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<h2> CHAPTER XVI — OLIVIA </h2>
<p>It was a trying position in which Olivia found herself when first she sat
at the same table with the stranger whose sense of humour, as she must
always think, was bound to be vastly entertained by her ridiculous story.
Yet she carried off the situation with that triumph that ever awaits on a
frank eye, a good honest heart, and an unfailing trust in the ultimate
sympathy of one's fellow-creatures. There was no <i>mauvaise honte</i>
there, Count Victor saw, and more than ever he admired, if that were
possible. It was the cruel father of the piece who was uneasy. He it was
who must busy himself with the feeding of an appetite whose like he had
not manifested before, either silent altogether or joining in the
conversation with the briefest sentences.</p>
<p>There was never a Montaiglon who would lose such a good occasion, and
Count Victor made the most of it. He was gentle, but not too gentle—for
this was a lady to resent the easy self-effacement with which so many of
her sex are deceived and flattered; he was not unmindful of the more
honest compliments, yet he had the shrewdness to eschew the mere
meaningless <i>blague</i> that no one could better employ with the
creatures of Versailles, who liked their olives well oiled, or the
Jeannetons and Mimis of the Italian comedy and the playhouse. Under his
genial and shining influence Olivia soon forgot the ignominy of these
recent days, and it was something gained in that direction that already
she looked upon him as a confederate.</p>
<p>"I am so glad you like our country, Count Victor," she said, no way
dubious about his praise of her home hills, those loud impetuous
cataracts, and that alluring coast. "It rains—oh! it rains—"</p>
<p>"<i>Parfaitement</i>, mademoiselle, but when it shines!" and up went his
hands in an admiration wherefor words were too little eloquent: at that
moment he was convinced truly that the sun shone nowhere else than in the
Scottish hills.</p>
<p>"Yes, yes, when it shines, as you say, it is the dear land! Then the woods—the
woods gleam and tremble, I always think, like a girl who has tears in her
eyes, the tears of gladness. The hills—let my father tell you of the
hills, Count Victor; I think he must love them more than he loves his own
Olivia—is that not cruel of a man with an only child? He would die,
I am sure, if he could not be seeing them when he liked. But I cannot be
considering the hills so beautiful as my own glens, my own little glens,
that no one, I'll be fancying, is acquainted with to the heart but me and
the red deer, and maybe a hunter or two. Of course, we have the big glens,
too, and I would like it if I could show you Shira Glen—"</p>
<p>"The best of it was once our own," said Doom, black at brow.</p>
<p>"—That once was ours, as father says, and is mine yet so long as I
can walk there and be thinking my own thoughts in it when the wood is
green, and the wild ducks are plashing in the lake."</p>
<p>Doom gave a significant exclamation: he was recalling that rumour had
Shira Glen for his daughter's favourite trysting-place.</p>
<p>"Rain or shine," said Count Victor, delighting in such whole-souled
rapture, delighting in that bright, unwearied eye, that curious turn of
phrase that made her in English half a foreigner like himself—"Rain
or shine, it is a country of many charms."</p>
<p>"But now you are too large in your praise," she said, not quite so warmly.
"I do not expect you to think it is a perfect country-side at any time and
all times; and it is but natural that you should love the country of
France, that I have been told is a brave and beautiful country, and a
country I am sometimes loving myself because of its hospitality to folk
that we know. I know it is a country of brave men, and sometimes I am
wondering if it is the same for beautiful women. Tell me!" and she leaned
on an arm that shone warm, soft, and thrilling from the short sleeve of
her gown, and put the sweetest of chins upon a hand for the wringing of
hearts.</p>
<p>Montaiglon looked into those eyes, so frank and yet profound, and straight
became a rebel. "Mademoiselle Olivia," said he, indifferently (oh, Cecile!
oh, Cecile!), "they are considered not unpleasing; but for myself, perhaps
acquaintance has spoiled the illusion."</p>
<p>She did not like that at all; her eyes grew proud and unbelieving.</p>
<p>"When I was speaking of the brave men of France," said she, "I fancied
perhaps they would tell what they really thought—even to a woman."
