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Doom Castle

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<h2> CHAPTER XXV — RECONCILIATION </h2> Mungo stood in the dark till the last beat of the horse-hoofs could be heard, and then went in disconsolate and perplexed. He drew the bars as it were upon a dear friend out in the night, and felt as there had gone the final hope for Doom and its inhabitants. "An auld done rickle o' a place!" he soliloquised, lifting a candle high that it might show the shame of the denuded and crumbling walls. "An auld done rickle: I've seen a better barn i' the Lothians, and fancy me tryin' to let on that it's a kind o' Edinbro'! Sirs! sirs! 'If ye canna hae the puddin' be contented wi' the bree,' Annapla's aye sayin', but here there's neither bree nor puddin'. To think that a' my traison against the master i' the interest o' his dochter and himsel' should come to naethin', and that Sim MacTaggart should be sent awa' wi' a flea in his lug, a' for the tirravee o' a lassie that canna' value a guid chance when it offers! I wonder what ails her, if it's no' that mon-sher's ta'en her fancy! Women are a' like weans; they never see the crack in an auld toy till some ane shows them a new ane. Weel! as sure as death I wash my haun's o' the hale affair. She's daft; clean daft, puir dear! If she kent whit I ken, she micht hae some excuse, but I took guid care o' that. I doot yon's the end o' a very promisin' match, and the man, though he mayna' think it, has his merchin' orders." The brief bow-legged figure rolled along the lobby, pshawing with vexation, and in a little, Doom, to all appearance, was a castle dark and desolate. Yet not wholly asleep, however dark and silent; for Olivia, too, had heard the last of the thundering hoofs, had suffered the agony that comes from the wrench of a false ideal from the place of its long cherishing. She came down in the morning a mere wraith of beauty, as it seemed to the little servitor, shutting her lips hard, but ready to burst into a shower. "Guid Lord!" thought Mungo, setting the scanty table. "It's clear she hasna steeked an e'e a' nicht, and me sleepin' like a peerie. That's ane o' the advantages o' being ower the uneasy age o' love—and still I'm no' that auld. I wonder if she's rued it the day already." She smiled upon him bravely, but woe-begone, and could not check a quivering lip, and then she essayed at a song hummed with no bad pretence as she cast from the window a glance along the wintry coast, that never changed its aspect though hearts broke. But, as ill-luck had it, the air was the unfinished melody of Sim's bewitching flageolet. She stopped it ere she had gone farther than a bar or two, and turned to find Mungo irresolute and disturbed. "He ga'ed awa'—" began the little man, with the whisper of the conspirator. "Mungo!" she cried, "you will not say a word of it. It is all bye with me, and what for not with you? I command you to say no more about it, do you hear?" And her foot beat with an imperiousness almost comical from one with such a broken countenance. "It's a gey droll thing—" "It's a gey hard thing, that is what it is," she interrupted him, "that you will not do what I tell you, and say nothing of what I have no relish to hear, and must have black shame to think of. Must I go over all that I have said to you already? It is finished, Mungo; are you listening? Did he—did he—looked vexed? But it does not matter, it is finished, and I have been a very foolish girl." "But that needna' prevent me tellin' ye that the puir man's awa' clean gyte." She smiled just the ghost of a smile at that, then put her hands upon her ears. "Oh!" she cried despairingly, "have I not a friend left?" Mungo sighed and said no more then, but went to Annapla and sought relief for his feelings in bilingual wrangling with that dark abigail. At low tide beggars from Glen Croe came to his door with yawning pokes and all their old effrontery: he astounded them by the fiercest of receptions, condemned them all eternally for limmers and sorners, lusty rogues and vagabonds. "Awa'! awa'!" he cried, an implacable face against their whining protestations—"Awa', or I'll gie ye the gairde! If I was my uncle Erchie, I wad pit an end to your argy-bargying wi' hail frae a gun!" But to Annapla it was, "Puir deevils, it's gey hard to gie them the back o' the haun' and them sae used to rougher times in Doom. What'll they think o' us? It's sic a doon-come, but we maun be hainin' seein' Leevie's lost her jo, and no ither way clear oot o' the bit. I'm seein' a toom girnel and done beef here lang afore next Martinmas." These plaints were to a woman blissfully beyond comprehending the full import of them, for so much was Annapla taken up with her Gift, so misty and remote the realms of Gaelic dream wherein she moved, that the little Lowland oddity's perturbation was beneath her serious attention. Olivia had that day perhaps the bitterest of her life. With love outside—calling in the evening and fluting in the bower, and ever (as she thought) occupied with her image even when farther apart—she had little fault to find with the shabby interior of her home. Now that love was lost, she sat with her father, oppressed and cold as it had been a vault. Even in his preoccupation he could not fail to see how ill she seemed that morning: it appeared to him that she had the look of a mountain birch stricken by the first of wintry weather. "My dear," he said, with a tenderness that had been some time absent from their relations, "you must be taking a change of air. I'm a poor parent not to have seen before how much you need it." He hastened to correct what he fancied from her face was a misapprehension. "I am speaking for your red cheeks, my dear, believe me; I'm wae to see you like that." "I will do whatever you wish, father," said Olivia in much agitation. Coerced she was iron, coaxed she was clay. "I have not been a very good daughter to you, father; after this I will be trying to be better." His face reddened; his heart beat at this capitulation of his rebel: he rose from his chair and took her into his arms—an odd display for a man so long stone-cold but to his dreams. "My dear, my dear!" said he, "but in one detail that need never again be named between us two, you have been the best of girls, and, God knows, I am not the pattern parent!" Her arm went round his neck, and she wept on his breast. "Sour and dour—" said he. "No, no!" she cried. "And poor to penury." "All the more need for a loving child. There are only the two of us." He held her at arm's-length and looked at her wistfully in the wet wan face and saw his wife Christina there. "By heaven!" he thought, "it is no wonder that this man should hunt her." "You have made me happy this day, Olivia," said he; "at least half happy. I dare not mention what more was needed to make me quite content." "You need not," said she. "I know, and that—and that—is over too. I am just your own Olivia." "What!" he cried elate; "no more?" "No more at all." "Now praise God!" said he. "I have been robbed of Credit and estate, and even of my name; I have seen king and country foully done by, and black affront brought on our people, and still there's something left to live for." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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