The Chamberlain overlooked the irony and glanced perplexed about him. There was, obviously, no place near that was not open to the objection urged. Everywhere the snow lay deep on grass and pathway; the trees were sheeted ghosts, the chill struck through his own Highland brogues.
“Come!” said he at last, with a sudden thought; “the sand's the place, though it's a bit to go,” and he led the way hurriedly towards the riverside.
“One of us may go farther to-day and possibly fare worse,” said Montaiglon with unwearied good-humour, stepping in his rear.
It was the beginning of the dawn. Already there was enough of it to show the world of hill and wood in vast, vague, silent masses, to render wan the flaming windows of the castle towers behind them. In the east a sullen sky was all blotched with crimson, some pine-trees on the heights were struck against it, intensely black, intensely melancholy, perhaps because they led the mind to dwell on wild, remote, and solitary places, the savagery of old forests, the cruel destiny of man, who has come after and must go before the dead things of the wood. There was no wind; the landscape swooned in frost.
“My faith! 'tis an odd and dolorous world at six o'clock in the morning,” thought Count Victor; “I wish I were asleep in Cammercy and all well.”
A young fallow-deer stood under an oak-tree, lifting its head to gaze without dismay, almost a phantom; every moment the dawn spread wider; at last the sea showed, leaden in the bay, mists revealed themselves upon Ben Ime. Of sound there was only the wearying plunge of the cascades and the roll of the shallows like tumbril-wheels on causeway as the river ran below the arches.
“Far yet, monsieur?” cried Count Victor to the figure striding ahead, and his answer came in curt accents.
“We'll be there in ten minutes. You want a little patience.”
“We shall be there, par dieu! in time enough,” cried out Count Victor. “'Tis all one to me, but the march is pestilent dull.”
“What! would ye have fiddlin' at a funeral?” asked the Chamberlain, still without turning or slowing his step; and then, as though he had been inspired, he drew out the flageolet that was ever his bosom friend, and the astounded Frenchman heard the strains of a bagpipe march. It was so incongruous in the circumstances that he must laugh.