Mungo took the coat into the castle kitchen, the true arcanum of Doom, where he and Annapla solved the domestic problems that in later years had not been permitted to disturb the mind of the master or his daughter. An enormous fireplace, arched like a bridge, and poorly enough fed nowadays compared with its gluttony in those happier years of his continual bemoaning, when plenty kept the spit perpetually at work, if it were only for the good of the beggars who blackened the road from the Lowlands, had a handful of peat in its centre to make the yawning orifice the more pathetic to eyes that had seen the flames leap there. Everywhere the evidence of the old abundant days—the rusting spit itself, the idle battery of cuisine, long rows of shining covers. Annapla, who was assumed to be true tutelary genius of these things, but in fact was beholden to the martial mannikin of Fife for inspiration and aid with the simplest of ragouts, though he would have died sooner than be suspected of the unsoldierly art of cookery,—Annapla was in one of her trances. Her head was swathed mountainously in shawls; her wild, black, lambent eyes had the look of distant contemplation.
“Lord keep 's!” said Mungo, entering, “what are ye doverin' on noo? Wauken up, ye auld bitch, and gie this coat a dight. D'ye ken wha's ocht it? It belangs to a gentleman that's no' like noo to get but this same, and the back-o'-my-haun'-to-ye oot o' Doom Castle.”
She took the coat and brushed it in a lethargy, with odd, unintelligible chanting.
“Nane o' your warlock canticles!” cried Mungo. “Ye gied the lassie to the man that cam' withouten boots—sorrow be on the bargain! And if it's cast-in' a spell on the coat ye are, I'll raither clean't mysel'.”
With that he seized the garment from her and lustily applied himself.
“A bonny-like hostler-wife ye'll mak',” said he. “And few'll come to Mungo Byde's hostelry if his wife's to be eternally in a deevilish dwaam, concocting Hielan' spells when she should be stirring at the broth. No' that I can blame ye muckle for a want o' the up-tak in what pertains to culinairy airts; for what hae ye seen here since ye cam' awa frae the rest o' the drove in Arroquhar but lang kail, and oaten brose, and mashlum bannocks? Oh! sirs, sirs!—I've seen the day!”
Annapla emerged from her trance, and ogled him with an amusing admiration.
“And noo it's a' by wi't; it's the end o' the auld ballant,” went on the little man. “I've kept auld Doom in times o' rowth and splendour, and noo I'm spared to see't rouped, the laird a dyvour and a nameless wanderer ower the face o' the earth. He's gaun abroad, he tells me, and settles to sit doon aboot Dunkerque in France. It's but fair, maybe, that whaur his forbears squandered he should gang wi' the little that's to the fore. I mind o' his faither gaun awa at the last hoved up, a fair Jeshurun, his een like to loup oot o' his heid wi' fat, and comin' back a pooked craw frae the dicing and the drink, nae doot amoung the scatter-brained white cockades. Whatna shilpit man's this that Leevie's gotten for her new jo? As if I dinna see through them! The tawpie's taen the gee at the Factor because he played yon ploy wi' his lads frae the Maltland barracks, and this Frenchy's ower the lugs in love wi' her, I can see as plain as Cowal, though it's a shameless thing to say't. He's gotten gey far ben in a michty short time. Ye're aye saying them that come unsent for should sit unserved; but wha sent for this billy oot o' France? and wha has been sae coothered up as he has since he cam' here? The Baron doesnae ken the shifts that you and me's been put to for to save his repitation. Mony a lee I tauld doon there i' the clachan to soother them oot o' butter and milk and eggs, and a bit hen at times; mony a time I hae gie'n my ain dinner to thae gangrel bodies frae Glencro sooner nor hae them think there was nae rowth o' vivers whaur they never wer sent awa empty-haunded afore. I aye keepit my he'rt up wi' the notion that him doon-bye the coat belangs to wad hae made a match o't, and saved us a' frae beggary. But there's an end o' that, sorry am I. And sorry may you be; ye auld runt, to hear't, for he's been the guid enough friend to me; and there wad never hae been the Red Sodger Tavern for us if it wasnae for his interest in a man that has aye kep' up the airmy.”
Annapla seemed to find the dialect of Fife most pleasing and melodious. She listened to his monologue with approving smiles, and sitting on a stool, cowered within the arch, warming her hands at the apology for a flame.
