The woman within heard it too, for her cries became more hysterical than ever.

"D--n ye, ye skirlin' auld b.i.t.c.h!" said the retainer, turning in exasperation, "can ye no steeck your jaw, and let them dae the howlin'

outside?" But it was in a tone of more respect he shouted up the stair some words of a.s.surance.

Yet there was no abatement of the cries, and Montaiglon, less--to do him justice--to serve his curiosity as to Annapla than from a natural instinct to help a distressed woman, put a foot on the stair to mount.

"Na, na! ye mauna leave me here!" cried Mungo, plucking at his sleeve.

There was something besides fear in the appeal, there was alarm of another sort that made Montaiglon pause and look the servitor in the eyes. He found confusion there as well as alarm at the furore outside and the imminent danger of the castle.

"I wish to G.o.d he was here himser," said Mungo helplessly, but still he did not relinquish his hold of Count Victor's sleeve.

"That need not prevent us comforting the lady," said Count Victor, releasing himself from the grasp.

"Let her alane, let her alane!" cried the servant distractedly, following the Frenchman upstairs.

Count Victor paid no heed: he was now determined to unveil a mystery that for all he knew might menace himself in this household of strange midnight happenings. The cries of the woman came from the corridor he had guessed her chamber to occupy, and to this he hastened. But he had scarcely reached the corridor when the flambeau Mungo held was suddenly blown out, and this effectively checked his progress. He turned for an explanation.

"D--n that draught!" said Mungo testily, "it's blawn oot my licht."

"We'll have to do without it, then," said the Count, "but you must show me the way to this shrieking woman."

"A' richt," said Mungo, "mind yer feet!" He pa.s.sed before the Count and cautiously led him up to the pa.s.sage where the woman's cries, a little less vehement, were still to be heard.

"There ye are! and muckle gude may it dae ye," he said, stopping at a door and pushing it open.

Count Victor stepped into darkness, thrust lightly as he went by the servant's hand, and the door closed with a click behind him. He was a prisoner! He had the humour to laugh softly at the conventionality of the deception as he vainly felt in an empty room for a non-existing doorhandle, and realised that Mungo had had his own way after all. The servant's steps declined along the corridor and down the stair, with a woman's to keep them company and a woman's sobs, all of which convinced the Count that his acquaintance with Annapla was not desired by the residents of Doom.

CHAPTER X -- SIM MACTAGGART, CHAMBERLAIN

On the roof of a high old church with as little architectural elegance as a dry-stone barn, a bell jerked by a rope from the church-yard indicated the close a.s.sociation of law and the kirk by ringing a sort of triumphal peal to the procession of the judges between the court-room and the inn. Contesting with its not too dulcet music blared forth the fanfare of two gorgeous trumpeters in scarlet and gold lace, tie wigs, silk stockings, and huge c.o.c.ked hats, who filled the street with a bra.s.sy melody that suggested Gabriel's stern and awful judgment-summons rather than gave lightness and rhythm to the feet of those who made up the procession. The procession itself had some dreadful aspects and elements as well as others incongruous and comical. The humorous fancy might see something to smile at in the two grey-wigged bent old men in long scarlet coats who went in front of the trumpeters, prepared to clear the way if necessary (though a gust of shrewd wind would have blown them off their feet), by means of the long-poled halberts they carried; but this impression of the farcical was modified by the nature of the body whereof they were the pioneers or advance guard.

Sleek magistrates and councillors in unaccustomed black suits and silver-buckled shoes, the provost ermined at their head, showed the way to the more actual, the more dignified embodiment of stern Scots law. At least a score of wigs were there from the Parliament House of Edinburgh, a score of dusty gowns, accustomed to sweep the lobbies of the Courts of Session, gathered the sand of the burgh street, and in their midst walked the representatives of that old feudal law at long-last ostensibly abandoned, and of the common law of the land. Argyll was in a demure equivalent for some Court costume, with a dark velvet coat, a ribbon of the Thistle upon his shoulder, a sword upon his haunch, and for all his sixty-six years he carried himself less like the lawyer made at Utrecht--like Justice-General and Extraordinary Lord of Session--than like the old soldier who had served with Marlborough and took the field for the House of Hanover in 1715. My Lords Elchies and Kilkerran walked on either side of him--Kilkerran with the lack-l.u.s.tre eye of the pa.s.sionate mathematician, the studious moralist devoted to midnight oil, a ruddy, tall, st.u.r.dy man, well filling the crimson and white silk gown; Elchies, a shrivelled atomy with a hirpling walk, leaning heavily upon a rattan, both with the sinister black tri-corne hats in their hands, and flanked by a company of musketeers.

