Doom Castle Part 15

"Still--still," said Count Victor, "one hesitates to mention it to so excellent a custodian of the family reputation--still there are other things to me somewhat--somewhat crepuscular."

His deprecatory smile and the gesture of his hands and shoulders conveyed his meaning.

"Ye're thinkin' o' the Baron in tartan," said Mungo, bluntly. He smiled oddly. "That's the funniest bit of all. If ye're here a while langer that'll be plain to ye too. Between the darkest secrets and oor understanding o' them there's whiles but a rag, and that minds me that Mistress Olivia was behin' the arras tapestry chitterin' wi' fright when ye broke in by her window. Sirs! sirs! what times we're ha'in; there's ploy in the warld yet, and me unable--tuts! I'm no' that auld either.

And faith here's himsel'."

Mungo punctiliously saluted his master as that gentleman emerged beneath the frowning doorway and joined Count Victor in the dejected garden, lifted the f.a.ggot of firewood he had laid at his feet during his talk with the visitor, and sought his kitchen.

In Doom's aspect there was restraint: Count Victor shared the feeling, for now he realised that, in some respects, at all events, he had been doing an injustice to his host.

"I find, M. le Count," said Doom, after some trivial introductories, "that you cannot be accommodated in the inn down by for some days yet--possibly another week. The Circuit Court has left a pack of the legal gentlemen and jurymen there, who will not be persuaded to return to Edinburgh so long as the cellar at the inn holds out, and my doer, Mr. Petullo, expresses a difficulty in getting any other lodging."

"I regret exceedingly--"

"No regret at all, M. le Count," said Doom, "no regret at all, unless it be that you must put up with a while longer of a house that must be very dull to you. It is my privilege and pleasure to have you here--without prejudice to your mission--and the only difficulty there might be about it has been removed through--through--through your meeting with my daughter Olivia. I learn you met her on the stair last night. Well--it would look droll, I dare say, to have encountered that way, and no word of her existence from me, but--but--but there has been a little disagreement between us. I hope I am a decently indulgent father, M. le Count, but--"

"You see before you one with great shame of his awkwardness, Baron,"

said Montaiglon. "Ordinarily, I should respect a host's privacy to the extent that I should walk a hundred miles round rather than stumble upon it, but this time I do not know whether to blame myself for my gaucherie or feel pleased that for once it brought me into good company. Mungo has just hinted with his customary discretion at the cause of the mystery.

I sympathise with the father; I am, with the daughter, _tres charme_ and--"

This hint of the gallant slightly ruffled Doom.

"Chut!" he cried. "The man with an only daughter had need be a man of patience. I have done my best with this Olivia of mine. She lost her mother when a child"--an accent of infinite tenderness here came to his voice. "These woods and this sh.o.r.e and this lonely barn of ours, all robbed of what once made it a palace to me and mine, were, I fancied, uncongenial to her spirit, and I sent her to the Lowlands. She came back, educated, as they call it--I think she brought back as good a heart as she took away, but singularly little tolerance sometimes for the life in the castle of Doom. It has been always the town for her these six months, always the town, for there she fell in with a fellow who is no fancy of mine."

Count Victor listened sympathetically, somewhat envying the lover, reviving in his mental vision the figure he had seen first twelve hours ago or less. He was brought to a more vivid interest in the story by the altered tone of Doom, who seemed to sour at the very mention of the unwelcome cavalier.

"Count," said he, "it's the failing of the s.e.x--the very best of them, because the simplest and the sweetest--that they will prefer a fool to a wise man and a rogue to a gentleman. They're blind, because the rogue is for ever showing off his sham good qualities till they s.h.i.+ne better than an ordinary decent man's may. To my eyes, if not quite to my knowledge, this man is as great a scoundrel as was ever left unhung.

It's in his look--well, scarcely so, to tell the truth, but something of it is in his mouth as well as in his history, and sooner than see my daughter take up for life with a creature of his stamp I would have her in her grave beside her mother. Unluckily, as I say, the man's a plausible rogue: that's the most dangerous rogue of all, and the girl's blind to all but the virtues and graces he makes a display of. I'll forgive Petullo his cheatry in the common way of his craft sooner than his introduction of such a man to my girl."

