by Neil Munro
CHAPTER XVI -- OLIVIA
It was a trying position in which Olivia found herself when first shesat at the same table with the stranger whose sense of humour, as shemust always think, was bound to be vastly entertained by her ridiculousstory. Yet she carried off the situation with that triumph that everawaits on a frank eye, a good honest heart, and an unfailing trust inthe ultimate sympathy of one's fellow-creatures. There was no _mauvaisehonte_ there, Count Victor saw, and more than ever he admired, if thatwere possible. It was the cruel father of the piece who was uneasy. Heit was who must busy himself with the feeding of an appetite whose likehe had not manifested before, either silent altogether or joining in theconversation with the briefest sentences.
There was never a Montaiglon who would lose such a good occasion, andCount Victor made the most of it. He was gentle, but not too gentle--forthis was a lady to resent the easy self-effacement with which so manyof her sex are deceived and flattered; he was not unmindful of themore honest compliments, yet he had the shrewdness to eschew the meremeaningless _blague_ that no one could better employ with the creaturesof Versailles, who liked their olives well oiled, or the Jeannetonsand Mimis of the Italian comedy and the playhouse. Under his genial andshining influence Olivia soon forgot the ignominy of these recent days,and it was something gained in that direction that already she lookedupon him as a confederate.
"I am so glad you like our country, Count Victor," she said, no waydubious about his praise of her home hills, those loud impetuouscataracts, and that alluring coast. "It rains--oh! it rains--"
"_Parfaitement_, mademoiselle, but when it shines!" and up went hishands in an admiration wherefor words were too little eloquent: at thatmoment he was convinced truly that the sun shone nowhere else than inthe Scottish hills.
"Yes, yes, when it shines, as you say, it is the dear land! Then thewoods--the woods gleam and tremble, I always think, like a girl who hastears in her eyes, the tears of gladness. The hills--let my father tellyou of the hills, Count Victor; I think he must love them more than heloves his own Olivia--is that not cruel of a man with an only child? Hewould die, I am sure, if he could not be seeing them when he liked. ButI cannot be considering the hills so beautiful as my own glens, my ownlittle glens, that no one, I'll be fancying, is acquainted with to theheart but me and the red deer, and maybe a hunter or two. Of course, wehave the big glens, too, and I would like it if I could show you ShiraGlen--"
"The best of it was once our own," said Doom, black at brow.
"--That once was ours, as father says, and is mine yet so long as I canwalk there and be thinking my own thoughts in it when the wood is green,and the wild ducks are plashing in the lake."
Doom gave a significant exclamation: he was recalling that rumour hadShira Glen for his daughter's favourite trysting-place.
"Rain or shine," said Count Victor, delighting in such whole-souledrapture, delighting in that bright, unwearied eye, that curious turn ofphrase that made her in English half a foreigner like himself--"Rain orshine, it is a country of many charms."
"But now you are too large in your praise," she said, not quite sowarmly. "I do not expect you to think it is a perfect country-side atany time and all times; and it is but natural that you should lovethe country of France, that I have been told is a brave and beautifulcountry, and a country I am sometimes loving myself because of itshospitality to folk that we know. I know it is a country of brave men,and sometimes I am wondering if it is the same for beautiful women. Tellme!" and she leaned on an arm that shone warm, soft, and thrilling fromthe short sleeve of her gown, and put the sweetest of chins upon a handfor the wringing of hearts.
Montaiglon looked into those eyes, so frank and yet profound, andstraight became a rebel. "Mademoiselle Olivia," said he, indifferently(oh, Cecile! oh, Cecile!), "they are considered not unpleasing; but formyself, perhaps acquaintance has spoiled the illusion."
She did not like that at all; her eyes grew proud and unbelieving.
"When I was speaking of the brave men of France," said she, "I fanciedperhaps they would tell what they really thought--even to a woman." Andhe felt very much ashamed of himself.
