Doom Castle | Page 9

that's like to be left to us before long."
"À la santé de la bonne cause!" said the Count politely, choking upon
the fiery liquor and putting down the glass with an apology.
"I am come from France--from Saint Germains," he said. "You may
have heard of my uncle; I am the Count de Montaiglon."
The Baron betrayed a moment's confusion.
"Do you tell me, now?" said he. "Then you are the more welcome. I
wish I could say so in your own language--that is, so far as ease goes,
known to me only in letters. From Saint Germains--" making a step or
two up and down the room, with a shrewd glance upon his visitor in the
bygoing. "H'm, I've been there on a short turn myself; there are several
of the Highland gentry about the place."
"There is one Bethune--Hugh Bethune of Ballimeanach, Baron,"
replied Count Victor meaningly. "Knowing that I was coming to this
part of the world, and that a person of my tongue and politics might be
awkwardly circumstanced in the province of Argyll, he took the liberty
to give me your direction as one in whose fidelity I might repose

myself. I came across the sleeve to Albion and skirted your noisy
eastern coast with but one name of a friend, pardieu, to make the
strange cliffs cheerful."
"You are very good," said the Baron simply, with half a bow. "And
Hugh Bethune, now--well, well! I am proud that he should mind of his
old friend in the tame Highlands. Good Hugh!"--a strange wistfulness
came to the Baron's utterance--"Good Hugh! he'll wear tartan when he
has the notion, I'm supposing, though, after all, he was no Gael, or a
very far-out one, for all that he was in the Marischal's tail."
"I have never seen him in the tartan, beyond perhaps a waistcoat of it at
a bal masque."
"So? And yet he was a man generally full of Highland spirit."
Count Victor smiled.
"It is perhaps his only weakness that nowadays he carries it with less
dignity than he used to do. A good deal too much of the Highland spirit,
M. le Baron, wears hoops, and comes into France in Leith frigates."
"Ay, man!" said the Baron, heedless of the irony, "and Hugh wears the
tartan?"
"Only in the waistcoat," repeated Count Victor, complacently looking
at his own scallops.
"Even that!" said the Baron, with the odd wistfulness in his voice. And
then he added hurriedly, "Not that the tartan's anything wonderful. It
cost the people of this country a bonny penny one way or another.
There's nothing honest men will take to more readily than the breeks,
says I--the douce, honest breeks----"
"Unless it be the petticoats," murmured the Count, smiling, and his
fingers went to the pointing of his moustache.
"Nothing like the breeks. The philabeg was aye telling your parentage

in every line, so that you could not go over the moor to Lennox there
but any drover by the roadside kent you for a small clan or a family of
caterans. Some people will be grumbling that the old dress should be
proscribed, but what does it matter?"
"The tartan is forbidden?" guessed Count Victor, somewhat puzzled.
Doom flushed; a curious gleam came into his eyes. He turned to fumble
noisily with the glasses as he replaced them in the cupboard.
"I thought that was widely enough known," said he. "Put down by the
law, and perhaps a good business too. Diaouil!" He came back to the
table with this muttered objurgation, sat and stared into the grey film of
the peat-fire. "There was a story in every line," said he, "a history in
every check, and we are odd creatures in the glens, Count, that we
could never see the rags without minding what they told. Now the
tartan's in the dye-pot, and you'll see about here but crotal-colour--the
old stuff stained with lichen from the rock."
"Ah, what damage!" said Count Victor with sympathetic tone. "But
there are some who wear it yet?"
The Baron started slightly. "Sir?" he questioned, without taking his
eyes from the embers.
"The precipitancy of my demands upon your gate and your hospitality
must have something of an air of impertinence," said Count Victor
briskly, unbuckling his sword and laying it before him on the table;
"but the cause of it lay with several zealous gentlemen, who were
apparently not affected by any law against tartan, for tartan they wore,
and sans culottes too, though the dirt of them made it difficult to be
certain of either fact. In the East it is customary, I believe, for the
infidel to take off his boots when he intrudes on sacred ground; nothing
is said about stockings, but I had to divest myself of both