by Neil Munro
CHAPTER XXXVI -- LOVE
It was hours before Count Victor could trust himself and his tell-talecountenance before Olivia, and as he remained in an unaccustomedseclusion for the remainder of the day, she naturally believed him cold,though a woman with a fuller experience of his sex might have come toa different conclusion. Her misconception, so far from being dispelledwhen he joined her and her father in the evening, was confirmed, for hisnatural gaiety was gone, and an emotional constraint, made up of love,dubiety, and hope, kept him silent even in the precious moments whenDoom retired to his reflections and his book, leaving them at the otherend of the room alone. Nothing had been said about the letter; the Baronkept his counsel on it for a more fitting occasion, and though Olivia,who had taken its possession, turned it over many times in her pocket,its presentation involved too much boldness on her part to be undertakenin an impulse. The evening passed with inconceivable dulness; thegentleman was taciturn to clownishness; Mungo, who had come in once ortwice to replenish fires and snuff candles, could not but look atthem with wonder, for he plainly saw two foolish folks in a commonmisunderstanding.
He went back to the kitchen crying out his contempt for them.
"If yon's coortin'," he said, "it's the drollest I ever clapt een on!The man micht be a carven image, and Leevie no better nor a shifty inthe pook. I hope she disnae rue her change o' mind alreadys, for I'llwarrant there was nane o' yon blateness aboot Sim MacTaggart, and it'sno' what the puir lassie's been used to."
But these were speculations beyond the sibyl of his odd adoration;Annapla was too intent upon her own elderly love-affairs to beinterested in those upstairs.
And upstairs, by now, a topic had at last come on between the silentpair that did not make for love or cheerfulness. The Baron had retiredto his own room in the rear of the castle, and they had begun to talkof the departure that was now fixed for a date made imminent throughthe pressure of Petullo. Where were they bound for but France? Doomhad decided upon Dunkerque because he had a half-brother there in aretirement compelled partly for political reasons Count Victor couldappreciate.
"France!" he cried, delighted. "This is ravishing news indeed,Mademoiselle Olivia!"
"Yes?" she answered dubiously, reddening a little, and wondering why heshould particularly think it so.
"Ma foi! it is," he insisted heartily. "I had the most disturbingvisions of your wandering elsewhere. I declare I saw my dear Baronand his daughter immured in some pestilent Lowland burgh town, mopingmountain creatures among narrow streets, in dreary tenements, withglimpse of neither sea nor tree to compensate them for pleasures lost.But France!--Mademoiselle has given me an exquisite delight. For, figureyou! France is not so vast that friends may not meet there often--ifone were so greatly privileged--and every roadway in it leads toDunkerque--and--I should dearly love to think of you as, so to speak,in my neighbourhood, among the people I esteem. It is not your devotedHighlands, this France, Mademoiselle Olivia, but believe me, it hasits charms. You shall not have the mountains--there I am distressed foryou--nor yet the rivulets; and you must dispense with the mists; butthere is ever the consolation of an air that is like wine in the head,and a frequent sun. France, indeed! _Je suis ravi!_ I little thoughtwhen I heard of this end to the old home of you that you were to makethe new one in my country; how could I guess when anticipating myfarewell to the Highlands of Scotland that I should have such goodcompany to the shore of France?"
"Then you are returning now?" asked Olivia, her affectation ofindifference just a little overdone.
In very truth he had not, as yet, so determined; but he boldly lied likea lover.
"'Twas my intention to return at once. I cannot forgive myself for beingso long away from my friends there."
Olivia had a bodice of paduasoy that came low upon her shoulders andshowed a spray of jasmine in the cleft of her rounded breasts, whichheaved with what Count Victor could not but perceive was some emotion.Her eyes were like a stag's, and they evaded him; she trifled with thepocket of her gown.
"Ah," she said, "it is natural that you should weary here in this sorryplace and wish to get back to the people you know. There will be manythat have missed you."
He laughed at that.
"A few--a few, perhaps," he said. "Clancarty has doubtless often soughtme vainly for the trivial coin: some butterflies in the _coulisse_ ofthe playhouse will have missed my pouncet-box; but I swear there arefew in Paris who would be inconsolable if Victor de Montaiglon never setfoot on the _trottoir_ again. It is my misfortune, mademoiselle, to havea multitude of friends so busy with content and pleasure--who will blamethem?--that an absentee makes little difference, and as for relatives,not a single one except the Baroness de Chenier, who is large enough tocount as double."
