Doom Castle

by Neil Munro

  CHAPTER XXXIII -- BACK IN DOOM

  The night brooded on the Highlands when Count Victor reached theshore. Snow and darkness clotted in the clefts of the valleys openinginnumerably on the sea, but the hills held up their heads and thoughtamong the stars--unbending and august and pure, knowing nothing at allof the glens and shadows. It was like a convocation of spirits. Thepeaks rose everywhere white to the brows and vastly ruminating. Anebbing tide too, so that the strand was bare. Upon the sands where therehad been that folly of the morning the waves rolled in an ascendinglisp, spilled upon at times with gold when the decaying moon--ahalbert-head thrown angrily among Ossian's flying ghosts, the warriorclouds--cut through them sometimes and was so reflected in the sea. Thesea was good; good to hear and smell; the flying clouds were grateful tothe eye; the stars--he praised God for the delicious stars not in wordsbut in an exultation of gratitude and affection, yet the mountain-peakswere most of all his comforters.

  He had run from the castle as if the devil had been at his red heels,with that ridiculous coat flapping its heavily braided skirts abouthis calves; passed through snow-smothered gardens, bordered bodingdark plantations of firs, leaped opposing fell-dykes whence shelteringanimals ran terrified at the apparition, and he came out upon theseaside at the bay as one who has overcome a nightmare and wakens to seethe familiar friendly glimmer of the bedroom fire.

  A miracle! and mainly worked by a glimpse of these blanched hills. Forhe knew now they were an inseparable part of his memory of Olivia, _her_hills, _her_ sheltering sentinels, the mere sight of them Doom's orison.Though he had thought of her so much when he shivered in the fosse, ithad too often been as something unattainable, never to be seen againperhaps, a part of his life past and done with. An incubus rode hischest, though he never knew till now, when it fled at the sight ofOlivia's constant friends the mountains. Why, the girl lived! her homewas round the corner there dark-jutting in the sea! He could, with someactivity, be rapping at her father's door in a couple of hours!

  "_Grace de Dieu!_" said he, "let us leave trifles and go home."

  It was a curious sign of his preoccupation, ever since he had escapedfrom his imprisonment, that he should not once have thought on wherehe was to fly to till this moment when the hills inspired. "Silence,thought, calm, and purity, here they are!" they seemed to tell him, andby no means unattainable. Where (now that he had time to think of it)could he possibly go to-night but to the shelter of Doom? Let the morrowdecide for itself. _A demain les affaires serieuses!_ Doom and--Olivia.What eyes she had, that girl! They might look upon the assailant of herwretched lover with anything but favour; yet even in anger they weremore to him than those of all the world else in love.

  Be sure Count Victor was not standing all the time of these reflectionsshivering in the snow. He had not indulged a moment's hesitation sinceever he had come out upon the bay, and he walked through the night asfast as his miserable shoes would let him.

  The miles passed, he crossed the rivers that mourned through hollowarches and spread out in brackish pools along the shore. Curlews pipeddolorously the very psalm of solitude, and when he passed amongthe hazel-woods of Strone and Achnatra, their dark recesses belledcontinually with owls. It was the very pick of a lover's road: nooutward vision but the sombre masses of the night, the valleys of snow,and the serene majestic hills to accompany that inner sight of thewoman; no sounds but that of solemn waters and the forest creatures tomake the memory of her words the sweeter. A road for lovers, and hewas the second of the week, though he did not know it. Only, SimonMacTaggart had come up hot-foot on his horse, a trampling conqueror (ashe fancied), the Count trudged shamefully undignified through snowthat came high upon the silken stockings, and long ago had made hisdancing-shoes shapeless and sodden. But he did not mind that; he had agoal to make for, an ideal to cherish timidly; once or twice he foundhimself with some surprise humming Gringoire's song, that surely shouldnever go but with a light heart.

  And in the fulness of time he approached the point of land from which heknew he could first see Doom's dark promontory if it were day. There hissteps slowed. Somehow it seemed as if all his future fortune dependedupon whether or not a light shone through the dark to greet him. Betweenhim and the sea rolling in upon a spit of the land there was--of allthings!--a herd of deer dimly to be witnessed running back and forwardon the sand as in some confusion at his approach; at another time thething should have struck him with amazement, but now he was too busywith his speculation whether Doom should gleam on him or not to studythis phenomenon of the frosty winds. He made a bargain with himself: ifthe isle was black, that must mean his future fortune; if a light wasthere, however tiny, it was the star of happy omen, it was--it was--itwas several things he dared not let himself think upon for fear ofimmediate disappointment.

  For a minute he paused as if to gather his courage and then make a dashround the point.

