Count Victor saidAu revoirto 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, fairintrigueusesand 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.
But now he was face to face with Olivia's lover, Count Victor discovered that he had not the slightest excuse for referring to her who was the only association between them! The lady herself and Mungo Boyd had conveyed a sense of very close conspiracy between all four, but from neither the lady nor any one else in Doom had he any passport to the friendship of this gentleman. It was only for a moment the difficulties of the situation mastered him.
“I have permitted myself, monsieur, to intrude upon you upon an excuse that must seem scandalously inadequate,” said he. “My name is Montaiglon—”
“With the particle, I think?” said Sim MacTaggart.
Count Victor started slightly.
“But yes,” said he, “it is so, though I never march with much baggage, and a De to a traveller is like a second hat. It is, then, that it is perhaps unnecessary to say more of myself?”
The Chamberlain with muchbonhomiegrasped his hand.
“M. Montaiglon,” said he, “I am very proud to meet you. I fancy a certain lady and I owe something to your consideration, and Simon MacTaggart stands upon no ceremony.”
Count Victor winced slightly at the conjunction, but otherwise he was delighted.
“I am ravished, monsieur!” said he. “Ceremony is like some people's assumption of dignity—the false bottoms they put in their boots to conceal the fact that they are under the average height, is it not?”
Arm in arm they went out in front of the inn and walked along the bay, and the Provost and the Bailies were left mourning for their king.
“You must not fancy the name and the reputation of the gentlemen of Cammercy unknown in these parts,” said the Chamberlain. “When the lady—who need not be more specifically mentioned—told me you had come to Doom, it was like the over-come of a song at first that I had heard of you before. And now that I see you, I mind the story went, when I was at Dunkerque some years ago, that Count Victor Jean, if all his other natural gifts had failed him, might have made a noble fortune as amaître d'escrime. Sir, I am an indifferent hand with the rapier myself, but I aye liked to see a man that was its master.”
“You are very good,” said Montaiglon, “and yet such a reputation, exaggerated as I fear it may be, is not, by my faith! the one I should desire under the circumstances that, as you have doubtless further heard, bring me here.”
“About that, M. Montaiglon, it is perhaps as well that the Duke of Argyll's Chamberlain should know nothing at all. You are a wild lot, my gallant Jacobites”—he laughed softly as he spoke. “Between ourselves I have been more than bottle friends with some lovable persons on your side of the house, and you will be good enough to consider Simon MacTaggart no politician, though the Duke's Chamberlainex officiois bound to be enemy to every man who will not swear King George the best of monarchs.”
“From what I know of affairs in Europe now, and for all our heroics of invasion,” said Count Victor, “his Majesty is like to remain in undisputed possession, and you may take my word for it, no affair of high politics is responsible for my being here. Monsieur himself has doubtless had affairs. I am seeking but for one man—”
“Drimdarroch,” said the Chamberlain. “So the lady told me. Our Drimdarroch will not provide very much interest for amaître d'escrime,” and he laughed as he pictured Petullo the writer shivering before a flash of steel.
“Ah! you speak of the lawyer: Doom told me of him, and as he was good enough to interest himself in my lodging in this place, I must make him my compliments at the earliest and tell him I have settled down for myself in theauberge.”
“To that much at least I can help you, though in the other affair I'm neutral in spite of my interest in any ploy of the kind. There's Petullo's house across the way; I'm on certain terms with him; if you care, we could see him now.”
“Le plus tôt sera le mieux!” said Count Victor.
The Chamberlain led the way.
When Petullo's work was done of an evening it was his practice to sit with his wife in their huge and draughty parlour, practising the good husband and the domestic virtues in an upright zealous manner, such as one may read of in the books. A noble thing to do, but what's the good of it when hearts are miles apart and the practitioner is a man of rags? Yet there he sat, strewing himself with snuff to keep himself awake, blinking with dim eyes at her, wondering for ever at her inscrutable nature, conversing improvingly upon his cases in the courts, or upon his growing fortune that he computed nightly like a miser. Sometimes, in spite of his drenchings of macabaw, sleep compelled him, and, humped in his lug-chair, he would forget his duty, yet waken at her every yawn. And she—she just looked at him as he slept! She looked—and loathed herself, that she—so clean, so graceful, so sweet in spite of all her sin—should be allied with a dead man. The evenings passed for her on fettered hours; but for the window she had died from her incubus, or at least stood up and shrieked and ran into the street.