"Ah! well, to tell the truth, mademoiselle," he confessed, "I have knownvery beautiful ones among them, and many that I liked, and still mustthink of with affection. _Mort de ma vie!_ am I not the very slave ofyour sex, that for all the charms, the goodness, the kindnesses andpurities, is a continual reproach to mine? In the least perfect of themI have never failed to find something to remind me of my little mother."
"And now I think that is much better," said Olivia, heartily, her eyessparkling at that concluding filial note. "I would not care at all for aman to come from his own land and pretend to me that he had no mind forthe beautiful women and the good women he had seen there. No; it wouldnot deceive me, that; it would not give me any pleasure. We have aproverb in the Highlands, that Annapla will often be saying, that therook thinks the pigeon hen would be bonny if her wings were black; andthat is a _seanfhacal_--that is an old-word that is true."
"If I seemed to forget France and what I have seen there of Youth andBeauty," said Count Victor, "it is, I swear it is--it is--"
"It is because you would be pleasant to a simple Highland girl," saidOlivia, with just a hint of laughter in her eyes.
"No, no, _par ma foi!_ not wholly that. But yes, I love my country--ah!the happy days I have known there, the sunny weather, the friends sogood, the comradeship so true. Your land is beautiful--it is even morebeautiful than the exiles in Paris told me; but I was not born here, andthere are times when your mountains seem to crush my heart."
"Is it so, indeed?" said Doom. "As for me, I would not change thebleakest of them for the province of Champagne." And he beat animpulsive hand upon the table.
"Yes, yes, I understand that," cried Olivia. "I understand it very well.It is the sorrow of the hills and woods you mean; ah! do I not know it,too? It is only in my own little wee glens among the rowans that I canfeel careless like the birds, and sing; when I walk the woods or standupon the shore and see the hills without a tree or tenant, when the landis white with the snow and the mist is trailing, Olivia Lamond is notvery cheery. What it is I do not know--that influence of my country; itis sad, but it is good and wholesome, I can tell you; it is then Ithink that the bards make songs, and those who are not bards, like poormyself, must just be feeling the songs there are no words for."
At this did Doom sit mighty pleased and humming to himself a bar ofminstrelsy.
"Look at my father there!" said Olivia; "he would like you to bethinking that he does not care a great deal for the Highlands ofScotland."
"Indeed, and that is not fair, Olivia; I never made pretence of that,"said Doom. "Never to such as understand; Montaiglon knows the Highlandsare at my heart, and that the look of the hills is my evening prayer."
"Isn't that a father, Count Victor?" cried Olivia, quite proud of theconfession. "But he is the strange father, too, that will be pretendingthat he has forgotten the old times and the old customs of our dearpeople. We are the children of the hills and of the mists; the hillsmake no change, the mists are always coming back, and the deer is in thecorrie yet, and when you will hear one that is of the Highland blood sayhe does not care any more for the old times, and preferring theEnglish tongue to his own, and making a boast of his patience when theGovernment of England robs him of his plaid, you must be watchful ofthat man, Count Victor. For there is something wrong. Is it not true,that I am saying, father?" She turned a questioning gaze to Doom, whohad no answer but a sigh.
"You will have perhaps heard my father miscall the _breacan_, miscallthe tartan, and--"
"Not at all," cried the Baron. "There is a great difference betweencondemning and showing an indifference."
"I think, father," said Olivia, "we are among friends. Count Victor, asyou say, could understand about our fancies for the hills, and it wouldbe droll indeed if he smiled at us for making a treasure of the tartan.Whatever my father, the stupid man
, the darling, may be telling you ofthe tartan and the sword, Count Victor, do not believe that we are suchpoor souls as to forget them. Though we must be wearing the Saxon in ourclothes and in our speech, there are many like me--and my dear fatherthere--who will not forget."
It was a curious speech all that, not without a problem, as well as thecharm of the unexpected and the novel, to Count Victor. For, somehowor other, there seemed to be an under meaning in the words; Olivia wasengaged upon the womanly task--he thought--of lecturing some one. If hehad any doubt about that, there was Mungo behind the Baron's chair, hisface just showing over his shoulder, seamed with smiles that spoke ofsome common understanding between him and the daughter of his master;and once, when she thrust more directly at her father, the littleservitor deliberately winked to the back of his master's head--a verygnome of slyness.
