Doom Castle Part 22

"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? G.o.d 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 G.o.d!

but I loved you, Sim Mac-Taggart!"

"Of all that's d.a.m.nable," 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.

"G.o.d 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, G.o.d! oh, G.o.d! 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.

"What _could_ you say in your own defence? There is not the ghost of an excuse for you. What _could_ you 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 G.o.d 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.

CHAPTER XXIII -- A MAN OF n.o.bLE SENTIMENT

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 G.o.d! 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 debauchee _sans_ heart 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 h.e.l.l 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. Honore, where intrigues go on behind fans and never an eye c.o.c.ked 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 G.o.d's my judge--"

"Pardon, monsieur," said the Count, eager to save this protesting gentleman another _betise_; "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 pa.s.sed, 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 a.s.sumed 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--"