One, arriving over the Caledonian railway at Doune, will at once
notice how that station exceeds any other of this line in point of
nice construction. The framework of the building is of steel; the roof,
glass; the platform of broad cement blocks lying like clean gray bands
along the car tracks. There is here no dirt, no smoke, no creaky floor
boards, no obtrusive glaring bookstalls, and no approach given over to
the soiling usages of trade. One goes out from the spotless shed into
a gravel court, inclosed with a high brick wall, stone capped, planted
along its southern exposure with pear trees, trained flat after the
manner of the northern gardener.
The Marchesa Soderrelli, following the little street into the village,
stopped in the public square at the shop of a tobacconist for a word
of direction. This square is one of the old landmarks of Doune. In the
center of it is a stone pillar, capped at the top with a quaint stone
lion, the work of some ancient cutter, to whom a lion was a fairy beast,
sitting like a Skye dog on his haunches with his long tail jauntily in
the air, and his wizened face cocked impudently.
From this square she turned east along a line of shops and white
cottages, down a little hill, to an old stone bridge, crossing the
Ardoch with a single high, graceful span. South of it stood the restored
walls of Doune Castle, once a Lowland stronghold, protected by the swift
waters of the Teith, now merely the most curious and the best preserved
ruin in the North. East of the Ardoch the land rises into a park set
with ancient oaks, limes, planes, and gnarled beeches. Here the street
crossing the Ardoch ends as a public thoroughfare, and barred by the
park gates, continues up the hill as a private road between two rows of
plane trees.
The Marchesa opened the little foot gate, cut like a door in the wall of
the park beside the larger gate, and walked slowly up the hill, over
the dead plane leaves beginning now to fall. As she advanced the
quaint split stone roof and high round wall of Old Newton House came
prominently into view. This ancient house, one of the most picturesque
in Scotland, deserves a word of comment. It was built in 1500 a.d., as
a residence for the royal keepers of Doune Castle, and built like that
castle with an eye forward to a siege. The stone walls are at some
points five feet thick. The main wing of the house is flanked with a
semicircular tower, capped with a round crow-step coping. The windows
high up in the wall were originally barred with iron; the holes in the
stones are still plainly visible. Under the east wing of the house is an
arched dungeon with no ray of light; under the west wing, a well for the
besieged. A secret opening in the wall of the third story descends under
the Ardoch, it is said, to Doune Castle. To the left are the formal
gardens inclosed by a tall holly hedge, and to the right, the green
sward of the park. The road climbing the hill turns about into a gravel
court.
The place is incrusted with legends. Prince Charlie on his daring
march south with a handful of Highlanders to wrest a kingdom from the
Hanoverian, coming to this stone span by the Ardoch, was met at the park
gate by the daughters of the house with a stirrup cup. He drank, as the
story runs, and pulling off his glove put down his hand to kiss. But one
madcap of the daughters answered, "I would rather prie your mou," and
the Prince, kissing her like a sweetheart, rode over the Ardoch to his
fortunes.
This old stronghold had originally but one way of entrance cut in the
solid wall of the tower. An iron door, set against a wide groove of the
stone, held it--barring against steel and fire. The door so low that
one entering must stoop his head, making him thus ready for that other,
waiting on the stairway with his ax.
This stone stairway ascending in the semicircular tower is one of
the master conceptions of the old-time builder. Each step is a single
fan-shaped stone, five inches thick, with a round end like a vertebra.
These round ends of the stones are set one above the other, making thus
a solid column, of which the flat part of each stone is a single step
of a spiral stairway. The early man doubtless took here his plan direct
from nature, in contemplation of the backbone of a stag twisted about,
and going thus to the great Master for his lesson, his work, to this
day, has not been bettered. His stairway was as solid and enduring as
his wall, with no wood to burn and no cemented joint to crumble.
The Marchesa, having come now to the gravel court before the iron door,
found there the brass knob of a modern bell. At her ringing, a footman
crossed the court from the service quarter of the house, took her card
and disappeared. A moment later he opened the creaking door and led
the way up the stone stair into a little landing, a sort of miniature
_entresol_, to the first floor of the house. This cell, made now to do
service as a hall, was lighted by a square window, cut in modern days
through the solid masonry of the tower. In the corner of it was a rack
for walking sticks, and on the row of brass hooks set into the wall were
dog whips, waterproofs, a top riding coat, and several shooting capes,
made of that rough tweed, hand spun and hand woven, by the peasants of
the northern islands, dyed with erotal and heather tips, and holding yet
faintly the odor of the peat smoke in which it was laboriously spun.
