CHAPTER XV
Hamilton, making moodily for his quarters, took a somewhat deserted by-way, which led him shortly under a long covered passage connected with the stables. He had but entered this unlighted tunnel, when, aware of a couple of figures approaching its further end, he backed instinctively into the shadows, prepared, with the amiable humour of his kind, to detect an intrigue or surprise a secret. Therefrom peering, himself unseen, he saw the two, man and woman, stop in the moonlight at the mouth of the archway, where he could very clearly distinguish the identity of one of them, and almost as certainly guess that of the other. His ears pricked to catch their whispered confidences, but he was too far off to distinguish more than an inarticulate giggling murmur.
And then there appeared to occur a little scuffle between the pair, and to the sound of a distinct smack the lady broke away and entered the passage alone. Obviously an attention of her cavalier’s having been promptly acknowledged by her, any further escort on his part had been peremptorily declined. He did not attempt, indeed, to follow, but standing alone in the moonlight a moment, holding his hand to his cheek, suddenly turned tail and vanished.
The hooded lady came on, all unconscious of the watcher, and was nearing the point of emergence when Hamilton stepped across her path and barred her way. She gave a small, irrepressible squeak, and stood stock still.
“Come,” he said; “let us see what little Tib is after her Tom this amorous night.”
She recognized his voice, and let him lead her impassively to near the mouth of the passage, just so as the entering light might fall upon her face. And then he turned back the shrouding wimple, and saw a very rosebud.
“The blush must be hot,” said he, “that shows by moonlight. And now, Mrs. Moll, what have you got to say for yourself?”
She laughed, quite recovered, and backed a step from him.
“Gentlemen first,” said she. “How did you find my lady? Alone, for a guess.”
“I came to find you.”
“Sure?”
“And by God I’ve found you—out!”
“Yes, I’m found out. You wouldn’t have me spend all my time stifling within?”
“You favour moonlit walks, it seems?”
“Why, for precaution’s sake, and to oblige you.”
“I’m doubtful about my obligation to you of late, Mrs. Moll. Who were you walking with?”
“I never asked him his name. I didn’t suppose it would be camel fo.”
“It was my lord Arran, was it not?”
“Was it, now? What an eye you’ve got!”
“And you had met him, I suppose, by appointment?”
“No, it was by the yew-tree.”
“Come, my lady, you’re playing some game of your own in all this, and I want to know what it is. I brought you here for a specific purpose, and I’ve more than an idea that you’re converting the opportunity to a purpose of your own. What is it?”
“What’s what? I was only taking a stroll.”
“How did you make the acquaintance of my lord Arran?”
“O! Is that his name?”
“You know it is.”
“Well, to be sure, many more people know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows.”
“Doesn’t he know you?”
“He does now, I’m thinking. His cheek will keep him in mind of me for the next hour.”
Had the limb been no more than the victim of a chance gallantry? Hamilton looked at her perplexed. A saintly innocence spoke from her eyes. But, with a vexed laugh, he dismissed the absurdity. And then his brows lifted to a sudden inspiration. He had recalled on the instant some seeming casual words of the Duke of York addressed to himself. They had related to a saraband, and to a certain superlative guitar possessed by Arran’s sister. Now he actually blinked in the dazzling illumination of an idea. Kate, and the guitar, and the royal strummer, and Arran—lured by Moll at the Duke’s instigation—the unconscious procurer of that meeting! There, however ordered, was the connection, the explanation of the visit. He felt as sure of it as if he had himself planned out the process. Why, in the name of intrigue, had he never hit on the trail before? But, now it was found, it led to certain conclusions. With a dog’s smile showing his teeth, he clapped his two hands on the girl’s shoulders, and held her grippingly before him.
“I’ve been thinking,” said he. “You told Lord Chesterfield, and he told me, that you’d been witness of the Duke of York’s visit to his wife. Isn’t that so?”
“Sure,” said Moll, her heart going a little in spite of herself. “I looked and listened through the keyhole.” She confessed it, quite unabashed; nor did Hamilton regard the act as anything but “cricket,” in the modern meaning. Honour, with gentlemen of his kidney, was just a phrase to toss on swordpoints.
