"This is a real pleasure to me," Peckover remarked, determined to get on flirting terms without wasting precious time in preliminary small-talk.
"This lovely day?" Ulrica responded, with an obvious pretence of misunderstanding his drift. "Yes, it is quite a treat."
"I meant," he pursued, with a stimulating glance at the fresh, pretty face, highly provocative now with a roguish smile, "a walk with you. I've been longing for this moment ever since I first set eyes on you."
Her glance of amused surprise suggested that she thought he was plungingin medias reswith a vengeance. "Clearly," she commented, "patience is one of your virtues."
"I don't know about patience," he replied. "If I've waited a long time for my chance, it has not been exactly patience, but because I couldn't get it sooner."
"Everything comes to him who waits," Ulrica observed with a careless laugh, to show she was not taking him too seriously.
"I hope you don't mind the change?" he suggested.
"In the weather?" she asked mischievously.
"Bother the weather! No. From Quorn to me."
"That remains to be seen," she answered. "So far, I have no objection to it."
"Same here. Lady Ormstork is a proper old grandee, but, well, naturally she's not exactly my idea of an afternoon's fun."
"I dare say not," Ulrica said dryly.
"Now you are," he declared boldly.
She ignored the compliment together with the amorous look which accompanied it. "I have often wondered how you and dear old Ormstork were getting on;" she remarked with self-possessed blandness. "One hears of such curious matches nowadays."
For a moment Peckover hardly realized the drift of the remark. Then he stopped dead. "Why, you don't mean to say," he gasped, "you thought I was making love to the old gal?"
She looked intensely amused at his face of disgust. "Lady Ormstork is not bad looking for her age," she suggested wickedly. "You must admit she is rather handsome."
"I dare say," he returned, not certain how far she was in earnest. "It never occurred to me to take stock of her."
Ulrica kept her countenance steady, but her eyes were dancing. "Then your devotion was purely Platonic?" she observed.
"You may call it what you like," he replied, playing for safety. "As I wasn't taking any."
"Ah, then, I suppose it was devotion to your friend, Lord Quorn," she pursued, the corners of her mouth twitching with mischief. "Of course. He saved your life, didn't he? And you—yes; how generous of you."
"Oh, bother my life," Peckover exclaimed with an impatient laugh. They had covered a good deal of ground without getting on very far towards the end he had in view, and any moment now Quorn might run them down.
"I expect poor old Quorn is feeling rather sick by now," he remarked pointedly, "at your giving him the slip and going off with me."
"You don't think he'll be jealous?" she asked with a laugh.
"Shouldn't be surprised."
"There is no real reason why he should be," she said.
"Nor no reason why he shouldn't be—if you like," he rejoined insinuatingly.
"I don't understand you, Mr. Gage," she said, looking at the same time as though she understood him perfectly.
"If you liked me half as well as I like you," he explained bluntly, under the compelling spur of her charms.
"You think it would matter to Lord Quorn?"
"You ought to know best," he returned. "I know it would matter a lot to me. The question is, which do you prefer?"
"Oh, his lordship, of course," she answered mockingly.
"Because he is a lord?"
"Naturally."
"I see," said Peckover catching her tone. "Is that your own original idea or Lady Ormstork's?"
"It is certainly Lady Ormstork's," was the evasive answer.
"But not yours. Not altogether," he urged wickedly. "You might have room in your heart for a little fondness for me?"
She laughed. "Why should I?"
"It would be such a treat," he pleaded.
"You are very, what Lady Ormstork calls, unconventional," she said quizzingly.
"Does that mean nice?"
"It may."
"You can't tell unless you give a fellow a chance," he said amorously, as his arm, extended behind her, somewhat unnecessarily, to put aside a bough, remained there. "Ulrica!" he murmured.
"Mr. Gage!"
"Percival—Percy," he suggested with empressement. "Ulrica, time's short, so don't let's quibble about trifles. You're the loveliest girl I've ever set eyes on," he continued with glib passion, "and I'm desperately in love with you. I've been dying to tell you so all the time, but never could till this blessed chance came along. Ulrica, say you're a little fond of me, in return."
"Mr. Gage!" Ulrica's expression was compounded of indignation, scorn and amusement. But perhaps the last was the only sentiment that was genuine. "It is not necessary," she protested, "to overdo the part like this."
"The part?"
"Lady Ormstork's little scheme," she said coolly. "You need not take the trouble to make it quite so life-like."
"Oh, it's no trouble," he assured her promptly. "It is a pleasure."
"I understood," she observed laughingly, "that the idea was to put it into Quorn's head that he ought to be jealous."
"That's it," Peckover replied readily. "And I'm doing my very best to give him cause for jealousy."
"It is very spirited of you," she said, with her provocative, mischievous twinkle. "But you need not act quite so hard, need you? At any rate till he sees us."
He made a wry face. "Not much fun in waiting till he sees us. It occurs to me this is a little game it pays to play in earnest. That is," he added pointedly, "if both parties are agreeable."
"Ah, that's the question," she said tantalizingly.
"Won't you answer it?" he asked insinuatingly.
"H'm! I rather like you," she admitted. "You are breezy."
"Thanks," he replied. "Then I ought to be in request on a warm day like this."
"Lord Quorn," she said with provoking irresponsiveness, "is breezy. But with him it blows from a rather different quarter. And he is apt to be a little gusty."
"Ah, yes. Dare say he would be," Peckover agreed, recalling certain squally passages in their intercourse. "Well, after all, a change of air ought to be grateful. Does you good."
Ulrica laughed. "With the wind chopping about there is likely to be a storm coming."
"Is there?" he returned. "Then let us take advantage of the fine weather while it lasts."
He was about to give a practical suggestion of how they might make the best of the sunny hours, with his arm only prevented from encircling her waist by a vigorous repulsive action on Ulrica's part, followed by a suggestion that the conditions did not exactly lend themselves to waltzing, when suddenly a man emerged from the bushes and stood in front of them. It was not the Lord Quorn they were expecting, but the real Quorn who had sighted them while prowling about the grounds, and now confronted them with an expression of jealous irritation on his now chronically aggrieved face.
"Hullo, my cunning little puppet," he exclaimed rudely. "Enjoying yourself this fine morning?"
"Trying to," replied Peckover, betwixt resentment and politic submissiveness.
"That's right," said Quorn with a distinctly objectionable sneer. "Poaching on the preserves of the person who calls himself Lord Quorn, it strikes me."
"Who is this rude person?" asked Ulrica, not knowing whether to be amused or alarmed.
"Oh, he's all right," