Doom Castle Part 17

said he. "Though, indeed, it is not particularly consoling to a widow's husband."

"I'd gie a pound Scots to ken wha chaps," said Mungo, deaf to every humour.

"Might I suggest your asking? It is, I have heard, the customary proceeding," said Count Victor.

"Wha's there?" cried Mungo, with an ear to the wood, that appeared to have nothing human outside, for now for a little there was absolute stillness. Then an answer as from a wraith--the humble request of some one for admission.

"Noo, that's michty droll," said Mungo, his face losing its alarm and taking on a look of some astonishment. "Haud that," and he thrust the torch in the Frenchman's hand. Without another word he drew back the bars, opened the door, and put out his head. He was caught by the throat and plucked forth into the darkness.

Count Victor could not have drawn a weapon had he had one ere the door fell in thundering on the walls. He got one glimpse of the _sans culottes_, appealed again to the De Chenier macer in his ancestry, and flung the flambeau at the first who entered.

The light went out; he dropped at a boy's intuition upon a knee and lowered his head. Over him in the darkness poured his a.s.sailants, too close upon each other in their eagerness, and while they struggled at the stair-foot he drew softly back. Out in the night Mungo wailed lugubrious in the hands of some of his captors; within there was a wonderful silence for a little, the baffled visitors recovering themselves with no waste of words, and mounting the stair in pursuit of the gentleman they presumed to have preceded them. When they were well up, he went to the door and made it fast again, leaving Mungo to the fate his stupidity deserved.

Doom's sleeping-chamber lay behind; he pa.s.sed along the corridor quickly, knocked at the door, got no answer, and entered.

It was as he had fancied--his host was gone, his couch had not been occupied. A storm of pa.s.sion swept through him; he felt himself that contemptible thing, a man of the world betrayed by a wickedness that ought to be transparent. They were in the plot then, master and man, perhaps even--but no, that was a thought to quell on the moment of its waking; she at least was innocent of all these machinations, and upstairs now, she shared, without a doubt, the alarms of Annapla. That familiar of shades and witches, that student of the fates, was a noisy poltroon when it was the material world that threatened; she was shrieking again.

"Loch Sloy! Loch Sloy!" now rose the voices overhead, surely the maddest place in the world for a Gaelic slogan: it gave him a sense of unspeakable savagery and antique, for it was two hundred years since his own family had cried "Cammercy!" on stricken fields.

He paused a moment, irresolute.

A veritable farce! he thought. It would have been so much easier for his host to hand him over without these play-house preliminaries.

But Olivia! but Olivia!

He felt the good impulse of love and anger, the old ichor of his folk surged through his veins, and without a weapon he went upstairs, trusting to his wits to deal best with whatever he would there encounter.

It seemed an hour since they had entered; in truth it was but a minute or two, and they were still in the bewildering blackness of the stair, one behind another in its narrow coils, and seemingly wisely dubious of too precipitate an advance. He estimated that they numbered less than half a dozen when he came upon the rear-most of the _queue_.

"Loch Sloy!" cried the leader, somewhat too theatrically for illusion.

"Cammercy for me!" thought Montaiglon: he was upon the tail, and clutched to drag the last man down. Fate was kind, she gave the bare knees of the enemy to his hand, and behold! here was his instrument--in the customary knife stuck in the man's stocking. It was Count Victor's at a flash: he stood a step higher, threw his arm over the shoulder of the man, pulled him backward into the pit of the stair and stabbed at him as he fell.

"_Un!_" said he as the wretch collapsed upon himself, and the knife seemed now unnecessary. He clutched the second man, who could not guess the tragedy behind, for the night's business was all in front, and surely only friends were in the rear--he clutched the second lower, and threw him backward over his head.

"_Deux!_" said Count Victor, as the man fell limp behind him upon his unconscious confederate.

The third in front turned like a viper when Count Victor's clutch came on his waist, and drove out with his feet. The act was his own undoing.

It met with no resistance, and the impetus of his kick carried him off the balance and threw him on the top of his confederates below.

"_Trois!_" said Montaiglon. "Pulling corks is the most excellent training for such a warfare," and he set himself almost cheerfully to number four.

But number four was not in the neck of the bottle: this ferment behind him propelled him out upon the stairhead, and Montaiglon, who had thrown himself upon him, fell with him on the floor. Both men recovered their feet at a spring. A moment's pause was noisy with the cries of the domestic in her room, then the Frenchman felt a hand pa.s.s rapidly over his habiliments and seek hurriedly for his throat, as on a sudden inspiration. What that precluded was too obvious: he fancied he could feel the poignard already plunging in his ribs, and he swiftly tried a fall with his opponent.

It was a wrestler's grip he sought, but a wrestler he found, for arms of a gigantic strength went round him, clasping his own to his side and rendering his knife futile; a Gaelic malediction hissed in his ear; he felt breath hot and panting; his own failed miserably, and his blood sang in his head with the pressure of those tremendous arms that caught him to a chest like a cuira.s.s of steel. But if his hands were bound his feet were free: he placed one behind his enemy and flung his weight upon him, so that they fell together. This time Count Victor was uppermost.