“How,” he said, “did you know it was the Duke of York?”
“I heard them say so.”
“You are lying. You pretended to Lord Chesterfield that you did not know who the visitor was, and so you give yourself away.”
“Do I? And a very pretty gift, too, though I say it.”
“Ah! You are quite shameless, I see.”
“Now, what cause have I for shame? Tell me that.”
“What cause? You can ask that!”
“O, I can ask anything.”
“Enough of this equivocating. What did you mean by stating you heard them say it was the Duke?”
“Why, I meant it.”
“Who were they?”
“Just my lady and the other.”
“O, the other! Who was the other?”
“Why, the one that wasn’t my lady, of course.”
“Was it Kit?”
“I never said so, you know.”
“What do you say now?”
“I say what I said before.”
“Come; was it man or woman?”
“How should I know? I’m ashamed of you, George.”
His strong fingers quivered with an almost irresistible desire to shake the life out of her. Possibly—for she had a liking for him—he might have won the truth from her even now by a show of tenderness; but his temper, exacerbated by a recent disappointment, had got the better of him, and any further finessing was at the moment beyond his power.
“Very well, my lady,” said he, drawing a deep breath. “I shall know how to deal with a traitor whom I had thought a confederate. I have done my part fairly by you——”
“Wait there,” said the girl, stopping him. She had abundance of spirit, and carried the sharpest little set of claws at the ends of her velvet fingers. “You promised to let the King see me.”
“I promised to let you see the King.”
“O, well! isn’t that the same thing—if he’s got eyes? Anyhow, you haven’t done it.”
“It was to have been the reward of your service to me; and in that, by God! you’ve failed, and I believe failed of purpose. I don’t reward traitors.”
“How have I been a traitor?”
“Don’t you know very well? But perhaps you’ve come to the conclusion that, saving the King, the Duke of York might suit you for second best.”
“George!”
“Don’t ‘George’ me, madam!”
“You’ll make me dangerous.”
“O, I know what you mean! But who’ll believe such a little rogue and liar! And who do you think will get the best of a contest of wits between us? But tell his lordship if you will. I’m at that reckless stage I should welcome a sharp decision with him. For you, you’ve proved yourself a worse than useless partner in the business—earning the man’s aversion instead of his love, and by your hints and antics bringing the pair nearer, through a mutual jealousy, than you found them. But I understood now why it was, and just the value of the scruples you were so nice in expressing. They waited on the highest bidder, didn’t they? and I wish you luck of him now you’ve got him. Upon my soul, Mrs. Davis, you have my sincere respect as one of the artfullest little timeservers that ever knew how to take a profit of circumstance.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“O! of course not. Innocence in a wimple, like a very pansy of the fields.”
“You want me to go, I suppose?”
“Why, your talents, I confess, seem wasted in this dull corner of the palace. There are livelier quarters for their exercise—the Duke of York’s, for instance.”
He took his hands from her shoulders; but their grip might still have imprisoned her, so rigid remained her attitude.
“You won’t let me see the King?” she said.
“Hey-day!” jeered he. “Not short of the very highest will content this country chip. But nothing for nothing, say I.”
She stood quite motionless, conning him—stood for a full minute, without a word. And then she shook her shoulders, and laughed, and held out her hand to him.
“Well, then, good-bye, George,” she said. “I think you’re hard on me; but I bear no malice, and we’ll part friends, won’t we?”
“Advice isn’t dismissal,” said Hamilton; “and you’re not my guest.”
“No, I know,” she answered. “But, truth is, his lordship was equally emphatic about my wanting a change—or perhaps it was himself wanted it; I’m not sure. Well, I’ll take a day to consider of it. You wouldn’t think better of me, I suppose, if in the meantime I were able to put you right about a certain question you’ve been puzzling yourself over?”
“What question, fubbs?” He felt quite kindly to her again, since she had yielded so submissively to his suggestion. The little rogue’s face of her, drawn in silver-point and just touched with pink, looked a sweet spiritual flower in the moonlight.
