by Neil Munro
CHAPTER XII -- OMENS AND ALARMS
Beaten back by Annapla's punch-bowl from their escalade, the assailantsrallied to a call from their commander, and abandoned, for the time atleast, their lawless enterprise. They tossed high their arms, stampedout their torch to blackness, shouted a ribald threat, and wereswallowed up by the black mainland. A gentle rain began to fall, andthe sea lapsed from a long roll to an oily calm. With no heed for thewarnings and protests of Mungo, whose intrepidity was too obviously amerely mental attitude and incapable of facing unknown dangers, CountVictor lit a lantern and went out again into the night that now heldno rumour of the band who had so noisily menaced. There was profoundsilence on the shore and all along the coast--a silence the moresinister because peopled by his enemies. He went round the castle,his lantern making a beam of yellow light before him, showing the rainfalling in silvery threads, gathering in silver beads upon his coat andtrickling down the channels of his weapon. A wonderful fondness forthat shaft of steel possessed him at the moment: it seemed a comradefaithful, his only familiar in that country of marvels and dreads;it was a comfort to have it hand in hand; he spoke to it once inaffectionate accents as if it had been a thing of life. The point of itsuggested the dark commander, and Count Victor scrutinised the groundbeside the dyke-side where he had made the thrust: to his comfort only asingle gout of blood revealed itself, for he had begun to fear somethingtoo close on a second homicide, which would make his presence in thecountry the more notorious. A pool of water still smoking showed whereAnnapla's punch-bowl had done its work; but for the blood and that, thealarms of the night might have seemed to him a dream. Far off to thesouth a dog barked; nearer, a mountain torrent brawled husky in itschasm. Perfumes of the wet woodland mingled with the odours of theshore. And the light he carried made Doom Castle more dark, moresinister and mysterious than ever, rising strong and silent from hisfeet to the impenetrable blackness overhead.
He went into the garden, he stood in the bower. There more than anywhereelse the desolation was pitiful--the hips glowing crimson on theirstems, the eglantine in withering strands, the rustic woodwork greenwith damp and the base growths of old and mouldering situations, theseat decayed and broken, but propped at its feet as if for recent use.All seemed to express some poignant anguish for lost summers, happydays, for love and laughter ravished and gone for ever. Above all, therain and sea saddened the moment--the rain dripping through the raggedfoliage and oozing on the wood, the cavernous sea lapping monstrous onthe rock that some day yet must crumble to its hungry maw.
He held high the lantern, and to a woman at her darkened window herbower seemed to glow like a shell lit in the depths of troubled ocean.He swung the light; a footstep, that he did not hear, was checked inwonder. He came out, and instinct told him some one watched him in thedark beyond the radiance of his lantern.
"_Qui est la?_" he cried, forgetting again the foreign country, thinkinghimself sentinel in homely camps, and when he spoke a footstep soundedin the darkness.
Some one had crossed from the mainland while he ruminated within. Helistened, with the lantern high above his head but to the right of himfor fear of a pistol-shot.
One footstep.
He advanced slowly to meet it, his fingers tremulous on his sword,and the Baron came out of the darkness, his hands behind his back, hisshoulders bent, his visage a mingling of sadness and wonder.
"M. le Baron?" said Count Victor, questioning, but he got no answer.Doom came up to him and peered at him as if he had been a ghost, a tearupon his cheek, something tense and troubled in his countenance, thatshowed him for the moment incapable of calm utterance.
"You--you--are late," stammered Count Victor, putting the sword behindhim and feeling his words grotesque.
"I took--I took you for a wraith--I took you for a vision," said theBaron plaintively. He put his hand upon his guest's arm. "Oh, man!" saidhe, "if you were Gaelic, if you were Gaelic, if you could understand! Icame through the dark from a place of pomp, from a crowded street, fromthings new and thriving, and above all the castle of his Grace flaringfrom foundation to finial like a torch, though murder was done this dayin the guise of justice: I came through the rain and the wet full ofbitterness to my poor black home, and find no light there where once myfather and my father's father and all the race of us knew pleasant hoursin the wildest weather. Not a light, not a lowe--" he went on, gazingupward to the frowning walls dark glistening in the rain--"and thenthe bower must out and shine to mind me--to mind me--ah, Mont-aiglon, mypardons, my regrets! you must be finding me a melancholy host."