"But you have not told me about the ladies of France," said she. "Stay!you will be telling me that again; it is not likely my father would becaring to hear about them so much as about the folk we know that havegone there from Scotland. They are telling me that many good, brave menare there wearing their hearts out, and that is the sore enough trial."
Count Victor thought of Barisdale and his cousin-german, youngGlengarry, gambling in that frowsiest boozing-ken in the Rue Tarane--theCafe de la Paix--without credit for a _louis d'or_; he thought of JamesMor Drummond and the day he came to him behind the Tuileries stableclad in rags of tartan to beg a loan; none of these was the picturesquefigure of loyalty in exile that he should care to paint for this youngwoman.
But he remembered also Cameron, Macleod, Traquair, a score of gallanthearts, of handsome gentlemen, and Lochiel, true chevalier--perhaps abetter than his king!
It was of these Count Victor spoke--of their faith, their valiancies,their shifts of penury and pride. He had used often to consort with themat Cammercy, and later on in Paris. If the truth were to be told, theyhad made a man of him, and now he was generous enough to confess it.
"I owe them much, your exiles, Mademoiselle Olivia," said he. "Whenfirst I met with them I was a man without an ideal or a name, without ascrap of faith or a cause to quarrel for. It is not good for the young,that, Baron, is it? To be passing the days in an _ennui_ and the nightsbelow the lamps? Well, I met your Scots after Dettingen, renewed the oldacquaintance I had made at Cam-mercy, and found the later exiles betterthan the first--than the Balhaldies, the Glengarries, Mur-rays,and Sullivans. They were different, _ces gens-la_. Ordinarily theyrendezvoused in the Taverne Tourtel of St. Germains, and that gloomypalace shared their devotions with Scotland, whence they came and ofwhich they were eternally talking, like men in a nostalgia. James andhis Jacquette were within these walls, often indifferent enough, I fear,about the cause our friends were exiled there for; and Charles, betweenLuneville and Liege or Poland and London, was not at the time aninspiring object of veneration, if you will permit me to says so, M. leBaron. But what does it matter? the cause was there, an image to keepthe good hearts strong, unselfish, and expectant. Ah! the songs theysang, so full of that hopeful melancholy of the glens you speak of,mademoiselle; the stories they told of Tearlach's Year; the hopes thatbound them in a brotherhood--and binds them yet, praise _le bon Dieu!_That was good for me. Yes; I like your exiled compatriots very much,Mademoiselle Olivia. And yet there was a _maraud_ or two among them; nofate could be too hard for the spies who would betray them."
For the first time in many hours Count Victor remembered that he had anobject in Scotland, but with it somehow Cecile was not associated.
"Mungo has been telling me about the spy, Count Victor. Oh, thewickedness of it! I feel black, burning shame that one with a Highlandname and a Highland mother would take a part like yon. I would not thinkthere could be men in the world so bad. They must have wicked mothers tomake such sons; the ghost of a good mother would cry from her grave tocheck her child in such a villany." Olivia spoke with intense feeling,her eyes lambent and her lips quivering.
"Drimdarroch's mother must have been a rock," said Count Victor.
"And to take what was my father's name!" cried Olivia; "Mungo has beentelling me that. Though I am a woman, I could be killing him myself."
"And here we're in our flights, sure enough!" broke in the father, as heleft them with a humorousous pretence at terror.
"Now you must tell me about the women of France," said Olivia. "I havea friend who was there once, and tells me, like you, he was indifferent;but I am doubting that he must have seen some there that were worth hisfancy."
"Is it there sits the wind?" thought Montaiglon. "Our serene angel isnot immune against the customary passions." An unreasonable envy ofthe diplomatist who had been indifferent to the ladies of France tookpossession of him; still, he might have gratified her curiosity abouthis fair compatriots had not Doom returned, and then Olivia's interestin the subject oddly ceased.