Doom Castle Part 3

"I regret the what-do-you-call-it?--the stoved howtowdy," said he, laughing, "more for the sound of it than for any sense its name conveys to me."

"There's meat as weel as music in it, as the fox said when he ate the bagpipes," said Mungo.

"There's waur nor howtowdy. And oh! I forgot the het victual, there's jugged hare."

"Is the hare ready?" asked the Baron suspiciously.

"It's no jist a'thegether what ye micht ca' ready," answered Mungo without hesitation; "but it can be here het in nae time, and micht agree wi' the Count better nor the cauld fowl."

"Tell Annapla to do the best she can," broke in the Baron on his servant's cheerful garrulity; and Mungo with another salute disappeared.

"How do your women-folk like the seclusion of Doom?" asked Count Victor, to make conversation while the refection was in preparation. "With the sea about you so, and the gang of my marauding obese friend in the wood behind, I should think you had little difficulty in keeping them under your eye."

The Baron was obviously confused. "Mungo's quite enough to keep his eye on Annapla," said he. "He has the heart and fancy to command a garrison; there's a drum forever beating in his head, a whistle aye fifing in his lug, and he will amuse you with his conceits of soldiering ancient and modern, a trade he thinks the more of because Heaven made him so unfit to become 'prentice to it. Good Mungo! There have been worse men; indeed what need I grudge admitting there have been few better? He has seen this place more bien than it is to-day in my father's time, and in my own too before the law-pleas ate us up; you will excuse his Scots freedom of speech, Count, he--"

A shot rang outside in some shrubbery upon the mainland, suddenly putting an end to Doom's conversation. Count Victor, sure that the Macfarlanes were there again, ran to the window and looked out, while his host in the rear bit his lip with every sign of annoyance. As Montaiglon looked he saw Mungo emerge from the shrubbery with a rabbit in his hand and push off hurriedly in a little boat, which apparently was in use for communication with the sh.o.r.e under such circ.u.mstances.

"And now," said the Count, without comment upon what he had seen, "I think, with your kind permission, I shall change my boots before eating.

"There's plenty of time for that, I jalouse," said Doom, smiling somewhat guiltily, and he showed his guest to a room in the turret. It was up a flight of corkscrew stairs, and lit with singular poverty by an orifice more of the nature of a porthole for a piece than a window, and this port or window, well out in the angle of the turret, commanded a view of the southward wall or curtain of the castle.

Montaiglon, left to himself, opened the bag that Mungo had placed in readiness for him in what was evidently the guest-room of the castle, transformed the travelling half of himself into something that was more in conformity with the gay nature of his upper costume, complacently surveyed the result when finished, and hummed a _chanson_ of Pierre Gringoire's, altogether unremembering the encounter in the wood, the dead robber, and the stern nature of his emba.s.sy here so far from France.

He bent to close the valise, and with a start abruptly concluded his song at the sight of a miniature with the portrait of a woman looking at him from the bottom of the bag.

"_Mort de ma vie!_ what a fool I am; what a forgetful _vengeur_, to be chanting Gringoire in the house of Doom and my quarry still to hunt!"

His voice had of a sudden gained a sterner accent; the pleasantness of his aspect became clouded by a frown. Looking round the constricted room, and realising how like a prison-cell it was compared with what he had expected, he felt oppressed as with the want of air. He sought vainly about the window for latch or hinge to open it, and as he did so glanced along the castle wall painted yellow by the declining sun. He noticed idly that some one was putting out upon the sill of a window on a lower stage what might have been a green kerchief had not the richness of its fabric and design suggested more a pennon or banneret. It was carefully placed by a woman's hands--the woman herself unseen. The incident recalled an old exploit of his own in Marney, and a flood of humorous memories of amorous intrigue.

"Mademoiselle Annapla," said he whimsically, "has a lover, and here's his signal. The Baron's daughter? The Baron's niece? The Baron's ward?

Or merely the Baron's domestic? M. Bethune's doc.u.ment suffers infernally from the fault of being too curt. He might at least have indicated the fair recluse."

CHAPTER IV -- WANTED, A SPY

The wail of a mountain pipe, poorly played, as any one accustomed to its strains would have admitted, even if the instrument was one he loved, and altogether execrable in the ears of Montaiglon, called him to the _salle_, where Doom joined him in a meal whereof good Mungo's jugged hare formed no part. Mungo, who had upheld ancient ceremony by his crude performance on the _piob mhor_, was the attendant upon the table,--an office he undertook with his bonnet on his head, "in token," as his master whisperingty explained to Count Victor, "of his sometimes ill-informed purpose of conducting every formal task in Doom upon the strict letter of military codes as pertained in camps, garrisons, and strongholds." It was amusing to witness the poor fellow's pompous precision of movement as he stood behind his master's chair or helped the guest to his humble meal; the rigidity of his inactive moments, or the ridiculous jerkiness with which he pa.s.sed a platter as 'twere to the time of a drill-sergeant's baton. More amusing still to one able, like Count Victor, to enter into the humour of the experience, was it to have his garrulity get the better of him in spite of the military punctilio.

"The Baron was telling me aboot your exploit wi' the Loch Sloy pairty.

Man! did I no' think ye had come by boat," he whispered over a tendered ale-gla.s.s. "It was jist my luck to miss sic a grand ploy. I wad hae backed ye to haud the water against Black Andy and all his clan, and they're no' slack at a tulzie."

"Ye may be grand in a fight, Mungo, but only a middling man at forage,"

interrupted his master. "I think ye said jugged hare?"

"It wasna my faut," explained the domestic, "that ye havena what was steepulated; the Baron wadna bide till the beast was cooked."