To all this Count Victor could no more than murmur his sympathy, but he had enough of the young gallant in him to make some mental reservations in favour of the persistent wooer. It was an alluring type, this haunter of the midnight bower, and melancholy sweet breather in the cla.s.sic reed. All the wooers of only daughters, he reminded himself, as well as all the sweethearts of only sons, were unworthy in the eyes of parents, and probably Mungo's unprejudiced att.i.tude towards the conspiring lovers was quite justified by the wooer's real character in spite of the ill repute of his history. He reflected that this confidence of Doom's left unexplained his own masquerade of the previous night, but he gave no whisper to the thought, and had, indeed, forgotten it by evening, when for the first time Olivia joined them at her father's table.

CHAPTER XVI -- OLIVIA

It was a trying position in which Olivia found herself when first she sat at the same table with the stranger whose sense of humour, as she must always think, was bound to be vastly entertained by her ridiculous story. Yet she carried off the situation with that triumph that ever awaits on a frank eye, a good honest heart, and an unfailing trust in the ultimate sympathy of one's fellow-creatures. There was no _mauvaise honte_ there, Count Victor saw, and more than ever he admired, if that were possible. It was the cruel father of the piece who was uneasy. He it was who must busy himself with the feeding of an appet.i.te whose like he had not manifested before, either silent altogether or joining in the conversation with the briefest sentences.

There was never a Montaiglon who would lose such a good occasion, and Count Victor made the most of it. He was gentle, but not too gentle--for this was a lady to resent the easy self-effacement with which so many of her s.e.x are deceived and flattered; he was not unmindful of the more honest compliments, yet he had the shrewdness to eschew the mere meaningless _blague_ that no one could better employ with the creatures of Versailles, who liked their olives well oiled, or the Jeannetons and Mimis of the Italian comedy and the playhouse. Under his genial and s.h.i.+ning influence Olivia soon forgot the ignominy of these recent days, and it was something gained in that direction that already she looked upon him as a confederate.

"I am so glad you like our country, Count Victor," she said, no way dubious about his praise of her home hills, those loud impetuous cataracts, and that alluring coast. "It rains--oh! it rains--"

"_Parfaitement_, mademoiselle, but when it s.h.i.+nes!" and up went his hands in an admiration wherefor words were too little eloquent: at that moment he was convinced truly that the sun shone nowhere else than in the Scottish hills.

"Yes, yes, when it s.h.i.+nes, as you say, it is the dear land! Then the woods--the woods gleam and tremble, I always think, like a girl who has tears in her eyes, the tears of gladness. The hills--let my father tell you of the hills, Count Victor; I think he must love them more than he loves his own Olivia--is that not cruel of a man with an only child? He would die, I am sure, if he could not be seeing them when he liked. But I cannot be considering the hills so beautiful as my own glens, my own little glens, that no one, I'll be fancying, is acquainted with to the heart but me and the red deer, and maybe a hunter or two. Of course, we have the big glens, too, and I would like it if I could show you s.h.i.+ra Glen--"

"The best of it was once our own," said Doom, black at brow.

"--That once was ours, as father says, and is mine yet so long as I can walk there and be thinking my own thoughts in it when the wood is green, and the wild ducks are plas.h.i.+ng in the lake."

Doom gave a significant exclamation: he was recalling that rumour had s.h.i.+ra Glen for his daughter's favourite trysting-place.

"Rain or s.h.i.+ne," said Count Victor, delighting in such whole-souled rapture, delighting in that bright, unwearied eye, that curious turn of phrase that made her in English half a foreigner like himself--"Rain or s.h.i.+ne, it is a country of many charms."

"But now you are too large in your praise," she said, not quite so warmly. "I do not expect you to think it is a perfect country-side at any time and all times; and it is but natural that you should love the country of France, that I have been told is a brave and beautiful country, and a country I am sometimes loving myself because of its hospitality to folk that we know. I know it is a country of brave men, and sometimes I am wondering if it is the same for beautiful women. Tell me!" and she leaned on an arm that shone warm, soft, and thrilling from the short sleeve of her gown, and put the sweetest of chins upon a hand for the wringing of hearts.

Montaiglon looked into those eyes, so frank and yet profound, and straight became a rebel. "Mademoiselle Olivia," said he, indifferently (oh, Cecile! oh, Cecile!), "they are considered not unpleasing; but for myself, perhaps acquaintance has spoiled the illusion."

She did not like that at all; her eyes grew proud and unbelieving.

"When I was speaking of the brave men of France," said she, "I fancied perhaps they would tell what they really thought--even to a woman." And he felt very much ashamed of himself.