“O, I mustn’t tell,” she said, “or it would spoil everything.”
“Then how can I answer for my better thoughts?” he protested.
“No, you can’t, of course,” she said. “Only I don’t want us to part enemies.”
“Come,” he said; “kisses are more proof than words.”
But, at that, with a light laugh, she sprang past him, and ran. At twenty yards she turned, blew him a mocking salute, and again turning, disappeared round a corner.
“In truth, a fascinating little devil,” thought Hamilton, with a grim smile, as he continued his way. “It goes to my heart to lose her. But, if anything were needed to prove the justice of my surmises regarding her double-dealing, the equanimity with which she accepted her dismissal should supply it. And yet she loves me well enough to wish to coax my good opinion at the end. How? What is this mystery of mysteries? Poor Moll!”
“Poor Moll” herself had got home meanwhile, and, crouching catlike by an unlatched window, with her eyes peering above the sill to see if the coast were clear, had presently re-entered the house by the way she had emerged from it. Once in, she stood up, shaking her cloak from her shoulders, touched her hair into order with rapid fingers, and exhaled a tragic sigh.
“So,” she whispered, with the tiniest of giggles; “one and one makes two, and two and one makes three. If she asks me to go, I shall begin to think I’m not wanted here any more. Will it come, I wonder?”
It came, in fact, quite punctually, and entirely to her surprise. As, stealing noiselessly across the room, she pushed open the unclosed door, it made her jump to find the Countess herself standing awaiting her spectrally on the threshold. She stopped, fairly staggered, and for the moment had not a word to say.
Her ladyship advancing, Moll fell back before her, and the two stood facing one another in the empty chamber. It was remote and unused, and bare of everything save the entering moonbeams, which gave it an aspect as of its windows being shored up by ghostly buttresses.
“I congratulate you, Mrs. Davis,” said Kate, in the most curiously inward of little voices. “It is apart, and well chosen, and only the merest accident led to my discovery of your use of it. But, having seen you slip out, I could not but watch and wait to welcome you home again.”
Moll rallied her wits for the inevitable combat.
“Sure,” she said, “hasn’t your ladyship ever felt the delight of climbing in by the window when you might enter by the open door?”
“I prefer direct ways to underhand,” was the chilling response.
“Try a stolen kiss before you answer for that,” said Moll.
“Thank you. I leave that sort of thing to you.”
“What do you mean, now, by ‘that sort of thing’? Does a Royal Duke count in it? because ’tis not every time he’s to be found coming in by the open door.”
“Your knowledge of the customs of princes,” said Kate icily, but with a curious little tremble in her voice, “is, of course, very profound; so you will be aware that they can claim privileges denied to others.”
“Is that so, now? Then what call had my lord your husband to get into such a tantrum about it, when I told him that the Duke of York had been paying you a visit?”
Seismographically, as it were, she was conscious of the shock her words produced. Kate shivered, and seemed to stiffen.
“I am not answerable for his lordship’s tantrums, as you call them,” she said in a stifled way, “any more than for his tastes and predilections. If any malicious wretch has chosen to carry slanderous tales to him, and he to listen to them——”
“That was me,” said Moll, “and I’m not going to be abused for just peeping through a keyhole and telling him what I saw behind it. How should I know, in my innocence, that it wasn’t all quite right and proper, and the last thing to make him explode over?”
Her little ladyship seemed to catch her breath over the mere audacity of this self-vindication; and then she answered in volume, though always careful to subdue her voice to the occasion—
“Innocent—you—without heart or conscience! monster of guile and ingratitude! viper on the hearth that has warmed you! Spy and informer that you are, to dare that brazen confession, and in the same breath to pretend to an artless innocence of the fire your vile calumny was intended to blow into a blaze! You innocent! You anything but the shameless wanton your every act proclaims you!”
She paused, panting. “Go on,” said Moll, unruffled. “Get it all out and over.”
“It does not move you,” said Kate. “Why should it?—deaf to every appeal of honour and decency. Shame on your woman’s nature, that can so wrong and vilify one of your own sex, whose only fault has been too great a tolerance of the insult and humiliation imposed upon her by your presence.”