“Wha the deevil could hae tauld her it was the lad himsel' was here that nicht wi' his desperate chiels frae the barracks? It couldna' be you, for I didna' tell ye mysel' for fear ye wad bluitter it oot and spoil his chances. She kent onyway, and it was for no ither reason she gie'd him the route, unless—unless she had a notion o' the Frenchman frae the first glisk o' him. There's no accoontin' for tastes; clap a bunnet on a tawtie-bogle, wi' a cock to the ae side that's kin' o' knowin', and ony woman'll jump at his neck, though ye micht pap peas through the place whaur his wame should be. The Frenchy's no' my taste onyway; and noo, there's Sim! Just think o' Sim gettin' the dirty gae-bye frae a glaikit lassie hauf his age; and no' his equal in the three parishes, wi' a leg to tak' the ee o' a hal dancin'-school, and auld Knapdale's money comin' till him whenever Knapdale's gane, and I'm hearin' he's in the deid-thraws already. Ill fa' the day fotch the Frenchy! The race o' them never brocht ocht in my generation to puir Scotland worth a bodle, unless it micht be a new fricassee to fyle a stamach wi'. I'm fair bate to ken what this Coont wants here. 'Drimdarroch,' says he, but that's fair rideeculous, unless it was the real auld bauld Drimdarroch, and that's nae ither than Doom. I winna wonder if he heard o' Leevie ere ever he left the France.”
Annapla began to drowse at the fire. He saw her head nod, and came round with the coat in his hand to confirm his suspicion that she was about to fall asleep. Her eyes were shut.
“Wauken up, Luckie!” he cried, disgusted at this absence of appreciation. “What ails the body? Ye're into your damnable dwaam again. There's them that's gowks enough to think ye're seein' Sichts, when it's neither mair nor less than he'rt-sick laziness, and I was ance ane o' them mysel'. Ye hinnae as muckle o' the Sicht as wad let ye see when Leevie was makin' a gowk o' ye to gar ye hang oot signals for her auld jo. A bonny-like brewster-wife ye'll mak', I warrant!” He tapped her, not unkindly, on the head with the back of his brush, and brought her to earth again.
“Are ye listenin', ye auld runt?” said he. “I'm goin' doon to the toon i' the aifternoon wi' this braw coat and money for Monsher's inn accoont, and if ye're no' mair wide-awake by that time, there's deil the cries'll gae in wi' auld MacNair.”
The woman laughed, not at all displeased with herself nor with her rough admirer, and set to some trivial office. Mungo was finished with the coat; he held it out at arm's length, admiring its plenitude of lace, and finally put off his own hodden garment that he might try on the Chamberlain's.
“God!” said he, “it fits me like an empty ale-cask. I thocht the Coont looked gey like a galo-shan in't, but I maun be the bonny doo mysel'. And I'm no that wee neither, for it's ticht aboot the back.”
Annapla thought her diminutive admirer adorable; she stood raptly gazing on him, with her dish-clout dripping on the floor.
“I wonder if there's no' a note or twa o' the New Bank i' the pouches,” said Mungo, and began to search. Something in one of the pockets rustled to the touch, and with a face of great expectancy he drew forth what proved to be a letter. The seal was broken, there was neither an address nor the superscription of the writer; the handwriting was a faint Italian, betokening a lady—there was no delicate scrupulosity about the domestic, and the good Mungo unhesitatingly indulged himself.
“It's no' exactly a note,” said he, contracting his brows above the document. Not for the first time Annapla regretted her inability to read, as she craned over his shoulder to see what evidently created much astonishment in her future lord.
“Weel, that bates a'!” he cried when he had finished, and he turned, visibly flushing, even through his apple-red complexion, to see Annapla at his shoulder.
“It's a guid thing the Sicht's nae use for English write,” said he, replacing the letter carefully in the pocket whence it had come. “This'll gae back to himsel', and naebody be nane the wiser o't for Mungo Byde.”
For half an hour he busied himself with aiding Annapla at the preparation of dinner, suddenly become silent as a consequence of what the letter had revealed to him, and then he went out to prepare his boat for his trip to town.
Annapla did not hesitate a moment; she fished out the letter and hurried with it to her master, less, it must be owned, from a desire to inform him, than from a womanly wish to share a secret that had apparently been of the greatest interest to Mungo.
Doom took it from her hands in an abstraction, for he was whelmed with the bitter prospect of imminent farewells; he carelessly scanned the sheet with half-closed eyes, and was well through perusing it before he realised that it had any interest. He began at the beginning again, caught the meaning of a sentence, sat bolt upright in the chair where Annapla had found him lolling, and finished with eagerness and astonishment.
