Doom Castle | Page 6

ship, oddly independent of aspect, self-contained, inviolable, eternally
apart, for ever by nature indifferent to the mainland, where a
Montaiglon was vulgarly quarrelling with sans culottes.
For a moment or two he stood bewildered. There was no drawbridge to
this eccentric moat; there was, on this side of the rock at least, not so
little as a boat; if Lamond ever held intercourse with the adjacent isle of

Scotland he must seemingly swim. Very well; the Count de Montaiglon,
guilty of many outrages against his ancestry to-day, must swim too if
that were called for. And it looked as if that were the only alternative.
Vainly he called and whistled; no answer came from the castle, that he
might have thought a deserted ruin if a column of smoke did not rise
from some of its chimneys.
It was his one stroke of good fortune that for some reason the pursuit
was no longer apparent. The dim woods behind seemed to have
swallowed up sight and sound of the broken men, who, at fault, were
following up their quarry to the castle of Mac-Cailen Mor instead of to
that of Baron Lamond. He had therefore time to prepare himself for his
next step. He sat on the shore and took off his elegant long boots, the
quite charming silk stockings so unlike travel in the wilds; then looked
dubiously at his limbs and at the castle. No! manifestly, an approach so
frank was not to be thought of, and he compromised by unbuttoning the
foot of his pantaloons and turning them over his knees. In any case, if
one had to swim over that yeasty and alarming barrier, his clothing
must get wet. À porte basse, passant courbé. He would wade as far as
he could, and if he must, swim the rest.
With the boots and the valise and the stockings and the skirts of his
coat tucked high in his arms, the Count waded into the tide, that chilled
deliciously after the heat of his flight.
But it was ridiculous! It was the most condemnable folly! His face
burned with shame as he found himself half-way over the channel and
the waves no higher than his ankles. It was to walk through a few
inches of water that he had nearly stripped to nature!
And a woman was laughing at him, morbleu! Decidedly a woman was
laughing--a young woman, he could wager, with a monstrously musical
laugh, by St. Denys! and witnessing (though he could not see her even
had he wished) this farce from an upper window of the tower. He stood
for a moment irresolute, half inclined to retreat from the ridicule that
never failed to affect him more unpleasantly than danger the most dire;
his face and neck flamed; he forgot all about the full-bosomed Baronne
or remembered her only to agree that nobility demanded some dignity

even in fleeing from an enemy. But the shouts of the pursuers that had
died away in the distance grew again in the neighbourhood, and he
pocketed his diffidence and resumed his boots, then sought the entrance
to a dwelling that had no hospitable portal to the shore.
Close at hand the edifice gained in austerity and dignity while it lost the
last of its scanty air of hospitality. Its walls were of a rough rubble of
granite and whinstone, grown upon at the upper storeys with grasses
and weeds wafted upon the ledges by the winds that blow indifferent,
bringing the green messages of peace from God. A fortalice dark and
square-built, flanked to the southern corner by a round turret, lit by few
windows, and these but tiny and suspicious, it was as Scots and
arrogant as the thistle that had pricked Count Victor's feet when first he
set foot upon the islet.
A low wall surrounded a patch of garden-ground to the rear, one corner
of it grotesquely adorned with a bower all bedraggled with rains, yet
with the red berry of the dog-rose gleaming in the rusty leafage like
grapes of fire. He passed through the little garden and up to the door.
Its arch, ponderous, deep-moulded, hung a scowling eyebrow over the
black and studded oak, and over all was an escutcheon with a blazon of
hands fess-wise and castles embattled and the legend--
"Doom
Man behauld the end of All. Be nocht Wiser than the Priest. Hope in
God"
He stood on tiptoe to read the more easily the time-blurred characters,
his baggage at his feet, his fingers pressed against the door. Some of
the words he could not decipher nor comprehend, but the first was plain
to his understanding.
"Doom!" said he airily and half aloud. "Doom! Quelle félicité! It is an
omen."
Then he rapped lightly on the oak with the pommel