The lawyer sat in a den that smelt most wickedly of mildewed vellum, sealing-wax, tape, and all that trash that smothers the soul of man—the appurtenances of his craft. He sat like a sallow mummy among them, like a half-man made of tailor's patches, flanked by piles of docketed letters and Records closed, bastioned by deed-boxes blazoned with the indication of their offices—MacGibbon's Mortification, Dunderave Estate, Coil's Trust, and so on; he sat with a shrieking quill among these things, and MacTaggart entering to him felt like thanking God that he had never been compelled to a life like this in a stinking mortuary, with the sun outside on the windows and the clean sea and the singing wood calling in vain. Perhaps some sense of contrast seized the writer, too, as he looked up to see the Chamberlain entering with a pleasant, lively air of wind behind him, and health and vigour in his step, despite the unwonted wanness of his face. At least, in the glance Petullo gave below his shaggy eyebrows, there was a little envy as well as much cunning. He made a ludicrous attempt at smiling.
“Ha!” he cried, “Mr. MacTaggart! Glad to see you, Mr. MacTaggart. Sit ye down, Mr. MacTaggart. I was just thinking about you.”
“No ill, I hope,” said the Chamberlain, refusing a seat proffered; for anything of the law to him seemed gritty in the touch, and a three-legged stool would, he always felt, be as unpleasant to sit upon as a red-hot griddle.
“Te-he!” squeaked Petullo with an irritating falsetto. “You must have your bit joke, Mr. MacTaggart. Did his Grace—did his Grace—I was just wondering if his Grace said anything to-day about my unfortunate accident with the compote yestreen.” He looked more cunningly than ever at the Chamberlain.
“In his Grace's class, Mr. Petullo, and incidentally in my own, nothing's said of a guest's gawkiness, though you might hardly believe it for a reason that I never could make plain to you, though I know it by instinct.”
“Oh! as to gawkiness, an accident of the like might happen to any one,” said Petullo, irritably.
“And that's true,” confessed the Chamberlain. “But, tut! tut! Mr. Petullo, a compote's neither here nor there to the Duke. If you had spilt two of them it would have made no difference; there was plenty left. Never mind the dinner, Mr. Petullo, just now, I'm in a haste. There's a Frenchman—”
“There's a wheen of Frenchmen, seemingly,” said the writer, oracularly, taking to the trimming of his nails with a piece of pumice-stone he kept for the purpose, and used so constantly that they looked like talons.
“Now, what the devil do you mean?” cried Mac-Taggart.
“Go on, go on with your business,” squeaked Petullo, with an eye upon an inner door that led to his household.