"And there will be--there will be the lady," said Olivia, with a poorattempt at raillery.
For a moment he failed to grasp her allusion.
"Of course, of course," said he hastily; "I hope, indeed, to see _her_there." He felt an exaltation simply at the prospect. To see her there!To have a host's right to bid welcome to his land this fair wild-flowerthat had blossomed on rocks of the sea, unspoiled and unsophisticated!
The jasmine stirred more obviously: it was fastened with a topaz broochthat had been her mother's, and had known of old a similar commotion;she became diligent with a book.
It was then there happened the thing that momentarily seemed a blow offate to both of them. But for Mungo's voice at intervals in the kitchen,the house was wholly still, and through the calm winter night there camethe opening bars of a melody, played very softly by Sim MacTaggart'sflageolet. At first it seemed incredible--a caprice of imagination, andthey listened for some moments speechless. Count Victor was naturallythe least disturbed; this unlooked-for entertainment meant the pleasantfact that the Duchess had been nowise over-sanguine in her estimate ofthe Chamberlain's condition. Here was another possible homicide offhis mind; the Gaelic frame was capable, obviously, of miraculousrecuperation. That was but his first and momentary thought; the nextwas less pleasing, for it seemed not wholly unlikely now that afterall Olivia and this man were still on an unchanged footing, and Mungo'ssowing of false hopes was like to bring a bitter reaping of regretfuldisillusions. As for Olivia, she was first a flame and then an icicle.Her face scorched; her whole being seemed to take a sudden wild alarm.Count Victor dared scarcely look at her, fearing to learn his doom orspy on her embarrassment until her first alarm was over, when she drewher lips together tightly and assumed a frigid resolution. She made noother movement.
A most bewitching flageolet! It languished on the night with ano'ermastering appeal, sweet inexpressibly and melting, the air unknownto one listener at least, but by him enviously confessed a very sirenspell. He looked at Olivia, and saw that she intended to ignore it.
"Orpheus has recovered," he ventured with a smile.
She stared in front of her with no response; but the jasmine rose andfell, and her nostrils were abnormally dilated. Her face had turned fromthe red of her first surprise to the white of suppressed indignation.The situation was inconceivably embarrassing for both; now his bolt wasshot, and unless she cared to express herself, he could not venture toallude to it again, though a whole orchestra augmented the efforts ofthe artist in the bower.
By-and-by there came a pause in the music, and she spoke.
"It is the blackest of affronts this," was her comment, that seemed atonce singular and sweet to her hearer.
"_D'accord_," said Count Victor, but that was to himself. He was quiteagreed that the Chamberlain's attentions, though well meant, were notfor a good woman to plume herself on.
The flageolet spoke again--that curious unfinished air. Never beforehad it seemed so haunting and mysterious; a mingling of reproaches andcommand. It barely reached them where they sat together listening, afairy thing and fascinating, yet it left the woman cold. And soon theserenade entirely ceased. Olivia recovered herself; Count Victor wasgreatly pleased.
"I hope that
is the end of it," she said, with a sigh of relief.
"Alas, poor Orpheus! he returns to Thrace, where perhaps Madame Petullomay lead the ladies in tearing him to pieces!"
"Once that hollow reed bewitched me, I fancy," said she with a shy airof confession; "now I cannot but wonder and think shame at my blindness,for yon Orpheus has little beyond his music that is in any wayadmirable."
"And that the gift of nature, a thing without his own deserving,like his--like his regard for you, which was inevitable, MademoiselleOlivia."
"And that the hollowest of all," she said, turning the evidence of it inher pocket again. "He will as readily get over that as over his injuryfrom you."
"Perhaps 'tis so. The most sensitive man, they say, does not place allhis existence on love; 'tis woman alone who can live and die in theheart."
"There I daresay you speak from experience," said Olivia, smiling, butimpatient that he should find a single plea in favour of a wretch hemust know so well.
"Consider me the exception," he hurried to explain. "I never loved butonce, and then would die for it." The jasmine trembled in its chastewhite nunnery, and her lips were temptingly apart. He bent forwardboldly, searching her provoking eyes.
"She is the lucky lady!" said Olivia in a low voice, and then a pause.She trifled with her book.
"What I wonder is that you could have a word to say of plea for thisthat surely is the blackest of his kind."
"Not admirable, by my faith! no; not admirable," he confessed, "but Iwould be the last to blame him for intemperately loving you. There,I think his honesty was beyond dispute; there he might have foundsalvation. That he should have done me the honour to desire my removalfrom your presence was flattering to my vanity, and a savage tribute toyour power, Mademoiselle Olivia."
