Doom Castle
Page 17
CHAPTER XVII -- A SENTIMENTAL SECRET
"Good night," said Olivia, at last, and straightway Count Victor feltthe glory of the evening eclipse. He opened the door to let her passthrough.
"I go back to my cell quiet enough," she said, in low tones, and with asmiling frown upon her countenance.
"Happy prisoner!" said he, "to be condemned to no worse than your owncompany."
"Ah! it is often a very dull and pitiful company that, Count Victor,"said Olivia, with a sigh.
It was not long till he, too, sought his couch, and the Baron of Doomwas left alone.
Doom sat long looking at his crumbling walls, and the flaming fortunes,the blush, the heat-white and the dead grey ash of the peat-fire. Hesighed now and then with infinite despondency. Once or twice he pshawedhis melancholy vapours, gave a pace back and forward on the oaken floor,with a bent head, a bereaved countenance, and sat down again, indulgingin the passionate void that comes to a bosom reft of its joys, its hopesand loves, and only mournful recollection left. A done man! Not an oldman; not even an elderly, but a done man none the less, with the heartout of him, and all the inspiration clean gone!
Count Victor's advent in the castle had brought its own bitterness, forit was not often now that Doom had the chance to see anything of thebig, brave outer world of heat and enterprise. This gallant revivedungovernably the remembrances he for ever sought to stifle--all he hadbeen and all he had seen, now past and gone for ever, as Annapla didnot scruple to tell him when the demands of her Gift or a short tempercompelled her. His boyhood in the dear woods, by the weedy river-banks,in the hill-clefts where stags harboured, on a shore for ever soundingwith the enchanting sea--oh, sorrow! how these things came beforehim. The gentle mother, with the wan, beautiful face; the eager fatherlooking ardent out to sea--they were plain to view. And then St.Andrews, when he was a bejant of St. Leonard's, roystering with hisfellows, living the life of youth with gusto, but failing lamentably atthe end; then the despondency of those scanty acres and decayed walls;his marriage with the dearest woman in the world, Death at the fireside,the bairn crying at night in the arms of her fosterer; his journeysabroad, the short hour of glory and forgetfulness with Saxe at Fontenoyand Laffeldt, to be followed only by these weary years of spoliation bylaw, of oppression by the usurping Hanoverian.
A done man! Only a poor done man of middle age, and the fact made allthe plainer to himself by contrast with his guest, alert and even gayupon a fiery embassy of retribution.
It was exactly the hour of midnight by a clock upon the mantel; a singlecandle, by which he had made a show of reading, was guttering all to aside and an ungracious end in a draught that came from some cranny inthe ill-seamed ingle-walls, for all that the night seemed windless. Aprofound stillness wrapped all; the night was huge outside, with the seadead-flat to moon and pulsing star.
He shook off his vapours vexatiously, and, as he had done on the firstnight of Count Victor's coming, he went to his curious orisons at thedoor--the orisons of the sentimentalist, the home-lover. Back he drewthe bars softly, and looked at the world that ever filled him withyearning and apprehension, at the draggled garden, at the sea, with itsroadway strewn with golden sand all shimmering, at the mounts--Ben Ime,Ardno, and Ben Artair, haughty in the night.
Then he shut the doors reluctantly, stood hesitating--more the done manthan ever--in the darkness of the entrance, finally hurried to save theguttering candle. He lit a new one at its expiring flame and left the_salle_. He went, not to his bedchamber, but to the foot of the stairthat led to the upper flats, to his daughter's room, to the room of hisguest, and to the ancient chapel. With infinite caution, he crept roundand round on the narrow corkscrew stair; at any step it might have beena catacomb cell.
He listened at the narrow corridor leading to Olivia's room and thatadjoining of her umquhile warder, Annapla; he paused, too, for a second,at Montaiglon's door. None gave sign of life. He went up higher.
A storey over the stage on which Count Victor slumbered the stair endedabruptly at an oaken door, which he opened with a key. As he entered,a wild flurry of wings disturbed the interior, and by the light of thecandle and some venturesome rays of the moon a flock of bats or birdswere to be seen in precipitous flight through unglazed windows and abroken roof.
Doom placed his candle in a niche of the wall and went over to anancient _armoire_, or chest, which seemed to be the only furniture ofwhat had apparently once been the chapel of the castle, to judge fromits size and the situation of an altar-like structure at the east end-.
He unlocked the heavy lid, threw it open, looked down with a sigh at itscontents, which seemed, in the light of he candle, nothing wonderful.But a suit of Highland clothes, and some of the more martialappurtenances of the lost Highland state, including the dirk that hadroused Montaiglon's suspicion!
He drew them out hurriedly upon the floor, but yet with an affectionatetenderness, as if they were the relics of a sacristy, and with eagernesssubstituted the gay tartan for his dull mulberry Saxon habiliments.It was like the creation of a man from a lay figure. The jerk at thekilt-belt buckle somehow seemed to brace the sluggish spirit; hisshoulders found their old square set above a well-curved back; hisfeet--his knees--by an instinct took a graceful poise they had neverlearned in the mean immersement of breeches and Linlithgow boots. Ashe fastened his buckled brogues, he hummed the words of MacMhaisterAllister's songs:
"Oh! the black-cloth of the Saxon, Dearer far's the Gaelic tartan!"
"Hugh Bethune's content with the waistcoat, is he?" he said to himself."He's no Gael to be so easily pleased, and him with a freeman's liberty!And yet--and yet--I would be content myself to have the old stuff onlyabout my heart."
He assumed the doublet and plaid, drew down upon his brow a bonnet withan eagle plume; turned him to the weapons. The knife--the pistols--thedirk, went to their places, and last he put his hand upon the hilt of asword--not a claymore, but the weapon he had worn in the foreign field.As foolish a piece of masquerade as ever a child had found entertainmentin, and yet, if one could see it, with some great element of pathos andof dignity. For with every item of the discarded and degraded costumeof his race he seemed to put on a grace not there before, a manliness,a spirit that had lain in abeyance with the clothes in that mothy chest.It was no done man who eagerly trod the floor of that ruined chapel, nolack-lustre failure of life, but one complete, commingling action withhis sentiment. He felt the world spacious about him again; a summons toample fields beyond the rotting woods and the sonorous shore of Doom.The blood of his folk, that had somehow seemed to stay about his heartin indolent clots, began to course to every extremity, and gave hisbrain a tingling clarity, a wholesome intoxication of the perfect man.
He drew the sword from its scabbard, joying hugely in the lisp of thesteel, at its gleam in the candle-light, and he felt anew the wonder ofone who had drunk the wine of life and venture to its lees.
He made with the weapon an airy academic salute _a la Gerard_ and thenew school of fence, thrust swift in tierce like a sun-flash in forestafter rain, followed with a parade, and felt an expert's ecstasy. Theblood tingled to his veins; his eyes grew large and flashing; a flushcame to that cheek, for ordinary so wan. Over and over again he sheathedthe sword, and as often withdrew it from its scabbard. Then he handledthe dirk with the pleasure of a child. But always back to the sword,handled with beauty and aplomb, always back to the sword, and he had itbefore him, a beam of fatal light, when something startled him, as onestruck unexpectedly by a whip.
There was a furious rapping at the outer door!