  _Ventre Dieu!_ Blackness! His heart ached.

  And then, as most men do in similar circumstances, he decided that thetest was a preposterous one. Why, faith! should he relinquish hope ofeverything because--

  What! the light was there. Like a fool he had misjudged the distance inthe darkness and had been searching for it in the wrong place. It wasso bright that it might be a star estrayed, a tiny star and venturesome,gone from the keeping of the maternal moon and wandered into the woodbehind Doom to tangle in the hazel-boughs. A dear star! a very gem ofstars! a star more precious than all the others in that clustered sky,because it was the light of Olivia's window. A plague on all the otherswith their twinkling search among the clouds for the little one lost!he wished it had been a darker night that he might have only this onevisible.

  By rights he should be weary and cold, and the day's events shouldtrouble him; but to tell the truth, he was in a happy exaltation all therest of the way. Sometimes the star of hope evaded him as he followedthe bending path, trees interposing; he only ran the faster to get itinto his vision again, and it was his beacon up to the very walls ofDoom.

  The castle took possession of the night.

  How odd that he should have fancied that brave tower arrogant; it wastranced in the very air of friendliness and love--the fairy residence,the moated keep of all the sweet old tales his nurse was used to tellhim when he was a child in Cam-mercy.

  And there he had a grateful memory of the ringleted middle-aged ladywho had alternately whipped and kissed him, and in his night's terrorssoothed him with tales. "My faith!" said he, "thou didst not think thyPerrault's 'Contes des Fees' might, twenty years after, have so close anapplication to a woman and a tower in misty Albion."

  He walked deliberately across to the rock, went round the tower, stooda moment in the draggled arbour--the poor arbour of dead ideals. Doom,that once was child of the noisy wars, was dead as the Chateau d'Arquessave for the light in its mistress's window. Poor old shell! and yetsomehow he would not have had it otherwise.

  He advanced and rapped at the door. The sound rang in the interior, andpresently Mungo's shuffling steps were heard and his voice behind thedoor inquiring who was there.

  "A friend," answered Count Victor, humouring the little old man's fancyfor affairs of arms.

  "A friend!" repeated Mungo with contempt. "A man on a horse has ayehunders o' frien's in the gutter, as Annapla says, and it wad need to besomethin' rarer to get into Doom i' the mirk o' nicht. I opened thedoor to a frien' the ither nicht and he gripped me by the craig and fairchoked me afore I could cry a barley."

  "_Peste!_ Do not flatter my English so much as to tell me you do notrecognise Count Victor's accent through a door."

  "Lord keep 's!" cried Mungo, hastily drawing his bolts. "Hae ye changedye'r mind already and left the inns? It's a guid thing for your wifeye're no marrit, or she wad be the sorry woman wi' sic a shiftin' man."

  His astonishment was even greater when Count Victor stood before him aludicrous figure with his too ample coat.

  "Dinna tell me ye hae come through the snaw this nicht like t
hat!"he cried incredulous, holding up his candle the better to examine thefigure.

  Count Victor laughed, and for an answer simply thrust forth a soppingfoot to his examination.

  "Man, ye must hae been hot on't!" said the servant, shaking his cowledhead till the tassel danced above his temple. "Ye'r shoon's fair steepedwi' water. Water's an awfu' thing to rot ye'r boots; I aye said if itrotted ane's boots that way, whit wad it no' dae to ane's stamach? Oh,sirs! sirs! this is becomin' the throng hoose, wi' comin's and goin'sand raps and roars and collie-shangies o' a' kin's. If it wasna me wasthe canny gaird o't it's Himsel' wad hae to flit for the sake o' hisnicht's sleep."

  "You behold, Mungo, the daw in borrowed plumes," said Count Victor asthe door was being barred again. "I hope the daw felt more comfortablethan I do in mine," and he ruefully surveyed his apparel. "Does MasterMungo recognise these peacock feathers?"

  Mungo scanned the garment curiously.

  "It's gey like ane I've seen on a bigger man," he answered.

  "And a better, perhaps, thought my worthy Mungo. I remember me thatour peacock was a diplomatist and had huge interest in your delightfulstories."

  A movement of Mungo's made him turn to see the Baron standing behind hima little bewildered at this apparition.

  "_Failte!_" said the Baron, "and I fancy you would be none the waur, aswe say, of the fireside."

  He went before him into the _salle_, taking Mungo's candle. Mungo wasdespatched for Annapla, and speedily the silent abigail of visions wasengaged upon that truly Gaelic courtesy, the bathing of the traveller'sfeet. The Baron considerately made no inquiries; if it was a caprice ofCount Victor's to venture in dancing shoes and a borrowed jacket throughdark snow-swept roads, it was his own affair. And the Count was so muchinterested in the new cheerfulness of his host (once so saturnine andmelancholy) that he left his own affairs unmentioned for a while as thewoman worked. It was quite a light-hearted recluse this, compared withthat he had left a week ago.