Where had she got this? She hesitated to tell him that it had been pilfered from the owner's pocket, and intimated that she had picked it up outside.
“Good woman,” said he in Gaelic, “you have picked up a fortune. It would have saved me much tribulation, and yourself some extra work, if you had happened to pick it up a month ago!”
He hurried to Olivia.
“My dear,” he said, “I have come upon the oddest secret.”
His daughter reddened to the roots of her hair, and fell to trembling with inexplicable shame. He did not observe it.
“It is that you have got out of the grip of the gled. Yon person was an even blacker villain than I guessed.”
“Oh!” she said, apparently much relieved, “and is that your secret? I have no wonder left in me for any new display of wickedness from Simon MacTaggart.”
“Listen,” he said, and read her the damnatory document. She flushed, she trembled, she well-nigh wept with shame; but “Oh!” she cried at the end, “is he not the noble man?”
“The noble man!” cried Doom at such an irrelevant conclusion. “Are you out of your wits, Olivia?”
She stammered an explanation. “I do not mean—I do not mean—this—wretch that is exposed here, but Count Victor. He has known it all along.”
“H'm,” said Doom. “I fancy he has. That was, like enough, the cause of the duel. But I do not think it was noble at all that he should keep silent upon a matter so closely affecting the happiness of your whole life.”
Olivia saw this too, when helped to it, and bit her lip. It was, assuredly, not right that Count Victor, in the possession of such secrets as this letter revealed, should allow her to throw herself away on the villain there portrayed.
“He may have some reason we cannot guess,” she said, and thought of one that made her heart beat wildly.
“No reason but a Frenchman's would let me lose my daughter to a scamp out of a pure punctilio. I can scarcely believe that he knew all that is in this letter. And you, my dear, you never guessed any more than I that these attacks under cover of night were the work of Simon MacTaggart.”
“I must tell you the truth, father,” said Olivia. “I have known it since the second, and that it was that turned me. I learned from the button that Count Victor picked up on the stair, for I recognised it as his. I knew—I knew—and yet I wished to keep a doubt of it, I felt it so, and still would not confess it to myself that the man I loved—the man I thought I loved—was no better than a robber.” “A robber indeed! I thought the man bad; I never liked his eye and less his tongue, that was ever too plausible. Praise God, my dear, that he's found out!”
It was hours before Count Victor could trust himself and his tell-tale countenance before Olivia, and as he remained in an unaccustomed seclusion for the remainder of the day, she naturally believed him cold, though a woman with a fuller experience of his sex might have come to a different conclusion. Her misconception, so far from being dispelled when he joined her and her father in the evening, was confirmed, for his natural gaiety was gone, and an emotional constraint, made up of love, dubiety, and hope, kept him silent even in the precious moments when Doom retired to his reflections and his book, leaving them at the other end of the room alone. Nothing had been said about the letter; the Baron kept his counsel on it for a more fitting occasion, and though Olivia, who had taken its possession, turned it over many times in her pocket, its presentation involved too much boldness on her part to be undertaken in an impulse. The evening passed with inconceivable dulness; the gentleman was taciturn to clownishness; Mungo, who had come in once or twice to replenish fires and snuff candles, could not but look at them with wonder, for he plainly saw two foolish folks in a common misunderstanding.
He went back to the kitchen crying out his contempt for them.
“If yon's coortin',” he said, “it's the drollest I ever clapt een on! The man micht be a carven image, and Leevie no better nor a shifty in the pook. I hope she disnae rue her change o' mind alreadys, for I'll warrant there was nane o' yon blateness aboot Sim MacTaggart, and it's no' what the puir lassie's been used to.”
But these were speculations beyond the sibyl of his odd adoration; Annapla was too intent upon her own elderly love-affairs to be interested in those upstairs.
And upstairs, by now, a topic had at last come on between the silent pair that did not make for love or cheerfulness. The Baron had retired to his own room in the rear of the castle, and they had begun to talk of the departure that was now fixed for a date made imminent through the pressure of Petullo. Where were they bound for but France? Doom had decided upon Dunkerque because he had a half-brother there in a retirement compelled partly for political reasons Count Victor could appreciate.
“France!” he cried, delighted. “This is ravishing news indeed, Mademoiselle Olivia!”
“Yes?” she answered dubiously, reddening a little, and wondering why he should particularly think it so.
