“Let me see it, please?” said Olivia.
She took it in her hand but for a moment, turned slightly aside to look more closely at it in the sconce-light, paled with some emotion, and gave it back with slightly trembling fingers.
“I have a headache,” she said suddenly. “I am not so brave as I thought I was; you will let me say good night?”
She smiled to Count Victor with a face most wan.
“My dear, you are like a ghost,” said her father, and as she left the room he looked after her affectionately.
CHAPTER XX — AN EVENING'S MELODY IN THE BOAR'S HEAD INN
The Boar's Head Inn, for all its fine cognomen, was little better than any of the numerous taverns that kept discreet half-open doors to the wynds and closes of the Duke's burgh town, but custom made it a preserve of the upper class in the community. There it was the writers met their clients and cozened them into costly law pleas over the genial jug or chopine; the through-going stranger took his pack there and dwelt cheaply in the attics that looked upon the bay and upon the little harbour where traffic dozed upon the swinging tide, waiting the goodwill of mariners in no hurry to leave a port so alluring; in its smoke-grimed public-room skippers frequented, full of loud tales of roving, and even the retinue of MacCailen was not averse from an evening's merriment in a company where no restraint of the castle was expected, and his Grace was mentioned but vaguely as a personal pronoun.
There was in the inn a sanctum sanctorum where only were allowed the bailies of the burgh, a tacksman of position, perhaps, from the landward part, or the like of the Duke's Chamberlain, who was no bacchanal, but loved the company of honest men in their hours of manumission. Here the bottle was of the best, and the conversation most genteel—otherwise there had been no Sim MacTaggart in the company where he reigned the king. It was a state that called for shrewd deportment. One must not be too free, for an excess of freedom cheapened the affability, and yet one must be hail fellow with magistrate—and even an odd master mariner—with no touch of condescension for the Highland among them who could scent the same like aqua vito and resent it like a push of the hand.
He came not often, but ever was he welcome, those nights the more glorious for his qualities of humour and generosity, his tales that stirred like the brassy cry of trumpets, his tolerance of the fool and his folly, his fatalist excuse for any sin except the scurviest. And there was the flageolet! You will hear the echo of it yet in that burgh town where he performed; its charm lingers in melodies hummed or piped by old folks of winter nights, its magic has been made the stuff of myth, so that as children we have heard the sound of Simon's instrument in the spring woods when we went there white-hay-gathering, or for fagots for the schoolhouse fire.