“My dancing days are over,” said Sim MacTaggart, but merely as one who repeats a formula; his eyes were roving among the women. The dark green-and-blue tartan of the house well became him: he wore diced hose of silk and a knife on the calf of his leg; his plaid swung from a stud at the shoulder, and fell in voluminous and graceful folds behind him. His eyes roved among the women, and now and then he lifted the whitest of hands and rubbed his shaven chin.
Count Victor was a little amused at the vanity of this village hero. And then there happened what more deeply impressed him with wonder at the contrarieties of character here represented, for the hero brimmed with sentimental tears!
They were caused by so simple a thing as a savage strain of music from the Duke's piper, who strutted in the gallery fingering a melody in an interval of the dance—a melody full of wearisome iterations in the ears of the foreigner, who could gain nothing of fancy from the same save that 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 he was undisturbed.
“An air with a story, perhaps?” asked Count Victor.
“They are all stories,” answered this odd person, so responsive to the yell of guttural reeds. “In that they are like our old friend Balhaldie, whose tales, as you may remember—the old rogue!—would fill many pages.”
“Many leaves, indeed,” said Count Victor—“preferably fig-leaves.”
“The bagpipe moves me like a weeping woman, and here, for all that, is the most indifferent of musicians.”
“Tenez! monsieur; I present my homages to the best of flageolet-players,” said Count Victor, smiling.
“The flageolet! a poor instrument, and still—and still not without its qualities. Here's one at least who finds it the very salve for weariness. Playing it, I often feel in the trance of rapture. I wish to God I could live my life upon the flute, for there I'm on the best and cleanest terms with myself, and no backwash of penitence. Eh! listen to me preaching!”
“There is one air I have heard of yours—so!—that somehow haunts me,” said Count Victor; “its conclusion seemed to baffle you.”