But for the window! From there she saw the hill Dunchuach, so tranquil, and the bosky deeps of Shira Glen that she knew so well in dusky evenings and in moonlight, and must ever tenant, in her fancy, with the man she used to meet there. Often she would turn her back upon that wizened atomy of quirks and false ideals, and let her bosom pant to think to-night!—to-night!—to-night!
When the Chamberlain and Montaiglon were announced she could have cried aloud with joy. It was not hard in that moment of her elation to understand why once the Chamberlain had loved her; beside the man to whom her own mad young ambition manacled her she seemed a vision of beauty none the worse for being just a little ripened.
“Come awa' in!” cried the lawyer with effusion. “You'll find the mistress and me our lones, and nearly tiring o' each other's company.”
The Chamberlain was disappointed. It was one of those evenings when Mrs. Petullo was used to seek him in the woods, and he had thought to find her husband by himself.
“A perfect picture of a happy hearth, eh?” said he. “I'm sweared to spoil it, but I'm bound to lose no time in bringing to you my good friend M. Montaiglon, who has taken up his quarters at the Boar's Head. Madam, may I have the pleasure of introducing to you M. Montaiglon?” and Sim Mac-Taggart looked in her eyes with some impatience, for she hung just a second too long upon his fingers, and pinched ere she released them.
She was delighted to make monsieur's acquaintance. Her husband had told her that monsieur was staying farther up the coast and intended to come to town.. Monsieur was in business; she feared times were not what they were for business in Argyll, but the air was bracing—and much to the same effect, which sent the pseudo wine merchant gladly into the hands of her less ceremonious husband.
As for Petullo, he was lukewarm. He saw no prospects of profit from this dubious foreigner thrust upon his attention by his well-squeezed client the Baron of Doom. Yet something of style, some sign of race in the stranger, thawed him out of his suspicious reserve, and he was kind enough to be condescending to his visitor while cursing the man who sent him there and the man who guided him. They sat together at the window, and meanwhile in the inner end of the room a lonely lady made shameful love.
“Oh, Sim!” she whispered, sitting beside him on the couch and placing the candlestick on a table behind them; “this is just like old times—the dear darling old times, isn't it?”
She referred to the first of theirliaison, when they made their love in that same room under the very nose of a purblind husband.
The Chamberlain toyed with his silver box and found it easiest to get out of a response by a sigh that might mean anything.
“You have the loveliest hand,” she went on, looking at his fingers, that certainly were shapely enough, as no one knew better than Simon Mac-Taggart. “I don't say you are in any way handsome,”—her eyes betrayed her real thought,—“but I'll admit to the hands,—they're dear pets, Sim.”
He thrust them in his pockets.
“Heavens! Kate!” he protested in a low tone, and assuming a quite unnecessary look of vacuity for the benefit of the husband, who gazed across the dim-lit room at them, “don't behave like an idiot; faithful wives never let their husbands see them looking like that at another man's fingers. What do you think of our monsher? He's a pretty enough fellow, if you'll not give me the credit.”
“Oh, he's good enough, I daresay,” she answered without looking aside a moment. “I would think him much better if he was an inch or two taller, a shade blacker, and Hielan' to boot. But tell me this, and tell me no more, Sim; where has your lordship been for three whole days? Three whole days, Simon MacTaggart, and not a word of explanation. Are you not ashamed of yourself, sir? Do you know that I was along the riverside every night this week? Can you fancy what I felt to hear your flageolet playing for tipsy fools in Ludovic's room? Very well, I said: let him! I have pride of my own, and I was so angry to-night that I said I would never go again to meet you. You cannot blame me if I was not there to-night, Sim. But there!—seeing you have rued your cruelty to me and made an excuse to see me even before him, there, I'll forgive you.”
“Oh! well!” drawled the Chamberlain, ambiguously.
“But I can't make another excuse this week. He sits in here every night, and has a new daft notion for late suppers. Blame yourself for it, Sim, but there can be no trysts this week.”
“I'm a most singularly unlucky person,” said the Chamberlain, in a tone that deaf love alone could fail to take alarm at.
“I heard a story to-day that frightened me, Sim,” she went on, taking up some fine knitting and bending over it while she spoke rapidly, always in tones too low to carry across the room. “It was that you have been hanging about that girl of Doom's you met here.”
The Chamberlain damned internally.
“Don't believe all you hear, Kate,” said he. “And even if it was the case,”—he broke off in a faint laugh.
