Doom Castle Part 39

Petullo was from home. It was in such circ.u.mstances she found the bondage least intolerable. Now she was to find his absence more than a pleasant respite; it gave her an opportunity of warning Doom. She had scarce made up her mind how he should be informed of the jeopardies that menaced his guest, whose skaithless departure with Olivia was even, from her point of view, a thing wholly desirable, when the Baron appeared himself. It was not on the happiest of errands he came down on the first day of favouring weather; it was to surrender the last remnant of his right to the home of his ancestors. With the flourish of a quill he brought three centuries of notable history to a close.

"Here's a lesson in humility, Mr. Campbell," said he to Petullo's clerk.

"We builded with the sword, and fell upon the sheep-skin. Who would think that so foolish a bird as the grey goose would have Doom and its generations in its wing?"

He had about his shoulders a plaid that had once been of his tartan, but had undergone the degradation of the dye-pot for a foolish and tyrannical law; he threw it round him with a dignity that was half defiance, and cast his last glance round the scene of his sorriest experiences--the dusty writing-desks, the confusion of old letters; the taped and dog-eared, fouled, and forgotten records of pithy causes; and, finally, at the rampart of deed-chests, one of which had the name "Drimdarroch" blazoned on it for remembrance if he had been in danger of forgetting.

"And is it yourself, Baron?" cried a woman's voice as he turned to go.

"I am so sorry my husband is from home."

He turned again with his hat off for the lady who had an influence on his fate that he could never guess of.

"It is what is left of me, ma'am," said he. "And it is more than is like to be seen of me in these parts for many a day to come," but with no complaint in his expression.

"Ah," said she, "I know; I know! and I am so sorry. You cannot leave to-day of any day without a gla.s.s of wine for _deoch-an-doruis_."

"I thank you, ma'am," said Doom, "but my boat is at the quay, and Mungo waits for me."

"But, indeed, you must come in, Baron," she insisted. "There is something of the greatest importance I have to say to you, and it need not detain you ten minutes."

He followed her upstairs to her parlour. It was still early in the day and there was something of the slattern in her dragging gown. As he walked behind her, the remembrance would intrude of that betraying letter, and he had the notion that perhaps she somehow knew he shared her shameful secret. Nor was the idea dispelled when she stopped and faced him in the privacy of her room with her eyes swollen and a trembling under-lip.

"And it has come to this of it, Baron?" said she.

"It has come to this," said Doom simply.

"I cannot tell you how vexed I am. But you know my husband--"

"I have the honour, ma'am," said he, bowing with an old-fashioned inclination.

"--You know my husband, a hard man, Baron, though I perhaps should be the last to say it, and I have no say in his business affairs."

"Which is doubtless proper enough," said Doom, and thought of an irony breeding forbade him to give utterance to.

"But I must tell you I think it is a scandal you should have to go from the place of your inheritance; and your sweet girl too! I hope and trust she is in good health and spirits?"

"My good girl is very well," said he, "and with some reason for cheerfulness in spite of our misfortunes. As for them, ma'am, I am old enough to have seen and known a sufficiency of ups and downs, of flux and change, to wonder at none of them. I am not going to say that what has come to me is the most joco of happenings for a person like myself that has more than ordinary of the sentimentalist in me, and is bound to be wrapped up in the country-side hereabouts. But the tail may go with the hide, as the saying runs. Doom, that's no more than a heart-break of memories and an' empty sh.e.l.l, may very well join Duntorvil and Drimdarroch and the Islands of Lochow, that have dribbled through the courts of what they call the law and left me scarcely enough to bury myself in another country than my own."

Mrs. Petullo was not, in truth, wholly unmoved, but it was the actress in her wrung her hands.

"I hear you are going abroad," she cried. "That must be the hardest thing of all."

"I am not complaining, ma'am," said Doom.

"No, no; but oh! it is so sad, Baron--and your dear girl too, so sweet and nice--"

The Baron grew impatient; the "something of importance" was rather long of finding an expression, and he took the liberty of interrupting.

"Quite so, ma'am," said he, "but there was something in particular you had to tell me. Mungo, as I mentioned, is waiting me at the quay, and time presses, for we have much to do before we leave next week."

A look of relief came to Mrs. Petullo's face.

"Next week!" she cried. "Oh, then, that goes far to set my mind at ease." Some colour came to her cheeks; she trifled with a handkerchief.

"What I wished to say, Baron, was that your daughter and--and--and the French gentleman, with whom we are glad to hear she is like to make a match of it, could not be away from this part of the country a day too soon. I overheard a curious thing the other day, it is only fair I should tell you, for it concerns your friend the French gentleman, and it was that Simon MacTaggart knew the Frenchman was back in your house and threatened trouble. There may be nothing in it, but I would not put it past the same person, who is capable of any wickedness."

"It is not the general belief, ma'am," said the Baron, "but I'll take your word for it, and, indeed, I have long had my own suspicions. Still, I think the same gentleman has had his wings so recently clipped that we need not be much put about at his threats."

"I have it on the best authority that he broods mischief," said she.