Doom laughed. "Come, come, Mungo," said he, "the Count could scarcely be expected to wait for the cooking of an animal running wild in the bracken twenty minutes ago."

"Oh, it disna tak' sae terrible lang to cook a hare," said the unabashed retainer.

"But was it a hare after a', Mungo?" asked his master. "Are ye sure it wasna a rabbit?"

"A rabbit!" cried he in astonishment; then more cautiously, "Weel, if it was a rabbit, it was a gey big ane, that's a' I can say," and he covered his perturbation by a retreat from the room to resume his office of musician, which, it appeared, demanded a tune after dinner as well as before it.

What had seemed to Montaiglon a harsh, discordant torturing of reeds when heard on the stair outside his chamber, seemed somehow more mellowed and appropriate--pleasing even--when it came from the garden outside the castle, on whose gra.s.s-grown walk the little lowlander strutted as he played the evening melody of the house of Doom--a pibroch all imbued with pa.s.sion and with melancholy. This distance lulled it into something more than human music, into a harmony with the monotone of the wave that thundered against the rock; it seemed the voice of choiring mermen; it had the bitterness, the agonised remembrance, of the sea's profound; it was full of hints of stormy nights and old wars. For a little Doom and his visitor sat silent listening to it, the former, with a strain upon his countenance, tapping nervously with his fingers upon the arm of his chair.

"An old custom in the Highlands," he explained. "I set, perhaps, too little store by it myself, but Mungo likes to maintain it, though he plays the pipe but indifferently, and at this distance you might think the performance not altogether without merit.

"I love all music," replied Count Victor with polite ambiguity, and he marvelled at the signs of some deep feeling in his host.

Till a late hour they sat together while Count Victor explained his mission to the Highlands. He told much, but, to be sure, he did not at first tell all. He recounted the evidences of the spy's guilt as a correspondent with the British Government, whose pay he drew while sharing the poor fortunes and the secrets of the exiled Jacobites.

"Iscariot, my dear Baron," he protested, "was a Bayard compared with this wretch. His presence in your locality should pollute the air; have you not felt a malaise?"

"It's dooms hard," admitted the Baron, throwing up distressed hands, "but, man, I'm feared he's not the only one. Do you know, I could mention well-kent names far ben in the Cause--men not of hereabouts at all, but of Lochaber no less, though you may perhaps not guess all that means--and they're in Paris up to the elbow now in the same trade. It's well known to some of yourselves, or should be, and it puzzles me that you should come to the shire of Argyll on account of one, as I take it, no worse than three or four you might have found by stepping across the road to Roisin's coffee-house in the Rue Vaugirard. The commoners in the late troubles have been leal enough, I'll give them that credit, but some of the gentry wag their tongues for Prince Tearlach and ply their pens for Geordie's pay."

The servant came in with two candles, placed them on the table, and renewed the fire. He had on a great woollen night-cowl of gaudy hue with a superb ta.s.sel that bobbed grotesquely over his beady eyes.

"I'll awa' to my bed, if it's your will, Baron," said he with the customary salute. "I was thinkin' it might be needful for me to bide up a while later in case ony o' the c.o.o.nt's freends cam' the way; but the tide'll keep them aff till mornin' anyway, and I'm sure we'll meet them a' the baulder then if we hae a guid sleep." He got permission to retire, and pa.s.sed into the inky darkness of the corridor, and crept to that part of the vacant dwelling in which he had his bed.

"There might be another reason for my coming here," said Montaiglon, resuming the conversation where Mungo's entrance had broken it off. "In this affair there was a lady. I knew her once." He paused with a manner showing discomposure.

"And there was liking; I can comprehend," said Doom with sympathy.

"Liking is but love without wings," said Montaiglon. "My regard soared above the clay; I loved her, and I think she was not indifferent to me till this man came in her way. He had, they say, the devil's tongue; at least he had the devil's heart, and she died six months ago with her head on my arm. I could tell you the story, M. le Baron, but it is in all the books, and you can fancy it easily. She died forgiving her betrayer, and sending a message to that effect by me. I come to deliver it, and, by G.o.d! to push it to his heart."

"It is a dangerous errand in this country and at this time," said Doom, looking into the fire.

"Ah! but you did not know Cecile," replied Montaiglon, simply.

"But I know the human heart. I know it in any man under the sober age of thirty. Better to let it rest thus. Excuse my interference. It does not matter much to me that it should be out of my house you should go seeking for your vengeance, but I'm an older man than you, and have learned how quickly the worst misfortunes and wrongs may be forgotten.

In your place I would leave this man to the punishment of his own conscience."

Montaiglon laughed bitterly. "That," said he, "is to a.s.sume a mechanism that in his case never existed. Pardon me, I pray you, but I prefer the old reckoning, which will be all the fairer because he has the reputation of being a good swordsman, and I am not without some practice."

"And the man's name? you have not mentioned it."

"But there you puzzle me. He was eight months in France, six of these in a lodging beside the Baigneurs on the Estrapade, Rue Dauphine. He came with no credentials but from Glengarry, and now Glengarry can give no account of him except that he had spoken familiarly to him of common friends in the Highlands."

"Oh, Glengarry--Alasdair Rhuadh!" exclaimed the Baron, dryly.

"And presumed to be burdened with a dangerous name, he pa.s.sed with the name of Drimdarroch."

"Drimdarroch!" repeated the Baron with some apparent astonishment.

"I have never seen the man, so far as I know, for I was at Cammercy when he hung about the lady."

"Drimdarroch!" repeated Doom reflectively, "a mere land t.i.tle."

"And some words he dropped in the ear of the lady made me fancy he might be found about the Court of Argyll."