Simon went to the library and saw plainly that the storm was come.
“Sit down, Simon, sit down,” said his Grace and carefully sharped a pen.
The Chamberlain subsided in a chair; crossed his legs; made a mouth as
if to whistle. There was a vexatious silence in the room till the Duke
got up and stood against the chimney-piece and spoke.
“Well,” said he, “I could be taking a liberty with the old song and
singing 'Roguery Parts Good Company' if I were not, so far as music
goes, as timber as the table there and in anything but a key for music
even if I had the faculty. Talking about music, you have doubtless not
heard the ingenious ballant connected with your name and your exploits.
It has been the means of informing her Grace upon matters I had
preferred she knew nothing about, because I liked to have the women I
regard believe the world much better than it is. And it follows that
you and I must bring our long connection to an end. When will it be most
convenient for my Chamberlain to send me his resignation after 'twelve
years of painstaking and intelligent service to the Estate,' as we might
be saying, on the customary silver salver?”
Simon cursed within but outwardly never quailed.
“I know nothing about a ballant,” said he coolly, “but as for the rest
of it, I thank God I can be taking a hint as ready as the quickest. Your
Grace no doubt has reasons. And I'll make bold to say the inscription
it is your humour to suggest would not be anyway extravagant, for
the twelve years have been painstaking enough, whatever about their
intelligence, of which I must not be the judge myself.”
“So far as that goes, sir,” said the Duke, “you have been a pattern. And
it is your gifts that make your sins the more heinous; a man of a more
sluggish intelligence might have had the ghost of an excuse for failing
to appreciate the utmost loathsomeness of his sins.”
“Oh! by the Lord Harry, if it is to be a sermon--!” cried Simon, jumping
to his feet.
“Keep your chair, sir! keep your chair like a man!” said the Duke. “I am
thinking you know me well enough to believe there is none of the common
moralist about me. I leave the preaching to those with a better conceit
of themselves than I could afford to have of my indifferent self. No
preaching, cousin, no preaching, but just a word among friends, even if
it were only to explain the reason for our separation.”
The Chamberlain resumed his chair defiantly and folded his arms.
“I'll be cursed if I see the need for all this preamble,” said he; “but
your Grace can fire away. It need never be said that Simon MacTaggart
was feared to account for himself when the need happened.”
“Within certain limitations, I daresay that is true,” said the Duke.
“I aye liked a tale to come to a brisk conclusion,” said the
Chamberlain, with no effort to conceal his impatience.
“This one will be as brisk as I can make it,” said his Grace. “Up till
the other day I gave you credit for the virtue you claim--the readiness
to answer for yourself when the need happened. I was under the delusion
that your duel with the Frenchman was the proof of it.”
“Oh, damn the Frenchman!” cried the Chamberlain with contempt and
irritation. “I am ready to meet the man again with any arm he chooses.”
“With any arm!” said the Duke dryly. “'Tis always well to have a whole
one, and not one with a festering sore, as on the last occasion. Oh
yes,” he went on, seeing Simon change colour, “you observe I have
learned about the old wound, and what is more, I know exactly where you
got it.”
“Your Grace seems to have trustworthy informants,” said the Chamberlain
less boldly, but in no measure abashed. “I got that wound through your
own hand as surely as if you had held the foil that gave it, for the
whole of this has risen, as you ought to know, from your sending me to
France.”
“And that is true, in a sense, my good sophist. But I was, in that, the
unconscious and blameless link in your accursed destiny. I had you sent
to France on a plain mission. It was not, I make bold to say, a mission
on which the Government would have sent any man but a shrewd one and
a gentleman, and I was mad enough to think Simon Mac-Taggart was both.
When you were in Paris as our agent--”
“Fah!” cried Simon, snapping his fingers and drawing his face in a
grimace. “Agent, quo' he! for God's sake take your share of it and say
spy and be done with it!”
The Duke shrugged his shoulders, listening patiently to the
interruption. “As you like,” said he. “Let us say spy, then. You were to
learn what you could of the Pretender's movements, and incidentally
you were to intromit with certain of our settled agents at Versailles.
Doubtless a sort of espionage was necessary to the same. But I make
bold to say the duty was no ignoble one so long as it was done with
some sincerity and courage, for I count the spy in an enemy's country is
engaged upon the gallantest enterprise of war, using the shrewdness that
alone differs the quarrel of the man from the fury of the beast, and
himself the more admirable, because his task is a thousand times more
dangerous than if he fought with the claymore in the field.”
“Doubtless! doubtless!” said the Chamberlain. “That's an old tale
between the two of us, but you should hear the other side upon it.”
“No matter; we gave you the credit and the reward of doing your duty as
you engaged, and yet you mixed the business up with some extremely dirty
work no sophistry of yours or mine will dare defend. You took our money,
MacTaggart--and you sold us! Sit down, sit down and listen like a man!
You sold us; there's the long and the short of it, and you sold our
friends at Versailles to the very people you were sent yourself to act
against. Countersap with a vengeance! We know now where Bertin got his
information. You betrayed us and the woman Cecile Favart in the one
filthy transaction.”
The Chamberlain showed in his face that the blow was home. His mouth
broke and he grew as grey as a rag.
“And that's the way of it?” he said, after a moment's silence.
“That's the way of it,” said the Duke. “She was as much the agent--let
us say the spy, then--as you were yourself, and seems to have brought
more cunning to the trade than did our simple Simon himself. If her
friend Montaiglon had not come here to look for you, and thereby put us
on an old trail we had abandoned, we would never have guessed the source
of her information.”
“I'll be cursed if I have a dog's luck!” cried Simon.
Argyll looked pityingly at him. “So!” said he. “You mind our old country
saying, _Ni droch dhuine dàn da féin_--a bad man makes his own fate?”
“Do you say so?” cried MacTaggart, with his first sign of actual
insolence, and the Duke sighed.
“My good Simon,” said he, “I do not require to tell you so, for you know
it very well. What I would add is that all I have said is, so far as
I am concerned, between ourselves; that's my only tribute to our old
acquaintanceship. Only I can afford to have no more night escapades at
Doom or anywhere else with my fencibles, and so, Simon, the resignation
cannot be a day too soon.”
“Heaven forbid that I should delay it a second longer than is desirable,
and your Grace has it here and now! A fine _fracas_ all this about a
puddock-eating Frenchman! I do not value him nor his race to the extent
of a pin. And as for your Grace's Chamberlain--well, Simon MacTaggart
has done very well hitherto on his own works and merits.”
“You may find, for all that,” says his Grace, “that they were all summed
up in a few words--'he was a far-out cousin to the Duke.' _Sic itur ad
astra_.”
At that Simon put on his hat and laughed with an eerie and unpleasant
stridency. He never said another word, but left the room. The sound of
his unnatural merriment rang on the stair as he descended.
“The man is fey,” said the Duke to himself, listening with a startled
gravity.