A great band of children lent the ludicrous element again to the company by following close upon its heels, chanting a doggerel song to the tune of the trumpets; the populace stood at the close-mouths or leaned over their windows looking at the spectacle, wondering at the pomp given to the punishment of a Stewart who a few years ago would have been sent to the gallows by his Grace with no more formality than might have attended the sentence of a kipper salmon-poacher to whipping at the hands of Long Davie the dempster.

His Grace was entertaining the Lords, the Counsel (all but the convict's lawyers--a lot of disaffected Jacobites, who took their food by themselves at the inn, and brusquely refused his Grace's hospitality), the magistracy, and some county friends, to a late dinner at the castle that night, and an hour after saw them round the ducal board.

If Count Victor was astonished at the squalid condition of things in the castle of the poor Baron of Doom, he would have been surprised to find here, within an hour or two's walk of it, so imposing and luxuriant a domesticity. Many lands, many hands, great wealth won by law, battle, and the shrewdness of generations, enabled Argyll to give his castle grandeur and his table the opulence of any southern palace. And it was a bright company that sat about his board, with several ladies in it, for his d.u.c.h.ess loved to have her sojourn in her Highland home made gay by the company of young women who might by their beauty and light hearts recall her own lost youth.

A bagpipe stilled in the hall, a lute breathed a melody from a neighbouring room, the servants in claret and yellow livery noiselessly served wine.

Elchies sourly pursed his lips over his liquor, to the mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and vexation of his Grace, who knew his lordship's cellar, or even the Justiciary Vault in the town (for the first act of the Court had been to send down bins from Edinburgh for their use on circuit), contained no vintage half so good, and "Your Grace made reference on the way up to some one killed in the neighbourhood," he said, as one resuming a topic begun elsewhere.

"Not six miles from where we sit," replied the Duke, his cultivated English accent in a strong contrast with the broad burr of the Edinburgh justiciar, "and scarcely a day before you drove past. The man shot, so far as we have yet learned, was a Macfarlane, one of a small but ancient and extremely dishonest clan whose country used to be near the head of Loch Lomond. Scarcely more than half a hundred of them survive, but they give us considerable trouble, for they survive at the cost of their neighbour's gear and cattle. They are robbers and footpads, and it looks as if the fatality to one of their number near Doom has been incurred during a raid. We still have our raids, Lord Elchies, in spite of what you were saying on the bench as to the good example this part of the country sets the rest of the Highlands--not the raids of old fashion, perhaps, but more prosaic, simply thefts indeed. That is why I have had these troops brought here. It is reported to me pretty circ.u.mstantially that some of the Appin people are in the key to attempt a rescue of James Stewart on his way to the place of execution at Lettermore. They would think nothing of attempting it once he was brought the length of Benderloch, if only a law officer or two had him in charge."

"I would have thought the duty of keeping down a ploy of that kind would have been congenial to your own folk," said Elchies, drenching his nostrils vulgarly with macabaw.

Argyll smiled. "You may give us credit for willingness to take our share of the responsibility of keeping Appin in order," said he. "I should not wonder if there are half a hundred claymores with hands in them somewhere about our old barracks in Maltland. Eh! Simon?" and he smiled down the table to his Chamberlain.

"Five-and-forty, to be strict," said the gentleman appealed to, and never a word more but a sudden stop, for his half-eaten plum had miraculously gone from his plate in the moment he had looked up at the Duke.

"Was't in your lands?" asked Elchies, indifferent, but willing to help on a good topic in a company where a variety of cla.s.ses made the conversation anything but brisk.

"No," said Argyll, "it was in Doom, the place of a small landowner, Lamond, whose castle--it is but a ramshackle old bigging now--you may have noticed on your left as you rode round. Lamond himself is a man I have a sort of softness for, though, to tell the truth, he has forced me into more litigation than he had money to pay for and I had patience to take any lasting interest in."