"Do not mention it," said Count Victor carelessly, though the conductof this marvel fairly bewildered him, and his distress seemed poorlyaccounted for by his explanation. "_Ah, vieux blagueur!_" he thought,"can it be Balhaldie again--a humbug with no heart in his breast butan onion in his handkerchief?" And then he was ashamed of suspicions ofwhich a day or two ago he would have been incapable.
"My dear friends of Monday did me the honour to call in your absence,"he said. "They have not gone more than twenty minutes."
"What! the Macfarlanes," cried Doom, every trace of his softer emotiongone, but more disturbed than ever as he saw the sword for the firsttime. "Well--well--well?" he inquired eagerly.
"Well, well, well?" and he gripped Count Victor by the arm and lookedhim in the eyes.
"Nothing serious happened," replied Count Victor, "except that yourdomestics suffered some natural alarms."
Doom seemed wonderously relieved. "The did not force an entrance?" saidhe.
"They did their best, but failed. I pricked one slightly before I fellback on Mungo's barricades; that and some discomfiture from MistressAnnapla's punch-bowl completed the casualties."
"Well? well? well?" cried Lamond, still waking something. Count Victoronly looked at him in wonder, and led the way to the door where Mungodrew back the bars and met his master with a trembling front. A glanceof mute inquiry and intelligence passed between the servant and hismaster: the Frenchman saw it and came to his own conclusions, butnothing was said till the Baron had made a tour of investigation throughthe house and come at last to join his guest in the _salle_, where theembers of the fire were raked together on the hearth and fed with newpeat. The Count and his host sat down together, and when Mungo had goneto prepare some food for his master, Count Victor narrated the night'sadventure. He had an excited listener--one more excited, perhaps, thanthe narrative of itself might account for.
"And there is much that is beyond my poor comprehension," continuedCount Victor, looking at him as steadfastly as good breeding wouldpermit.
"Eh?" said Doom, stretching fingers that trembled to the peat-flame thatstained his face like wine.
"Your servant Mungo was quite unnecessarily solicitous for my safety,and took the trouble to put me under lock and key."
Doom fingered the bristles of his chin in a manifest perturbation."He--he did that, did he?" said he, like one seeking to gain time forfurther reflection. And when Count Victor waited some more sympatheticcomment, "It was--it was very stupid, very stupid of Mungo," said he.
"Stupid!" echoed Count Victor ironically. "Ah! so it was. I should nothave said stupid myself, but it so hard, is it not, for a foreignerto find the just word in his poor vocabulary? For a _betise_ much lessunpleasant I have scored a lackey's back with a scabbard. Master Mungohad an explanation, however, though I doubted the truth of it."
"And what was that?"
"That you would be angry if he permitted me to get into danger while Iwas your guest,--an excuse more courteous than convincing."
"He was right," said Doom, "though I can scarcely defend the manner ofexecuting his trust: I was not to see that he would make a trepanningaffair of it. I'm--I'm very much grieved, Count, much grieved, I assureyou: I shall have a word or two on the matter the morn's morning withMungo. A stupid action! a stupid action! but you know the man by thistime--an oddity out and out."
"A little too much so, if I may take the liberty, M. le Baro
n,--a littletoo much so for a foreigner's peace of mind," said Count Victor softly."Are you sure, M. le Baron, there are no traitors in Doom?" and heleaned forward with his gaze on the Baron's face.
The Baron started, flushed more crimson than before, and turned analarmed countenance to his interrogator. "Good God!" he cried, "are youbringing your doubts of the breed of us to my hearthstone?"
"It is absurd, perhaps," said Count Victor, still very softly, andwatching his host as closely as he might, "but Mungo--"
"Pshaw! a good lowland heart! For all his clowning, Count, you mighttrust him with your life."
"The other servant then--the woman?"
Doom looked a trifle uneasy. "Hush!" said he, with half a glance behindhim to the door. "Not so loud. If she should hear!" he stammered: hestopped, then smiled awkwardly. "Have ye any dread of an Evil Eye?" saidhe.
"I have no dread of the devil himself, who is something more tangible,"replied Count Victor. "You do not suggest that malevolent influence inMistress Annapla, do you?"
"We are very civil to her in these parts," said Doom, "and I'm not keento put her powers to the test. I have seen and heard some droll thingsof her."
