CHAPTER XXI — COUNT VICTOR CHANGES HIS QUARTERS
Count Victor said Au revoir to Doom Castle that afternoon. Mungo had rowed him down by boat to the harbour and left him with his valise at the inn, pleased mightily that his cares as garrison were to be relieved by the departure of one who so much attracted the unpleasant attention of nocturnal foes, and returned home with the easiest mind he had enjoyed since the fateful day the Frenchman waded to the rock. As for Count Victor, his feelings were mingled. He had left Doom from a double sense of duty, and yet had he been another man he would have bided for love. After last evening's uproar, plain decency demanded that Jonah should obviate a repetition by removing himself elsewhere. There was also another consideration as pregnant, yet more delicate: the traditions of his class and family as well as his natural sense of honour compelled his separation from the fascinating influence of the ingenuous woman whose affections were pledged in another quarter. In a couple of days he had fallen desperately in love with Olivia—a precipitation that might seem ridiculous in any man of the world who was not a Montaiglon satiated by acquaintance with scores of Dame Stratagems, fair intrigueuses and puppets without hearts below their modish bodices. Olivia charmed by her freshness, and the simple frankness of her nature, with its deep emotions, gave him infinitely more surprise and thrill than any woman he had met before. “Wisdom wanting absolute honesty,” he told himself, “is only craft: I discover that a monstrous deal of cleverness I have seen in her sex is only another kind of cosmetic daubed on with a sponge.”
And then, too, Olivia that morning seemed to have become all of a sudden very cold to him. He was piqued at her silence, he was more than piqued to discover that she too, like Mungo, obviously considered his removal a relief.
Behold him, then, with his quarters taken in the Boar's Head Inn, whence by good luck the legal gang of Edinburgh had some hours before departed, standing in the entrance feeling himself more the foreigner than ever, with the vexing reflection that he had not made any progress in the object of his embassy, but, on the contrary, had lost no little degree of his zest therein.
The sound of the flageolet was at once a blow and a salute. That unaccomplished air had helped to woo Olivia in her bower, but yet it gave a link with her, the solace of the thought that here was one she knew. Was it not something of good fortune that it should lead him to identify and meet one whose very name was still unknown to him, but with whom he was, in a faint measure, on slight terms of confederacy through the confession of Olivia and the confidence of Mungo Boyd?
“Toujours l'audace!” thought he, and he asked for the innkeeper's introduction to the performer. “If it may be permitted, and the gentleman is not too pressingly engaged.”
“Indeed,” said the innkeeper—a jovial rosy gentleman, typical of his kind—“indeed, and it may very well be permitted, and it would not be altogether to my disadvantage that his lordship should be out of there, for the Bailies cannot very well be drinking deep and listening to Mr. Simon MacTag-gart's songs, as I have experienced afore. The name?”
“He never heard it,” said Count Victor, “but it happens to be Montaiglon, and I was till this moment in the odd position of not knowing his, though we have a common friend.”
A few minutes later the Chamberlain stood before him with the end of the flageolet protruding from the breast of his coat.
As they met in the narrow confine of the lobby—on either hand of them closed rooms noisy with clink of drinking-ware, with laugh and jest and all that rumour of carouse—Montaiglon's first impression was exceeding favourable. This Chamberlain pleased his eye to start with; his manner was fine-bred in spite of a second's confusion; his accent was cordial, and the flageolet displayed with no attempt at concealment, captured the heart of the Frenchman, who had been long enough in these isles to weary of a national character that dare not surrender itself to any unbusiness-like frisking in the meadows. And one thing more there was revealed—here was the kilted gallant of the miniature in Olivia's chamber, and here was the unfriendly horseman of the wood, here in fine was the lover of the story, and the jealousy (if it was a jealousy) he had felt in the wood, forgotten, for he smiled.