"The Baron of Doom, is that the man?" cried Elchies, dryly. "Faith, I ken him well. Some years syne he was living months at a time in the Court of Session, and eating and sleeping in John's Coffee-house, and his tale--it's a gey old one--was that the litigation was always from the other side. I mind the man weel; Baron he called himself, though, if I mind right, his t.i.tle had never been confirmed by the king _n liberam baroniam_ He had no civil nor criminal jurisdiction. A black-avised man; the last time he came before me--Mr. Petullo, ye were there--it was in a long-standing case o' multiple poinding, and if I'm no'mistaken, a place ca'd Drimadry or Drimdarry, or something like that, changed hands ower the head o't."

Petullo the writer, shrinking near the foot of the table in an adequate sense of his insignificance, almost choked himself by gulping the whole gla.s.s of wine at his lips in his confusion, and broke into a perspiration at the attention of the company thus drawn to him. He squeaked back an unintelligible acquiescence; and completed his own torture by upsetting a compote of fruit upon his black knee-breeches.

Opposite the unhappy lawyer sat a lady of extraordinary beauty--a haughty, cold, supercilious sort of beauty, remarkable mainly from the consciousness of its display. Her profile might have been cut from marble by a Greek; her neck and bust were perfect, but her shoulders, more angular than was common in that time of bottle-shape, were carried somewhat too grandly for a gentle nature. The cruelty of her character betrayed itself in a faint irrestrainable smile at Petullo's discomfiture, all the more cruel because his eyes were entreatingly on hers as he mopped up awkwardly the consequences of his gaucherie. She smiled, but that was not the strangest part of her conduct, for at the same time she nudged with her knee the Chamberlain who sat next to her, and who had brought her into the room. To cap the marvel, he showed no surprise, but took her hint with a conspirator's enforced composure.

He looked at the little, dried-up, squeaking creature opposite, and--refused the lady the gratification of a single sign of the amus.e.m.e.nt she had apparently expected. She reddened, bit her nether lip, and "Your poor man of business is in a sore plight," she whispered, using the name Sim with significant freedom.

"My dear Kate," said he quietly, "as G.o.d's my judge, I can find nothing to laugh at in the misery of a poor wretch like yon."

"That's the second time!" she whispered with well-concealed ill-humour, a smile compelled upon her face but a serpent in her voice.

"The second time?" he repeated, lifting his eyebrows questioning, and always keeping a shoulder to her--a most chilly exterior. "Your ladyship is in the humour to give guesses."

She gave a swift reply to some only half-heard remark by her next-hand neighbour, then whispered to him, "It's the second time you have been cruel to me to-day. You seem bent on making me unhappy, and it is not what you promised. Am I not looking nice?"

"My dear girl," said he calmly, "do you know I am not in the mood for making sport of an old fool to prove my Kindness of heart to you."

"To me, Sim!" she whispered, the serpent all gone from her voice, and a warm, dulcet, caressing accent in it, while her eyes were melting with discreetly veiled love. "And I plotted so much to get beside you."

"That is the d.a.m.ned thing," he replied between his teeth, and smiling the while to some comment of his other neighbour, "you plot too much, my dear. I do not want to be unkind, but a little less plotting would become you more. I have no great liking for your husband, as you may guess; but there he's covered with compote and confusion, and for the look of the thing, if for no more, it would suit his wife to pretend some sympathy. In any case, for G.o.d's sake do not look at me as if I shared your amus.e.m.e.nt at his trouble. And I'm sure that Elchies by his glowering saw you eat my plum."

Mrs. Petullo cast a glance of disdain at the poor object she was bound to by a marriage for position and money, and for a moment or two gave no attention to the society of his Grace's Chamberlain, who was so suspiciously in her confidence.

Simon MacTaggart played idly with the stem of his gla.s.s. He was odd in that bibulous age, inasmuch as he never permitted wine to tempt his palate to the detriment of his brains, and he listened gravely to the conversation that was being monopolised at the head of the table round the Duke.

Women liked him. Indeed women loved this Chamberlain of Argyll readily, more for his eyes and for his voice and for some odd air of mystery and romance in his presence than for what generally pa.s.s for good looks.

