“Comment?” said the Count. He was not prepared for an opening quite like this.
“Well,” said the Chamberlain, “you saw it for yourself; you are not a mole like Petullo the husband. By God! I would be that brute's death if he were thirty years younger, and made of anything else than sawdust. It's a tragedy in there, and look at this burgh!—like the grave but for the lights of it; rural, plodding, unambitious, ignorant—and the last place on earth you might seek in for a story so peetiful as that in there. My heart's wae, wae for that woman; I saw her face was like a corp when we went in first, though she put a fair front on to us. A woman in a hundred; a brave woman, few like her, let me tell you, M. Montaiglon, and heartbroken by that rat she's married on. I could greet to think on all her trials. You saw she was raised somewhat; you saw I have some influence in that quarter?”
For his life Count Victor could make no reply, so troubled was his mind with warring thoughts of Olivia betrayed, perhaps, to a debauchee sans heart and common pot-house decency; of whether in truth this was the debauchee to such depths as he suggested, or a man in a false position through the stress of things around him.
The Chamberlain went on as in a meditation. “Poor Kate! poor Kate! We were bairns together, M. Montaiglon, innocent bairns, and happy, twenty years syne, and I will not say but what in her maidenhood there was some warmth between us, so that I know her well. She was compelled by her relatives to marriage with our parchment friend yonder, and there you have the start of what has been hell on earth for her. The man has not the soul of a louse, and as for her, she's the finest gold! You would see that I was the cause of her swoon?”
“Unhappy creature!” said Montaiglon, beginning to fear he had wronged this good gentleman.
“You may well say it, M. Montaiglon. It is improper, perhaps, that I should expose to a stranger the skeleton of that house, but I'm feeling what happened just now too much to heed a convention.” He sighed profoundly. “I have had influence with the good woman, as you would see; for years I've had it, because I was her only link with the gay world she was born to be an ornament in, and the only one free to be trusted with the tale of her misery. Well, you know—you are a man of the world, M. Montaiglon—you know the dangers of such a correspondence between a person of my reputation, that is none of the best, because I have been less a hypocrite than most, and a lady in her position. It's a gossiping community this, long-lugged and scandal-loving like all communities of its size; it is not the Faubourg St. Honoré, where intrigues go on behind fans and never an eye cocked or a word said about it; and I'll not deny but there have been scandalous and cruel things said about the lady and myself. Now, as God's my judge—”
“Pardon, monsieur,” said the Count, eager to save this protesting gentleman another bêtise; “I quite understand, I think,—the lady finds you a discreet friend. Naturally her illness has unmanned you. The scandal of the world need never trouble a good man.”
“But a merely middling-good man, M. Montaiglon,” cried the Chamberlain; “you'll allow that's a difference. Lord knows I lay no claim to a crystal virtue! In this matter I have no regard for my own reputation, but just for that very reason I'm anxious about the lady's. What happened in that room there was that I've had to do an ill thing and make an end of an auld sang. I'm rarely discreet in my own interest, M. Montaiglon, but it had to be shown this time, and as sure as death I feel like a murderer at the havoc I have wrought with that good woman's mind!”
He stopped suddenly; a lump was in his throat. In the beam of light that came through the hole in a shutter of a house they passed, Montaiglon saw that his companion's face was all wrought with wretchedness, and a tear was on his cheek.
The discovery took him aback. He had ungenerously deemed the strained voice in the darkness beside him a mere piece of play-acting, but here was proof of genuine feeling, all the more convincing because the Chamberlain suddenly brisked up and coughed and assumed a new tone, as if ashamed of his surrender to a sentiment.