Doom Castle Part 24

He fastened his horse to a young hazel and crossed the sandy interval between the mainland and the rock, sea-wrack bladders bursting under his feet, and the smells of seaweed dominant over the odours of the winter wood. The tower was pitch dark. He went into the bower, sat on the rotten seat among the damp bedraggled strands of climbing flowers, and took his flageolet from his pocket.

He played softly, breathing in the instrument the very pang of love.

It might have been a psalm and this forsaken dew-drenched bower a great cathedral, so rapt, so devoted, his spirit as he sought to utter the very deepest ecstasy. Into the reed he poured remembrance and regret; the gathered nights of riot and folly lived and sorrowed for; the ideals cherished and surrendered; the remorseful sinner, the awakened soul.

No one paid any heed in Castle Doom.

That struck him suddenly with wonder, as he ceased his playing for a moment and looked through the broken trellis to see the building black below the starry sky. There ought, at least, to be a light in the window of Olivia's room. She had made the tryst herself, and never before had she failed to keep it. Perhaps she had not heard him. And so to his flageolet again, finding a consolation in the sweetness of his own performance.

"Ah!" said he to himself, pausing to admire--"Ah! there's no doubt I finger it decently well--better than most--better than any I've heard, and what's the wonder at that? for it's all in what you feel, and the most of people are made of green wood. There's no green timber here; I'm cursed if I'm not the very ancient stuff of fiddles!"

He had never felt happier in all his life. The past?--he wiped that off his recollection as with a sponge; now he was a new man with his feet out of the mire and a clean road all the rest of the way, with a clean sweet soul for his companion. He loved her to his very heart of hearts; he had, honestly, for her but the rendered pa.s.sion of pa.s.sion--why! what kept her?

He rammed the flageolet impatiently into his waistcoat, threw back his cloak, and stepped out into the garden. Doom Castle rose over him black, high and low, without a glimmer. A terrific apprehension took possession of him. He raised his head and gave the signal call, so natural that it drew an answer almost like an echo from an actual bird far off in some thicket at Achnatra. And oh! felicity; here she was at last!

The bolts of the door slid back softly; the door opened; a little figure came out. Forward swept the lover, all impatient fires--to find himself before Mungo Boyd!

He caught him by the collar of his coat as if he would shake him.

"What game is this? what game is this?" he furiously demanded. "Where is she?"

"Canny, man, canny!" said the little servitor, releasing himself with difficulty from the grasp of this impetuous lover. "Faith! it's anither warnin' this no' to parley at nicht wi' onything less than twa or three inch o' oak dale atween ye and herm."

"Cut clavers and tell me what ails your mistress!"

"Oh, weel; she hisna come oot the nicht," said Mungo, waving his arms to bring the whole neighbourhood as witness of the obvious fact.

The Chamberlain thrust at his chest and nearly threw him over.

"Ye dull-witted Lowland brock!" said he; "have I no' the use of my own eyes? Give me another word but what I want and I'll slash ye smaller than ye are already with my Ferrara."

"Oh, I'm no' that wee!" said Mungo. "If ye wad jist bide cool--"

"'Cool' quo' he! Man! I'm up to the neck in fire. Where is she?"

"Whaur ony decent la.s.s should be at this 'oor o' the nicht--in her naked bed."

"Say that again, you foul-mouthed dog o' Fife, and I'll gralloch you like a deer!" cried the Chamberlain, his face tingling.

"Losh! the body's cracked," said Mungo Boyd, astounded at this nicety.

"I was to meet her to-night; does she know I'm here?"

"I rapped at her door mysel' to mak' sure she did."

"And what said she?"

"She tauld me to gae awa'. I said it was you, and she said it didna maitter."

"Didna maitter!" repeated the Chamberlain, viciously, mimicking the eastland accent. "What ails her?"

"Ye ought to ken that best yoursel'. It was the last thing I daur ask her," said Mungo Boyd, preparing to retreat, but his precaution was not called for, he had stunned his man.

The Chamberlain drew his cloak about him, cold with a contemptuous rebuff. His mouth parched; violent emotions wrought in him, but he recovered in a moment, and did his best to hide his sense of ignominy.

"Oh, well!" said he, "it's a woman's way, Mungo."