“Ma foi! it is,” he insisted heartily. “I had the most disturbing visions of your wandering elsewhere. I declare I saw my dear Baron and his daughter immured in some pestilent Lowland burgh town, moping mountain creatures among narrow streets, in dreary tenements, with glimpse of neither sea nor tree to compensate them for pleasures lost. But France!—Mademoiselle has given me an exquisite delight. For, figure you! France is not so vast that friends may not meet there often—if one were so greatly privileged—and every roadway in it leads to Dunkerque—and—I should dearly love to think of you as, so to speak, in my neighbourhood, among the people I esteem. It is not your devoted Highlands, this France, Mademoiselle Olivia, but believe me, it has its charms. You shall not have the mountains—there I am distressed for you—nor yet the rivulets; and you must dispense with the mists; but there is ever the consolation of an air that is like wine in the head, and a frequent sun. France, indeed!Je suis ravi!I little thought when I heard of this end to the old home of you that you were to make the new one in my country; how could I guess when anticipating my farewell to the Highlands of Scotland that I should have such good company to the shore of France?”
“Then you are returning now?” asked Olivia, her affectation of indifference just a little overdone.
In very truth he had not, as yet, so determined; but he boldly lied like a lover.
“'Twas my intention to return at once. I cannot forgive myself for being so long away from my friends there.”
Olivia had a bodice of paduasoy that came low upon her shoulders and showed a spray of jasmine in the cleft of her rounded breasts, which heaved with what Count Victor could not but perceive was some emotion. Her eyes were like a stag's, and they evaded him; she trifled with the pocket of her gown.
“Ah,” she said, “it is natural that you should weary here in this sorry place and wish to get back to the people you know. There will be many that have missed you.”
He laughed at that.
“A few—a few, perhaps,” he said. “Clancarty has doubtless often sought me vainly for the trivial coin: some butterflies in thecoulisseof the playhouse will have missed my pouncet-box; but I swear there are few in Paris who would be inconsolable if Victor de Montaiglon never set foot on thetrottoiragain. It is my misfortune, mademoiselle, to have a multitude of friends so busy with content and pleasure—who will blame them?—that an absentee makes little difference, and as for relatives, not a single one except the Baroness de Chenier, who is large enough to count as double.”
“And there will be—there will be the lady,” said Olivia, with a poor attempt at raillery.
For a moment he failed to grasp her allusion.
“Of course, of course,” said he hastily; “I hope, indeed, to seeherthere.” He felt an exaltation simply at the prospect. To see her there! To have a host's right to bid welcome to his land this fair wild-flower that had blossomed on rocks of the sea, unspoiled and unsophisticated!
The jasmine stirred more obviously: it was fastened with a topaz brooch that had been her mother's, and had known of old a similar commotion; she became diligent with a book.
It was then there happened the thing that momentarily seemed a blow of fate to both of them. But for Mungo's voice at intervals in the kitchen, the house was wholly still, and through the calm winter night there came the opening bars of a melody, played very softly by Sim MacTaggart's flageolet. At first it seemed incredible—a caprice of imagination, and they listened for some moments speechless. Count Victor was naturally the least disturbed; this unlooked-for entertainment meant the pleasant fact that the Duchess had been nowise over-sanguine in her estimate of the Chamberlain's condition. Here was another possible homicide off his mind; the Gaelic frame was capable, obviously, of miraculous recuperation. That was but his first and momentary thought; the next was less pleasing, for it seemed not wholly unlikely now that after all Olivia and this man were still on an unchanged footing, and Mungo's sowing of false hopes was like to bring a bitter reaping of regretful disillusions. As for Olivia, she was first a flame and then an icicle. Her face scorched; her whole being seemed to take a sudden wild alarm. Count Victor dared scarcely look at her, fearing to learn his doom or spy on her embarrassment until her first alarm was over, when she drew her lips together tightly and assumed a frigid resolution. She made no other movement.
A most bewitching flageolet! It languished on the night with an o'ermastering appeal, sweet inexpressibly and melting, the air unknown to one listener at least, but by him enviously confessed a very siren spell. He looked at Olivia, and saw that she intended to ignore it.
“Orpheus has recovered,” he ventured with a smile.
She stared in front of her with no response; but the jasmine rose and fell, and her nostrils were abnormally dilated. Her face had turned from the red of her first surprise to the white of suppressed indignation. The situation was inconceivably embarrassing for both; now his bolt was shot, and unless she cared to express herself, he could not venture to allude to it again, though a whole orchestra augmented the efforts of the artist in the bower.
