CHAPTER XXVI -- THE DUKE'S BALL
For some days Count Victor chafed at the dull and somewhat squalidlife of the inn. He found himself regarded coldly among strangers; theflageolet sounded no longer in the private parlour; the Chamberlainstayed away. And if Drimdarroch had seemed ill to find from Doom, he wasabsolutely indiscoverable here. Perhaps there was less eagerness in thesearch because other affairs would for ever intrude--not the Cause (thatnow, to tell the truth, he somehow regarded moribund; little wonderafter eight years' inaction!) nor the poignant home-thoughts that madehis ride through Scotland melancholy, but affairs more recent, andOlivia's eyes possessed him.
A morning had come of terrific snow, and made all the colder, too, hissojourn in the country of MacCailen Mor. Now he looked upon mountainswhite and far, phantom valleys gulping chilly winds, the sea alone withsome of its familiar aspect, yet it, too, leaden to eye and heart as itlay in a perpetual haze between the headlands and lazily rose and fellin the bays.
The night of the ball was to him like a reprieve. From the darkness ofthose woody deeps below Dunchuach the castle gleamed with fires, and aHighland welcome illumined the greater part of the avenue from the townwith flambeaux, in whose radiance the black pines, the huge beeches,the waxen shrubbery round the lawns all shrouded, seemed to creep closerround the edifice to hear the sounds of revelry and learn what charmsthe human world when the melodious winds are still and the weather iscold, and out of doors poor thickets must shiver in appalling darkness.
A gush of music met Count Victor at the threshold; dresses wererustling, a caressing warmth sighed round him, and his host was verygenial.
"M. Montaiglon," said his Grace in French, "you will pardon ourshort notice; my good friend, M. Montaiglon, my dear; my wife, M.Montaiglon--"
"But M. Montaiglon merely in the inns, my lord," corrected theFrenchman, smiling. "I should be the last to accept the honour of yourhospitality under a _nom de guerre_."
The Duke bowed. "M. le Comte," he said, "to be quite as candid asyourself, I pierced your incognito even in the dark. My dear sir, aScots traveller named for the time being the Baron Hay once had theprivilege of sharing a glass coach with your uncle between Parisand Dunkerque; 'tis a story that will keep. Meanwhile, as I say, M.Montaiglon will pardon the shortness of our notice; in these wildsone's dancing shoes are presumed to be ever airing at the fire. You mustconsider these doors as open as the woods so long as your are in thisneighbourhood. I have some things I should like to show you thatyou might not find wholly uninteresting--a Raphael, a Rembrandt (soreputed), and several Venetians--not much, in faith, but regarding whichI should value your criticism--"
Some other guests arrived, his Grace's speech was broken, and CountVictor passed on, skirting the dancers, who to his unaccustomed eyespresented features strange yet picturesque as they moved in the puzzlinginvolutions of a country dance. It was a noble hall hung round withtapestry and bossed with Highland targets, trophies of arms and themountain chase; from the gallery round it drooped little banners withthe devices of all those generations of great families that mingled inthe blood of MacCailen Mor.
The Frenchman looked round him for a familiar face, and saw theChamberlain in Highland dress in the midst of a little group of dames.
Mrs. Petullo was not one of them. She was dancing with her husband--apitiful spectacle, for the lawyer must be pushed through the dance as hewere a doll, with monstrous ungracefulness, and no sense of the time ofthe music, his thin legs quarrelling with each other, his neighboursall confused by his inexpert gyrations, and yet himself with a smirk ofsatisfaction on his sweating countenance.
"Madame is not happy," thought Count Victor, watching the lady who wascompelled to be a partner in these ungainly gambols.
And indeed Mrs. Petullo was far from happy, if her face betrayed herreal feelings, as she shared the ignominy of the false position intowhich Petullo had compelled her. When the dance was ended she did nottake her husband's proffered arm, but walked before him to her seat,utterly ignoring his pathetic courtesies.
This little domestic comedy only engaged Count Victor for a moment; hefelt vexed for a woman in a position for which there seemed no remedy,and he sought distraction from his uneasy feeling by passing every manin the room under review, and guessing which of them, if any, couldbe the Drim-darroch who had brought him there from France. It was abaffling task. For many were there with faces wholly inscrutable whomight very well have among them the secret he cherished, and yet nothingabout them to advertise the scamp who had figured so effectivelyin other scenes than these. The Duke, their chief, moved now amongthem--suave, graceful, affectionate, his lady on his arm, sometimessqueezing her hand, a very boy in love!
"That's a grand picture of matrimonial felicity, Count," said a voice atCount Victor's ear, and he turned to find the Chamberlain beside him.
"Positively it makes me half envious, monsieur," said Count Victor."A following influenced by the old feudal affections and wellnighworshipping; health and wealth, ambitions gratified, a name that hassounded in camp and Court, yet a heart that has stayed at home; thefever of youth abated, and wedded to a beautiful woman who does notweary one, _pardieu!_ his Grace has nothing more in this world to wishfor."