And he felt very much ashamed of himself.</p>
<p>"Ah! well, to tell the truth, mademoiselle," he confessed, "I have known
very beautiful ones among them, and many that I liked, and still must
think of with affection. <i>Mort de ma vie!</i> am I not the very slave of
your sex, that for all the charms, the goodness, the kindnesses and
purities, is a continual reproach to mine? In the least perfect of them I
have never failed to find something to remind me of my little mother."</p>
<p>"And now I think that is much better," said Olivia, heartily, her eyes
sparkling at that concluding filial note. "I would not care at all for a
man to come from his own land and pretend to me that he had no mind for
the beautiful women and the good women he had seen there. No; it would not
deceive me, that; it would not give me any pleasure. We have a proverb in
the Highlands, that Annapla will often be saying, that the rook thinks the
pigeon hen would be bonny if her wings were black; and that is a <i>seanfhacal</i>—that
is an old-word that is true."</p>
<p>"If I seemed to forget France and what I have seen there of Youth and
Beauty," said Count Victor, "it is, I swear it is—it is—"</p>
<p>"It is because you would be pleasant to a simple Highland girl," said
Olivia, with just a hint of laughter in her eyes.</p>
<p>"No, no, <i>par ma foi!</i> not wholly that. But yes, I love my country—ah!
the happy days I have known there, the sunny weather, the friends so good,
the comradeship so true. Your land is beautiful—it is even more
beautiful than the exiles in Paris told me; but I was not born here, and
there are times when your mountains seem to crush my heart."</p>
<p>"Is it so, indeed?" said Doom. "As for me, I would not change the bleakest
of them for the province of Champagne." And he beat an impulsive hand upon
the table.</p>
<p>"Yes, yes, I understand that," cried Olivia. "I understand it very well.
It is the sorrow of the hills and woods you mean; ah! do I not know it,
too? It is only in my own little wee glens among the rowans that I can
feel careless like the birds, and sing; when I walk the woods or stand
upon the shore and see the hills without a tree or tenant, when the land
is white with the snow and the mist is trailing, Olivia Lamond is not very
cheery. What it is I do not know—that influence of my country; it is
sad, but it is good and wholesome, I can tell you; it is then I think that
the bards make songs, and those who are not bards, like poor myself, must
just be feeling the songs there are no words for."</p>
<p>At this did Doom sit mighty pleased and humming to himself a bar of
minstrelsy.</p>
<p>"Look at my father there!" said Olivia; "he would like you to be thinking
that he does not care a great deal for the Highlands of Scotland."</p>
<p>"Indeed, and that is not fair, Olivia; I never made pretence of that,"
said Doom. "Never to such as understand; Montaiglon knows the Highlands
are at my heart, and that the look of the hills is my evening prayer."</p>
<p>"Isn't that a father, Count Victor?" cried Olivia, quite proud of the
confession. "But he is the strange father, too, that will be pretending
that he has forgotten the old times and the old customs of our dear
people. We are the children of the hills and of the mists; the hills make
no change, the mists are always coming back, and the deer is in the corrie
yet, and when you will hear one that is of the Highland blood say he does
not care any more for the old times, and preferring the English tongue to
his own, and making a boast of his patience when the Government of England
robs him of his plaid, you must be watchful of that man, Count Victor. For
there is something wrong. Is it not true, that I am saying, father?" She
turned a questioning gaze to Doom, who had no answer but a sigh.</p>
<p>"You will have perhaps heard my father miscall the <i>breacan</i>, miscall
the tartan, and—"</p>
<p>"Not at all," cried the Baron. "There is a great difference between
condemning and showing an indifference."</p>
<p>"I think, father," said Olivia, "we are among friends. Count Victor, as
you say, could understand about our fancies for the hills, and it would be
droll indeed if he smiled at us for making a treasure of the tartan.
Whatever my father, the stupid man, the darling, may be telling you of the
tartan and the sword, Count Victor, do not believe that we are such poor
souls as to forget them. Though we must be wearing the Saxon in our
clothes and in our speech, there are many like me—and my dear father
there—who will not forget."</p>
<p>It was a curious speech all that, not without a problem, as well as the
charm of the unexpected and the novel, to Count Victor. For, somehow or
other, there seemed to be an under meaning in the words; Olivia was
engaged upon the womanly task—he thought—of lecturing some
one. If he had any doubt about that, there was Mungo behind the Baron's
chair, his face just showing over his shoulder, seamed with smiles that
spoke of some common understanding between him and the daughter of his
master; and once, when she thrust more directly at her father, the little
servitor deliberately winked to the back of his master's head—a very
gnome of slyness.</p>
<p>"But you have not told me about the ladies of France," said she. "Stay!