"That has been my own experience," said Count Victor. "Are you sureher honesty is on more substantial grounds than her reputation forwitchcraft? I demand your pardon for expressing these suspicions, butI have reasons. I cannot imagine that the attack of the Macfarlanes wasconnived at by your servants, though that was my notion for a littlewhen Mungo locked me up, for they suffered more alarm at the attack thanI did, and the reason for the attack seems obvious enough. But are youaware that this woman who commands your confidence is in the practiceof signalling to the shore when she wishes to communicate with some onethere?"
"I think you must be mistaken," said Doom, uneasily.
"I could swear I saw something of the kind," said Count Victor. Hedescribed the signal he had seen twice at her window. "Not having mether at the time, I laid it down to some gay gillian's affair witha lover on the mainland, but since I have seen her that ideaseem--seems--"
"Just so, I should think it did," said the Baron: but though his wordswere light, his aspect was disturbed. He paced once or twice up and downthe floor, muttered something to himself in Gaelic, and finally went tothe door, which he opened. "Mungo, Mungo!" he cried into the darkness,and the servant appeared with the gaudy nightcap of his slumber alreadyon.
"Tell Annapla to come here," said the Baron.
The servant hesitated, his lip trembled upon some objection that he didnot, however, express, and he went on his errand.
In a little the woman entered. It was not surprising that when CountVictor, prepared by all that had gone before to meet a bright youngcreature when he had gone into his chamber where she was repelling theescalade of the enemy, had been astounded to find what he found there,for Mistress Annapla was in truth not the stuff for amorous intrigues.She had doubtless been handsome enough in her day, but that was longdistant; now there were but the relics of her good looks, with only hereyes, dark, lambent, piercing, to tell of passions unconsumed. She hadeyes only for her master; Count Victor had no existence for her, and hewas all the freer to watch how she received the Baron's examination.
"Do you dry your clothes at the windows in Doom?" asked her masterquietly, with none of a master's bluntness, asking the question inEnglish from politeness to his guest.
She replied rapidly in Gaelic.
"For luck," said the Baron dubiously when he had listened to a longguttural explanation that was of course unintelligible to the Frenchman."That's a new freit. To keep away the witches. Now, who gave ye a notionlike that?" he went on, maintaining his English.
Another rapid explanation followed, one that seemed to satisfy theBaron, for when it was finished he gave her permission to go.
"It's as I thought," he explained to Count Victor. "The old body hasbeen troubled with moths and birds beating themselves against her windowat night when the light was in it: what must she be doing but taking itfor some more sinister visitation, and the green kerchief is supposed tokeep them away."
"I should have fancied it might have been a permanency in that case,"suggested Count Victor, "unless, indeed, your Highland ghosts have aspecial preference for Mondays and Wednesdays."
"Permanency!" repeated the Baron, thoughtfully. "H'm!" The suggestionhad obviously struck him as reasonable, but he baulked at any debate onit.
"There was also the matter of the horseman," went on Count Victorblandly, pointing his moustache.
"Horseman?" queried the Baron.
"A horseman _sans doute_. I noticed most of your people here ride witha preposterously short stirrup; this one rode like a gentleman cavalier.He stopped opposite the castle this forenoon and waved his complimentsto the responsive maid."
The effect upon the Baron was amazing. He grew livid with some feelingrepressed. It was only for a moment; the next he was for changing theconversation, but Count Victor had still his quiver to empty.
"Touching flageolets?" said he, but there his arrow missed.
Doom only laughed.
"For that," said he, "you must trouble Annapla or Mungo. They have astory that the same's to be heard every night of storm, but my bed's atthe other side of the house and I never heard it;" and he broughtthe conversation back to the Macfarlanes, so that Count Victor had torelinquish his inquisition.
"The doings of to-night," said he, "make it clear I must rid you ofmy presence _tout a l'heure_. I think I shall transfer me to the townto-morrow."
"You can't, man," protested Doom, though, it almost seemed, with somereluctance. "There could be no worse time for venturing there. In thefirst place, the Macfarlanes' affair is causing a stir; then I've hadno chance of speaking to Petullo about you. He was to meet me after thecourt was over, but his wife dragged him up with her to dinner in thecastle. Lord! yon's a wife who would be nane the waur o' a leatherin',as they say in the south. Well, she took the goodman to the castle,though a dumb dog he is among gentrice, and the trip must have beenlittle to his taste. I waited and better waited, and I might have beenwaiting for his home-coming yet, for it's candle-light to the top flatof MacCailen's tower and the harp in the hall. Your going, Count, willhave to be put off a day or two longer."