by Neil Munro
CHAPTER IV -- WANTED, A SPY
The wail of a mountain pipe, poorly played, as any one accustomed to itsstrains 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 juggedhare formed no part. Mungo, who had upheld ancient ceremony by his crudeperformance on the _piob mhor_, was the attendant upon the table,--anoffice he undertook with his bonnet on his head, "in token," as hismaster whisperingty explained to Count Victor, "of his sometimesill-informed purpose of conducting every formal task in Doom upon thestrict letter of military codes as pertained in camps, garrisons,and strongholds." It was amusing to witness the poor fellow's pompousprecision of movement as he stood behind his master's chair or helpedthe guest to his humble meal; the rigidity of his inactive moments, orthe ridiculous jerkiness with which he passed a platter as 'twere to thetime of a drill-sergeant's baton. More amusing still to one able, likeCount Victor, to enter into the humour of the experience, was it to havehis 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 tenderedale-glass. "It was jist my luck to miss sic a grand ploy. I wad haebacked ye to haud the water against Black Andy and all his clan, andthey'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 wassteepulated; the Baron wadna bide till the beast was cooked."
Doom laughed. "Come, come, Mungo," said he, "the Count could scarcelybe expected to wait for the cooking of an animal running wild in thebracken twenty minutes ago."
"Oh, it disna tak' sae terrible lang to cook a hare," said the unabashedretainer.
"But was it a hare after a', Mungo?" asked his master. "Are ye sure itwasna a rabbit?"
"A rabbit!" cried he in astonishment; then more cautiously, "Weel, if itwas a rabbit, it was a gey big ane, that's a' I can say," and he coveredhis perturbation by a retreat from the room to resume his office ofmusician, which, it appeared, demanded a tune after dinner as well asbefore it.
What had seemed to Montaiglon a harsh, discordant torturing of reedswhen heard on the stair outside his chamber, seemed somehow moremellowed and appropriate--pleasing even--when it came from the gardenoutside the castle, on whose grass-grown walk the little lowlanderstrutted as he played the evening melody of the house of Doom--a pibrochall imbued with passion and with melancholy. This distance lulled itinto something more than human music, into a harmony with the monotoneof the wave that thundered against the rock; it seemed the voice ofchoiring mermen; it had the bitterness, the agonised remembrance, of thesea's profound; it was full of hints of stormy nights and old wars. Fora little Doom and his visitor sat silent listening to it, the former,with a strain upon his countenance, tapping nervously with his fingersupon the arm of his chair.
"An old custom in the Highlands," he explained. "I set, perhaps, toolittle store by it myself, but Mungo likes to maintain it, though heplays the pipe but indifferently, and at this distance you might thinkthe performance not altogether without merit.
"I love all music," replied Count Victor with polite ambiguity, and hemarvelled at the signs of some deep feeling in his host.
Till a late hour they sat together while Count Victor explained hismission to the Highlands. He told much, but, to be sure, he did notat first tell all. He recounted the evidences of the spy's guilt asa correspondent with the British Government, whose pay he drew whilesharing the poor fortunes and the secrets of the exiled Jacobites."Iscariot, my dear Baron," he protested, "was a Bayard compared withthis wretch. His presence in your locality should pollute the air; haveyou 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 couldmention well-kent names far ben in the Cause--men not of hereabouts atall, but of Lochaber no less, though you may perhaps not guess all thatmeans--and they're in Paris up to the elbow now in the same trade. It'swell known to some of yourselves, or should be, and it puzzles me thatyou 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 theroad to Roisin's coffee-house in the Rue Vaugirard. The commoners inthe late troubles have been leal enough, I'll give them that credit, butsome of the gentry wag their tongues for Prince Tearlach and ply theirpens for Geordie's pay."
The servant came in with two candles, placed them on the table, andrenewed the fire. He had on a great woollen night-cowl of gaudy hue witha superb tassel that bobbed grotesquely over his beady eyes.
