CHAPTER XXXVII -- THE FUTILE FLAGEOLET
But Simon MacTaggart did not pipe wholly in vain. If Oliviawas unresponsive, there was one at least in Doom who was his,whole-heartedly, and Mungo, when the flageolet made its vain appeal,felt a personal injury that the girl should subject his esteemedimpersonation of all the manly graces and virtues--so to call them--tothe insult of indifference.
As the melodies succeeded each other without a sign of response fromoverhead, he groaned, and swore with vexation and anger.
"Ye can be bummin' awa' wi' your chanter," he said as he stood listeningin the kitchen. "Her leddyship wodnae hae ye playin' there lang yourlane a saison syne, but thae days is done wi'; there's nae lugs for atirlin' at the winnock whaur there's nae love--at least wi' MistressLeevie."
Annapla heard the music with a superstitious terror; her eyes threatenedto leap out of her head, and she clutched the arm of her adorer.
"Gae 'wa!" he told her, shaking her off with a contempt for her fears."Are ye still i' the daft Hielan' notion that it's a ghaist that'splayin' there? That was a story he made up himsel', and the need for't's done. There's naethin' waur nor Sim MacTaggart oot there i' thegairden, wastin' his wund on a wumman that's owre muckle ta'en up i' thenoo wi' the whillywhaes o' a French sneckdrawer that haesnae the smeddumto gi'e her a toozlin' at the 'oor she needs it maist. Ay, ay! caw awa'wi' yer chanter, Sim, ye'll play hooly and fairly ere ever ye play 't i'the lug o' Leevie Lamond, and her heid against your shoulder again."
When it seemed at last the player's patience was at an end, the littleservitor took a lamp and went to the door. He drew the bolts softly,prepared to make a cautious emergence, with a recollection of his warmreception before. He was to have a great surprise, for there stood SimonMac-Taggart leaning against the jamb--a figure of dejection!
"Dod!" cried Mungo, "ye fair started me there, wi' your chafts like clayand yer ee'n luntin'. If I hadnae been tauld when I was doon wi' yercoat the day that ye was oot and aboot again, I wad hae taen 't for yourwraith."
The Chamberlain said nothing. There was something inexpressibly solemnin his aspect as he leaned wearily against the side of the door, hisface like clay, as Mungo had truly said, and his eyes flaming in thelight of the lantern. The flageolet was in his hand; he was shiveringwith cold. And he was silent. The silence of him was the most staggeringfact for the little domestic, who would have been relieved to hear anoath or even have given his coat-collar to a vigorous shaking ratherthan be compelled to look on misery inarticulate. Simon looked past himinto the shadows of the hall as a beggar looks into a garden where isno admission for him or his kind. A fancy seized Mungo that perhaps thisdumb man had been drinking. "He's gey like a man on the randan," he saidto himself, peering cautiously, "but he never had a name for the glassthough namely for the lass."
"Is she in?" said the Chamberlain, suddenly, without changing hisattitude, and with scanty interest in his eyes.
"Oh ay! She's in, sure enough," said Mungo. "Whaur else wad she be butin?"
"And she'll have heard me?" continued the Chamberlain.
"I'll warrant ye!" said Mungo.
"What's wrong?"
Mungo pursed out his lips and shook his lantern. "Ye can be askin'that," said he. "Gude kens!"
The Chamberlain still leaned wearily against the door jamb, mentallywhelmed by dejection, bodily weak as water. His ride on a horse alongthe coast had manifestly not been the most fitting exercise for a mannew out of bed and the hands of his physician.
"What about the foreigner?" said he at length, and glowered the moreinto the interior as if he might espy him.
Mungo was cautious. This was the sort of person who on an impulse wouldrush the guard and create a commotion in the garrison; he temporised.
"The foreigner?" said he, as if there were so many in his experiencethat some discrimination was called for. "Oh ay, the Coont. A gey queerbirkie yon! He's no' awa yet. He's sittin' on his dowp yet, waitin' adispensation o' Providence that'll gie him a heeze somewhere else."
"Is--he--is he with her?" said Simon.
"Oh, thereaboots, thereaboots," admitted Mungo, cautiously. "There's naedoot they're gey and chief got sin! he cam' back, and she foun' oot whacreated the collieshangie."