"Ay! he has most that's needed to make it a very comfortable world.Providence is good--"
"But sometimes grudging--"
"But sometimes grudging, as you say; yet MacCailen has got everything.When I see him and her there so content I'm wondering at my own wastedyears of bachelordom. As sure as you're there, I think the sooner I drawin at a fire and play my flageolet to the guidwife the better for me."
"It is a gift, this domesticity," said Count Victor, not without aninward twinge at the picture. "Some of us have it, some of us have not,and no trying hard for content with one's own wife and early supperswill avail unless one is born to it like the trick of the Sonnet. Ihave been watching our good friend, your lawyer's wife, distracted overthe--over the--_balourdise_ of her husband as a dancer: he dances like abootmaker's sign, if you can imagine that, and I dare not approach themtill her very natural indignation has simmered down."
The Chamberlain looked across, the hall distastefully and found Mrs.Petullo's eyes on him. She shrugged, for his perception alone, a whiteshoulder in a manner that was eloquent of many things.
"To the devil!" he muttered, yet essayed at the smile of good friendshipwhich was now to be their currency, and a poor exchange for the oldgold.
"Surely Monsieur MacTaggart dances?" said the Count; "I see a score ofladies here who would give their garters for the privilege."
"My dancing days are over," said Sim MacTaggart, but merely as onewho repeats a formula; his eyes were roving among the women. The darkgreen-and-blue tartan of the house well became him: he wore diced hoseof silk and a knife on the calf of his leg; his plaid swung from a studat the shoulder, and fell in voluminous and graceful folds behind him.His eyes roved among the women, and now and then he lifted the whitestof hands and rubbed his shaven chin.
Count Victor was a little amused at the vanity of this village hero. Andthen there happened what more deeply impressed him with wonder at thecontrarieties of character here represented, for the hero brimmed withsentimental tears!
They were caused by so simple a thing as a savage strain of music fromthe Duke's piper, who strutted in the gallery fingering a melody in aninterval of the dance--a melody full of wearisome iterations in the earsof the foreigner, who could gain nothing of fancy from the same savethat the low notes sobbed. When the piece was calling in the hall,ringing stormily to the roof, shaking the banners, silencing the guests,the Duke's Chamberlain laughed with some confusion in a pretence that hewas undisturbed.
"An air with a story, perhaps?" asked Count Victor.
"They are all stories," answered this odd person, so responsive to theyell of guttural reeds. "In that they are like our old friend Balhaldie,whose tales, as you may remember--the old rogue!--would fill manypages."
"Many
leaves, indeed," said Count Victor--"preferably fig-leaves."
"The bagpipe moves me like a weeping woman, and here, for all that, isthe most indifferent of musicians."
"_Tenez!_ monsieur; I present my homages to the best offlageolet-players," said Count Victor, smiling.
"The flageolet! a poor instrument, and still--and still not withoutits qualities. Here's one at least who finds it the very salve forweariness. Playing it, I often feel in the trance of rapture. I wish toGod I could live my life upon the flute, for there I'm on the best andcleanest terms with myself, and no backwash of penitence. Eh! listen tome preaching!"
"There is one air I have heard of yours--so!--that somehow haunts me,"said Count Victor; "its conclusion seemed to baffle you."
"So it does, man, so it does! If I found the end of that, I fancy Iwould find a new MacTaggart. It's--it's--it's not a run of notes Iwant--indeed the air's my own, and I might make it what I chose--butan experience or something of that sort outside my opportunities, or myrecollection."
Count Victor's glance fell on Mrs. Petullo, but hers was not on him; shesought the eyes of the Chamberlain.
"Madame looks your way," he indicated, and at once the Chamberlain'svisage changed.
"She'd be better to look to her man," he said, so roughly that the Countonce more had all his misgivings revived.
"We may not guess how bitter a prospect that may be," said he with pityfor the creature, and he moved towards her, with the Chamberlain, ofnecessity, but with some reluctance, at his heel.
Mrs. Petullo saw the lagging nature of her old love's advance; it wasall that was needed now to make her evening horrible.
"Oh!" said she, smiling, but still with other emotions than amusement orgoodwill struggling in her countenance, "I was just fancying you wouldbe none the waur o' a wife to look to your buttons."
"Buttons!" repeated the Chamberlain.
"See," she said, and lightly turned him round so that his back wasshown, with his plaid no longer concealing the absence of a button froma skirt of his Highland jacket.
Count Victor looked, and a rush of emotions fairly overwhelmed him, forhe knew he had the missing button in his pocket.
Here was the nocturnal marauder of Doom, or the very devil was in it!
The Chamberlain laughed, but still betrayed a little confusion: Mrs.Petullo wondered at the anger of his eyes, and a moment later launchedupon an abstracted minuet with Montaiglon.