His hands were free of a sudden; he raised the knife to stab at the breast heaving under him, but he heard as from another world--as from a world of calm and angels--the voice of Olivia in her room crying for her father, and a revulsion seized him, so that he hesitated at his ugly task. It was less than a second's slackness, yet it was enough, for his enemy rolled free and plunged for the stair. Montaiglon seized him as he fled; the skirt of his coat dragged through his hands, and left him with a b.u.t.ton. He dropped it with a cry, and turned in the darkness to find himself more frightfully menaced than before.

This time the plunge of the dirk was actual; he felt it sear his side like a hot iron, and caught the wrist that held it only in time to check a second blow. His fingers slipped, his head swam; a moment more, and a Montaiglon was dead very far from his pleasant land of France, in a phantom castle upon a shadowy sea among savage ghosts.

"Father! father!"

It was Olivia's voice; a light was thrown upon the scene, for she stood beside the combatants with a candle in her hand.

They drew back at a mutual spasm, and Montaiglon saw that his antagonist was the Baron of Doom!

CHAPTER XIX -- REVELATION

Doom, astounded, threw the dagger from him with an exclamation. His eyes, large and burning yet with pa.s.sion, were wholly for Count Victor, though his daughter Olivia stood there at his side holding the light that had revealed the furies to each other, her hair in dark brown cataracts on her shoulders, and eddying in bewitching curls upon her ears and temples, that gleamed below like the foam of mountain pools.

"Father! father! what does this mean?" she cried. "There is some fearful mistake here."

"That is not to exaggerate the position, at all events," thought Count Victor, breathing hard, putting the knife un.o.bserved behind him.

He smiled to this vision and shrugged his shoulders. He left the elucidation of the mystery to the other gentleman, this counsellor of forgiveness and peace, clad head to foot in the garb he contemned, and capable of some excellent practice with daggers in the darkness.

"I'll never be able to say how much I regret this, Count Victor," said Doom. "Good G.o.d! your hands were going, and in a second or two more--"

"For so hurried a farce," said Count Victor, "the lowered light was something of a mistake, _n'est ce pas?_ I--I--I just missed the point of the joke," and he glanced at the dagger glittering sinister in the corner of the stair.

"I have known your mistake all along," cried Olivia. "Oh! it is a stupid thing this. I will tell you! It is my father should have told you before."

The clangour of the outer door closing recalled that there was danger still below. Olivia put a frightened hand on her father's arm. "A thousand pardons, Montaiglon," cried he; "but here's a task to finish."

And without a word more of excuse or explanation he plunged downstairs.

Count Victor looked dubiously after him, and made no move to follow.

"Surely you will not be leaving him alone there," said Olivia. "Oh! you have not your sword. I will get your sword." And before he could reply she had flown to his room. She returned with the weapon. Her hand was all trembling as she held it out to him. He took it slowly; there seemed no need for haste below now, for all was silent except the voices of Doom and Mungo.

"It is very good of you, Mademoiselle Olivia," said he. "I thank you, but--but--you find me in a quandary. Am I to consider M. le Baron as ally or--or--or--" He hesitated to put the brutal alternative to the daughter.

Olivia stamped her foot impetuously, her visage disturbed by emotions of anxiety, vexation, and shame.

"Oh, go! go!" she cried. "You will not, surely, be taking my father for a traitor to his own house--for a murderer."

"I desire to make the least of a pleasantry I am incapable of comprehending, yet his dagger was uncomfortably close to my ribs a minute or two ago," sard Count Victor reflectively.

"Oh!" she cried. "Is not this a coil? I must even go myself," and she made to descend.

"Nay, nay," said Count Victor softly, holding her back. "Nay, nay; I will go if your whole ancestry were ranked at the foot."

"It is the most stupid thing," she cried, as he left her; "I will explain when you come up. My father is a Highland gentleman."

"So, by the way, was Drimdarroch," said Montaiglon, but that was to himself. He smiled back into the illumination of the lady's candle, then descended into the darkness with a brow tense and frowning, and his weapon prepared for anything.

The stair was vacant, so was the corridor. The outer door was open; the sound of the sea came in faint murmurs, the mingled odours of pine and wrack borne with it. Out in the heavens a moon swung among her stars most queenly and sedate, careless altogether of this mortal world of strife and terrors; the sea had a golden roadway. A lantern light bobbed on the outer edge of the rock, shining through Olivia's bower like a will-o'-the-wisp, and he could hear in low tones the voices of Doom and his servant. Out at sea, but invisible, for beyond the moon's influence, a boat was being rowed fast: the beat of the oars on the thole-pins came distinctly. And in the wood behind, now cut off from them by the riding waves, owls called incessantly.

It was like a night in a dream, like some vast wheeling chimera of fever--that plangent sea before, those terrors fleeing, and behind, a maiden left with her duenna in a castle demoniac.