"Oh!" cried Olivia, "you cannot deceive me, Count Victor. It is odd thatall your sex must stick up for each other in the greatest villanies."
"Not the greatest, Mademoiselle Olivia," said Count Victor with aninclination; "he might have been indifferent to your charms, and thatwere the one thing unforgivable. But soberly, I consider his follyscarce bad enough for the punishment of your eternal condemnation."
"This man thinks lightly indeed of me," thought Olivia. "Drimdarroch hasa good advocate," said she shortly, "and the last I would have lookedfor in his defence was just yourself."
"Drimdarroch?" he repeated, in a puzzled tone.
"Will you be telling me that you do not know?" she said. "For what didSimon MacTaggart harass our household?"
"I have been bold enough to flatter myself; I had dared to think--"
She stopped him quickly, blushing. "You know he was Drimdarroch, CountVictor," said she, with some conviction.
He jumped to his feet and bent to stare at her, his face all wroughtwith astonishment.
"_Mon Dieu!_ Mademoiselle, you do not say the two were one? Andyet--and yet--yes, _par dieu!_ how blind I have been; there is everypossibility."
"I thought you knew it," said Olivia, much relieved, "and felt anythingbut pleased at your seeming readiness in the circumstances to let me bethe victim of my ignorance. I had too much trust in the wretch."
"Women distrust men too much in the general and too little inparticular. And you knew?" asked Count Victor. .
"I learned to-day," said Olivia, "and this was my bitter schooling."
She passed him the letter. He took it and read aloud:
"I have learned now," said the writer, "the reason for your blacklooks at Monsher the wine merchant that has a Nobleman's Crest upon hisbelongings. It is because he has come to look for Drimdarroch. And thestupid body cannot find him! _We_ know who Drimdarroch is, do we not,Sim? Monsher may have sharp eyes, but they do not see much furtherthan a woman's face if the same comes in his way. And Simon MacTaggart(they're telling me) has been paying late visits to Doom Castle thatwere not for the love of Miss Milk-and-Water. Sim! Sim! I gave youcredit for being less o' a Gomeral. To fetch the Frenchman to myhouse of all places! You might be sure he would not be long among ourIndwellers here without his true business being discovered. Drimdarroch,indeed! Now I will hate the name, though I looked with a differenceon it when I wrote it scores of times to your direction in the RueDauphine of Paris, and loved to dwell upon a picture of the place therethat I had never seen, because my Sim (just fancy it!) was there. Youwere just a Wee Soon with the title, my dear Traitour, my bonny Spy. Itmight have been yours indeed, and more if you had patience, yes perhapsand Doom forby, as that is like to be my good-man's very speedily. Whatif I make trouble, Sim, and open the eyes of Monsher and the mim-mou'edMadame at the same moment by telling them who is really Drimdarroch?Will it no' gar them Grue, think ye?"
Count Victor stood amazed when he had read this. A confusion of feelingswere in his breast. He had blundered blindly into his long-studiedreprisals whose inadequate execution he was now scarce willing toregret, and Olivia had thought him capable of throwing her to thiscolossal rogue! The document shook in his hand.
"Well?" said Olivia at last. "Is it a much blacker man that is therethan the one you thought? I can tell you I will count it a disgrace tomy father's daughter that she ever looked twice the road he was on."
"And yet I can find it in me to forgive him the balance of hispunishment," cried the Count.
"And what for might that be?" said she.
"Because, Mademoiselle Olivia, he led me to Scotland and to yourfather's door."
She saw a rapture in his manner, a kindling in his eye, and drew herselftogether with some pride.
"You were welcome to my father's door; I am sure of that of it,whatever," said she, "but it was a poor reward for so long a travelling.And now, my grief! We must steep the withies and go ourselves to thestart of fortune like any beggars."
"No! no!" said he, and caught her hand that trembled in his like a bird."Olivia!--oh, God, the name is like a song--_je t'aime! je t'aime!_Olivia, I love you!"
She plucked her hand away and threw her shoulders back, haughty, yettrembling and on the brink of tears.
"It is not kind--it is not kind," she stammered, almost sobbing. "Thelady that is in France."
"_Petite imbecile!_" he cried, "there is no lady in France worthy tohold thy scarf; 'twas thyself, _mignonne_, I spoke of all the time; onlythe more I love the less I can express."
He drew her to him, crushing the jasmine till it breathed in a fragrantdissolution, bruising her breast with the topaz.