By-and-by there came a pause in the music, and she spoke.
“It is the blackest of affronts this,” was her comment, that seemed at once singular and sweet to her hearer.
“D'accord,” said Count Victor, but that was to himself. He was quite agreed that the Chamberlain's attentions, though well meant, were not for a good woman to plume herself on.
The flageolet spoke again—that curious unfinished air. Never before had it seemed so haunting and mysterious; a mingling of reproaches and command. It barely reached them where they sat together listening, a fairy thing and fascinating, yet it left the woman cold. And soon the serenade entirely ceased. Olivia recovered herself; Count Victor was greatly pleased.
“I hope that is the end of it,” she said, with a sigh of relief.
“Alas, poor Orpheus! he returns to Thrace, where perhaps Madame Petullo may lead the ladies in tearing him to pieces!”
“Once that hollow reed bewitched me, I fancy,” said she with a shy air of confession; “now I cannot but wonder and think shame at my blindness, for yon Orpheus has little beyond his music that is in any way admirable.”
“And that the gift of nature, a thing without his own deserving, like his—like his regard for you, which was inevitable, Mademoiselle Olivia.”
“And that the hollowest of all,” she said, turning the evidence of it in her pocket again. “He will as readily get over that as over his injury from you.”
“Perhaps 'tis so. The most sensitive man, they say, does not place all his existence on love; 'tis woman alone who can live and die in the heart.”
“There I daresay you speak from experience,” said Olivia, smiling, but impatient that he should find a single plea in favour of a wretch he must know so well.
“Consider me the exception,” he hurried to explain. “I never loved but once, and then would die for it.” The jasmine trembled in its chaste white nunnery, and her lips were temptingly apart. He bent forward boldly, searching her provoking eyes.
“She is the lucky lady!” said Olivia in a low voice, and then a pause. She trifled with her book.
“What I wonder is that you could have a word to say of plea for this that surely is the blackest of his kind.”
“Not admirable, by my faith! no; not admirable,” he confessed, “but I would be the last to blame him for intemperately loving you. There, I think his honesty was beyond dispute; there he might have found salvation. That he should have done me the honour to desire my removal from your presence was flattering to my vanity, and a savage tribute to your power, Mademoiselle Olivia.”
“Oh!” cried Olivia, “you cannot deceive me, Count Victor. It is odd that all your sex must stick up for each other in the greatest villanies.”
“Not the greatest, Mademoiselle Olivia,” said Count Victor with an inclination; “he might have been indifferent to your charms, and that were the one thing unforgivable. But soberly, I consider his folly scarce bad enough for the punishment of your eternal condemnation.”
“This man thinks lightly indeed of me,” thought Olivia. “Drimdarroch has a good advocate,” said she shortly, “and the last I would have looked for in his defence was just yourself.”
“Drimdarroch?” he repeated, in a puzzled tone.
“Will you be telling me that you do not know?” she said. “For what did Simon MacTaggart harass our household?”
“I have been bold enough to flatter myself; I had dared to think—”
She stopped him quickly, blushing. “You know he was Drimdarroch, Count Victor,” said she, with some conviction.
He jumped to his feet and bent to stare at her, his face all wrought with astonishment.
“Mon Dieu!Mademoiselle, you do not say the two were one? And yet—and yet—yes,par dieu!how blind I have been; there is every possibility.”
“I thought you knew it,” said Olivia, much relieved, “and felt anything but pleased at your seeming readiness in the circumstances to let me be the victim of my ignorance. I had too much trust in the wretch.”
“Women distrust men too much in the general and too little in particular. And you knew?” asked Count Victor. .
“I learned to-day,” said Olivia, “and this was my bitter schooling.”