“Even if what?” she repeated, looking up.
“Even if—even if there was anything in the story, who's to blame? Your goodman's not the ass he sometimes looks.”
“You mean that he was the first to put her in your way, and that he had his own reasons?”
The Chamberlain nodded.
Mrs. Petullo's fingers rushed the life out of her knitting. “If I thought—if I thought!” she said, leaving the sentence unfinished. No more was necessary; Sim MacTaggart thanked heaven he was not mated irrevocably.
“Is it true?” she asked. “Is it true of you, Sim, who did your best to make me push Petullo to Doom's ruin?”
“Now, my dear, you talk the damnedest nonsense!” said Simon MacTaggart firmly. “I pushed in no way; the fool dropped into your husband's hands like a ripe plum. I have plenty of shortcomings of my own to answer for without getting the blame of others.”
“Don't lie like that, Sim, dear,” said Mrs. Petullo, decidedly. “My memory is not gone yet, though you seem to think me getting old. Oh yes! I have all my faculties about me still.”
“I wish to the Lord you had prudence; old Vellum's cocking his lugs.”
“Oh, I don't care if he is; you make me desperate, Sim.” Her needles thrust like poignards, her bosom heaved. “You may deny it if you like, but who pressed me to urge him on to take Drim-darroch? Who said it might be so happy a home for us when—when—my goodman there—when I was free?”
“Heavens! what a hangman's notion!” thought the Chamberlain to himself, with a swift side glance at this termagant, and a single thought of calm Olivia.
“You have nothing to say to that, Sim, I see. It's just too late in the day for you to be virtuous, laddie; your Kate knows you and she likes you better as you are than as you think you would like to be. We were so happy, Sim, we were so happy!” A tear dropped on her lap.
“Now heaven forgive me for my infernal folly!” cried out the soul of Sim MacTaggart; but never a word did he say aloud.
Count Victor, at the other end of the room, listening to Petullo upon wines he was supposed to sell and whereof Petullo was supposed to be a connoisseur, though as a fact his honest taste was buttermilk—Count Victor became interested in the other pair. He saw what it took younger eyes, and a different experience from those of the husband, to observe.
“Cognac,”—this to M. le Connoisseur with the rheumy eye—“but yes, it is good; your taste in that must be a national affair, is it not? Our best, the La Rochelle, has the name of a Scot—I think of Fife—upon the cask;” but to himself, with a glance again at the tragic comedy in the corner of the couch, “Fi donc!Mungo had reason; my gentleman of the dark eye is suspiciously likecavalière servante.”
The Chamberlain began to speak fast upon topics of no moment, dreading the consequence of this surrender on the woman's part: she heard nothing as she thrust furiously and blindly with her needles, her eyes suffused with tears courageously restrained. At last she checked him.
“All that means, Sim, that it's true about the girl,” said she. “I tried to think it was a lie when I heard it, but now you compel me to believe you are a brute. You are a brute, Sim, do you hear that? Oh God! oh God! that ever I saw you! That ever I believed you! What is wrong with me, Sim? tell me, Sim! What is wrong with me? Am I different in any way from what I was last spring? Surely I'm not so old as all that; not a grey hair in my head, not a wrinkle on my face. I could keep like that for twenty years yet, just for love of Sim MacTaggart. Sim, say something, for the love of Heaven! Say it's a lie. Laugh at the story, Sim! Oh, Sim! Sim!”
The knitting needles clicked upon each other in her trembling hands, like fairy castanets.
“Who will say that man's fate is in his own fingers?” the Chamberlain asked himself, at the very end of patience. “From the day I breathed I got no chance. A clean and decent road's before me and a comrade for it, and I'm in the mood to take it, and here's the glaur about my feet! I wonder what monsieur there would do in a plight like mine. Lord! I envy him to be sitting there, and never a skeleton tugging at his sleeve.”
Mrs. Petullo gulped a sob, and gave a single glance into his face as he stared across the room.
“Why do you hate that man?” she asked, suddenly.
“Who?” said he smiling, and glad that the wild rush of reproach was checked. “Is it monsher? I hate nobody, my dear Kate, except sometimes myself for sin and folly.”
“And still and on you hate that man,” said she convinced. “Oh no! not with that face, with the face you had a second ago. I think—oh! I can guess the reason; he has been up in Doom Castle; has he been getting round Miss Milk-and-Water? If he has, he's far more like her than you are. You made me pauperise her father, Sim; I'm sorry it was not worse. I'll see that Petullo has them rouped from the door.”
