"With a howl he went down on his knees, and with another he begged for mercy.""With a howl he went down on his knees, and with another he begged for mercy."
"With a howl he went down on his knees, and with another he begged for mercy.""With a howl he went down on his knees, and with another he begged for mercy."
The ever-alert duke opened it, as though nothing unusual were occurring, giving entrance to Miss Leo, who with a manly stride came in only to stand dumfounded before the abject spectacle of her brother's abasement.
"Carnaby!" she cried in a voice calculated to put fire into a lump of wet clay. "You great oaf! What fool's game is this?"
The duke explained. "It is simply the result of a slight personal difference between his grace and my humble self."
"Get up, you great booby!" Lalage commanded, naturally thinking that the slight personal difference between the two men should have reversed their positions.
"Stay where you are," cried the duke in his most stentorian tones. And Mr. Leo stayed.
"Quorn! At last!" The cry came in a tone of menacing rapture from Lalage who had now found time to glance round the table.
"Hold on!" was that nobleman's chilling response, as he rose and stretched out a fending hand in front of him.
"My Quorn!" repeated Miss Leo with native tenacity.
"Quorn?" cried the duke in a voice of puzzled exasperation, "Quorn again in that quarter. I get tired of this Quorn here, Quorn there."
"This is Lord Quorn," Lalage declared with an exultation which, considering the position her champion occupied at the moment, was scarcely justified.
"So? Are you sure?" the duke demanded searchingly.
"Sure? I knew him in Australia. I have come over to marry him," was the convincing answer.
"So?" The fiery little Castilian turned to Quorn. "You marry this lady, eh?"
"No," he returned, ungallantly. "I'm hanged if I do."
"Carnaby!" cried his sister in a ringing voice. "You hear that?"
"Yes," said Carnaby impotently from the floor.
"Let the poor fellow alone," recommended Quorn. "He's a thing of the past."
But his crow was cut short by the duke. "So, your grace thinks to marry Miss Buffkin?" No answer. "In spite of your engagement to this handsome lady?" The duke's wry face was lost in a grin. "May I request once again the honour of a few words with your grace in private?"
"You may, but you won't get it," was the dogged reply. "I stop here."
"So? I believe not," said the duke, turning on his vindictive glare to the full. "I have been long enough made a fool of with your different Lord Quorns. I am sick of Lord Quorn. I put him away, and if I make a mistake—ah!"
He turned swiftly with the cry of an enraged tiger. Prompted by signs from his sister, Carnaby had taken advantage of the duke's back being turned to rise from his undignified position and stealthily approach his little adversary with the idea of taking him unawares from behind and trying what muscle would do. But the Spaniard, whose energies and faculties were concentrated in a small space, was too wide awake for him. With the turn he sprang back and whipping round his rapier brought it with a swift cut across Carnaby's ample countenance. As Mr. Leo roared and danced with pain, and Lalage, throwing her arms round the duke's, shouted to the three to help her, if they were men, in disarming the wriggling Grandee, the door was thrown open and Mr. Doutfire came quickly in, followed by the local constable.
Mr. Doutfire with professional promptitude at once proceeded to adapt himself to the situation. He planted himself in business-like fashion before the wriggling duke, and with a wave of both hands, suggested to his captor that she should release him.
"Let go, ma'am," he said reassuringly. "It's all right now. I'll rake the fire out."
Thus bidden Miss Leo relaxed her clasp, not however, before Mr. Doutfire had, with a practised twist, wrenched the sword from the ducal grasp.
"Now, then," he demanded in a tone of stern reproof, "what's this all about? What's the trouble now?"
"You shall not interfere," foamed the duke. "You are not wanted, policeman."
"Detective-Inspector is my rank," Mr. Doutfire reminded him with a touch of severity. "Looks as though I was wanted," he added with a curl of the lip and a confident glance round the company.
"You are not," insisted the duke in his fiercest tone and with his most appalling glare. "I am the Duke of Salolja, and I tell you you are to go."
He might as well have glared at the spattered portrait of Everard, ninth Baron Quorn, on the wall for any effect his eyes produced on the uncompromising and unimaginative official.
"I should like that corroborated," was all the response he got from Mr. Doutfire.
"No, don't go!" cried Mr. Leo with a subdued and, painful roar. "He has assaulted me, stabbed me, threatened to shoot me. I give him in charge. Take him. I——"
"Has he got firearms on him?" enquired Mr. Doutfire severely.
For answer the duke whipped out his revolver. But swift as the action was, Mr. Doutfire's counter move was quicker.
With practised skill he clutched the dangerous wrist and with a business-like jerk held it in the air with the revolver pointing to the ceiling.