She passed him the letter. He took it and read aloud:
“I have learned now,” said the writer, “the reason for your black looks at Monsher the wine merchant that has a Nobleman's Crest upon his belongings. It is because he has come to look for Drimdarroch. And the stupid body cannot find him!Weknow who Drimdarroch is, do we not, Sim? Monsher may have sharp eyes, but they do not see much further than a woman's face if the same comes in his way. And Simon MacTaggart (they're telling me) has been paying late visits to Doom Castle that were not for the love of Miss Milk-and-Water. Sim! Sim! I gave you credit for being less o' a Gomeral. To fetch the Frenchman to my house of all places! You might be sure he would not be long among our Indwellers here without his true business being discovered. Drimdarroch, indeed! Now I will hate the name, though I looked with a difference on it when I wrote it scores of times to your direction in the Rue Dauphine of Paris, and loved to dwell upon a picture of the place there that I had never seen, because my Sim (just fancy it!) was there. You were just a Wee Soon with the title, my dear Traitour, my bonny Spy. It might have been yours indeed, and more if you had patience, yes perhaps and Doom forby, as that is like to be my good-man's very speedily. What if I make trouble, Sim, and open the eyes of Monsher and the mim-mou'ed Madame at the same moment by telling them who is really Drimdarroch? Will it no' gar them Grue, think ye?”
Count Victor stood amazed when he had read this. A confusion of feelings were in his breast. He had blundered blindly into his long-studied reprisals whose inadequate execution he was now scarce willing to regret, and Olivia had thought him capable of throwing her to this colossal rogue! The document shook in his hand.
“Well?” said Olivia at last. “Is it a much blacker man that is there than the one you thought? I can tell you I will count it a disgrace to my father's daughter that she ever looked twice the road he was on.”
“And yet I can find it in me to forgive him the balance of his punishment,” cried the Count.
“And what for might that be?” said she.
“Because, Mademoiselle Olivia, he led me to Scotland and to your father's door.”
She saw a rapture in his manner, a kindling in his eye, and drew herself together with some pride.
“You were welcome to my father's door; I am sure of that of it, whatever,” said she, “but it was a poor reward for so long a travelling. And now, my grief! We must steep the withies and go ourselves to the start of fortune like any beggars.”
“No! no!” said he, and caught her hand that trembled in his like a bird. “Olivia!—oh, God, the name is like a song—je t'aime! je t'aime!Olivia, I love you!”
She plucked her hand away and threw her shoulders back, haughty, yet trembling and on the brink of tears.
“It is not kind—it is not kind,” she stammered, almost sobbing. “The lady that is in France.”
“Petite imbecile!” he cried, “there is no lady in France worthy to hold thy scarf; 'twas thyself,mignonne, I spoke of all the time; only the more I love the less I can express.”
He drew her to him, crushing the jasmine till it breathed in a fragrant dissolution, bruising her breast with the topaz.
But Simon MacTaggart did not pipe wholly in vain. If Olivia was unresponsive, there was one at least in Doom who was his, whole-heartedly, and Mungo, when the flageolet made its vain appeal, felt a personal injury that the girl should subject his esteemed impersonation of all the manly graces and virtues—so to call them—to the insult of indifference.
As the melodies succeeded each other without a sign of response from overhead, he groaned, and swore with vexation and anger.
“Ye can be bummin' awa' wi' your chanter,” he said as he stood listening in the kitchen. “Her leddyship wodnae hae ye playin' there lang your lane a saison syne, but thae days is done wi'; there's nae lugs for a tirlin' at the winnock whaur there's nae love—at least wi' Mistress Leevie.”
Annapla heard the music with a superstitious terror; her eyes threatened to leap out of her head, and she clutched the arm of her adorer.
“Gae 'wa!” he told her, shaking her off with a contempt for her fears. “Are ye still i' the daft Hielan' notion that it's a ghaist that's playin' there? That was a story he made up himsel', and the need for 't's done. There's naethin' waur nor Sim MacTaggart oot there i' the gairden, wastin' his wund on a wumman that's owre muckle ta'en up i' the noo wi' the whillywhaes o' a French sneckdrawer that haesnae the smeddum to gi'e her a toozlin' at the 'oor she needs it maist. Ay, ay! caw awa' wi' yer chanter, Sim, ye'll play hooly and fairly ere ever ye play 't i' the lug o' Leevie Lamond, and her heid against your shoulder again.”
When it seemed at last the player's patience was at an end, the little servitor took a lamp and went to the door. He drew the bolts softly, prepared to make a cautious emergence, with a recollection of his warm reception before. He was to have a great surprise, for there stood Simon Mac-Taggart leaning against the jamb—a figure of dejection!
“Dod!” cried Mungo, “ye fair started me there, wi' your chafts like clay and yer ee'n luntin'. If I hadnae been tauld when I was doon wi' yer coat the day that ye was oot and aboot again, I wad hae taen 't for your wraith.”