“Adorable Kate!” said the Chamberlain, ironically.
Her face flamed, she pressed her hand on her side.
“I'll not forget that, Sim,” said she with a voice of marvellous calm, bracing herself to look indifferently across the room at her husband. “I'll not forget many things, Sim. I thought the man I was to raise from the lackey that you were ten years ago would have some gratitude. No, no, no, Sim; I do not mean that, forgive me. Don't look at me like that! Where are you to be to-morrow night, Sim? I could meet you at the bridge; I'll make some excuse, and I want you to see my new gown—such a gown, Sim! I know what you're thinking, it would be too dark to see it; but you could strike a light, sweetheart, and look. Do you mind when you did that over and over again the first time, to see my eyes? I'm not going to say another word about—about Miss Milk-and-Water, if that's what angers you. She could never understand my Sim, or love the very worm he tramps on as I do. Now look at me smiling; ain't I brave? Would any one know to see me that my heart was sore? Be kind to me, Sim, oh! be kind to me; you should be kind to me, with all you promised!”
“Madame is smiling into a mist; alas! poor M. Petullo!” thought Count Victor, seeing the lady standing up and looking across the room.
“Kate,” said the Chamberlain in a whisper, pulling unobserved at her gown, “I have something to say to you.”
She sat down again in a transport, her cheeks reddening, her eyes dancing; poor soul! she was glad nowadays of the very crumbs of affection from Sim MacTaggart's table.
“I know you are going to say 'Yes' for to-morrow night, Sim,” said she triumphant. “Oh, you are my own darling! For that I'll forgive you everything.”
“There's to be no more nonsense of this kind, Kate,” said the Chamberlain. “We have been fools—I see that quite plainly—and I'm not going to carry it on any longer.”
“That is very kind of you,” said Mrs. Petullo, with the ring of metal in her accent and her eyes on fire. “Do you feel a great deal of remorse about it?”
“I do,” said he, wondering what she was to be at next.
“Poor man! I was aye sure your conscience would be the death of you some day. And it's to be the pretext for throwing over unhappy Kate Cameron, is it?”
“Not Kate Cameron—her I loved—but Mrs. Petullo.”
“Whom you only made-believe to? That is spoken like a true Highland gentleman, Sim. I'm to be dismissed with just that amount of politeness that will save my feelings. I thought you knew me better, Sim. I thought you could make a more plausible excuse than that for the dirty transaction when it had to be done, as they say it must be done some time with all who are in our position. As sure as death I prefer the old country style that's in the songs, where he laughs and rides away. But I'm no fool, Sim; what about Miss Milk-and-Water? Has she been hearing about me, I wonder, and finding fault with her new jo? The Lord help her if she trusts him as I did!”
“I want you to give me a chance, Kate,” said the Chamberlain desperately. Petullo and the Count were still intently talking; the tragedy was in the poor light of a guttering candle.
“A chance?” she repeated vaguely, her eyes in vacancy, a broken heart shown in the corners of her mouth, the sudden aging of her countenance.
“That's it, Kate; you understand, don't you? A chance. I'm a boy no longer. I want to be a better man—” The sentence trailed off, for the Chamberlain could not but see himself in the most contemptible of lights.
“A better man!” said she, her knitting and her hands drowned in her lap, her countenance hollow and wan. “Lord keep me, a better man! And am I to be any the better woman when my old lover is turned righteous? Have you no' a thought at all for me when I'm to be left with him that's not my actual husband, left without love, hope, or self-respect? God help poor women! It's Milk-and-Water then; that's settled, and I'm to see you at the kirk with her for a lifetime of Sundays after this, an honest woman, and me what I am for you that have forgotten me—forgotten me! I was as good as she when you knew me first, Sim; I was not bad, and oh, my God! but I loved you, Sim Mac-Taggart!”
“Of all that's damnable,” said the Chamberlain to himself, “there's nothing beats a whining woman!” He was in a mortal terror that her transports could be heard across the room, and that would be to spoil all with a vengeance.
“God pity women!” she went on. “It's a lesson. I was so happy sometimes that it frightened me, and now I know I was right.”
“What do you say, my dear?” cried out Petullo across the room, suspiciously. He fancied he had heard an over-eager accent in her last words, that were louder spoken than all that had gone before. Fortunately he could not make out her face as he looked, otherwise he would have seen, as Montaiglon did with some surprise, a mask of Tragedy.