"That'll do, my lord duke," he said with playful insistence. "Better let me take care of that. It's a dangerous plaything."
But the duke's characteristic under-estimation of the power of the British police system prompted him to resist and to struggle violently to release his hand. Mr. Doutfire gave a well-understood nod to his subordinate, and that functionary smartly acting upon it, came behind the duke and pinioned his arms. Next moment the revolver was detached by a knowing professional trick, and was in Mr. Doutfire's pocket. "You can let go, Tugby," he said with calm authority, and the raging noble was free to dance and gesticulate in a very tornado of rage.
He was understood to intimate that the insult put upon him, a Duke of Salolja and a Grandee of Spain, by a mere paltry English policeman, in not allowing him free vent for his display offorce majeureand homicidal proclivities was one which would not only be the cause of private and personal bloodshed, but would in all human probability result in a devastating war between the two Powers, from which the least unpleasant outcome England could expect would be the loss of Gibraltar and the bulk of the British fleet. Mr. Doutfire received the intelligence with a tolerant stolidity. Custom had made him impervious to threats and sceptical of the practical value of vindictive utterances. His scornful and unmoved attitude had the effect of raising to a still higher pitch the rage of the Spanish fire-eater, who seemed now to have lost all that self-control which before had been so telling. He had, in fact, become inebriated with wrath and excitement.
"Scoundrel, villain!" he cried, shaking both fists in the air before the imperturbable Doutfire. "You lay your ignoble hands on the Duke of Salolja! I will have your life."
"Steady! Steady!" responded Mr. Doutfire in a tone of gentle warning.
"I shall not steady," roared the duke, whose face had now assumed the look of the false nose, eyes and moustache of a carnival mask. "You shall not defy me. You shall go this moment, or I will run you through your wretched body."
With a sudden dart he snatched up the sword from the floor and began a series of flourishes which threatened seriously to embarrass Mr. Doutfire. "Steady, now," commanded that gentleman, but instead of complying, the duke seemed to be ferociously bent on selecting a suitable point of impact in the detective's thick-set figure.
"Lay hold, Tugby."
The duke comprehending the order, jumped round swiftly, bringing the sword point in opposition to Mr. Tugby's advancing tunic. But the diversion was enough for Mr. Doutfire's purpose. He seized the Spaniard's flourishing arms from behind, then planting his knee in the small of the ducal back, by way of purchase, he held the heir of all the Saloljas trussed.
"Take the sword away from him," he ordered his subordinate. "Now," when that was, after a short but fierce struggle, accomplished, "you had better slip on the bracelets."
Accordingly, with some difficulty and much explosive language the hands of a Grandee of Spain were, it is sad to relate, for the first time on record, fastened behind his back by a pair of vulgar English handcuffs, and the traditions of the Saloljas were, for the moment, rendered a negligible quantity.
In his violent struggles the duke had stumbled backwards into a low and deep-seated armchair. From this he was, from the fact that his hands were fastened behind him, unable to rise or regain his balance. All he could do was to kick furiously and to make loud use of expletives which, although couched in the Spanish language, were obviously of an exceedingly florid, even ensanguined, character. To quiet him and to prevent possible mischief, Mr. Doutfire and his underling, approaching the job on either side from behind, each seized a ducal leg, and tucked it in comparative harmlessness under his arm. It may be doubted whether in the long and blood-stained annals of the house of Salolja any member of that distinguished and ruthless family had ever occupied quite so undignified a position before.
"Dangerous party to deal with, my lord," remarked the panting Mr. Doutfire jerkily, owing to the convulsions of the Salolja leg, addressing himself impartially to the three men, any one of whom might be Lord Quorn. "I'm afraid we shall have to see him safe to Bunbury and give him a night in the cells, in default of bail."
The prisoner laughed in the very impotence of his rage. "You shall have your absurd Great Bunbury pulled down about your ears if you do not instantly release me," he spluttered through his teeth.
"All right, my lord duke," Doutfire returned, with a wink at the company. "We'll keep in the middle of the street in case the buildings should come down on our hats. Now, when you're ready, sir, we'll make a move as it's getting late. Sorry to have to put the bracelets on a gentleman of your position, but I take the responsibility. In this country even dukes have got to behave themselves, and we don't allow tricks with these dangerous playthings."
He pulled the duke up and set him on his feet, then took up the rapier and revolver and handed them to his subordinate.
"You shall release me at once," hissed the duke through his wolfish teeth, "or it will be the worse for you."
"All right. We'll see about that," replied Mr. Doutfire in the tone he might use to a naughty child. "I understand the prisoner threatened and assaulted you, Mr.——?" he added to Carnaby, producing his note book.