you will be telling me that again; it is not likely my father would be
caring to hear about them so much as about the folk we know that have gone
there from Scotland. They are telling me that many good, brave men are
there wearing their hearts out, and that is the sore enough trial."</p>
<p>Count Victor thought of Barisdale and his cousin-german, young Glengarry,
gambling in that frowsiest boozing-ken in the Rue Tarane—the Caf� de
la Paix—without credit for a <i>louis d'or</i>; he thought of James
Mor Drummond and the day he came to him behind the Tuileries stable clad
in rags of tartan to beg a loan; none of these was the picturesque figure
of loyalty in exile that he should care to paint for this young woman.</p>
<p>But he remembered also Cameron, Macleod, Traquair, a score of gallant
hearts, of handsome gentlemen, and Lochiel, true chevalier—perhaps a
better than his king!</p>
<p>It was of these Count Victor spoke—of their faith, their valiancies,
their shifts of penury and pride. He had used often to consort with them
at Cammercy, and later on in Paris. If the truth were to be told, they had
made a man of him, and now he was generous enough to confess it.</p>
<p>"I owe them much, your exiles, Mademoiselle Olivia," said he. "When first
I met with them I was a man without an ideal or a name, without a scrap of
faith or a cause to quarrel for. It is not good for the young, that,
Baron, is it? To be passing the days in an <i>ennui</i> and the nights
below the lamps? Well, I met your Scots after Dettingen, renewed the old
acquaintance I had made at Cam-mercy, and found the later exiles better
than the first—than the Balhaldies, the Glengarries, Mur-rays, and
Sullivans. They were different, <i>ces gens-l�</i>. Ordinarily they
rendezvoused in the Taverne Tourtel of St. Germains, and that gloomy
palace shared their devotions with Scotland, whence they came and of which
they were eternally talking, like men in a nostalgia. James and his
Jacquette were within these walls, often indifferent enough, I fear, about
the cause our friends were exiled there for; and Charles, between
Luneville and Liege or Poland and London, was not at the time an inspiring
object of veneration, if you will permit me to says so, M. le Baron. But
what does it matter? the cause was there, an image to keep the good hearts
strong, unselfish, and expectant. Ah! the songs they sang, so full of that
hopeful melancholy of the glens you speak of, mademoiselle; the stories
they told of Tearlach's Year; the hopes that bound them in a brotherhood—and
binds them yet, praise <i>le bon Dieu!</i> That was good for me. Yes; I
like your exiled compatriots very much, Mademoiselle Olivia. And yet there
was a <i>maraud</i> or two among them; no fate could be too hard for the
spies who would betray them."</p>
<p>For the first time in many hours Count Victor remembered that he had an
object in Scotland, but with it somehow Cecile was not associated.</p>
<p>"Mungo has been telling me about the spy, Count Victor. Oh, the wickedness
of it! I feel black, burning shame that one with a Highland name and a
Highland mother would take a part like yon. I would not think there could
be men in the world so bad. They must have wicked mothers to make such
sons; the ghost of a good mother would cry from her grave to check her
child in such a villany." Olivia spoke with intense feeling, her eyes
lambent and her lips quivering.</p>
<p>"Drimdarroch's mother must have been a rock," said Count Victor.</p>
<p>"And to take what was my father's name!" cried Olivia; "Mungo has been
telling me that. Though I am a woman, I could be killing him myself."</p>
<p>"And here we're in our flights, sure enough!" broke in the father, as he
left them with a humorousous pretence at terror.</p>
<p>"Now you must tell me about the women of France," said Olivia. "I have a
friend who was there once, and tells me, like you, he was indifferent; but
I am doubting that he must have seen some there that were worth his
fancy."</p>
<p>"Is it there sits the wind?" thought Montaiglon. "Our serene angel is not
immune against the customary passions." An unreasonable envy of the
diplomatist who had been indifferent to the ladies of France took
possession of him; still, he might have gratified her curiosity about his
fair compatriots had not Doom returned, and then Olivia's interest in the
subject oddly ceased.</p>
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