He had just the history and the career and reputation that to men and women, except the very wisest and the somewhat elderly, have an attraction all unreasonable; for his youth had been stormy; he had known great dangers, tremendous misfortunes, overcoming both by a natural--sometimes spendthrift--courage; he was credited with more than one amorous intrigue, that being in high quarters was considered rather in his favour than otherwise; he was high in the esteem of families in the social scale considerably above his own (that had greatly declined since his people could first boast a coat impaled with the galley of Lome); he was alert, mind and body, polite to punctilio, a far traveller, a good talker, and above all a lover of his kind, so that he went about with a smile (just touched a little by a poetic melancholy) for all. To the women at Argyll's table he was the most interesting man there, and though materially among the least eminent and successful, had it been his humour to start a topic of his own in opposition to his patron's, he could have captured the interest of the gathering in a sentence.

But Simon MacTaggart was for once not in the mood for the small change of conversation. Some weighty thought possessed him that gave his eye a remote quality even when he seemed to be sharing the general attention in the conversation, and it was as much resentment at the summons from his abstraction and his mood as a general disinclination to laugh at a wretch's misery on the bidding of the wretch's wife, that made him so curt to Mrs. Petullo's advances. To him the dinner seemed preposterously unending. More than once his hand went to his fob with an unconscious response to his interest in the pa.s.sage of the time; with difficulty he clenched his teeth upon the yawns that followed his forced smiles at the murmured pleasantries of the humble bailies and town councillors in his midst, who dared only venture on a joke of their own, and that discreetly m.u.f.fled, when there was a pause in the conversation of the Duke and the Judges. And to the woman at his shoulder (the one on his left--the wife of the Provost, a little fair-haired doll with a giggling appreciation of the importance of her situation in such grand company, and a half-frightened gladness at being so near MacTaggart) he seemed more mysterious and wonderful than ever. Mrs. Petullo, without looking at his half-averted face, knew by the mere magnetic current from his cold shoulder that of her he was just now weary, that with his company as a whole he was bored, and that some interest beyond that noisy hall engaged his abstracted thought.

"No," the Duke was saying; "the murderer has not been discovered, nor indeed have we the most important evidence that there was a murder at all--for the body itself is as yet a mere matter of rumour, though of its existence there is no reasonable ground for doubt. It was carried off, as I am informed, by the Macfarlanes, whose anxiety to hush the affair is our main proof that they were on no honest expedition when this happened. But an affair like that gets bruited abroad: it came to us from Cairndhu that the corpse of a Macfarlane was carried past in the gloaming by some of his friends, anxious to get it smuggled through Ard-kinglas with as little public notice as possible."

"_Acta exteriora indicant interiora seceta_, to somewhat misapply a well-kent maxim. The _res gesto_ show, I think, that it was a murder on the part of the robbers themselves." It was Elchies who spoke, cracking filberts the while with his great yellow teeth that gave him so cruel a look upon the bench.

"As a matter of fact," said the Chamberlain suddenly, "the man was shot by a French pistol," and a hush fell on the table in expectation of further details, but they were not forthcoming.

"Well, I'm astonished to hear it, and I hope you know where to lay hands on the homicide," said the Duke.

"It's none of our affair--nowadays," said the Chamberlain. "And, forbye, I'm only telling a carried tale after all. There may be no more in it than the fancy of the Glen Fyne folk who told me of it."

The Duke looked at his Chamberlain, saw that the topic, so far as he was concerned, was ended, and signalled to the d.u.c.h.ess. It was not the custom of the time, but her Grace had introduced into her Highland court the practice of withdrawing the ladies for some time after dinner, and leaving the men to their birling of the wine, as they phrased it. Out she swept at her husband's signal with her company--Lady Strachur, Lady Charlotte, Mrs. Petullo, the Provost's wife, and three or four of no greater importance to our story--and of all that were left behind, perhaps there was none but her husband, who, oddly' enough (as people thought) for a duke, loved her as if he were a boy courting still, to reflect that the room was colder and less human wanting the presence of her and her bright company. His Grace, who cared for the bottle even less than did his Chamberlain, slid round the wine sun-wise for a Highlander's notion of luck; the young advocates, who bleared somewhat at the eyes when they forgot themselves, felt the menacing sleepiness and glowing content of potations carried to the verge of indiscretion; Kilkerran hummed, Petullo hawed, the Provost humbly ventured a sculduddery tale, the Duke politely listening the while to some argument of Elchies upon the right of any one who had been attacked by the Macfarlanes to use arms against them.