"Yes," affirmed that valiant gentleman. "I'm cut and stabbed all over."
"Tut!" cried the prisoner explosively. "The fellow is a great coward. He cries if you prick him."
"You will," continued Mr. Doutfire, unheeding the interruption, "charge the prisoner, I presume, with feloniously cutting and wounding?"
"That's it," replied Mr. Leo, regaining confidence.
"Carnaby, you great fool, why didn't you wring his neck and fling the little brute into the dust-hole?"
Carnaby failed to impart into his expression any regret that he had not endeavoured to forestall the suggestion.
"Good job he didn't try it on, ma'am," observed Mr. Doutfire dryly. "Whether he succeeded or not, in either case it might have been awkward for him. You'll attend at 10.30 a.m. to-morrow at the Court House, Great Bunbury," he added. "And some of you gentlemen had better be on hand to give evidence if required."
He nodded to Tugby, and each taking an arm of the speechless duke they conducted him, with certain indications of unwillingness on his part, to the door. This the representative of the Saloljas favoured with a mighty kick, by way of protest and also doubtless of letting off some of his compressed rage. Mr. Doutfire pulled him unceremoniously back, then, as Tugby opened the door, shot him forwards, and in such humiliating fashion did the manacled Grandee disappear from the scene of his brief triumph.
Those who remained were now at liberty to take more precise and less preoccupied notice of one another.
"So I've got you at last, Lord Quorn," observed Miss Leo with somewhat menacing satisfaction.
"No, you haven't," objected that person, coolly lighting a fresh cigar."
"Oh, haven't I?" the lady rejoined. "You hear that, Carnaby dear?"
"Don't worry dear Carnaby," put in Peckover. "He has got a headache."
Mr. Leo's stony stare of discomfiture did not relax to traverse the statement. Mechanically he put forth a great hand and poured himself out, as in a dream, an overflowing glass of port wine. He then, still in a state of mental apathy, sought, with cowed and lacklustre eye, the cigar-box and absently helped himself—to more of the contents than he could smoke at once. But he made no other and more relevant answer to the bugle-call of his sister's question. It was felt by the three men that the legend of his doughty deeds was a myth; as a terrorist he belonged to ancient history.
The hour of 10.30 next morning saw the depository of the Salolja traditions, a defiant and fretful Castilian porcupine with quills erect, standing in the dock of an occasional court, composed of one alderman of Great Bunbury (incidentally a family grocer), one public-spirited local doctor, and a couple of fussy half-pay colonels, to answer the serious charges of threatening to murder divers of His Majesty's subjects, and also with feloniously stabbing and wounding another, to wit, one Carnaby Leo, described somewhat vaguely as of Australia.
Mr. Doutfire here saw an opportunity for more than regaining some loss of prestige which he had lately incurred, of course through no fault of his, but of a cheese-paring Treasury; and moreover for handing his name down with undying fame in the criminal annals of Great Bunbury.
The Duke of Salolja insisted upon regarding the whole business as beneath his serious notice. His line of defence was to maintain a haughty and contemptuous silence, at the same time to shrivel up his very common-place judges by focussing upon them in turn his most ferociously fascinating glare. Alas! He misjudged the stuff of which British parochial authority is composed. Even if he had succeeded in terrifying the retired colonels, there was still the florid general practitioner to reduce to a quite improbable state of collapse, and it is well known that a family grocer fears nothing in this world—except another family grocer.
Evidence sufficient to justify a remand was taken, and the prisoner, who seemed to emit sparks of indignation was told that he would eventually be sent to Quarter Sessions. Then in pursuance of a plan which Peckover had concocted overnight, Gage and Lord Quorn offered themselves as bail for the duke. This was, after some demur and difference of opinion, accepted, the two colonels being dead against allowing a foreigner of homicidal tendencies to be at large, while the doctor and the grocer took a higher position and declared themselves in favour of doing no act that should endanger theentente cordialebetween Great Britain and Spain. So finally, bail was accepted for the duke's appearance on the following Saturday.
Upon his release from durance his sureties and Peckover sought an interview with the irate nobleman, and, ignoring certain dark and direful threats, gently but convincingly hinted to him that the only way to avoid a considerable term of imprisonment with its incidental tarnish on the scutcheon of the Saloljas was to lose no time in putting the English Channel and the republic of France, to say nothing of the Pyrenees, between himself and the Great Bunbury Bench. At first the duke, pulsating with a sense of injury, declared that sooner than run away from a handful of English shopkeepers, he would put the whole of the inhabitants of Great Bunbury, as given in the last census return, to the edge of the sword. On its being pointed out to him, however, that his plan, attractive in itself, was deficient in certain elements of feasibility, he consented to meet the objection by reducing the number of his intended victims, and intimated that his thirst for blood might be satisfied by the immolation of the mayor and corporation, the heads of the fire brigade and the police force, the town clerk, town crier, the station master and a picked half-dozen of the principal tradesmen on the altar of his vengeance.
