Doom Castle Part 20

The Chamberlain most willingly complied: it was the easiest retort to the Provost's vague allusion.

He played the tune again; once more its conclusion baffled him, and as he tried a futile repet.i.tion Count Victor stood listening in the lobby of the Boar's Head Inn.

CHAPTER XXI -- COUNT VICTOR CHANGES HIS QUARTERS

Count Victor said _Au revoir_ to Doom Castle that afternoon.

Mungo had rowed him down by boat to the harbour and left him with his valise at the inn, pleased mightily that his cares as garrison were to be relieved by the departure of one who so much attracted the unpleasant attention of nocturnal foes, and returned home with the easiest mind he had enjoyed since the fateful day the Frenchman waded to the rock. As for Count Victor, his feelings were mingled. He had left Doom from a double sense of duty, and yet had he been another man he would have bided for love. After last evening's uproar, plain decency demanded that Jonah should obviate a repet.i.tion by removing himself elsewhere. There was also another consideration as pregnant, yet more delicate: the traditions of his cla.s.s and family as well as his natural sense of honour compelled his separation from the fascinating influence of the ingenuous woman whose affections were pledged in another quarter. In a couple of days he had fallen desperately in love with Olivia--a precipitation that might seem ridiculous in any man of the world who was not a Montaiglon satiated by acquaintance with scores of Dame Stratagems, fair _intrigueuses_ and puppets without hearts below their modish bodices. Olivia charmed by her freshness, and the simple frankness of her nature, with its deep emotions, gave him infinitely more surprise and thrill than any woman he had met before. "Wisdom wanting absolute honesty," he told himself, "is only craft: I discover that a monstrous deal of cleverness I have seen in her s.e.x is only another kind of cosmetic daubed on with a sponge."

And then, too, Olivia that morning seemed to have become all of a sudden very cold to him. He was piqued at her silence, he was more than piqued to discover that she too, like Mungo, obviously considered his removal a relief.

Behold him, then, with his quarters taken in the Boar's Head Inn, whence by good luck the legal gang of Edinburgh had some hours before departed, standing in the entrance feeling himself more the foreigner than ever, with the vexing reflection that he had not made any progress in the object of his emba.s.sy, but, on the contrary, had lost no little degree of his zest therein.

The sound of the flageolet was at once a blow and a salute. That unaccomplished air had helped to woo Olivia in her bower, but yet it gave a link with her, the solace of the thought that here was one she knew. Was it not something of good fortune that it should lead him to identify and meet one whose very name was still unknown to him, but with whom he was, in a faint measure, on slight terms of confederacy through the confession of Olivia and the confidence of Mungo Boyd?

"_Toujours l'audace!_" thought he, and he asked for the innkeeper's introduction to the performer. "If it may be permitted, and the gentleman is not too pressingly engaged."

"Indeed," said the innkeeper--a jovial rosy gentleman, typical of his kind--"indeed, and it may very well be permitted, and it would not be altogether to my disadvantage that his lords.h.i.+p should be out of there, for the Bailies cannot very well be drinking deep and listening to Mr.

Simon MacTag-gart's songs, as I have experienced afore. The name?"

"He never heard it," said Count Victor, "but it happens to be Montaiglon, and I was till this moment in the odd position of not knowing his, though we have a common friend."

A few minutes later the Chamberlain stood before him with the end of the flageolet protruding from the breast of his coat.

As they met in the narrow confine of the lobby--on either hand of them closed rooms noisy with clink of drinking-ware, with laugh and jest and all that rumour of carouse--Montaiglon's first impression was exceeding favourable. This Chamberlain pleased his eye to start with; his manner was fine-bred in spite of a second's confusion; his accent was cordial, and the flageolet displayed with no attempt at concealment, captured the heart of the Frenchman, who had been long enough in these isles to weary of a national character that dare not surrender itself to any unbusiness-like frisking in the meadows. And one thing more there was revealed--here was the kilted gallant of the miniature in Olivia's chamber, and here was the unfriendly horseman of the wood, here in fine was the lover of the story, and the jealousy (if it was a jealousy) he had felt in the wood, forgotten, for he smiled.

But now he was face to face with Olivia's lover, Count Victor discovered that he had not the slightest excuse for referring to her who was the only a.s.sociation between them! The lady herself and Mungo Boyd had conveyed a sense of very close conspiracy between all four, but from neither the lady nor any one else in Doom had he any pa.s.sport to the friends.h.i.+p of this gentleman. It was only for a moment the difficulties of the situation mastered him.

"I have permitted myself, monsieur, to intrude upon you upon an excuse that must seem scandalously inadequate," said he. "My name is Montaiglon--"

"With the particle, I think?" said Sim MacTaggart.

Count Victor started slightly.

"But yes," said he, "it is so, though I never march with much baggage, and a De to a traveller is like a second hat. It is, then, that it is perhaps unnecessary to say more of myself?"

The Chamberlain with much _bonhomie_ grasped his hand.

"M. Montaiglon," said he, "I am very proud to meet you. I fancy a certain lady and I owe something to your consideration, and Simon MacTaggart stands upon no ceremony."

Count Victor winced slightly at the conjunction, but otherwise he was delighted.

"I am ravished, monsieur!" said he. "Ceremony is like some people's a.s.sumption of dignity--the false bottoms they put in their boots to conceal the fact that they are under the average height, is it not?"

Arm in arm they went out in front of the inn and walked along the bay, and the Provost and the Bailies were left mourning for their king.