“I'm giving Mr. MacTaggart my congratulations on his coming marriage,” said she quickly, with a miraculous effort at a little laugh, and the Chamberlain cursed internally.
“Oh! it's that length, is it?” said Petullo with a tone of gratification. “Did I no' tell you, Kate? You would deny't, and now you have the best authority. Well, well, it's the way we a' maun gang, as the auld blin' woman said, and here's wishing you the best o' luck!”
He came across to shake hands, but the Chamberlain checked him hurriedly.
“Psha!” said he. “Madame's just a little premature, Mr. Petullo; there must be no word o' this just now.”
“Is it that way?” said Petullo. “Likely the Baron's thrawn. Man, he hasna a roost, and he should be glad—” He stopped on reflection that the Frenchman was an intimate of the family he spoke of, and hastily returned to his side without seeing the pallor of his wife.
“And so it was old Vellum who clyped to you,” said the Chamberlain to the lady.
“I see it all plainly now,” said she. “He brought her here just to put her in your way and punish me. Oh, heavens, I'll make him rue for that! And do you fancy I'm going to let you go so easily as all that, Sim? Will Miss Mim-mou' not be shocked if I tell her the truth about her sweetheart?”
“You would not dare!” said the Chamberlain.
“Oh! would I not?” Mrs. Petullo smiled in a fashion that showed she appreciated the triumph of her argument. “What would I not do for my Sim?”
“Well, it's all by, anyway,” said he shortly.
“What, with her?” said Mrs. Petullo, but with no note of hope.
“No, with you,” said he brutally. “Let us be friends, good friends, Kate,” he went on, fearing this should too seriously arouse her. “I'll be the best friend you have in the world, my dear, if you'll let me, only—”
“Only you will never kiss me again,” said she with a sob. “There can be no friendship after you, Sim, and you know it. You are but lying again. Oh, God! oh, God! I wish I were dead! You have done your worst, Simon MacTaggart; and if all tales be true—”
“I'm not saying a word of what I might say in my own defence,” he protested.
“Whatcouldyou say in your own defence? There is not the ghost of an excuse for you. Whatcouldyou say?”
“Oh, I could be pushed to an obvious enough retort,” he said, losing patience, for now it was plain that they were outraging every etiquette by so long talking together while others were in the room. “I was to blame, Heaven knows! I'm not denying that, but you—but you—” And his fingers nervously sought in his coat for the flageolet.
Mrs. Petullo's face flamed. “Oh, you hound!” she hissed, “you hound!” and then she laughed softly, hysterically. “That is the gentleman for you! The seed of kings, no less! What a brag it was! That is the gentleman for you!—to put the blame on me. No, Sim; no, Sim; I will not betray you to Miss Mim-mou', you need not be feared of that; I'll let her find you out for herself and then it will be too late. And, oh! I hate her! hate her! hate her!”
“Thank God for that!” said the Chamberlain with a sudden memory of the purity she envied, and at these words Mrs. Petullo fell in a swoon upon the floor.
“Lord, what's the matter?” cried her husband, running to her side, then crying for the maid.
“I haven't the slightest idea,” said Sim MacTag-gart. “But she looked ill from the first,” and once more he inwardly cursed his fate that constantly embroiled him in such affairs.
Ten minutes later he and the Count were told the lady had come round, and with expressions of deep sympathy they left Petullo's dwelling.
There was a silence between the two for a little after they came out from Petullo's distracted household. With a chilling sentiment towards his new acquaintance, whom he judged the cause of the unhappy woman's state, Count Victor waited for the excuse he knew inevitable. He could not see the Chamberlain's face, for the night was dark now; the tide, unseen, was running up on the beach of the bay, lights were burning in the dwellings of the little town.
“M. Montaiglon,” at last said the Chamberlain in a curious voice where feelings the most deep appeared to strive together, “yon's a tragedy, if you like.”
“Comment?” said the Count. He was not prepared for an opening quite like this.
“Well,” said the Chamberlain, “you saw it for yourself; you are not a mole like Petullo the husband. By God! I would be that brute's death if he were thirty years younger, and made of anything else than sawdust. It's a tragedy in there, and look at this burgh!—like the grave but for the lights of it; rural, plodding, unambitious, ignorant—and the last place on earth you might seek in for a story so peetiful as that in there. My heart's wae, wae for that woman; I saw her face was like a corp when we went in first, though she put a fair front on to us. A woman in a hundred; a brave woman, few like her, let me tell you, M. Montaiglon, and heartbroken by that rat she's married on. I could greet to think on all her trials. You saw she was raised somewhat; you saw I have some influence in that quarter?”
