Simon MacTaggart went out possessed by the devils of hatred and chagrin.
He saw himself plainly for what he was in truth--a pricked bladder, his
career come to an ignoble conclusion, the single honest scheme he had
ever set his heart on brought to nought, and his vanity already wounded
sorely at the prospect of a contemptuous world to be faced for the
remainder of his days. All this from the romantics of a Frenchman who
walked through life in the step of a polonaise, and a short season ago
was utterly unaware that such a man as Simon MacTaggart existed, or
that a woman named Olivia bloomed, a very flower, among the wilds!
At whatever angle he viewed the congregated disasters of the past few
weeks, he saw Count Victor in their background--a sardonic, smiling,
light-hearted Nemesis; and if he detested him previously as a merely
possible danger, he hated him now with every fibre of his being as the
cause of his upheaval.
And then, in this way that is not uncommon with the sinner, he must pity
himself because circumstances had so consistently conspired against him.
He had come into the garden after the interview with Argyll had made it
plain that the darkest passages in his servant's history were known to
him, and had taken off his hat to get the night breeze on his brow which
was wet with perspiration. The snow was still on the ground; among the
laden bushes, the silent soaring trees of fir and ash, it seemed as if
this was no other than the land of outer darkness whereto the lost are
driven at the end. It maddened him to think of what he had been brought
to; he shook his fist in a childish and impotent petulance at the
spacious unregarding east where Doom lay--the scene of all his passions.
“God's curse on the breed of meddlers!” he said. “Another month and I
was out of these gutters and hell no more to tempt me. To be the douce
good-man, and all the tales of storm forgotten by the neighbours
that may have kent them; to sit perhaps with bairns--her bairns
and mine--about my knee, and never a twinge of the old damnable
inclinations, and the flageolet going to the honestest tunes. All lost!
All lost for a rat that takes to the hold of an infernal ship, and comes
here to chew at the ropes that dragged me to salvation. This is where it
ends! It's the judgment come a day ower soon for Sim MacTaggart. But Sim
MacTaggart will make the rat rue his meddling.”
He had come out with no fixed idea of what he next should do, but one
step seemed now imperative--he must go to Doom, otherwise his blood
would burst every vein in his body. He set forth with the stimulus of
fury for the barracks where his men lay, of whom half-a-dozen at least
were his to the gate of the Pit itself, less scrupulous even than
himself because more ignorant, possessed of but one or two impulses--a
foolish affection for him and an inherited regard for rapine too rarely
to be indulged in these tame latter days. To call them out, to find them
armed and ready for any enterprise of his was a matter of brief time.
They set out knowing nothing at all of his object, and indifferent so
long as this adorable gentleman was to lead them.
When they came to Doom the tide was full and round about it, so they
retired upon the hillside, sheltering in a little plantation of fir
through which they could see the stars, and Doom dense black against
them without a sign of habitation.
And yet Doom, upon the side that faced the sea, was not asleep. Mungo
was busy upon the preparations for departure, performing them in a
funereal spirit, whimpering about the vacant rooms with a grief that was
trivial compared with that of Doom itself, who waited for the dawn as
if it were to bring him to the block, or of Olivia, whose pillow was
wet with unavailing tears. It was their last night in Doom. At daybreak
Mungo was to convey them to the harbour, where they should embark upon
the vessel that was to bear them to the lowlands. It seemed as if the
sea-gulls came earlier than usual to wheel and cry about the rock,
half-guessing that it was so soon to be untenanted, and finally, as it
is to-day, the grass-grown mound of memories. Olivia rose and went
to her window to look out at them, and saw them as yet but vague grey
floating shapes slanting against the paling stars.
And then the household rose; the boat nodded to the leeward of the rock,
with its mast stepped, its sail billowing with a rustle in the faint
air, and Mungo at the sheet. The dawn came slowly, but fast enough for
the departing, and the landward portion of the rock was still in shadow
when Olivia stepped forth with a tear-stained face and a trembling hand
on Victor's arm. He shared her sorrow, but was proud and happy too that
her trials, as he hoped, were over. They took their seat in the boat and
waited for the Baron. Now the tide was down, the last of it running in
tiny rivulets upon the sand between the mainland and the rock, and Simon
and his gang came over silently. Simon led, and turned the corner of the
tower hastily with his sword in his hand to find the Baron emerging.
He had not seen the boat and its occupants, but the situation seemed to
flash upon him, and he uttered a cry of rage.
Doom drew back under the frowning eyebrow of what had been his home,
tugged the weapon from his scabbard, and threw himself on guard.
“This is kind, indeed,” he said in a pause of his assailant's confusion
at finding this was not the man he sought. “You have come to say
'Goodbye.' On guard, black dog, on guard!”
“_So dhuit maat!_--here then is for you,” cried Sim, and waving back his
followers, engaged with a rasp of steel. It lasted but a moment: Doom
crouched a little upon bending knees, with a straight arm, parrying the
assault of a point that flew in wild disorder. He broke ground for a
few yards with feints in quarte. He followed on a riposte with a
lunge--short, sharp, conclusive, for it took his victim in the chest
and passed through at the other side with a thud of the hilt against
his body. Sim fell with a groan, his company clustering round him, not
wholly forgetful of retaliation, but influenced by his hand that forbade
their interference with his enemy.
“Clean up your filth!” said Doom in the Gaelic, sheathing his sword and
turning to join his daughter. “He took Drimdarroch from me, and now, by
God! he's welcome to Doom.”
“Not our old friends, surely?” said Count Victor, looking backward at
the cluster of men.
“The same,” said Doom, and kept his counsel further.
Count Victor put his arm round Olivia's waist. The boat's prow fell off;
the sail filled; she ran with a pleasant ripple through the waves, and
there followed her a cry that only Doom of all the company knew was a
coronach, followed by the music of Sim MacTaggart's flageolet.
It rose above the ripple of the waves, above the screaming of the birds,
finally stilling the coronach, and the air it gave an utterance to was
the same that had often charmed the midnight bower, failing at the last
abruptly as it had always done before.
“By heavens! it is my Mary's favourite air, and that was all she knew of
it,” said Doom, and his face grew white with memory and a speculation.
“Had he found the end of that air,” said Count Victor, “he had found, as
he said himself, another man. But I, perhaps, had never found Olivia!”