"Ah! well, to tell the truth, mademoiselle," he confessed, "I have known very beautiful ones among them, and many that I liked, and still must think of with affection. _Mort de ma vie!_ am I not the very slave of your s.e.x, that for all the charms, the goodness, the kindnesses and purities, is a continual reproach to mine? In the least perfect of them I have never failed to find something to remind me of my little mother."

"And now I think that is much better," said Olivia, heartily, her eyes sparkling at that concluding filial note. "I would not care at all for a man to come from his own land and pretend to me that he had no mind for the beautiful women and the good women he had seen there. No; it would not deceive me, that; it would not give me any pleasure. We have a proverb in the Highlands, that Annapla will often be saying, that the rook thinks the pigeon hen would be bonny if her wings were black; and that is a _seanfhacal_--that is an old-word that is true."

"If I seemed to forget France and what I have seen there of Youth and Beauty," said Count Victor, "it is, I swear it is--it is--"

"It is because you would be pleasant to a simple Highland girl," said Olivia, with just a hint of laughter in her eyes.

"No, no, _par ma foi!_ not wholly that. But yes, I love my country--ah!

the happy days I have known there, the sunny weather, the friends so good, the comrades.h.i.+p so true. Your land is beautiful--it is even more beautiful than the exiles in Paris told me; but I was not born here, and there are times when your mountains seem to crush my heart."

"Is it so, indeed?" said Doom. "As for me, I would not change the bleakest of them for the province of Champagne." And he beat an impulsive hand upon the table.

"Yes, yes, I understand that," cried Olivia. "I understand it very well.

It is the sorrow of the hills and woods you mean; ah! do I not know it, too? It is only in my own little wee glens among the rowans that I can feel careless like the birds, and sing; when I walk the woods or stand upon the sh.o.r.e and see the hills without a tree or tenant, when the land is white with the snow and the mist is trailing, Olivia Lamond is not very cheery. What it is I do not know--that influence of my country; it is sad, but it is good and wholesome, I can tell you; it is then I think that the bards make songs, and those who are not bards, like poor myself, must just be feeling the songs there are no words for."

At this did Doom sit mighty pleased and humming to himself a bar of minstrelsy.

"Look at my father there!" said Olivia; "he would like you to be thinking that he does not care a great deal for the Highlands of Scotland."

"Indeed, and that is not fair, Olivia; I never made pretence of that,"

said Doom. "Never to such as understand; Montaiglon knows the Highlands are at my heart, and that the look of the hills is my evening prayer."

"Isn't that a father, Count Victor?" cried Olivia, quite proud of the confession. "But he is the strange father, too, that will be pretending that he has forgotten the old times and the old customs of our dear people. We are the children of the hills and of the mists; the hills make no change, the mists are always coming back, and the deer is in the corrie yet, and when you will hear one that is of the Highland blood say he does not care any more for the old times, and preferring the English tongue to his own, and making a boast of his patience when the Government of England robs him of his plaid, you must be watchful of that man, Count Victor. For there is something wrong. Is it not true, that I am saying, father?" She turned a questioning gaze to Doom, who had no answer but a sigh.

"You will have perhaps heard my father miscall the _breacan_, miscall the tartan, and--"

"Not at all," cried the Baron. "There is a great difference between condemning and showing an indifference."

"I think, father," said Olivia, "we are among friends. Count Victor, as you say, could understand about our fancies for the hills, and it would be droll indeed if he smiled at us for making a treasure of the tartan.

Whatever my father, the stupid man, the darling, may be telling you of the tartan and the sword, Count Victor, do not believe that we are such poor souls as to forget them. Though we must be wearing the Saxon in our clothes and in our speech, there are many like me--and my dear father there--who will not forget."

It was a curious speech all that, not without a problem, as well as the charm of the unexpected and the novel, to Count Victor. For, somehow or other, there seemed to be an under meaning in the words; Olivia was engaged upon the womanly task--he thought--of lecturing some one. If he had any doubt about that, there was Mungo behind the Baron's chair, his face just showing over his shoulder, seamed with smiles that spoke of some common understanding between him and the daughter of his master; and once, when she thrust more directly at her father, the little servitor deliberately winked to the back of his master's head--a very gnome of slyness.

"But you have not told me about the ladies of France," said she. "Stay!

you will be telling me that again; it is not likely my father would be caring to hear about them so much as about the folk we know that have gone there from Scotland. They are telling me that many good, brave men are there wearing their hearts out, and that is the sore enough trial."