For his life Count Victor could make no reply, so troubled was his mind with warring thoughts of Olivia betrayed, perhaps, to a debaucheesansheart and common pot-house decency; of whether in truth this was the debauchee to such depths as he suggested, or a man in a false position through the stress of things around him.
The Chamberlain went on as in a meditation. “Poor Kate! poor Kate! We were bairns together, M. Montaiglon, innocent bairns, and happy, twenty years syne, and I will not say but what in her maidenhood there was some warmth between us, so that I know her well. She was compelled by her relatives to marriage with our parchment friend yonder, and there you have the start of what has been hell on earth for her. The man has not the soul of a louse, and as for her, she's the finest gold! You would see that I was the cause of her swoon?”
“Unhappy creature!” said Montaiglon, beginning to fear he had wronged this good gentleman.
“You may well say it, M. Montaiglon. It is improper, perhaps, that I should expose to a stranger the skeleton of that house, but I'm feeling what happened just now too much to heed a convention.” He sighed profoundly. “I have had influence with the good woman, as you would see; for years I've had it, because I was her only link with the gay world she was born to be an ornament in, and the only one free to be trusted with the tale of her misery. Well, you know—you are a man of the world, M. Montaiglon—you know the dangers of such a correspondence between a person of my reputation, that is none of the best, because I have been less a hypocrite than most, and a lady in her position. It's a gossiping community this, long-lugged and scandal-loving like all communities of its size; it is not the Faubourg St. Honoré, where intrigues go on behind fans and never an eye cocked or a word said about it; and I'll not deny but there have been scandalous and cruel things said about the lady and myself. Now, as God's my judge—”
“Pardon, monsieur,” said the Count, eager to save this protesting gentleman anotherbêtise; “I quite understand, I think,—the lady finds you a discreet friend. Naturally her illness has unmanned you. The scandal of the world need never trouble a good man.”
“But a merely middling-good man, M. Montaiglon,” cried the Chamberlain; “you'll allow that's a difference. Lord knows I lay no claim to a crystal virtue! In this matter I have no regard for my own reputation, but just for that very reason I'm anxious about the lady's. What happened in that room there was that I've had to do an ill thing and make an end of an auld sang. I'm rarely discreet in my own interest, M. Montaiglon, but it had to be shown this time, and as sure as death I feel like a murderer at the havoc I have wrought with that good woman's mind!”
He stopped suddenly; a lump was in his throat. In the beam of light that came through the hole in a shutter of a house they passed, Montaiglon saw that his companion's face was all wrought with wretchedness, and a tear was on his cheek.
The discovery took him aback. He had ungenerously deemed the strained voice in the darkness beside him a mere piece of play-acting, but here was proof of genuine feeling, all the more convincing because the Chamberlain suddenly brisked up and coughed and assumed a new tone, as if ashamed of his surrender to a sentiment.
“I have been compelled to be cruel to-night to a woman, M. Montaiglon,” said he, “and that is not my nature. And—to come to another consideration that weighed as much with me as any—this unpleasant duty of mine that still sticks in my throat like funeral-cake was partly forced by consideration for another lady—the sweetest and the best—who would be the last I should care to have hear any ill of me, even in a libel.”
A protest rose to Montaiglon's throat; a fury stirred him at the gaucherie that should bring Olivia's name upon the top of such a subject. He could not trust himself to speak with calmness, and it was to his great relief the Chamberlain changed the topic—broadened it, at least, and spoke of women in the general, almost cheerfully, as if he delighted to put an unpleasant topic behind him. It was done so adroitly, too, that Count Victor was compelled to believe it prompted by a courteous desire on the part of the Chamberlain not too vividly to illuminate his happiness in the affection of Olivia.
“I'm an older man than you, M. Montaiglon,” said the Chamberlain, “and I may be allowed to give some of my own conclusions upon the fair. I have known good, ill, and merely middling among them, the cunning and the simple, the learned and the utterly ignorant, and by the Holy Iron! honesty and faith are the best virtues in the lot of them. They all like flattery, I know—”
“A dead man and a stupid woman are the only ones who do not.Jamais beau parler riecorcha le langue!” said Montaiglon.