When he was made aware of certain practical objections which stood in the way of the town of Great Bunbury falling in with this modified suggestion, the noble Castilian proposed as a last alternative that he should meet a selected dozen men of the township's best blood in a suitable arena, and should engage these representatives one after the other in a duelà outrance. On this proposal being ruled out of order owing to the deplorably faulty state of the English law, the duke, glaring and bristling with suppressed vindictiveness, declared that he must do something to remove the stain that had been cast upon him and his house; whereupon Peckover suggested that the best thing he could do to prevent the said stain from spreading would be to disguise himself as the representative of a firm of Spanish claret merchants, and take the 1.15 train on the way to Dover.
This plan did not, however, commend itself to the representative of a Spanish house, whose trade appeared to be, not the bottling, but the spilling, of claret of a very different type. "It is very amusing, very clever of you, gentlemen," he objected in withering scorn. "You wish to get me out of the way that you may pay court to Miss Buffkin. I am not an idiot."
"You'll be a convict this day fortnight if you don't clear out," remarked Peckover. "Great Bunbury is not to be trifled with."
The duke laughed discordantly. "Great Bunbury! It makes me laugh."
"You'll have plenty of time for laughing," observed Peckover, "in jail. You can do a lot of smiling in twelve calendar months if you stick to it."
The duke snapped his fingers, but he looked uneasy, and the snap wanted tone. Perhaps the fingers were clammy. "I shall not go," he maintained, "till I have killed some one in Great Bunbury."
"Not good enough," argued Peckover. "If you kill anybody here you'll be hanged. And you couldn't kill anybody worth a duke's being hanged for. Why, the best man you could select for the purpose in the town wouldn't rise above an auctioneer or a brewer. It wouldn't be a fair deal."
Still the duke was obstinate. "I marry the adorable Buffkin," he declared, "in spite of Great Bunbury."
"All right. Here she is," said Gage, pointing to an open carriage which was approaching.
A portmanteau shared the box with the driver. Inside were three people, Lady Ormstork, Miss Buffkin and a middle-aged man with greyish-red hair and a face which partook curiously of the characteristics of the fox and the sheep. He was a common-looking person, and, as such, had the air of being out of place in that company.
Lady Ormstork stopped the carriage and hailed the group on the pavement. "My dear Lord Quorn, this is fortunate," she exclaimed, addressing her remark to the three possible holders of that title, with a leaning towards Gage. "What absurd goings on at Staplewick! How d'you do, duke? I always said your wilful ignorance of our English ideas would land you in trouble. Well, and how has the ridiculous business at the Court House gone off? Laughed out of court, I presume."
As the duke seemed inclined to impart no more precise information than could be gathered from a bow and a scowl, Peckover answered the question. "Remanded on bail."
Lady Ormstork threw up her hands in amused horror. "A Salolja, a Grandee of Spain, remanded on bail by a bench of provincial cheese-mongers!" she cried. "Really, it is the very acme of the ridiculous. It is only fit for a burlesque. My dearest Ulrica, do think of it! Oh, dear me, it is too absurd for comment." And she went off in a fit of rather stagey laughter.
"It is no laughing matter—for somebody," hissed the duke darkly.
Lady Ormstork's burst ended with an abruptness which suggested a doubt as to its genuineness. "It is really so diverting," she said, "that I am forgetting to introduce Mr. Buffkin, dear Ulrica's father, to Lord Quorn."
The inference to be drawn from Mr. Buffkin's demeanour was that he was not in the habit of being suddenly presented to peers of the realm. Lord Quorn, however, relieved his embarrassment by seizing his hand with a cordial grip. "Glad you've come down," he remarked, with his eyes on Mr. Buffkin's daughter.
"Pleased to meet your lordship," responded Mr. Buffkin.
Lady Ormstork raised her eye-glasses in diplomatic caution. "You don't mean to say you are Lord Quorn, after all?" she asked with a hedging smile.
"I'm nobody else," was the confident reply.
"He's Lord Quorn right enough," corroborated Peckover, with a chastened confession of a truth which could no longer be kept in the well.
"How singular," murmured Lady Ormstork, only half convinced and wondering how, if it turned out to be true, she would stand.
A professional-looking elderly man with a brief bag in his hand who had been regarding the group with some attention now came forward.
"Lord Quorn?" he said, addressing the peer.