The Chamberlain said nothing. There was something inexpressibly solemn in his aspect as he leaned wearily against the side of the door, his face like clay, as Mungo had truly said, and his eyes flaming in the light of the lantern. The flageolet was in his hand; he was shivering with cold. And he was silent. The silence of him was the most staggering fact for the little domestic, who would have been relieved to hear an oath or even have given his coat-collar to a vigorous shaking rather than be compelled to look on misery inarticulate. Simon looked past him into the shadows of the hall as a beggar looks into a garden where is no admission for him or his kind. A fancy seized Mungo that perhaps this dumb man had been drinking. “He's gey like a man on the randan,” he said to himself, peering cautiously, “but he never had a name for the glass though namely for the lass.”
“Is she in?” said the Chamberlain, suddenly, without changing his attitude, and with scanty interest in his eyes.
“Oh ay! She's in, sure enough,” said Mungo. “Whaur else wad she be but in?”
“And she'll have heard me?” continued the Chamberlain.
“I'll warrant ye!” said Mungo.
“What's wrong?”
Mungo pursed out his lips and shook his lantern. “Ye can be askin' that,” said he. “Gude kens!”
The Chamberlain still leaned wearily against the door jamb, mentally whelmed by dejection, bodily weak as water. His ride on a horse along the coast had manifestly not been the most fitting exercise for a man new out of bed and the hands of his physician.
“What about the foreigner?” said he at length, and glowered the more into the interior as if he might espy him.
Mungo was cautious. This was the sort of person who on an impulse would rush the guard and create a commotion in the garrison; he temporised.
“The foreigner?” said he, as if there were so many in his experience that some discrimination was called for. “Oh ay, the Coont. A gey queer birkie yon! He's no' awa yet. He's sittin' on his dowp yet, waitin' a dispensation o' Providence that'll gie him a heeze somewhere else.”
“Is—he—is he with her?” said Simon.
“Oh, thereaboots, thereaboots,” admitted Mungo, cautiously. “There's nae doot they're gey and chief got sin! he cam' back, and she foun' oot wha created the collieshangie.”
“Ay, man, and she kens that?” said the Chamberlain with unnatural calm.
“'Deed does she, brawly! though hoo she kens is mair nor I can guess. Monsher thrieps it wasnae him, and I'll gie my oath it wasnae me.”
“Women are kittle cattle, Mungo. There's whiles I think it a peety the old law against witchcraft was not still to the fore. And so she kent, did she? and nobody tell't her. Well, well!” He laughed softly, with great bitterness.
Mungo turned the lantern about in his hand and had nothing to say.
“What's this I'm hearing about the Baron—the Baron and her—and her, leaving?” said the Chamberlain.
“It's the glide's truth that,” said the little man; “and for the oots and ins o't ye'll hae to ask Petullo doon-by, for he's at the root o't. Doom's done wi'; it's his decreet, and I'm no' a day ower soon wi' the promise o' the Red Sodger—for the which I'm muckle obleeged to you, Factor. Doom's done; they're gaun awa' in a week or twa, and me and Annapla's to be left ahint to steek the yetts.”
“So they tell me, Mungo; so they tell me,” said the Chamberlain, neither up nor down at this corroboration. “In a week or twa! ay! ay! It'll be the bowrer nae langer then,” he went on, unconsciously mimicking the Lowland Scots of the domestic. “Do ye ken the auld song?—
'O Bessie Bell and Mary Gray,They were twa bonnie lassies!They bigged a bower on yon burn-brae,And theekit it o'er wi' rashes.'”
He lilted the air with indiscreet indifference to being heard within; and “Wheesh! man, wheesh!” expostulated Mungo. “If himsel' was to ken o' me colloguing wi' ye at the door at this 'oor o' the nicht, there wad be Auld Hornie to pay.”
“Oh! there's like to be that the ways it is,” said the Chamberlain, never lifting his shoulder from the door-post, beating his leg with the flageolet, and in all with the appearance of a casual gossip reluctant to be going. “Indeed, and by my troth! there's like to be that!” he repeated. “Do ye think, by the look of me, Mungo, I'm in a pleasant condition of mind?”
“Faith and ye look gey gash, sir,” said Mungo; “there's no denyin' that of it.”
The Chamberlain gave a little crackling laugh, and held the flageolet like a dirk, flat along the inside of his arm and his fingers straining round the thick of it.