"Ay, man, and she kens that?" said the Chamberlain with unnatural calm.
"'Deed does she, brawly! though hoo she kens is mair nor I can guess.Monsher thrieps it wasnae him, and I'll gie my oath it wasnae me."
"Women are kittle cattle, Mungo. There's whiles I think it a peety theold law against witchcraft was not still to the fore. And so she kent,did she? and nobody tell't her. Well, well!" He laughed softly, withgreat 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 ootsand 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' thepromise 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 andAnnapla's to be left ahint to steek the yetts."
"So they tell me, Mungo; so they tell me," said the Chamberlain, neitherup nor down at this corroboration. "In a week or twa! ay! ay! It'll bethe bowrer nae langer then," he went on, unconsciously mimicking theLowland Scots of the domestic. "Do ye ken the auld song?--
'O Bessie Bell and Mary Gray, They were twa bonnie lassies! 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 beAuld 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 theflageolet, and in all with the appearance of a casual gossip reluctantto be going. "Indeed, and by my troth! there's like to be that!" herepeated. "Do ye think, by the look of me, Mungo, I'm in a pleasantcondition of mind?"
"Faith and ye look gey gash, sir," said Mungo; "there's no denyin' thatof it."
The Chamberlain gave a little crackling laugh, and held the flageoletlike a dirk, flat along the inside of his arm and his fingers straininground the thick of it.
"Gash!" said he. "That's the way I feel. By God! Ye fetched down my coatto-day. It was the first hint I had that this damned dancing master washere, for he broke jyle; who would have guessed he was fool enough tocome here, where--if we were in the key for it--we could easily sethands on him? He must have stolen the coat out of my own room; butthat's no' all of it, for there was a letter in the pocket of it whenit disappeared. What was in the letter I am fair beat to remember, but Iknow 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 letterat all would be to blunder.
"A letter!" said he; "there was nae letter that I saw;" and he concludedthat he must have let it slip out of the pocket.
The Chamberlain for the first time relinquished the support of thedoorway, and stood upon his legs, but his face was more dejected thanever.
"That settles it," said he, filling his chest with air. "I had a smallhope that maybe it might have come into your hands without the othersseeing it, but that was expecting too much of a Frenchman. And theletter's away with it! My God! 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 aman 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 eyesthat saw nothing. "In that case ye need not wonder that her ladyshipinby should ken all, for I'm thinking it was a very informing bitletter, though the exact wording of it has slipped my recollection. Itwould be expecting over much of human nature to think that the foreignerwould keep his hands out of the pouch of a coat he stole, and keep anysecret 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 wasgone.
His horse was tethered to a thorn; he climbed wearily into the saddleand swept along the coast. At the hour of midnight his horse wasstabled, and he himself was whistling in the rear of Petullo's house, asignal the woman there had thought never to hear again.
She responded in a joyful whisper from a window, and came down a fewminutes 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 downto stare into her hood; even in the darkness she saw a plain fury in hiseyes; if there was a doubt about his state of mind, the oath he utteredremoved 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 littlerelaxing 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 assured you got it."
"That I got it has nothing to do with the matter, woman. What I want toknow 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 amasking now is what was in it?"
Mrs. Petullo began to weep softly, partly from the pain of the man'sunconsciously cruel grasp, partly frotn disillusion, partly from a fearthat she had to do with a mind deranged.
"Oh, Sim, have you forgotten already? It did not use to be that with aletter of mine!"
He flung away her hands and swore again.
"Oh, Kate Cameron," he cried, "damned black was the day I first clapteyes on you! Tell me this, did your letter, that was through all mydreams when I was in the fever of my wound, and yet that I cannot recalla sentence of, say you knew I was Drimdarroch? It is in my mind that itdid so."
"Black the day you saw me, Sim!" said she. "I'm thinking it is justthe other way about, my honest man. Drimdarroch! And spy, it seems, andsomething worse! And are you feared that I have clyped it all to MadameMilk-and-Water? No, Simon, I have not done that; I have gone about thething 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 olddominie! 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. Ifthat does not please your ladyship, you are ill to serve. And I wouldnot just be saying that the game is finished altogether even yet, solong as I know where to lay my fingers on the Frenchman."
She plucked her hands free, and ran from him without another word, gladfor once of the sanctuary of a husband's door.