Quorn jumped round. "What, Powler!" he cried. "Just the man, in the nick of time. Here, you can tell this lady whether I'm Lord Quorn or not. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Mr. Powler, my lawyer, of the firm of Powler, Gaze and Powler, Lincoln's Inn. Come down to see me, eh?"
"Getting no reply to our letters since your lordship left town, I thought I would just run down to Staplewick and see how things were getting on," Mr. Powler explained. "Yes," he continued, "I am quite prepared to vouch for the identity of this gentleman as Lord Quorn."
"There!" cried Lady Ormstork, "I always said so. What a splendid practical joke, though, to try to take us all in. How well you played the part," she said guilefully to Gage. "Dear Lord Quorn," she continued gushingly, "this is all most interesting. May we come up this afternoon us usual? Mr. Buffkin is so anxious to see beautiful Staplewick."
"Come as soon as you like," said Quorn promptly.
"How sweet of you," murmured Lady Ormstork. "Dear Ulrica would be sorry to miss her daily ramble in the lovely park. Wouldn't you, dear?"
"I dare say I should," responded Miss Buffkin indifferently, with a half grimace at Peckover.
"I have," the duke suddenly burst out, "a word to say to Miss Ulrica. I do myself the honour of following your distinguished carriage to The Cracknels."
"Please don't," both ladies protested. "I fear," the elder continued. "I cannot, after thisesclandre, undertake to receive you."
The duke gave a mingled shrug, scowl and bow. "It plunges me into despair," he said, with just a suspicion of sarcasm, "to be deprived of the supreme happiness of milady Ormstork's coveted society. Perhaps, though, I may be humbly permitted an interview with the distinguished Mr. Buffkin?"
Mr. Buffkin, whose distinction required the penetrating eye of the Spaniard to notice it, and whose conversational powers did not seem to be of a high order, looked aggressively uncomfortable. "Is this," he inquired bluntly, "the Spanish gentleman who has been pestering Barbara—I mean Ulrica—with his attentions?"
The duke made a prancing step on the pavement. "Pestering?" he repeated hoarsely, pulling his moustache with nervous fury.
"That," replied Lady Ormstork uncompromisingly, "is the person; the Duke of Salolja."
"I have," said the duke, with a flourish, "the honour to desire a matrimonial alliance with your gracious and adorable daughter."
"No, thank you." Mr. Buffkin's voice was high-pitched, almost squeaky, and quite common. "We don't desire any foreign alliance."
"As Duchesse de Salolja"—began the duke.
"No good," interrupted Mr. Buffkin, with a decisive shake of his very commercial-looking head. "Spanish titles are not a line I care to handle. I've told Bar—Ulrica she can marry whom she likes, but if it's a foreigner, duke or fiddler, she'll have to do it on three hundred a year."
The Salolja lip curled. "His excellency jests. The renowned millionaire Buffkin allows his daughter, the Duchesse de Salolja, three hundred pounds a year! It is rich!"
Mr. Buffkin looked particularly irresponsive. "Who says I am a millionaire?" he demanded shrilly. The duke bowed and indicated Lady Ormstork. "Afaçon de parler," that lady explained. "Anyhow, a very rich man."
"Divide it by ten," said Mr. Buffkin with a twinkle.
The duke looked suddenly chastened, not to say depressed. "The glorious Miss Ulrica," he said with an obvious effort, "would be an inestimable prize without a penny of dowry."
"That's about what she'll have if she marries you," returned Mr. Buffkin, whose eloquence, if not exactly copious, was considerably to the point.
"Shall we drive on?" suggested Lady Ormstork. "Au revoir, Lord Quorn," she gushed. "Till this afternoon, then.Au revoir, Mr. Gage." Not knowing Peckover's name, since the reshuffle, she discreetly left him out.
But Ulrica's parting nod was for him alone.
As the carriage rolled away up the High Street the duke was the first to speak.
"What time does that infernal train leave your unsavoury town of Great Bunbury?" he inquired.
Sharnbrook had called at Staplewick for an authoritative version of certain blood-curdling rumours which had reached him, and he stayed to luncheon.
"Wish I'd known you were having such a thrilling time," he said regretfully. "I'd have come up and helped. Well, I say, with this new twist of the Quorn title our fair friends at the Moat will get a nasty shake, eh? I'm ever so grateful for the way you fellows have relieved the pressure of the fair dodgers; they've eased off wonderfully of late, and I've got my wind again."
"Glad to hear it," observed Peckover. "Always willing to oblige a sportsman."
"Ah," said Sharnbrook in a gratified tone, "if I'd only known you were having fits with that little Spanish bantam, I'd have brought along a rare good bull-dog that would have reduced him to fragments and pulp inside three minutes. A nailing beast, knows his business from A to Z and quite a picture when he's——"
"The little devil of a duke would have put a bullet through him," said Gage, "and that would have been a pity."