The footman now opened the white door at the end of this narrow landing,
and announced the Marchesa Soderrelli. As the woman entered a man arose
from a chair by a library table in the middle of the room.
To the eye he was a tall, clean-limbed Englishman, perhaps five and
thirty; his fair hair, thick and close cropped, was sunburned; his eyes,
clear and hard, were dark-blue, shading into hazel; his nose, aquiline
in contour, was as straight and clean cut as the edges of a die; his
mouth was strong and wide; his face lean and tanned. Under the morning
sunlight falling through the high window, the man was a thing of bronze,
cast in some old Tuscan foundry, now long forgotten by the Amo.
The room was that distinctive chamber peculiar to the English country
house, a man's room. On the walls were innumerable trophies; elk from
the forests of Norway, red deer from the royal preserves of Prussia, the
great branching antlers of the Cashmire stag, and the curious ebon horns
of the Gaur, together with old hunting prints and pencil drawings of
big game. On the floor were skins. The buffalo, found only in the vast
woodlands of Lithuania; the brown bear of Russia, the Armenian tiger.
Along the east wall were three rows of white bookshelves, but newly
filled; on a table set before these cases were several large volumes
apparently but this day arrived, and as yet but casually examined. To
the left and to the right of the mantel were gun cases built into the
wall, old like the house, with worn brass keyholes, and small diagonal
windows of leaded glass, through which one could see black stocks and
dark-blue barrels.
Over the mantel in a smoke-stained frame was a painting of the old Duke
of Dorset, at the morning of his life, in the velvet cap and the long
red coat of a hunter. The face of the painting was, in every detail, the
face of the man standing now below it, and the Marchesa observed, with a
certain wonder, this striking verification of the innkeeper's fantastic
story.
On the table beside the leather chair from which the man had arisen
were the evidences of two conflicting interests. A volume of political
memoirs, closed, but marked at a certain page with the broad blade of
a paper cutter--shaped from a single ivory tusk, its big gray handle
pushing up the leaves of the book--and beside it, the bolt thrown open,
the flap of the back sight pulled up, was a rifle.
An observer entering could not say, on the instant, with which of these
two interests that one at the table had been latest taken. Had he gone,
however, to the books beyond him on the wall, he might have fixed in a
way the priority of those interests. The thick volumes on the table
were the political memoirs of the late Duke of Dorset. The newer books
standing in the shelves were exclusively political and historical,
having to do with the government of England, speeches, journals, essays,
memoirs, the first sources of this perplexing and varied knowledge;
while the older, worn volumes, found now and then among them, were
records of big-game shooting, expeditions into little known lands, works
rising to a scientific accuracy on wild beast stalking, the technic of
the rifle, the flight and effect of the bullet, and all the varied gear
of the hunter. It would seem that the master of this house, having for a
time but one consuming interest in his life, had come now upon a second.
The Duke of Dorset advanced and extended his hand to the woman standing
in the door.
"It is the Marchesa Soderrelli," he said; "I am delighted."
The words of the man were formal and courteous, but colored with no
visible emotion; a formula of greeting rather, suited equally to a
visitor from the blue or one coming, with a certain claim upon the
interest, from the nether darkness. The hospitality of the house was
presented, but the emotions of the host retained.
The Marchesa put her gloved fingers for a moment into the man's hand.
"I hope," she answered, "that I do not too greatly disturb you."
"On the contrary, Madam," replied the Duke, "you do me a distinction."
Then he led her to his chair, and took another at the far end of the
table. He indicated the book, the rifle, with a gesture.
"You find me," he said, "in council with these conflicting symbols.
Permit me to remove them."
"Pray do not," replied the Marchesa, smiling; "I attach, like Pompey, a
certain value to the flight of birds. Signs found waiting at the turn
of the road affect me. Those articles have to me a certain premonitory
value."
"They have to me," replied the Duke, "a highly symbolic value. They are
signposts, under which I have been standing, somewhat like a runaway
lad, now on one foot and now on the other." Then he added, as in formal
inquiry, "I hope, Madam, that the Marquis Soderrelli is quite well."
A cloud swept over the woman's face. "He is no longer in the world," she
said.