"I'll awa' to my bed, if it's your will, Baron," said he with thecustomary salute. "I was thinkin' it might be needful for me to bide upa while later in case ony o' the Coont's freends cam' the way; but thetide'll keep them aff till mornin' anyway, and I'm sure we'll meetthem a' the baulder then if we hae a guid sleep." He got permission toretire, and passed into the inky darkness of the corridor, and crept tothat 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. "Inthis affair there was a lady. I knew her once." He paused with a mannershowing discomposure.
"And there was liking; I can comprehend," said Doom with sympathy.
"Liking is but love without wings," said Montaiglon. "My regard soaredabove the clay; I loved her, and I think she was not indifferent to metill 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 herhead on my arm. I could tell you the story, M. le Baron, but it isin all the books, and you can fancy it easily. She died forgiving herbetrayer, and sending a message to that effect by me. I come to deliverit, and, by God! 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 ofthirty. Better to let it rest thus. Excuse my interference. It doesnot matter much to me that it should be out of my house you should goseeking for your vengeance, but I'm an older man than you, and havelearned how quickly the worst misfortunes and wrongs may be forgotten.In your place I would leave this man to the punishment of his ownconscience."
Montaiglon laughed bitterly. "That," said he, "is to assume a mechanismthat in his case never existed. Pardon me, I pray you, but I preferthe old reckoning, which will be all the fairer because he has thereputation of being a good swordsman, and I am not without somepractice."
"And the man's name? you have not mentioned it."
"But there you puzzle me. He was eight months in France, six of these ina lodging beside the Baigneurs on the Estrapade, Rue Dauphine. He camewith no credentials but from Glengarry, and now Glengarry can give noaccount of him except that he had spoken familiarly to him of commonfriends in the Highlands."
"Oh, Glengarry--Alasdair Rhuadh!" exclaimed the Baron, dryly.
"And presumed to be burdened with a dangerous name, he passed with thename 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 whenhe hung about the lady."
"Drimdarroch!" repeated Doom reflectively, "a mere land title."
"And some words he dropped in the ear of the lady made me fancy he mightbe found about the Court of Argyll."
"Drimdarroch! Drimdarroch! I ken no one of the name, though the nameitself, for very good reasons, is well known to me. Have you anydescription of the man?"
"Not much. A man older than myself, dark, well-bred. I should say a mansomething like yourself
, if you will pardon the comparison, with a lesseasy mind, if he remembers his friends and his past."
Doom pushed back his chair a little from the fire, but without takinghis eyes from the peats, and made a curious suggestion.
"You would not take it to be me, would you?" he asked.
Count Victor laughed, with a gesture of his hands that made denial allunnecessary.
"Oh, but you do not know," went on the Baron. "Some months of caballingwith our friends--even our Hielan' friends--in the France, left me withan unwholesome heart that would almost doubt my father in his grave. Youmentioned the name Drimdarroch--is it not the odd thing that you shouldspeak it to the only man in the shire that ever had the right to use it?Do you see this?" and rising he stepped to a recess in the wall, onlyhalf curtained, so that its contents overflowed into the chamber, and bya jerk of the hand revealed a strange accumulation of dusty documents inpaper and in parchment. He looked at them with an aspect of disgust, andstirred them with a contemptuous toe as if he meddled with the litter ofa stye.
"That's Drimdarroch!" said he, intensely bitter; "that's Drimdarroch,and Duntorvil, that's the Isles, the bonny Isles of Lochow; that's damnlike to be Doom too! That and this ruckle of stones we sit in are allthat's left of what was my father's and my grandfather's and theirforebears back till the dark of time. And how is it, ye may ask? Let uspretermit the question till another occasion; anyway here's Drimdarrochwi' the lave, at any rate the weight of it in processes, records,caveats, multiple poindings, actions of suspension and declator, interimdecrees, fugie warrants, compts, and reckonings--God! I have the cackleof the law in my head like a ballant, and what's the wonder at that wi'all my practice?"
He stooped and picked up from the confused heap of legal scrivenings byfinger-tips that seemed to fear infection a parchment fouled with itspassage through the courts and law offices. "You're in luck indeed,"said he; "for there's Drimdarroch--all that's left of it to me: the landitself is in the hands of my own doer, Petullo the writer down-by, andscab seize his bestial!"