"Yes," Sharnbrook agreed, "that wouldn't have suited me. I've only had the beggar a month, and have just got fond of him."
"Even a Spanish bluffer has his uses," observed Gage. "He has knocked the stuffing out of Quorn's bush-ranger."
"Yes," said Quorn, "that brute has no more terrors for me; I suppose, though, I shall have him and Lalage hanging about the place till I can afford to send them back."
"Better keep the fire-irons out of the way," remarked Peckover.
"I'll send the precious pair back home for you, if you don't get the Buffkin money," said Gage magnanimously. "After all, I owe you something. I can't say I've had much fun out of your title, and hope you'll do better with it. But it has been an experience, and I certainly shan't hanker after the peerage again."
Quorn thanked him. "Hope you'll stay on here as long as you fancy," he said.
Gage shook his head. "No thanks. I'm off to-morrow. Too much Hemyock about for me. But I'll run down later and see what you're making of it."
"What's going to become of you?" he asked Peckover. "Got anything more to sell that doesn't belong to you?"
"You can't blame me," Peckover protested. "I kept to my part of the bargain as long as you had any use for it. And I couldn't help it. If you hadn't made a bid for the title I should have had to take it on myself."
"Right you are," responded Gage good-humouredly. "Well, you had better come with me and show me round. You can draw £300 a year as my secretary."
"I'm your man," said Peckover with alacrity. "What I don't show you won't be worth seeing."
Lady Ormstork with Mr. and Miss Buffkin was announced.
The dowager was full of gush. "Dear Lord Quorn! What an amusing incognito! Quite like the lord of Burleigh. One can quite understand your wishing to put people's real affection to the test."
"We won't inquire how the article stood it," Quorn replied bluntly.
"Quite romantic, as dear Ulrica was saying," the lady proceeded, quite unabashed. "May we, before going out, look round the picture gallery? Mr. Buffkin would so like to see the interesting family portraits and wonderful old armour."
If Mr. Buffkin's expression was meant to be corroborative it was a distinct failure. Whatever sentiment might have been read in his commercial face, a yearning for the satisfying of an artistic curiosity was not there.
No objection to the proposal being made, the party proceeded to what Peckover called the ancestral showroom.
"Won't you look after dear Ulrica and show her round?" Lady Ormstork said pointedly to Quorn when the somewhat dreary gallery was reached.
Quorn, nothing loath, attached himself forthwith to Miss Buffkin, who had somehow gravitated to the now negligible Peckover. "Now, Mr. Peckover," he said bluffly, "you ought to know all about these fifth of November Johnnies. Give us a bit of the showman. Take us round the effigies, and don't be too long about it."
On account, perhaps, of Miss Buffkin's obvious preference, Peckover was in higher spirits than his lot seemed to warrant.
"All right," he responded, pulling a ramrod from an ancient gun for use as a showman's wand. "Here goes! Lord Quorn, ladies and gentlemen: with a view to combining instruction with amusement, I propose to give you some points concerning these noble effigies with which the spacious apartment is lined. True, it is only the outer crusts of these distinguished warriors and sportsmen that I am able to bring to your notice. The kernels are all gone, and the shells are—hem!—left tenantless. But, as in these days the tailor makes the man, so we may say that in olden times the blacksmith made him, from which we may conclude that we have the best part," he tapped a suit of armour with his wand, "of the noble house of Quorn remaining with us to this day."
"Hear! hear!" cried Sharnbrook, with more appreciation than tact, while Miss Buffkin laughed sympathetically.
"The clockwork has long since run down," continued Peckover finding the vocabulary of his former vocation coming in usefully; "the striking gear is out of order, on account of the dust getting into it. The hands can point no longer, and the faces have lost their enamel. But we have still the cases—some plain, like this,"—he tapped a suit of plate armour—"some engine turned, like that," pointing to an inlaid suit, "some with open faces, like this yawner," he rattled his wand in the cavity of a vizorless helmet, "some hunters, like this prancer," indicating an equestrian portrait. "To begin at the beginning." He held up a dilapidated helmet in one hand and in the other a fragment of armour. "Sir Guy de Quorn, founder of the family."
There was a laugh from everybody, although Lady Ormstork's was rather belated, that astute dowager's sense of humour being outweighed by her concern at seeing that Ulrica was paying more attention to the flippant little showman than to the more solid worth of Lord Quorn.