The man saw instantly that by bungling inadvertence he had put his
finger on a place that ached. This dissolute Italian Marquis was finally
dead then. And fragments of pictures flitted for a moment through the
background of his memory. A woman, young, beautiful, but like the spirit
of man--after the figure of Epictetus--chained invisibly to a corpse. He
saw the two, as in a certain twilight, entering the Hotel Dardanelle
in Venice; the two coming forth from some brilliant Viennese café, and
elsewhere in remote Asiatic capitols, always followed by a word, pitying
the tall, proud girl to whom a sardonic destiny had given such beauty
and such fortune. The very obsequious clerks of the Italian consulate,
to which this Marquis was attached, named him always with a deprecating
gesture.
The Duke's demeanor softened under the appealing misery of these
fragments. He blamed the thoughtless word that had called them up. Still
he was glad, as that abiding sense of justice in every man is glad, when
the oppressor, after long immunity, wears out at last the incredible
patience of heaven. The Marquis had got, then, the wage which he had
been so long earning.
The Duke sought refuge in a conversation winging to other matters. He
touched the steel muzzle of the rifle lying on the table.
"You will notice," he said, "that I do not abandon myself wholly to the
memoirs of my uncle. I am going out to Canada to look into the Japanese
difficulties that we seem to have on our hands there. And I hope to
get a bit of big-game shooting. I have been trying to select the proper
rifle. Usually, after tramping about for half a day, one gets a single
shot at his beast, and possibly, not another. He must, therefore, not
only hit the beast with that shot, but he must also bring him down with
it. The problem, then, seems to be to combine the shock, or killing
power, of the old, big, lead bullet with the high velocity and
extreme accuracy of the modern military rifle. With the Mauser and the
Lee-Enfield one can hit his man or his beast at a great distance, but
the shock of the bullet is much less than that of the old, round,
lead one. The military bullet simply drills a little clean hole which
disables the soldier, but does not bring down the beast, unless it
passes accurately through some vital spot. I have, therefore, selected
what I consider to be the best of these military rifles, the Mannlicher
of Austrian make, and by modifying the bullet, have a weapon with the
shock or killing power of the old 4:50 black powder Express."
The man, talking thus at length with a definite object, now paused,
took a cartridge out of the drawer of the table, and set it down by the
muzzle of the rifle.
"You will notice," he said, "that this is the usual military cartridge,
but if you look closer you will see that the nickel case of the bullet
has four slits cut near the end. Those simple slits in the case cause
the bullet, when it strikes, to expand. The scientific explanation is
that when the nose of the projectile meets with resistance, the base
of it, moving faster, pushes forward through this now weakened case and
expands the diameter of the bullet, and so long as this resistance to
the bullet continues, the expansion continues until there is a great
flattened mass of spinning lead."
The Marchesa Soderrelli, visualizing the terrible effect of such a
weapon, could not suppress a shudder.
"The thing is cruel," she said.
"On the contrary," replied the man, "it is humane. With such a bullet
the beast is brought down and killed. Nothing is more cruel than to
wound an animal and leave it to die slowly, or to be the lingering prey
of other beasts."
The Duke of Dorset spun the cartridge a moment on the table, then he
tossed it back into the drawer.
"I fear," he said, "that I cannot bring quite the same measure of
enthusiasm to the duties of this new life. The great mountains, the
vast wind-scoured Steppes allure me. I have lived there when I could. I
suppose it is this English blood." Again smiling, he indicated the
pile of volumes beyond him by the bookcase. "But I have, happily, the
assistance of my uncle."
The Marchesa took instant advantage of this opening.
"You are very fortunate," she said; "most of us are taken up suddenly by
the Genii of circumstance and set down in an unknown land without a hand
to help us."
The Duke's face returned to its serious outlines. "I do not believe
that," he said; "there is always aid."
"In theory, yes," replied the Marchesa, "there is always food, clothing,
shelter; but to that one who is hungry, ragged, cold, it is not always
available."
"The tongue is in one's head," answered the Duke; "one can always ask."
"No," said the woman, "one cannot always ask. It is sometimes easier to
starve than to ask for the loaf lying in the baker's window."