Back he threw the relic of his patrimony; he dropped the curtain; heturned on his guest a face that tried to smile. "Come, let us sit downagain," he said, "and never heed my havers. Am I not thankful to haveDoom itself left me, and the company of the hills and sea? After all,there are more Drimdarrochs than one in the Highlands, for the namemeans just 'the place at the back of the oak-wood or the oaken shaw,'and oaks are as plentiful hereabout as the lawyers are in the burghdown-by. I but mentioned it to show you the delicacy of your search, foryou do not know but what I'm the very man you want, though I'm sittinghere looking as if acting trusty for the Hanoverian cause did not fillmy pouches."
"_Tenez!_ M. Bethune was scarcely like to send me to Doom in that case,"said the Count laughing.
"But Bethune, like yourself, may never have seen the man."
"But yes, it is true, he did not see him any more than I did.Drimdarroch, by all accounts, was a spendthrift, a player, a _bavard_,his great friends, Glengarry and another Scot, Balhaldie--"
"Oh, Balhaldie! blethering Balhaldie!" cried Doom, contempt upon hiscountenance. "And Balhaldie would sell him, I'll warrant. He seems, thisDrimdarroch, to have been dooms unlucky in his friends. I say all I'vesaid to you, Count, because you're bound to find it out for yourselfsome day if you prosecute your search here, and you might be cominground to me at last with your ower-ready pistol when I was ill-preparedto argue out my identity. Furthermore, I do not know the man you want.About the castle down-by his Grace has a corps of all kinds that youmight pick from nine times out of ten without striking an honest man.Some of them are cadets of his own family, always blunt opponents ofmine and of our cause here and elsewhere; some are incomers, as we callthem; a few of them from clans apparently friendly to us when in otherquarters, but traitors and renegades at the heart; some are spies byhabit and repute. There's not a friend of mine among them, not in allthe fat and prosperous rabble of them; but I wish you were here onanother errand, though to Doom, my poor place, you are welcome. I am awidower, a lonely man, with my own flesh and blood rebel against me"--hechecked his untimeous confidence--"and yet I have been chastened byyears and some unco experiences from a truculent man to one preferringpeace except at the last ditch."
"_Eh bien!_ Monsieur; _this_ is the last ditch!" said Montaiglon. "Spyand murderer, M. le Baron, and remember I propose to give him more thanthe murderer's chance when I agree to meet him on a fair field with asword in his hand."
"I have seen you lunge, sir," said Doom meaningly; "I ken the carriageof a fencer's head; your eye's fast, your step's light; with the swordI take it Drimdarroch is condemned, and your practice with the pistol,judging from the affair with the Macfarlanes, seems pretty enough. Youpropose, or I'm mistaken, to make yourself the executioner. It is a stepfor great deliberation, and for the sake of a wanton woman--"
"Sir!" cried Montaiglon, half rising in his chair.
Doom's eyes gleamed, a quiver ran over his brow, and a furrow came tothe jaw; his hand went to his side, where in other days there mighthave been a dagger. It was the flash of a moment, and died again almostbefore Montaiglon had seen and understood.
"_Mille pardons!_" said Doom with uncouth French. "I used the word inits most innocent sense, with its kindliest meaning; but I was a fool touse it at all, and I withdraw it."
Count Victor bowed his head. "So," said he. "Perhaps I am too muchQuixote, for I saw her but a few times, and that briefly. She was likea--like a fine air once heard, not all to be remembered, never wholly tobe forgot. She had a failing, perhaps--the error of undue affection toqualify her for a sinful world. As it was, she seemed among other womensome rarity out of place--Venus at a lantern feast."
"And ye would send this man to hell that he may find his punishment inremembering her? If I thought so much of vengeance I would leave him onthe earth forgetting."
"M. le Baron, I make you my compliments of your complacence," said CountVictor, rising to his feet and desirous to end the discussion. "Iam only Victor de Montaiglon, poorly educated in the forgiveness oftreachery, and lamentably incapable of the nobihty _de cour_ that youprofess. But I can be grateful; and if you give me the hospitality ofyour house for a day or two, I shall take care that neither it nor itsowner will be implicated in my little affair. Touching retirement "--hewent on with a smile--"I regret exceedingly an overpowering weariness.I have travelled since long before dawn, and burning the candle _parles deux bouts_ is not, as Master Mungo hints, conducive to a vigorousreception of the Macfarlanes if they feel like retaliating to-morrow,and making your domicile the victim of my impetuosity and poormarksmanship."
