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

The miles pa.s.sed, he crossed the rivers that mourned through hollow arches and spread out in brackish pools along the sh.o.r.e. Curlews piped dolorously the very psalm of solitude, and when he pa.s.sed among the hazel-woods of Strone and Achnatra, their dark recesses belled continually with owls. It was the very pick of a lover's road: no outward vision but the sombre ma.s.ses of the night, the valleys of snow, and the serene majestic hills to accompany that inner sight of the woman; no sounds but that of solemn waters and the forest creatures to make the memory of her words the sweeter. A road for lovers, and he was the second of the week, though he did not know it. Only, Simon MacTaggart had come up hot-foot on his horse, a trampling conqueror (as he fancied), the Count trudged shamefully undignified through snow that came high upon the silken stockings, and long ago had made his dancing-shoes shapeless and sodden. But he did not mind that; he had a goal to make for, an ideal to cherish timidly; once or twice he found himself with some surprise humming Gringoire's song, that surely should never go but with a light heart.

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

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

_Ventre Dieu!_ Blackness! His heart ached.

And then, as most men do in similar circ.u.mstances, he decided that the test was a preposterous one. Why, faith! should he relinquish hope of everything because--

What! the light was there. Like a fool he had misjudged the distance in the darkness and had been searching for it in the wrong place. It was so 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 wood behind Doom to tangle in the hazel-boughs. A dear star! a very gem of stars! a star more precious than all the others in that cl.u.s.tered sky, because it was the light of Olivia's window. A plague on all the others with 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 one visible.

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

The castle took possession of the night.

How odd that he should have fancied that brave tower arrogant; it was tranced 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 tell him when he was a child in Cam-mercy.

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

He walked deliberately across to the rock, went round the tower, stood a 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'Arques save for the light in its mistress's window. Poor old sh.e.l.l! and yet somehow he would not have had it otherwise.

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

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

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

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

"Lord keep 's!" cried Mungo, hastily drawing his bolts. "Hae ye changed ye'r mind already and left the inns? It's a guid thing for your wife ye'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 a ludicrous figure with his too ample coat.

"Dinna tell me ye hae come through the snaw this nicht like that!"

he cried incredulous, holding up his candle the better to examine the figure.

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

"Man, ye must hae been hot on't!" said the servant, shaking his cowled head till the ta.s.sel danced above his temple. "Ye'r shoon's fair steeped wi' water. Water's an awfu' thing to rot ye'r boots; I aye said if it rotted 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's and raps and roars and collie-shangies o' a' kin's. If it wasna me was the canny gaird o't it's Himsel' wad hae to flit for the sake o' his nicht's sleep."

"You behold, Mungo, the daw in borrowed plumes," said Count Victor as the door was being barred again. "I hope the daw felt more comfortable than I do in mine," and he ruefully surveyed his apparel. "Does Master Mungo recognise these peac.o.c.k 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 that our peac.o.c.k was a diplomatist and had huge interest in your delightful stories."

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

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

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

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

"_Comment?_"

"Down-by, I mean. I'm glad myself always to get home out of it at this season. When the fishers are there it's all my fancy, but when it does not smell of herring, the stench of lawyers' sheepskins gets on the top and is mighty offensive to any man that has had muckle to do with them."

"Dull!" repeated Count Victor, now comprehending; "I have crowded more experience into the past four-and-twenty hours than I might meet in a month anywhere east of Calais. I have danced with a d.u.c.h.ess, fought a stupid duel, with a town looking on for all the world as if it were a performance in a circus with lathen weapons, moped in a dungeon, broken through the same, stolen a coat, tramped through miles of snow in a pair of pantoufles, forgotten to pay the bill at the inn, and lost my baggage and my reputation--which latter I swear no one in these parts will be glad to pick up for his own use. Baron, I'll be shot if your country is not bewitched. My faith! what happenings since I came here expecting to be killed with _ennui!_ I protest I shall buy a Scots estate and ask all my friends over here to see real life. Only they must have good const.i.tutions; I shall insist on them having good const.i.tutions. And there's another thing--it necessitates that they must have so kind a friend as Monsieur le Baron and so hospitable a house as Doom to fall back on when their sport comes to a laughable termination, as mine has done to-night."

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

"Found the devil!" cried Montaiglon, a shade of vexation in his countenance, for he had not once that day had a thought of all that had brought, him into Scotland. "The haystack must be stuck full of needles like 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 hard at his guest.

"It is not the Chamberlain?"

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

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

"As to that I think I may be tranquil. I have, there too, the best a.s.surances that the business will be hushed up."

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

Count Victor's turn it was to feel vexation now. He pulled his moustache and reddened. "As to that, Baron," said he, "I pray you not to despise me, for I have to confess that my warmth in the mission that brought me here has abated sadly. You need not ask me why. I cannot tell you. As for me and my affair, I have not forgotten, nor am I likely wholly to forget; but your haystack is as _difficile_ as you promised it should be, and--there are divers other considerations. It necessitates that I go 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 situation approaching. He was sure to be asked--once Annapla's service was over--what led to the encounter, and to give the whole story frankly involved Olivia's name unpleasantly in a vulgar squabble. He saw for the first time that he had been wholly unwarranted in taking the defence of the Baron's interests into his own hands. Could he boldly intimate that in his opinion jealousy of himself had been the spring of the Chamberlain's midnight attacks on the castle of Doom? That were preposterous! And yet that seemed the only grounds that would justify his challenging the Chamberlain.

When Annapla was gone then Doom got the baldest of histories. He was encouraged to believe that all this busy day of adventure had been due to a simple quarrel after a game of cards, and where he should have preferred a little more detail he had to content himself with a humorous narrative of the escape, the borrowing of the coat, and the interview with the d.u.c.h.ess.

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

CHAPTER x.x.xIV -- IN DAYS OF STORM

In a rigorous privacy of storm that lasted many days after his return, and cut Doom wholly off from the world at large, Count Victor spent what but for several considerations would have been--perhaps indeed they really were--among the happiest moments of his life. It was good in that tumultuous weather, when tempests snarled and frosts fettered the countryside, and the sea continually wrangled round the rock of Doom, to look out on the inclemency from windows where Olivia looked out too.