"You must not fancy the name and the reputation of the gentlemen of Cammercy unknown in these parts," said the Chamberlain. "When the lady--who need not be more specifically mentioned--told me you had come to Doom, it was like the over-come of a song at first that I had heard of you before. And now that I see you, I mind the story went, when I was at Dunkerque some years ago, that Count Victor Jean, if all his other natural gifts had failed him, might have made a n.o.ble fortune as a _maitre d'escrime_. Sir, I am an indifferent hand with the rapier myself, but I aye liked to see a man that was its master."

"You are very good," said Montaiglon, "and yet such a reputation, exaggerated as I fear it may be, is not, by my faith! the one I should desire under the circ.u.mstances that, as you have doubtless further heard, bring me here."

"About that, M. Montaiglon, it is perhaps as well that the Duke of Argyll's Chamberlain should know nothing at all. You are a wild lot, my gallant Jacobites"--he laughed softly as he spoke. "Between ourselves I have been more than bottle friends with some lovable persons on your side of the house, and you will be good enough to consider Simon MacTaggart no politician, though the Duke's Chamberlain _ex officio_ is bound to be enemy to every man who will not swear King George the best of monarchs."

"From what I know of affairs in Europe now, and for all our heroics of invasion," said Count Victor, "his Majesty is like to remain in undisputed possession, and you may take my word for it, no affair of high politics is responsible for my being here. Monsieur himself has doubtless had affairs. I am seeking but for one man--"

"Drimdarroch," said the Chamberlain. "So the lady told me. Our Drimdarroch will not provide very much interest for a _maitre d'escrime_," and he laughed as he pictured Petullo the writer s.h.i.+vering before a flash of steel.

"Ah! you speak of the lawyer: Doom told me of him, and as he was good enough to interest himself in my lodging in this place, I must make him my compliments at the earliest and tell him I have settled down for myself in the _auberge_."

"To that much at least I can help you, though in the other affair I'm neutral in spite of my interest in any ploy of the kind. There's Petullo's house across the way; I'm on certain terms with him; if you care, we could see him now."

"_Le plus tot sera le mieux!_" said Count Victor.

The Chamberlain led the way.

CHAPTER XXII -- THE LONELY LADY

When Petullo's work was done of an evening it was his practice to sit with his wife in their huge and draughty parlour, practising the good husband and the domestic virtues in an upright zealous manner, such as one may read of in the books. A n.o.ble thing to do, but what's the good of it when hearts are miles apart and the pract.i.tioner is a man of rags?

Yet there he sat, strewing himself with snuff to keep himself awake, blinking with dim eyes at her, wondering for ever at her inscrutable nature, conversing improvingly upon his cases in the courts, or upon his growing fortune that he computed nightly like a miser. Sometimes, in spite of his drenchings of macabaw, sleep compelled him, and, humped in his lug-chair, he would forget his duty, yet waken at her every yawn.

And she--she just looked at him as he slept! She looked--and loathed herself, that she--so clean, so graceful, so sweet in spite of all her sin--should be allied with a dead man. The evenings pa.s.sed for her on fettered hours; but for the window she had died from her incubus, or at least stood up and shrieked and ran into the street.

But for the window! From there she saw the hill Dunchuach, so tranquil, and the bosky deeps of s.h.i.+ra Glen that she knew so well in dusky evenings and in moonlight, and must ever tenant, in her fancy, with the man she used to meet there. Often she would turn her back upon that wizened atomy of quirks and false ideals, and let her bosom pant to think to-night!--to-night!--to-night!

When the Chamberlain and Montaiglon were announced she could have cried aloud with joy. It was not hard in that moment of her elation to understand why once the Chamberlain had loved her; beside the man to whom her own mad young ambition manacled her she seemed a vision of beauty none the worse for being just a little ripened.

"Come awa' in!" cried the lawyer with effusion. "You'll find the mistress and me our lones, and nearly tiring o' each other's company."

The Chamberlain was disappointed. It was one of those evenings when Mrs.

Petullo was used to seek him in the woods, and he had thought to find her husband by himself.

"A perfect picture of a happy hearth, eh?" said he. "I'm sweared to spoil it, but I'm bound to lose no time in bringing to you my good friend M. Montaiglon, who has taken up his quarters at the Boar's Head.

Madam, may I have the pleasure of introducing to you M. Montaiglon?" and Sim Mac-Taggart looked in her eyes with some impatience, for she hung just a second too long upon his fingers, and pinched ere she released them.

She was delighted to make monsieur's acquaintance. Her husband had told her that monsieur was staying farther up the coast and intended to come to town.. Monsieur was in business; she feared times were not what they were for business in Argyll, but the air was bracing--and much to the same effect, which sent the pseudo wine merchant gladly into the hands of her less ceremonious husband.

As for Petullo, he was lukewarm. He saw no prospects of profit from this dubious foreigner thrust upon his attention by his well-squeezed client the Baron of Doom. Yet something of style, some sign of race in the stranger, thawed him out of his suspicious reserve, and he was kind enough to be condescending to his visitor while cursing the man who sent him there and the man who guided him. They sat together at the window, and meanwhile in the inner end of the room a lonely lady made shameful love.

"Oh, Sim!" she whispered, sitting beside him on the couch and placing the candlestick on a table behind them; "this is just like old times--the dear darling old times, isn't it?"

She referred to the first of their _liaison_, when they made their love in that same room under the very nose of a purblind husband.

The Chamberlain toyed with his silver box and found it easiest to get out of a response by a sigh that might mean anything.