“Faith, and that's very true,” consented the Chamberlain, laughing softly. “I take it not amiss myself if it's proffered in the right way—which is to say, for the qualities I know I have, and not for the imaginary ones. As I was saying, give me the simple heart and honesty; they're not very rife in our own sex, and—”
“Even there, monsieur, I can be generous enough,” said Montaiglon. “I can always retain my regard for human nature, because I have learned never to expect too much from it.”
“Well said!” cried the Chamberlain. “Do you know that in your manner of rejoinder you recall one Dumont I met once at the Jesuits' College when I was in France years ago?”
“Ah, you have passed some time in my country, then?” said the Count with awakened interest, a little glad of a topic scarce so abstruse as sex.
“I have been in every part of Europe,” said the Chamberlain; “and it must have been by the oddest of mischances I have not been at Cammercy itself, for well I knew your uncle's friends, though, as it happened, we were of a different complexion of politics. I lived for months one time in the Hôtel de Transylvania, Rue Condé, and kept mycarosse de remise, and gambled like every other ass of my kind in Paris till I had not a louis to my credit. Lord! the old days, the old days! I should be penitent, I daresay, M. Montaiglon, but I'm putting that off till I find that a sober life has compensations for the entertainment of a life of liberty.”
“Did you know Balhaldie?”
“Do I know the inside of my own pocket! I've played piquet wi' the old rogue a score of times in the Sun tavern of Rotterdam. Pardon me speaking that way of one that may be an intimate of your own, but to be quite honest, the Scots gentlemen living on the Scots Fund in France in these days were what I call the scourings of the Hielan's. There were good and bad among them, of course, but I was there in theentourageof one who was no politician, which was just my own case, and I saw but the convivial of my exiled countrymen in their convivial hours. Politics! In these days I would scunner at the very word, if you know what that means, M. Montaiglon. I was too throng with gaiety to trouble my head about such trifles; my time was too much taken up with buckling my hair, in admiring the cut of my lacedjabot, and the Mechlin of my wrist-bands.”
They were walking close upon the sea-wall with leisurely steps, preoccupied, the head of the little town, it seemed, wholly surrendered to themselves alone. Into the Chamberlain's voice had come an accent of the utmost friendliness and flattering ir-restraint; he seemed to be leaving his heart bare to the Frenchman. Count Victor was by these last words transported to his native city, and his own far-off days of galliard. Why, in the name of Heaven! was he here listening to hackneyed tales of domestic tragedy and a stranger's reminiscences? Why did his mind continually linger round the rock of Doom, so noisy on its promontory, so sad, so stern, so like an ancient saga in its spirit? Cecile—he was amazed at it, but Cecile, and the Jacobite cause he had come here to avenge with a youth's ardour, had both fallen, as it were, into a dusk of memory!
“By the way, monsieur, you did not happen to have come upon any one remotely suggesting my Drimdarroch in the course of your travels?”
“Oh, come!” cried Sim MacTaggart; “if I did, was I like to mention it here and now?” He laughed at the idea. “You have not grasped the clannishness of us yet if you fancy—”
“But in an affair of strict honour, monsieur,” broke in Count Victor eagerly. “Figure you a woman basely betrayed; your admirable sentiments regarding the sex must compel you to admit there is here something more than clannishness can condone. It is true there is the political element—but not much of it—in my quest, still—”
“Not a word of that, M. Montaiglon!” cried the Chamberlain: “there you address yourself to his Grace's faithful servant; but I cannot be denying some sympathy with the other half of your object. If I had known this by-named Drimdarroch you look for, I might have swithered to confess it, but as it is, I have never had the honour. I've seen scores of dubious cattle round the walls of Ludo-vico Rex, but which might be Drimdarroch and which might be decent honest men, I could not at this time guess. We have here among us others who had a closer touch with affairs in France than I.”
“So?” said Count Victor. “Our friend the Baron of Doom suggested that for that very reason my search was for the proverbial needle in the haystack. I find myself in pressing need of a judicious friend at court, I see. Have you ever found your resolution quit you—not an oozing courage, I mean, but an indifference that comes purely by the lapse of time and the distractions on the way to its execution? It is my case at the moment. My thirst for the blood of thisinconnuhas modified considerably in the past few days. I begin to wish myself home again, and might set out incontinent if the object of my coming here at all had not been so well known to those I left behind. You would be doing a brilliant service—and perhaps but little harm to Drimdarroch after all—if you could arrange a meeting at the earliest.”
He laughed as he said so.