"The best authority," repeated Doom, with never a doubt as to what that was. "Well, it may be, but I have no fear of him. Once, I'll confess, he troubled me, but the man is now no more than a rotten kail-stock so far as my household is concerned. I thank G.o.d Olivia is happy!"

"And so do I, I'm sure, with all my heart," chimed in the lady.

"And that is all the more reason why the Count--you see we know his station--should be speedily out of the way of molestation, either from the law or Simon MacTaggart."

Doom made to bring the interview to a conclusion. "As to the Count,"

said he, "you can take my word for it, he is very well able to look after himself, as Drimdarroch, or MacTaggart, or whatever is the Chamberlain's whim to call himself, knows very well by now. Drimdarroch, indeed! I could be kicking him myself for his fouling of an honest old name."

"Kicking!" said she; "I wonder at your leniency. I cannot but think you are far from knowing the worst of Simon MacTaggart."

"The worst!" said Doom. "That's between himself and h.e.l.l, but I know as much as most, and it's enough to make me sure the man's as boss as an empty barrel. He was once a sort of friend of mine, till twenty years ago my wife grew to hate the very mention of his name. Since then I've seen enough of him at a distance to read the plausible rogue in his very step. The man wears every bawbee virtue he has like a brooch in his bonnet; and now when I think of it, I would not dirty my boots with him."

Mrs. Petullo's lips parted. She hovered a second or two on a disclosure that explained the wife's antipathy of twenty years ago, but it involved confession of too intimate a footing on her own part with the Chamberlain, and she said no more.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX -- BETRAYED BY A BALLAD

Some days pa.s.sed and a rumour went about the town, in its origin as indiscoverable as the birthplace of the winds. It engaged the seamen on the tiny trading vessels at the quay, and excited the eagerest speculation in Ludovic's inn. Women put down their water-stoups at the wells and shook mysterious heads over hints of Sim MacTaggart's history.

No one for a while had a definite story, but in all the innuendoes the Chamberlain figured vaguely as an evil influence. That he had slain a man in some parts abroad was the first and the least astonishing of the crimes laid to his charge, though the fact that he had never made a brag of it was counted sinister; but, by-and-by, surmise and sheer imagination gave place to a commonly accepted tale that Simon had figured in divers escapades in France with the name Drimdarroch; that he had betrayed men and women there, and that the Frenchman had come purposely to Scotland seeking for him. It is the most common of experiences that the world will look for years upon a man admiringly and still be able to recall a million things to his discredit when he is impeached with some authority. It was so in this case. The very folks who had loved best to hear the engaging flageolet, feeling the springs of some n.o.bility bubble up in them at the bidding of its player, and drunk with him and laughed with him and ever esteemed his free gentility, were the readiest to recall features of his character and incidents of his life that--as they put it--ought to have set honest men upon their guard. The tale went seaward on the gabbards, and landward, even to Lorn itself, upon carriers' carts and as the richest part of the packman's budget. Furthermore, a song or two was made upon the thing, that even yet old women can recall in broken stanzas, and of one of these, by far the best informed, Petullo's clerk was the reputed author.

As usual, the object of the scandal was for a while unconscious. He went about experiencing a new aloofness in his umquhile friends, and finally concluded that it was due to his poor performance in front of the foreigner on the morning of the ball, and that but made him the more venomously ruminant upon revenge. In these days he haunted the avenues like a spirit, brooding on his injuries, pondering the means of a retaliation; there were no hours of manumission in the inn; the reed was still. And yet, to do him justice, there was even then the frank and suave exterior; no boorish awkward silence in his ancient gossips made him lose his jocularity; he continued to embellish his conversation with morals based on universal kindness and goodwill.

At last the thunder broke, for the scandal reached the castle, and was there overheard by the d.u.c.h.ess in a verse of the ballad sung under her window by a gardener's boy. She made some inquiries, and thereafter went straight to her husband.

"What is this I hear about your Chamberlain?" she asked.

Argyll drew down his brows and sighed. "My Chamberlain?" said he. "It must be something dreadful by the look of her grace the d.u.c.h.ess. What is it this time? High treason, or marriage, or the need of it? Or has old Knapdale died by a blessed disposition and left him a fortune? That would save me the performance of a very unpleasant duty."

"It has gone the length of scurrilous songs about our worthy gentleman.

The town has been ringing with scandals about him for a week, and I never heard a word about it till half-an-hour ago."

"And so you feel defrauded, my dear, which is natural enough, being a woman as well as a d.u.c.h.ess. I am glad to know that so squalid a story should be so long of reaching your ears; had it been anything to anybody's credit you would have been the first to learn of it. To tell the truth, I've heard the song myself, and if I have seemed unnaturally engaged for a day or two it is because I have been in a quandary as to what I should do. Now that you know the story, what do you advise, my dear?"

"A mere woman must leave that to the Lord Justice-General," she replied.

"And now that your Chamberlain turns out a greater scamp than I thought him, I'm foolish enough to be sorry for him."

"And so am I," said the Duke, and looked about the shelves of books lining the room. "Here's a mult.i.tude of counsellors, a great deal of the world's wisdom so far as it has been reduced to print, and I'll swear I could go through it from end to end without learning how I should judge a problem like Sim MacTaggart."