CHAPTER VI -- MUNGO BOYD

It was difficult for Count Victor, when he went abroad in the morning, to revive in memory the dreary and mysterious impressions of his arrival; and the melody he had heard so often half-completed in the dark waste and hollow of the night was completely gone from his recollection, leaving him only the annoying sense of something on the tongue's-tip, as we say, but as unattainable as if it had never been heard. As he walked upon a little knoll that lay between the seaside of the castle and the wave itself, he found an air of the utmost benignity charged with the odours of wet autumn woodlands in a sunshine. And the sea stretched serene; the mists that had gathered in the night about the hills were rising like the smoke of calm hearths into a sky without a cloud. The castle itself, for all its natural arrogance and menace, had something pleasant in its aspect looked at from this small eminence, where the garden did not display its dishevelment and even the bedraggled bower seen from the rear had a look of trim' composure.

To add to the morning's cheerfulness Mungo was afoot whistling a ballad air of the low country, with a regard for neither time nor tune in his puckered lips as he sat on a firkin-head at an outhouse door and gutted some fish he had caught with his own hands in a trammel net at the river-mouth before Montaiglon was awake and the bird, as the Gaelic goes, had drunk the water.

"Gude mornin' to your honour," he cried with an elaborately flourished salute as Montaiglon sauntered up to him. "Ye're early on the move, Monsher; a fine caller mornin'. I hope ye sleepit weel; it was a gowsty nicht."

In spite of his a.s.sumed indifference and the purely casual nature of his comment upon the night, there was a good deal of cunning, thought Montaiglon, in the beady eyes of him, but the stranger only smiled at the ease of those Scots domestic manners.

"I did very well, I thank you," said he. "My riding and all the rest of it yesterday would have made me sleep soundly inside the drum of a marching regiment."

"That's richt, that's richt," said Mungo, ostentatiously handling the fish with the awkward repugnance of one unaccustomed to a task so menial, to prove perhaps that cleansing them was none of his accustomed office. "That's richt. When we were campaignin' wi' Marlborough oor lads had many a time to sleep wi' the cannon dirlin' aboot them. Ye get us'd to't, ye get us'd to't, as Annapla says aboot bein' a weedow woman.

And if ye hae noticed it, c.o.o.nt, there's nae people mair adapted for fechtin' under diffeeculties than oor ain; that's what maks the Scots the finest sogers in the warld. It's the build o' them, 'Lowlan' or 'Hielan', the breed o' them; the dour hard character o' their country and their mainner o' leevin'. We gied the English a fleg at the 'Forty-five,' didnae we? That was where the tartan cam' in: man, there's naethin' like us!"

"You do not speak like a Highlander," said Montaiglon, finding some of this gasconade unintelligible.

"No, I'm no' exactly a'thegether a Hielan'man," Mungo admitted, "though I hae freends con-nekit wi' the auldest clans, and though I'm, in a mainner o' speakin', i' the tail o' Doom, as I was i' the tail o' his faither afore him--peace wi' him, he was the grand soger!--but Hielan'

or Lowland, we gied them their scuds at the 'Forty-five.' Scots regiments, sir, a' the warld ower, hae had the best o't for fechtin', marchin', or glory. See them at the auld grand wars o' Sweden wi'

Gus-tavus, was there ever the like o' them? Or in your ain country, whaure's the bate o' the Gairde Ecossay, as they ca't?"

He spoke with such a zest, he seemed to fire with such a martial glow, that Montaiglon began to fancy that this amusing grotesque, who in stature came no higher than his waist, might have seen some service as sutler or groom in a campaigning regiment.

"_Ma foi!_" he exclaimed, with his surprise restrained from the most delicate considerations for the little man's feelings; "have you been in the wars?"

It was manifestly a home-thrust to Mungo. He had risen, in his moment of braggadocio, and was standing over the fish with a horn-hilted gutting-knife in his hands, that were sanguine with his occupation, and he had, in the excess of his feeling, made a flourish of the knife, as if it were a dagger, when Montaiglon's query checked him. He was a bubble burst, his backbone--that braced him to the tension of a cuira.s.sier of guards--melted into air, into thin air, and a ludicrous limpness came on him, while his eye fell, and confusion showed about his mouth.

"In the wars!" he repeated. "Weel--no jist a'thegether what ye micht call i' the wars--though in a mainner o' speakin', gey near't. I had an uncle oot wi' Balmerina; ye may hae heard tell o'm, a man o' tremendous valour, as was generally al-ooed--Dugald Boyd, by my faither's side.

There's been naethin' but sogers in oor family since the be-ginnin'

o' time, and mony ane o' them's deid and dusty in foreign lands. It it hadnae been for the want o' a half inch or thereby in the height o'

my heels "--here he stood upon his toes--"I wad hae been in the airmy mysel'. It's the only employ for a man o' s.p.u.n.k, and there's s.p.u.n.k in Mungo Boyd, mind I'm tellin' ye!"