“Gash!” said he. “That's the way I feel. By God! Ye fetched down my coat to-day. It was the first hint I had that this damned dancing master was here, for he broke jyle; who would have guessed he was fool enough to come here, where—if we were in the key for it—we could easily set hands on him? He must have stolen the coat out of my own room; but that's no' all of it, for there was a letter in the pocket of it when it disappeared. What was in the letter I am fair beat to remember, but I know that it was of some importance to myself, and of a solemn secrecy, and it has not come back with the coat.”
Mungo was taken aback at this, but to acknowledge he had seen the letter at all would be to blunder.
“A letter!” said he; “there was nae letter that I saw;” and he concluded that he must have let it slip out of the pocket.
The Chamberlain for the first time relinquished the support of the doorway, and stood upon his legs, but his face was more dejected than ever.
“That settles it,” said he, filling his chest with air. “I had a small hope that maybe it might have come into your hands without the others seeing it, but that was expecting too much of a Frenchman. And the letter's away with it! My God! Away with it!
'... Bigged a bower on yon burn-brae,And theekit it o'er wi' rashes!'”
“For gude sake!” said Mungo, terrified again at this mad lilting from a man who had anything but song upon his countenance.
“You're sure ye didnae see the letter?” asked the Chamberlain again.
“Amn't I tellin' ye?” said Mungo.
“It's a pity,” said the Chamberlain, staring at the lantern, with eyes that saw nothing. “In that case ye need not wonder that her ladyship inby should ken all, for I'm thinking it was a very informing bit letter, though the exact wording of it has slipped my recollection. It would be expecting over much of human nature to think that the foreigner would keep his hands out of the pouch of a coat he stole, and keep any secret he found there to himself. I'm saying, Mungo!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Somebody's got to sweat for this!”
There was so much venom in the utterance and such a frenzy in the eye, that Mungo started; before he could find a comment the Chamberlain was gone.
His horse was tethered to a thorn; he climbed wearily into the saddle and swept along the coast. At the hour of midnight his horse was stabled, and he himself was whistling in the rear of Petullo's house, a signal the woman there had thought never to hear again.
She responded in a joyful whisper from a window, and came down a few minutes later with her head in a capuchin hood.
“Oh, Sim! dear, is it you indeed? I could hardly believe my ears.”
He put down the arms she would throw about his neck and held her wrists, squeezing them till she almost screamed with pain. He bent his face down to stare into her hood; even in the darkness she saw a plain fury in his eyes; if there was a doubt about his state of mind, the oath he uttered removed it.
“What do you want with me?” she gasped, struggling to free her hands.
“You sent me a letter on the morning of the ball?” said he, a little relaxing his grasp, yet not altogether releasing her prisoned hands.
“Well, if I did!” said she.
“What was in it?” he asked.
“Was it not delivered Jo you? I did not address it nor did I sign it, but I was assured you got it.”
“That I got it has nothing to do with the matter, woman. What I want to know is what was in it?”
“Surely you read it?” said she.
“I read it a score of times—”
“My dear Sim!”
“—And cursed two score of times as far as I remember; but what I am asking now is what was in it?”
Mrs. Petullo began to weep softly, partly from the pain of the man's unconsciously cruel grasp, partly frotn disillusion, partly from a fear that she had to do with a mind deranged.
“Oh, Sim, have you forgotten already? It did not use to be that with a letter of mine!”
He flung away her hands and swore again.
“Oh, Kate Cameron,” he cried, “damned black was the day I first clapt eyes on you! Tell me this, did your letter, that was through all my dreams when I was in the fever of my wound, and yet that I cannot recall a sentence of, say you knew I was Drimdarroch? It is in my mind that it did so.”
“Black the day you saw me, Sim!” said she. “I'm thinking it is just the other way about, my honest man. Drimdarroch! And spy, it seems, and something worse! And are you feared that I have clyped it all to Madame Milk-and-Water? No, Simon, I have not done that; I have gone about the thing another way.”
“Another way,” said he. “I think I mind you threatened it before myself, and Doom is to be rouped at last to pleasure a wanton woman.”
“A wanton woman! Oh, my excellent tutor! My best respects to my old dominie! I'll see day about with you for this!”
“Day about!” said he, “ftly good sweet-tempered Kate! You need not fash; your hand is played; your letter trumped the trick, and I am done. If that does not please your ladyship, you are ill to serve. And I would not just be saying that the game is finished altogether even yet, so long as I know where to lay my fingers on the Frenchman.”
She plucked her hands free, and ran from him without another word, glad for once of the sanctuary of a husband's door.