“The best authority,” repeated Doom, with never a doubt as to what that was. “Well, it may be, but I have no fear of him. Once, I'll confess, he troubled me, but the man is now no more than a rotten kail-stock so far as my household is concerned. I thank God Olivia is happy!”
“And so do I, I'm sure, with all my heart,” chimed in the lady. “And that is all the more reason why the Count—you see we know his station—should be speedily out of the way of molestation, either from the law or Simon MacTaggart.”
Doom made to bring the interview to a conclusion. “As to the Count,” said he, “you can take my word for it, he is very well able to look after himself, as Drimdarroch, or MacTaggart, or whatever is the Chamberlain's whim to call himself, knows very well by now. Drimdarroch, indeed! I could be kicking him myself for his fouling of an honest old name.”
“Kicking!” said she; “I wonder at your leniency. I cannot but think you are far from knowing the worst of Simon MacTaggart.”
“The worst!” said Doom. “That's between himself and Hell, but I know as much as most, and it's enough to make me sure the man's as boss as an empty barrel. He was once a sort of friend of mine, till twenty years ago my wife grew to hate the very mention of his name. Since then I've seen enough of him at a distance to read the plausible rogue in his very step. The man wears every bawbee virtue he has like a brooch in his bonnet; and now when I think of it, I would not dirty my boots with him.”
Mrs. Petullo's lips parted. She hovered a second or two on a disclosure that explained the wife's antipathy of twenty years ago, but it involved confession of too intimate a footing on her own part with the Chamberlain, and she said no more.
CHAPTER XXXIX — BETRAYED BY A BALLAD
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.