Doom Castle Part 38

"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 n.o.body 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 la.s.sies!

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 G.o.d! Ye fetched down my coat to-day. It was the first hint I had that this d.a.m.ned 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 G.o.d! 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 a.s.sured 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, "d.a.m.ned 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII -- A WARNING