“H'm,” said Doom. “I fancy he has. That was, like enough, the cause of
the duel. But I do not think it was noble at all that he should keep
silent upon a matter so closely affecting the happiness of your whole
life.”
Olivia saw this too, when helped to it, and bit her lip. It was,
assuredly, not right that Count Victor, in the possession of such
secrets as this letter revealed, should allow her to throw herself away
on the villain there portrayed.
“He may have some reason we cannot guess,” she said, and thought of one
that made her heart beat wildly.
“No reason but a Frenchman's would let me lose my daughter to a scamp
out of a pure punctilio. I can scarcely believe that he knew all that is
in this letter. And you, my dear, you never guessed any more than I that
these attacks under cover of night were the work of Simon MacTaggart.”
“I must tell you the truth, father,” said Olivia. “I have known it since
the second, and that it was that turned me. I learned from the button
that Count Victor picked up on the stair, for I recognised it as his. I
knew--I knew--and yet I wished to keep a doubt of it, I felt it so, and
still would not confess it to myself that the man I loved--the man
I thought I loved--was no better than a robber.” “A robber indeed! I
thought the man bad; I never liked his eye and less his tongue, that was
ever too plausible. Praise God, my dear, that he's found out!”