“Man! I'm touched by the issue,” said the Chamberlain; “I must cast an eye about. Drimdarroch, of course, is Doom, or was, if a lawyer's sheep-skins had not been more powerful nowadays than the sword; but”—he paused a moment as if reluctant to give words to the innuendo—“though Doom himself has been in France to some good purpose in nis time, and though, for God knows what, he is no friend of mine, I would be the first to proclaim him free of any suspicion.”
“That, monsieur, goes without saying! I was stupid enough to misunderstand some of his eccentricities myself, but have learned in our brief acquaintanceship to respect in him the man of genuine heart.”
“Just so, just so!” cried the Chamberlain, and cleared his throat. “I but mentioned his name to make it plain that his claim to the old title in no way implicated him. A man of great heart, as you say, though with a reputation for oddity. If I were not the well-wisher of his house, I could make some trouble about his devotion to the dress and arms forbidden here to all but those in the king's service, as I am myself, being major of the local Fencibles. And—by the Lord! here's MacCailen!”
They had by this time entered the policies of the Duke. A figure walked alone in the obscurity, with arms in a characteristic fashion behind its back, going in the direction they themselves were taking. For a second or two the Chamberlain hesitated, then formed his resolution.
“I shall introduce you,” he said to Count Victor. “It may be of some service afterwards.”
The Duke turned his face in the darkness, and, as they came alongside, recognised his Chamberlain.
“Good evening, good evening!” he cried cheerfully. “'Art a late bird, as usual, and I am at that pestilent task the rehearsal of a speech.”
“Your Grace's industry is a reproach to your Grace's Chamberlain,” said the latter. “I have been at the speech-making myself, partly to a lady.”
“Ah, Mr. MacTaggart!” cried the Duke in a comical expostulation.
“And partly to this unfortunate friend of mine, who must fancy us a singularly garrulous race this side of the German Ocean. May I introduce M. Montaiglon, who is at the inn below, and whom it has been my good fortune to meet for the first time to-night?”
Argyll was most cordial to the stranger, who, however, took the earliest opportunity to plead fatigue and return to his inn. He had no sooner retired than the Duke expressed some natural curiosity.
“It cannot be the person you desired for the furnishing of our tolbooth the other day, Sim?” said he.
“No less,” frankly responded the Chamberlain. “Your Grace saved me afaux pasthere, for Montaiglon is not what I fancied at all.”
“You were ever the dubious gentleman, Sim,” laughed his Grace. “And what—if I may take the liberty—seeks our excellent and impeccable Gaul so far west?”
“He's a wine merchant,” said the Chamberlain, and at that the Duke laughed.
“What, man!” he cried at last, shaking with his merriment, “is our ancient Jules from Oporto to be ousted with the aid of Sim MacTaggart from the ducal cellars in favour of one Montaiglon?” He stopped, caught his Chamberlain by the arm, and stood close in an endeavour to perceive his countenance. “Sim,” said he, “I wonder what Modene would say to find his cousin hawking vile claret round Argyll. Your friend's incognito is scarcely complete enough even in the dark. Why, the man's Born! I could tell it in his first sentence, and it's a swordsman's hand, not a cellarer's fingers, he gave me a moment ago. That itself would betray him even if I did not happen to know that the Montaiglons have theparticule.”
“It is quite as you say,” confessed the Chamberlain with some chagrin at his position, “but I'm giving the man's tale as he desires to have it known here. He's no less than the Count de Montaiglon, and a rather decent specimen of the kind, so far as I can judge.”
“But why thealias, good Sim?” asked the Duke. “I like not youraliases, though they have been, now and then—ahem!—useful.”
“Your Grace has travelled before now as Baron Hay,” said the Chamberlain.
“True! true! and saved very little either in inn charges or in the pother of State by the device. And if I remember correctly, I made no pretence at wine-selling on these occasions. Honestly now, what the devil does the Comte de Montaiglon do here—and with Sim MacTaggart?”
“The matter is capable of the easiest explanation. He's here on what he is pleased to call an affair of honour, in which there is implicated the usual girl and another gentleman, who, it appears, is some ope, still unknown, about your Grace's castle.” And the story in its entirety was speedily his Grace's.
“H'm,” ejaculated Argyll at last when he had heard all. “And you fancy the quest as hopeless as it is quixotic? Now mark me! Simon; I read our French friend, even in the dark, quite differently. He had little to say there, but little as it was 'twas enough to show by its manner that he's just the one who will find his man even in my crowded corridors.”