"You'll likely ken," said Mungo; "I've had sma' troke wi' them mysel'."

"Lucky man! And now that I mind right, I think it was not to-night I was to come, after all; I must have made a mistake. If you have a chance in the morn's morning you can tell her I wasted a tune or two o' the flageolet on a wheen stars. It is a pleasant thing in stars, Mungo, that ye aye ken where to find them when ye want them!"

He left the rock, and took to horse again, and home. All through the dark ride he fervently cursed Count Victor, a prey of an idiotic jealousy.

CHAPTER XXV -- RECONCILIATION

Mungo stood in the dark till the last beat of the horse-hoofs could be heard, and then went in disconsolate and perplexed. He drew the bars as it were upon a dear friend out in the night, and felt as there had gone the final hope for Doom and its inhabitants.

"An auld done rickle o' a place!" he soliloquised, lifting a candle high that it might show the shame of the denuded and crumbling walls. "An auld done rickle: I've seen a better barn i' the Lothians, and fancy me tryin' to let on that it's a kind o' Edinbro'! Sirs! sirs! 'If ye canna hae the puddin' be contented wi' the bree,' Annapla's aye sayin', but here there's neither bree nor puddin'. To think that a' my traison against the master i' the interest o' his dochter and himsel' should come to naethin', and that Sim MacTaggart should be sent awa' wi' a flea in his lug, a' for the tirravee o' a la.s.sie that canna' value a guid chance when it offers! I wonder what ails her, if it's no' that mon-sher's ta'en her fancy! Women are a' like weans; they never see the crack in an auld toy till some ane shows them a new ane. Weel! as sure as death I wash my haun's o' the hale affair. She's daft; clean daft, puir dear! If she kent whit I ken, she micht hae some excuse, but I took guid care o' that. I doot yon's the end o' a very promisin' match, and the man, though he mayna' think it, has his merchin' orders."

The brief bow-legged figure rolled along the lobby, pshawing with vexation, and in a little, Doom, to all appearance, was a castle dark and desolate.

Yet not wholly asleep, however dark and silent; for Olivia, too, had heard the last of the thundering hoofs, had suffered the agony that comes from the wrench of a false ideal from the place of its long cherishing.

She came down in the morning a mere wraith of beauty, as it seemed to the little servitor, shutting her lips hard, but ready to burst into a shower.

"Guid Lord!" thought Mungo, setting the scanty table. "It's clear she hasna steeked an e'e a' nicht, and me sleepin' like a peerie. That's ane o' the advantages o' being ower the uneasy age o' love--and still I'm no' that auld. I wonder if she's rued it the day already."

She smiled upon him bravely, but woe-begone, and could not check a quivering lip, and then she essayed at a song hummed with no bad pretence as she cast from the window a glance along the wintry coast, that never changed its aspect though hearts broke. But, as ill-luck had it, the air was the unfinished melody of Sim's bewitching flageolet.

She stopped it ere she had gone farther than a bar or two, and turned to find Mungo irresolute and disturbed.

"He ga'ed awa'--" began the little man, with the whisper of the conspirator.

"Mungo!" she cried, "you will not say a word of it. It is all bye with me, and what for not with you? I command you to say no more about it, do you hear?" And her foot beat with an imperiousness almost comical from one with such a broken countenance.

"It's a gey droll thing--"

"It's a gey hard thing, that is what it is," she interrupted him, "that you will not do what I tell you, and say nothing of what I have no relish to hear, and must have black shame to think of. Must I go over all that I have said to you already? It is finished, Mungo; are you listening? Did he--did he--looked vexed? But it does not matter, it is finished, and I have been a very foolish girl."

"But that needna' prevent me tellin' ye that the puir man's awa' clean gyte."

She smiled just the ghost of a smile at that, then put her hands upon her ears.

"Oh!" she cried despairingly, "have I not a friend left?"

Mungo sighed and said no more then, but went to Annapla and sought relief for his feelings in bilingual wrangling with that dark abigail.

At low tide beggars from Glen Croe came to his door with yawning pokes and all their old effrontery: he astounded them by the fiercest of receptions, condemned them all eternally for limmers and sorners, l.u.s.ty rogues and vagabonds.