Doom sighed, took up a candle, and led the way into the passage. A chillair was in the corridor, that smelled like a cellar underground, andas their footsteps sounded reverberant upon the flags uncar-peted, DoomCastle gave the stranger the impression of a vault. Fantastic shadowsdanced macabre in the light of the candles; they were the only furnitureof that part of the rough dwelling that the owner shuffled throughas quickly as he could to save his guest from spying too closely thebarrenness of the land. He went first to the outer door with the candlebefore he said good night, drew back great bars, and opened the oak. Thesky was studded with pale golden stars; the open air was dense with theperfume of the wood, the saline indication of the sea-ware. On the rockyedge of the islet at one part showed the white fringe of the waves nowmore peaceful; to the north brooded enormous hills, seen dimly by thestars, couchant terrors, vague, vast shapes of dolours and alarms. Doomstood long looking at them with the flame of the candle blowinginward and held above his head--a mysterious man beyond Montaiglon'scomprehension. He stood behind him a pace or two, shivering in theevening air.
"You'll be seeing little there, I'll warrant, Count, but a cold nightand inhospitable vacancy, hard hills and the robber haunting them. Forme, that prospect is my evening prayer. I cannot go to sleep withoutit, for fear I wake in Paradise and find it's all by with Doom and thenative hills for me."
And by that he seemed to Montaiglon more explicable: it was the loverhe was; the sentimentalist, the poet, knowing the ancient secret of theanimate earth, taking his hills and valleys passionately to his heart.The Frenchman bowed his sympathy and understanding.
"It's a wonder Mungo kept his word and went to bed," said the Baron,recovering his ordinary manner, "for it would just suit his whim to bideup and act sentry here, very well pleased at the chance your coming gavehim of play-acting the man of war."
He bolted the door again with its great bars, then gravely preceded hisguest to the foot of the turret stair, where he handed him the candle.
"You're in a dreary airt of the house," he said apologetically, "but Ihope you may find it not uncomfortable. Doom is more than two-thirdsbut empty shell, and the bats have the old chapel above you. _Oidhchemhath!_ Good night!" He turned upon his heel and was gone into thefarther end of the passage.
As Montaiglon went up to his room, the guttering candle flame, puffedat by hidden and mischievous enemies from broken ports and gun-slits,showed upon the landing lower than his own a long corridor he had notobserved upon his first ascent. With the candle held high above his headhe glanced into the passage, that seemed to have several doors on eitherhand. In a castle so sparsely occupied the very knowledge of thislong and empty corridor in the neighbourhood of his sleeping apartmentconferred a sense of chill and mystery. He thought he could perceive theodour of damp, decayed wood, crumbled lime, hanging rotten in stagnantairs and covered with the dust of years. "_Dieu!_" he exclaimedinvoluntarily, "this is no Cammercy." He longed for some relief from theair of mystery and dread that hung about the place. A laugh would havebeen a revelation, a strain of song a miracle of healing. And all atonce he reflected upon the Annapla as yet unseen.
"These might be her quarters," he reflected, finding a solace inthe thought. The chill was at once less apparent, a pleasant glow ofcompanionship came over him. Higher up he held the light to see thefarther into the long passage, and as he did so the flame was puffedout. It seemed so human a caprice that he drew himself sharply againstthe wall, ready by instinct to evade any rush or thrust that was tofollow. And then he smiled at his own alarm at a trick of the windthrough some of La-mond's ill-patched walls, and found his consolationin the sense of companionship confirmed by sight of a thin line of lightbelow a door mid-way up the curious passage.
"Annapla, for a louis!" he thought cheerfully. "Thank heaven for onepetticoat in Doom--though that, in truth, is to concede the lady but ascanty wardrobe." And he hummed softly as he entered his own room.
Wearied exceedingly by the toils of the day, he had no sooner thrownhimself upon the bed than he slept with no need for the lullaby aid ofthe sea that rumoured light and soothingly round the rock of Doom.