Again she stopped, and Mrs. Moll took up the tale, very pink and cool.
“Gingumbobs!” she said. “If I’m so wicked, aren’t you a little giving away your own innocency? If all was so in order in the great gentleman’s visit, why are you so warm about my peeping and telling of it?”
“Because, by making a secret of it you designedly make it appear the very scandal it was not.”
“I made no secret of it, bless you! Why, I’ll go tell everybody about it this very moment, if you like. There now; ain’t I forgiving?”
“Forgiving!” Poor Kate put back a stray curl from her damp forehead. “You dare to throw the burden of compunction upon me! What have I not to forgive, since the day of your arrival—in this room—now?” Desperately she grasped to recover the moral lead, and to elude the charge to which the other wickedly sought to pin her. “Why are you here, I say?” she went on hurriedly. “What is the meaning of these secret exits and entrances? But no need to ask; your insolence betrays you. Did you meet your lover? Did he slip out from the Queen’s presence just to kiss and dally a wanton moment with the fond, inseparable object of his fancy? Could neither of you wait the hour of reunion in the house you insult and pollute by your presence? Poor, severed, unhappy couple, rent apart by the only brief interval which my lord is forced against his will to devote to duty and decency!”
She stopped of her very passion.
“I wouldn’t be sarcastic, if I were you,” said Moll. “It fits you about as well as the Lancashire giant’s breeches would. And ’tis all thrown away; because, if you mean his lordship, I wouldn’t trouble to walk out of one room into another to meet him, much less climb through a window.”
Kate, her bosom still stormy, looked her scornful incredulity. She pointed to the casement.
“Why that way, then?” she said.
“For no reason,” answered the visitor, “except that when a body’s watched and pounced on for her every movement she has to take her own measures to steal a little freedom. The air isn’t so fresh or the company so lively here that one isn’t driven once in a while to play truant. Aye, you may sneer and doubt, madam”—she was waxing a little warm—“but ’tis true, nevertheless, that if I were to spy your precious husband in my walks, I’d go a mile out of my way to avoid him. Love him, indeed! I tell you that he fair sickens me. I tell you that if I drew him in a lottery, I’d tear the ticket up under his very nose.”
Indeed, she snapped her fingers viciously, as if rehearsing the act, and then stood with her arms akimbo, breathing defiance.
“Then why,” said her ladyship, with an extremely wrathful hauteur, yet with an instinctive wincing from the pugnacious little claws, “do you persist in this daily offence of imposing your company where it is least admired or desired?”
The naughty girl broke into a laugh, and clapped her hands.
“It’s come,” she cried, “it’s come, as I knew it would!” and her face fell twinklingly grave “So you want me to go?” she said.
“I should have thought,” responded Kate, “it could have been small gratification to you to stay on to contemplate the failure of your designs on a virtue on which you would meanly seek to revenge yourself by pretending to scorn what you have been powerless to corrupt.”
Moll fairly whistled.
“Mercy on us!” she exclaimed. “Virtue! Do you mean his? And is that your way of putting it? So it’s sour grapes on my part, is it? But I never said, you know, that I had that effect on him that he has on me.”
“Who would expect you to say it, vain and heartless creature? But, whatever the truth—and I look to only distortion of it from your lips—these clandestine flittings, be their object what or whom they may, can no longer be suffered to impair the reputation of this house. They must either cease or you must go.”
Moll, her lip lifted, brought up her right hand with a slow flourish, and once, twice, thrice, snapped thumb and second finger together with great deliberation.
“Very well, my lady,” said she. “I will go, and leave the reputation of this house in your keeping. I have done my little best to purify it during my brief time here; but I am afraid the disease is too deep-seated for anything but a chirurgical operation. When you have been removed, perhaps, by his royal physicianship of York, the place may have a chance of recovery.”
And she dropped a little insolent curtsy, and without a tremor, her nose exalted, brushed by my lady and stalked out of the room.
At which Kate, having no word to say, nor courage to say it, fell against the wall, with a white face, and had a hard to-do to fight away an inclination to tears.