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 their _liaison_, 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 like _cavalière 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.
“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 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.