by Neil Munro
CHAPTER V -- THE FLAGEOLET
He woke from a dream of pressing danger and impotent flight to marvelwhere he was in darkness; fancied himself at first in some waysideinn mid-way over Scotland, and sat up suddenly with an exclamation ofassurance that he was awake to the suppositious landlord who had called,for the sense of some sound but stilled on the second of his wakingwas strong within him. He fastened upon the vague starlit space of thelittle window to give him a clew to his situation. Then he rememberedDoom, and, with the window for his key, built up the puzzle of his room,wondering at the cause of his alarm.
The wind had risen and sent a loud murmur through the trees along thecoast; the sea, in breakers again, beat on the rock till Doom throbbed.But there was nothing in that to waken a man who had ridden two days oncoarse roads and encountered and fought with banditti. Decidedly therewas some menace in the night; danger on hard fields had given him bloodalert and unsleeping; the alarum was drumming at his breast. Stealthilyhe put out his hand, and it fell as by a fiddler's instinct upon thespot desired--the hilt of his sword. There he kept it with his breathsubdued, and the alarum severely quelled.
An owl's call sounded on the shore, extremely pensive in its note, andnatural, but unusual in the rhythm of its repetition. It might havepassed for the veritable call of the woods to an unsuspicious ear, butMontaiglon knew it for a human signal. As if to prove it so, it wasfollowed by the grating of the outer door upon its hinge, and the soundof a foot stumbling among stones.
He reflected that the tide was out in all probability, and at once thenotion followed that here were his searchers, the Macfarlanes, back inforce to revenge his impetuous injury to their comrades. But then--asecond thought almost as promptly told him in that case there should beno door opened.
A sound of subdued voices came from the foot of the tower and died inthe garden behind or was swept elsewhere by the wind; then, through thevoice of the wave, the moan of the wind, and its whistle in vent andcranny, came a strain of music--not the harsh uncultured pipe of Mungothe servitor, but a more dulcet air of flute or flageolet. In thosedark savage surroundings it seemed a sound inhuman, something unreal,something of remembrance in delirium or dream, charged for this Parisianwith a thousand recollections of fond times, gay times, passionate timeselsewhere. Doom throbbed to the waves, but the flageolet stirred in himnot so much surprise at this incongruous experience as a wave of emotionwhere all his past of gaillard was crystalled in a second--many nightsof dance and song anew experienced in a mellow note or two; an old lovereincarnated in a phrase (and the woman in the dust); the evenings ofProvence lived again, and Louis's darling flute piping from the chateauover the field and river; moons of harvest vocal with some peasantcheer; in the south the nightingale searching to express his kinshipwith the mind of man and the creatures of the copse, his rapture at thestar.
Somehow the elusive nature of the music gave it more than half itsmagic. It would die away as the wind declined, or come in passionatecrescendo. For long it seemed to Montaiglon--and yet it was tooshort--the night was rich with these incongruous but delightful strains.Now the player breathed some soft, slow, melancholy measure of themanner Count Victor had often heard the Scottish exiles croon withtears at his father's house, or sing with too much boisterousness at thedinners of the St. Andrew's Club, for which the Leith frigates had madespecial provision of the Scottish wine. Anon the fingers strayed upon anItalian symphony full of languors and of sun, and once at least a dancegave quickness to the execution.
But more haunting than all was one simple strain and brief, indeed neverwholly accomplished, as if the player sought to recollect a song forgot,that was repeated over and over again, as though it were the motiveof the others or refrain. Sometimes Montaiglon thought the player haddespaired of concluding this bewitching melody when he changed suddenlyto another, and he had a very sorrow at his loss; again, when itsprogress to him was checked by a veering current of the wind and theflageolet rose once more with a different tune upon it, he dreaded thatthe conclusion had been found in the lacuna.
He rose at last and went to the window, and tried in the wanillumination of the heavens to detect the mysterious musician in thegarden, but that was quite impossible: too dark the night, too huge andprofound the shadows over Doom. He went to his door and opened it andlooked down the yawning stairway; only the sigh of the wind in thegun-slits occupied the stairway, and the dark was the dark of Genesis.And so again to bed, to lie with his weariness for long forgotten. Hefound that tantalising fragment return again and again, but fated neverto be complete. It seemed, he fancied, something like a symbol of alife--with all the qualities there, the sweetness, the affection, thepassion, the divine despair, the longing, even the valours and thefaiths to make a great accomplishment, but yet lacking the roundaccomplishment. And as he waited once again for its recurrence he fellasleep.