Some days passed 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 nobility 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 Duchess 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 Duchess. 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 duchess. 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 multitude 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.”
She would have left him then, but he stopped her with a smiling
interrogation. “Well?” he said.
She waited.
“What about the customary privilege?” he went on.
“What is that?”
“Why, you have not said 'I told you so.'”
She smiled at that. “How stupid of me!” said she. “Oh! but you forgave
my Frenchman, and for that I owe you some consideration.”
“Did I, faith?” said he. “'Twas mighty near the compounding of a felony,
a shocking lapse in a Justice-General. To tell the truth, I was only
too glad, in MacTaggart's interest, while he was ill, to postpone
disclosures so unpleasant as are now the talk of the country; and like
you, I find him infinitely worse in these disclosures than I guessed.”
The Duchess went away, the Duke grew grave, reflecting on his duty. What
it clearly was he had not decided until it was late in the evening, and
then he sent for his Chamberlain.