"Not much of him remaining," Peckover went on. "Ladies and gentlemen of vivid powers of imagination may reconstruct in their minds from these scanty materials the noble mien, the imposing figure, of this doughty warrior. Pass on to Sir Nicholas de Quorn," he pointed to the suit of armour that stood next, "in a high state of preservation. A mighty man of valour, who had the advantage of living in times when he could knock a man out for sneezing in his presence without being liable to forty shillings or a month. Sir Nicholas spent a useful life in trying his muscle and weight on other people, and was getting his name up nicely, when unfortunately setting out to attack the castle of an absent neighbour in a thunderstorm, his lance acted as a lightning conductor, and he was prematurely cremated. Notice the aperture through which the electric fluid tunnelled its way to his knightly vitals, and the look of blank astonishment with a dash of 'uffiness on the champion's visage."
The said visage being indeed a blank, this fancy seemed to tickle even the unimaginative Mr. Buffkin. Peckover now directed attention to a weird-looking portrait. "Sir Penning de Quorn, surnamed the Feckless. He never did anything distinguished, and only escaped being made Commander-in-Chief through one of the Royal Family fancying himself in a cocked hat." He passed to another canvas. "Sir Brian de Quorn—sometimes called the Buffer, as nothing made any impression on him. He married four wives, three of whom survived him."
Sharnbrook guffawed, and Lady Ormstork looked scandalized.
"Sir Walter the Willing," proceeded Peckover, working up the showman business, as he pointed to the next portrait, "a distinguished advertising politician. He pushed his way to the front and became a Cabinet Minister by his imitations of popular jesters, and by dyeing his raven locks crimson with a secret wash which he purchased from a bald Crusader who had no further use for it. When at length the supply failed and the substitutes he tried to manufacture turned his hair green, and by their offensive odour left him alone on the Treasury Bench he was soon sent to the Upper House, becoming first Baron Quorn."
Mr. Buffkin, for an out-of-place, commercial Philistine seemed, to Peckover's gratification, to be taking in the lecture with genuine amusement.
Thus stimulated, the showman proceeded, "Harboro' de Quorn," he tapped a sporting portrait, "second Baron Quorn, and inventor of the Quorn Hunt. He induced the noble Normans to abandon the shooting of foxes which they consented to, owing to gunpowder being in its infancy, guns taking a quarter of an hour to load and fire, and the wily animal being hard to hit with a bow and arrow. He was the first M.F.H., and having an impediment in his speech he originated the expression, Yoicks! which, being interpreted, was his bovrilized way of cursing people who rode over the hounds."
"Good man," ejaculated Sharnbrook.
Peckover, encouraged by Ulrica's animated interest, went on with his lecture in spite of Lady Ormstork's obvious impatience. His next object was a big suit of armour on which he irreverently rattled his wand. "We now come to the third Baron, Marmaduke, surnamed the Masher. His fatal gift of beauty was the cause of some anxiety—to the married nobility, clergy and gentry of his acquaintance. He was, as you will observe, very particular about the cut of his armour and the shape of his helmet, which was constructed with an extra-size pigeon-hole, in order that the full extent of his handsome physiognomy might be utilized to dazzle the doting damsels. His end, ladies and gentlemen, was, I regret to say, a somewhat melancholy and unusual one. While drinking a stirrup-cup, and trying at the same time to wink over the brim of the goblet at the young lady behind the bar, a portion of the pick-me-up went down the wrong way; to correct which mistake his faithful squire seized a spade and smote him therewith on the back. The clang of the blow on his armour startled his horse, which took to bucking, and at the first attempt laid the coughing nobleman in the ditch. He never wunk again. Notice the rectangular impression of the shovel between the shoulders, also the extra-sized sliding kissing-trap of the helmet so contrived for the purpose of simplifying the process of osculation to which he was addicted."
A marked diversion was here created by the entrance at the farther end of the gallery of Bisgood ushering in the entire Hemyock family. Their arrival was not greeted with that cordiality which is usually desirable and customary; it was, indeed, anything but welcome to any except two of the party. As Quorn, followed by the rest, went forward to receive the visitors, Peckover and Miss Buffkin lingered behind together.
"Like to see the view from the Tower?" he suggested with a grin. Ulrica laughed and they slipped unnoticed through a covered door. From an octagonal chamber a winding stairway led up to the tower. "Come along," said Peckover elatedly.
Ulrica with a mischievous laugh followed, and they soon emerged at the top where floated a tattered flag from a tall staff.
"How lovely," Miss Buffkin exclaimed.
"Never mind the view," said Peckover desperately. "How do you like the new Lord Quorn?"
Ulrica pouted. "I don't see myself Lady Quorn," she answered with a certain amount of decision.
"No," Peckover agreed with conviction. "He's not a bad sort, but he wouldn't be my fancy if I were a pretty girl."