"I have tried starving," replied the Duke; "I went for two days hungry
in the Bjelowjesha forest; on the third day I begged a wood chopper for
his dinner and got it. I broke my leg once trying to follow a wounded
beast into one of those inaccessible peaks of the Pusiko. I crawled all
that night down the mountain to the hut of a Cossack, and there I begged
him, literally begged him for his horse. I had nothing; I was a dirty
mass of blood and caked earth; it was pure primal beggary. I got the
horse. The heart in every man, when one finally reaches to it, is right.
In his way, at the bottom of him, one is always pleased to help. The
pride, locking the tongue of the unfortunate, is false."
"Doubtless," replied the Marchesa, "in a state of nature, such a thing
is easy. But I do not mean that. I mean the humiliation, the distress,
of that one forced by circumstance to appeal to an equal or a superior
for aid--perhaps to a proud, arrogant, dominating person in authority."
"I have done that, too," replied the Duke, "and I still live. Once in
India I came upon a French explorer of a helpless, academic type. He had
come into the East to dig up a buried city, and the English Resident
of the native state would not permit him to go on. He had put his whole
fortune into the preparation for the work, and I found him in despair. I
went to the Resident, a person of no breeding, who endeavored, like all
those of that order, to make up for this deficiency with insolence. I
was ordered to wait on the person's leisure, to explain in detail
the explorer's plan, literally to petition the creature. It was not
pleasant, but in the end I got it; and I rather believe that this
Resident was not, at bottom, the worst sort, after one got to the real
man under his insolence."
The Marchesa recalled vaguely some mention of this incident in a
continental paper at the time.
"But," she said, "that was aid asked for another. That is easy. It is
aid asked for oneself that is crucifixion."
"If," replied the Duke, "any man had a thing which I desperately needed,
I should have the courage to ask him for it."
A tinge of color flowed up into the woman's face.
"I thought that, too," she said, "until I came into your house this
morning."
The Duke leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table.
"Have I acted then, so much like that English Resident?" he said. The
voice was low, but wholly open and sincere.
"Oh, no," replied the Marchesa, "no, it is not that."
"Then," he said, "you will tell me what it is that I can do."
The woman's color deepened. "It is so common, so sordid," she said,
"that I am ashamed to ask."
"And I," replied the Duke, "shall be always ashamed if you do not. I
shall feel that by some discourtesy I have closed the lips of one who
came trusting to a better memory of me. What is it?"
The woman's face took on a certain resolution under its color. "I have
come," she said, "to ask you for money."
The Duke's features cleared like water under a lifting fog. He arose,
went into an adjoining room, and returned with a heavy pigskin dispatch
case. He set the case on the table, opened it with, a little brass key,
took out a paper blank, wrote a moment on it and handed it with the pen
to the Marchesa. The woman divining that he had written a check did not
at first realize why he was giving her the pen. Then she saw that the
check was merely dated and signed and left blank for her to fill in any
sum she wished. She hesitated a moment with the pen in her fingers, then
wrote "five hundred pounds."
The Duke, without looking at the words that the Marchesa had written,
laid the check face downward on a blotter, and ran the tips of his
fingers over the back to dry the ink. Then he crossed to the mantel, and
pulled down the brass handle of the bell. When the footman entered, he
handed the check to him, with a direction to bring the money at once.
Then he came back, as to his chair, but pausing a moment at the back of
it, followed the footman out of the room.
A doubt of the man's striking courtesy flitted a moment into the woman's
mind. Had he gone, then, after this delicate unconcern, to see what sum
she had written into the body of the check? She arose quickly and looked
out of the high window. What she saw there set her blushing for the
doubt. The footman was already going down the road to the village.
She was hardly in her chair, smarting under the lesson, when the Duke
returned.
"I have taken the liberty to order a bit of luncheon," he said. "This
village is not celebrated for its inn."
The Marchesa wished to thank him for this new courtesy, but she felt
that she ought to begin with some word about the check, and yet she
knew, as by a subtle instinct, that she could not say too little about
it.
"You are very kind," she said, "I thank you for this money"; and
swiftly, with a deft movement of the fingers, she undid the strand of
pearls at her throat, and held it out across the table. "Until I can
repay it, please put this necklace in the corner of your box."
The Duke put her hand gently back. "No," he said, his mouth a bit drawn
at the corners, "you must not make a money lender of me."
"And you," replied the Marchesa, "must not make a beggar of me. I must
be permitted to return this money or I cannot take it."
"Certainly," replied the Duke, "you may repay me when you like, but I
will not take security like a Jew."
The butler, announcing luncheon, ended the controversy.