"It is the most obvious thing in the world, good Mungo," said Montaiglon, smiling. "You eviscerate fish with the gusto of a gladiator."

And then an odd thing happened to relieve Mungo's embarra.s.sment and end incontinent his garrulity. Floating on the air round the bulge of the turret came a strain of song in a woman's voice, not powerful, but rich and sweet, young in its accent, the words inaudible but the air startling to Count Victor, who heard no more than half a bar before he had realised that it was the unfinished melody of the nocturnal flageolet. Before he could comment upon so unexpected and surprising a phenomenon, Mungo had dropped his gutting-knife and made with suspicious rapidity for the entrance of the castle, without a word of explanation or leave-taking.

"I become decidedly interested in Annapla," said Montaiglon to himself, witnessing this odd retreat, "and my host gives me no opportunity of paying my homages. Malediction! It cannot be a wife; Bethune said nothing of a wife, and then M. le Baron spoke of himself as a widower.

A domestic, doubtless; that will more naturally account for the ancient fishmonger's fleet retirement. He goes to chide the erring Abigail.

Or--or--or the cunning wretch!" continued Montaiglon with new meaning in his eyes, "he is perhaps the essential lover. Let the Baron at breakfast elucidate the mystery."

But the Baron at breakfast said never a word of the domestic economy of his fortalice. As they sat over a frugal meal of oat porridge, the poached fish, and a smoky, high-flavoured mutton ham, whose history the Count was happy not to know, his host's conversation was either upon Paris, where he had spent some months of sad expatriation, yawning at its gaiety (it seemed) and longing for the woods of Doom; or upon the plan of the search for the spy and double traitor.

Montaiglon's plans were simple to crudeness. He had, though he did not say so, antic.i.p.ated some a.s.sistance from Doom in identifying the object of his search; but now that this was out of the question, he meant, it appeared, to seek the earliest and most plausible excuse for removal into the immediate vicinity of Argyll's castle, and on some pretext to make the acquaintance of as many of the people there as he could, then to select his man from among them, and push his affair to a conclusion.

"A plausible scheme," said Doom when he heard it, "but contrived without any knowledge of the situation. It's not Doom, M. le Count---oh no, it's not Doom down by there; it's a far more kittle place to learn the outs and ins of. The army and the law are about it, the one about as numerous as the other, and if your Drimdarroch, as I take it, is a traitor on either hand--to Duke Archie as well as to the king across the water, taking the money of both as has happened before now, he'll be no Drimdarroch you may wager, and not kent as such down there. Indeed, how could he? for Petullo the writer body is the only Drimdarroch there is to the fore, and he has a grieve in the place. Do you think this by-named Drimdarroch will be going about c.o.c.king his bonnet over his French amours and his treasons? Have you any notion that he will be the more or the less likely to do so when he learns that there's a French gentleman of your make in the country-side, and a friend of Doom's, too, which means a Jacobite? A daft errand, if I may say it; seeking a needle in a haystack was bairn's play compared to it."

"If you sit down on the haystack you speedily find the needle, M. le Baron," said Montaiglon playfully. "In other words, trust my sensibility to feel the p.r.i.c.k of his presence whenever I get into his society. The fact that he may suspect my object here will make him p.r.i.c.k all the quicker and all the harder."

"Even yet you don't comprehend Argyll's court. It's not Doom, mind you, but a place hotching with folk--half a hundred perhaps of whom have travelled as this Drimdarroch has travelled, and in Paris too, and just of his visage perhaps. Unless you challenged them all seriatim, as Petullo would say, I see no great prospect."

"I wish we could coax the fly here! That or something like it was what I half expected to be able to do when Bethune gave me your address as that of a landlord in the neighbourhood."

Doom reddened, perhaps with shame at the altered condition of his state in the house of his fathers. "I've seen the day," said he--"I've seen the day they were throng enough buzzing about Doom, but that was only so long as honey was to rob with a fair face and a nice humming at the robbery. Now that I'm a rooked bird and Doom a herried nest, they never look the road I'm on."

Mungo, standing behind his master's chair, gave a little crackling laugh and checked it suddenly at the angry flare in his master's face.

"You're mighty joco!" said the Baron; "perhaps you'll take my friend and me into your confidence;" and he frowned with more than one meaning at the little-abashed retainer.

"Paurdon! paurdon!" said Mungo, every part of the chart-like face thrilled with some uncontrollable sense of drollery, and he exploded in laughter more violent than ever.

"Mungo!" cried his master in the accent of authority.

The domestic drew himself swiftly to attention.