"He's too glumpy for me," Ulrica declared. "And what's more I'm not going to have him."
"What'll the guv'nor say?" Peckover asked dubiously.
Miss Buffkin laughed. "Oh, father won't mind. You see," she went on confidentially, "this coronet racket isn't his idea at all. Not it."
"Yours?"
"Not likely. It is old Ormstork's. We ran across her at the Grand Oceanic at Harrogate. She hung on to us like a stoat on a rabbit. We couldn't make her game out, till one day she asked father what odds he would lay her that I didn't marry a peer. And she has been dragging me about the country ever since, till it has fairly come to pall."
"I should think so," observed Peckover sympathetically.
"I don't know," she continued, "how many noble heads I've been thrown at. But somehow I've always managed to rebound, and sometimes hit the old lady in the eye. You see, I like a live man, not a stuffed peer, with about as much soul as a gramaphone."
"I wish I was a peer," he said ruefully. "I'm alive all right."
"So you are," she agreed, gazing round the depressing park.
"Yes," he said with a wistful touch, "you said you liked me once, when you thought I was something else."
"What was that?" she inquired naively.
"A rich chap; a millionaire."
"Well, aren't you?" she demanded.
"Not exactly," he answered rather lugubriously. "That dream's over. We've been playing a queer game, but it has come to an end sooner than I expected. I'm a poor devil again now, and there's all about it."
For a moment Ulrica's violet eyes rested on him sympathetically. Then they looked away and seemed to be interested in the distant figure of Mr. Treacher who was slouching across the landscape.
"If people are poor," she said presently in a low voice from which all feeling was rigidly excluded, "it doesn't make any difference with me, when I like them."
Peckover jumped up. He could do no less. "Ulrica," he said and his voice trembled, "you like me? Yes, you said you did once. But I can't hold you to that for I was a regular fraud when I got you to say it."
Miss Buffkin gave a little sigh, and with a lingering glance at the uninteresting Mr. Treacher, turned towards the stairway. "All right," she said with an affectation of indifference. "I think I hear some one climbing after us."
The steps were steep and awkward. He had to take her hand, and at the touch his resolution (more honourable than many a better-bred man would have formed) gave way. "Ulrica," he said with a diffident tremor, "you couldn't care for a little nobody like me?"
She was gathering up her skirts for the descent. "I always rather liked you," she confessed.
"You wouldn't marry me?"
"What would Lady Ormstork say?" she objected archly.
"Ulrica, you are not fooling me?"
"Not much," she answered. "By the way, my real name is Barbara. Only the old lady thought Ulrica more classy, and so it had to be Ulrica."
In an instant he had sprung to the top step and his arms were round her. "Barbara, my darling."
"Hark!" she protested struggling.
From below came Lady Ormstork's insistent call.
"Barbara, quick! Is it to be?"
"Poor old Ormstork."
"Bother her. It's your father."
"I think he likes you. You're rather his sort, and Q. isn't," she said over her shoulder as she went down the winding stairs.
At the bottom stood Lady Ormstork looking properly scandalized. Apart from her charge's escapade, her meeting with Lady Agatha had not been conducive to serenity.
"My dearest Ulrica," she said sourly, "how absurd of you to hide yourself away up in that horrid tower. Lord Quorn is hunting for you everywhere."
"I'm so glad he hasn't found me yet," was the not very soothing reply.
"Are you mad, girl?" cried the dowager.
"Not yet. If I marry Quorn you may inquire again."
Lady Ormstork's indignation was so great that she could only glare, first at Ulrica, then at Peckover. "Is this," she demanded in her most withering tones, "the sort of person you prefer to Lord Quorn?"
"All things considered, it is," answered Ulrica boldly.
"You hear that?" screamed the irate dowager to Mr. Buffkin, who had just appeared in his flight from the embarrassing position of a target for the shafts of the Hemyock family. "Your daughter actually refuses the ennobling alliance which I have been at such pains to arrange for her."
"I'm not exactly surprised to hear it," was the unsympathetic reply.
"Perhaps you will be to learn that your daughter has the unheard-of wrongheadedness to prefer a person of this most equivocal description," Lady Ormstork indicated Peckover with a contemptuous wave of her glasses, "to Lord Quorn."
"Ah," said Mr. Buffkin with provoking foolishness. "I dare say she prefers some one lively, and I don't blame her."
"But—but," urged Lady Ormstork, almost speechless with discomfiture, "do you call this person a good match?"
"I should say he matches her better than the lord," was the hopeless reply.
"That's right, father," observed Miss Buffkin.
Lady Ormstork turned and without another word went into the gallery, the others following at a safe distance.