  "I am not surprised you found yon place dull," at the last hazarded theBaron.

  "_Comment?_"

  "Down-by, I mean. I'm glad myself always to get home out of it at thisseason. When the fishers are there it's all my fancy, but when it doesnot smell of herring, the stench of lawyers' sheepskins gets on the topand is mighty offensive to any man that has had muckle to do with them."

  "Dull!" repeated Count Victor, now comprehending; "I have crowded moreexperience into the past four-and-twenty hours than I might meet in amonth anywhere east of Calais. I have danced with a duchess, fought astupid duel, with a town looking on for all the world as if it were aperformance in a circus with lathen weapons, moped in a dungeon, brokenthrough the same, stolen a coat, tramped through miles of snow in a pairof pantoufles, forgotten to pay the bill at the inn, and lost my baggageand my reputation--which latter I swear no one in these parts will beglad to pick up for his own use. Baron, I'll be shot if your country isnot bewitched. My faith! what happenings since I came here expecting tobe killed with _ennui!_ I protest I shall buy a Scots estate and askall my friends over here to see real life. Only they must have goodconstitutions; I shall insist on them having good constitutions. Andthere's another thing--it necessitates that they must have so kind afriend as Monsieur le Baron and so hospitable a house as Doom to fallback on when their sport comes to a laughable termination, as mine hasdone to-night."

  "Ah! then you have found your needle in the haystack after all?" criedDoom, vastly interested.

  "Found the devil!" cried Montaiglon, a shade of vexation in hiscountenance, for he had not once that day had a thought of all that hadbrought, him into Scotland. "The haystack must be stuck full of needleslike the bran of a pin-cushion."

  "And this one, who is not the particular needle named Drimdarroch?"

  "I shall give you three guesses, M. le Baron."

  Doom reflected, pulled out his nether lip with his fingers, looking hardat his guest.

  "It is not the Chamberlain?"

  "_Peste!_" thought the Count, "can the stern unbending parent haverelented? You are quite right," he said; "no other. But it is not amatter of the most serious importance. I lost my coat and the gentlemanlost a little blood. I have the best assurances that he will be on footagain in a week or two, by which time I hope--at all events I expect--tobe out of all danger of being invited to resume the entertainment."

  "In the meantime here's Doom, yours--so long as it is mine--whileit's your pleasure to bide in it if you fancy yourself safe frommolestation," said the Baron.

  "As to that I think I may be tranquil. I have, there too, the bestassurances that the business will be hushed up."

  "So much the better, though in any case this seems to have marred yourreal engagements here in the matter of Drimdarroch."

  Count Victor's turn it was to feel vexation now. He pulled his moustacheand reddened. "As to that, Baron," said he, "I pray you not to despiseme, for I have to confess that my warmth in the mission that brought mehere has abated sadly. You need not ask me why. I cannot tell you. Asfor me and my affair, I have not forgotten, nor am I likely wholly toforget; but your haystack is as _difficile_ as you promised it shouldbe, and--there are divers other considerations. It necessitates that Igo home. There shall be some raillery at my expense doubtless--_Ciel!_how Louis my cousin will laugh!--but no matter."

  He spoke a little abstractedly, for he saw a delicate situationapproaching. He was sure to be asked--once Annapla's service wasover--what led to the encounter, and to give the whole story franklyinvolved Olivia's name unpleasantly in a vulgar squabble. He saw for thefirst time that he had been wholly unwarranted in taking the defence ofthe Baron's interests into his own hands. Could he boldly intimatethat in his opinion jealousy of himself had been the spring of theChamberlain's midnight attacks on the castle of Doom? That werepreposterous! And yet that seemed the only grounds that would justifyhis challenging the Chamberlain.

  When Annapla was gone then Doom got the baldest of histories. He wasencouraged to believe that all this busy day of adventure had been dueto a simple quarrel after a game of cards, and where he should havepreferred a little more detail he had to content himself with a humorousnarrative of the escape, the borrowing of the coat, and the interviewwith the Duchess.

  "And now with your permission, Baron, I shall go to bed," at last saidCount Victor. "I shall sleep to-night, like a _sabot_. I am, I know, theboldest of beggars for your grace and kindness. It seems I am fated inthis country to make free, not only with my enemy's coat, but with mydear friend's domicile as if it were an inn. To-morrow, Baron, I shallmake my dispositions. The coat can be returned to its owner none theworse for my use of it, but I shall not so easily be able to squareaccounts with you."