"Mungo!" said his master, "you're a d.a.m.ned fool! In the army ye would have got the triangle for a good deal less. Right about face."

Mungo saluted and made the required retreat with a great deal less than his usual formality.

"There's a bit crack in the creature after all," said the Baron, displaying embarra.s.sment and annoyance, and he quickly changed the conversation, but with a wandering mind, as Count Victor could not fail to notice. The little man, to tell the truth, had somehow laughed at the wrong moment for Count Victor's peace of mind. For why should he be amused at the paucity of the visitors from Argyll's court to the residence of Doom? Across the table at a man unable to conceal his confusion Montaiglon stole an occasional glance with suspicion growing on him irresistibly.

An inscrutable face was there, as many Highland faces were to him, even among old friends in France, where Balhaldie, with the best possible hand at a game of cards, kept better than any gambler he had ever known before a mask of dull and hopeless resignation. The tongue was soft and fair-spoken, the hand seemed generous enough, but this by all accounts had been so even with Drimdarroch himself, and Drimdarroch was rotten to the core.

"Very curious," thought Montaiglon, making poor play with his braxy ham.

"Could Bethune be mistaken in this extraordinary Baron?" And he patched together in his mind Mungo's laughter with the Baron's history as briefly known to him, and the inexplicable signal and alarm of the night.

"Your Mademoiselle Annapla seems to be an entrancing vocalist," said he airily, feeling his way to a revelation.

The Baron, in his abstraction, scarcely half comprehended.

"The maid," he said, "just the maid!" and never a word more, but into a new topic.

"I trust so," thought the Count; "but the fair songster who signals from her window and has clandestine meetings at midnight with masculine voices must expect some incredulity on that point. Can it be possible that here I have Bluebeard or Lothario? The laughter of the woman seems to indicate that if here is not Lothario, here at all events is something more than seems upon the surface. _Tonnerre de dieu!_ I become suspicious of the whole breed of mountaineers. And not a word about last night's alarm--that surely, in common courtesy, demands some explanation to the guest whose sleep is marred."

They went out together upon the mainland in the forenoon to make inquiries as to the encounter with the Macfarlanes, of whose presence not a sign remained. They had gone as they had come, without the knowledge of the little community on the south of Doom, and the very place among the bracken where the Count had dropped his bird revealed no feather; the rain of the morning had obliterated every other trace. He stood upon the very spot whence he had fired at the luckless robber, and restored, with the same thrill of apprehension, the sense of mystery and of dread that had hung round him as he stole the day before through voiceless woods to the sound of noisy breakers on a foreign sh.o.r.e.

He saw again the brake nod in a little air of wind as if a form was harboured, and the pagan rose in him--not the sceptic but the child of nature, early and remote, lost in lands of silence and of omen in dim-peopled and fantastic woods upon the verge of clamorous seas.

"_Dieu!_" said he with a shiver, turning to his host. "This is decidedly not Verrays in the Rue Conde. I would give a couple of louis d'or for a moment of the bustle of Paris.

"A sad place yon!" said Doom.

And back they went to the castle to play a solemn game of lansquenet.

CHAPTER VII -- THE BAY OF THE BOAR'S HEAD

A solemn game indeed, for the Baron was a man of a sobriety unaccountable to Montaiglon, who, from what he knew of Macdonnel of Barisdel, Mac-leod, Balhaldie, and the others of the Gaelic gang in Paris, had looked for a roysterer in Doom. It was a man with strange melancholies he found there, with a ludicrous decorum for a person of his condition, rising regularly on the hour, it seemed, and retiring early to his chamber like a peasant, keeping no company with the neighbouring lairds because he could not even pretend to emulate their state, pa.s.sing his days among a score of books in English, some (as the Sieur de Guille) in French, and a Bedel Bible in the Irish letter, and as often walking aimlessly about the sh.o.r.e looking ardently at the hills, and rehearsing to himself native rhymes that ever account native women the dearest and the same hills the most beautiful in G.o.d's creation. He was the last man to look to for aid in an enterprise like Montaiglon's: if he had an interest in the exploit it seemed it was only to discourage the same, and an hour or two of his company taught the Count he must hunt his spy unaided.

But the hunting of the spy, in the odd irrelevance or inconsistency of nature, was that day at least an enterprise altogether absent from his thoughts. He had been diverted from the object of his journey to Scotland by just such a hint at romance as never failed to fascinate a Montaiglon, and he must be puzzling himself about the dulcet singer and her share in the clandestine midnight meeting. When he had finished his game with his host, and the latter had pleaded business in the burgh as an excuse for his absence in the afternoon, Count Victor went round Doom on every side trying to read its mystery. While it was a house whose very mortar must be drenched with tradition, whose every window had looked upon histories innumerable worth retelling, nothing was revealed of the matter in hand.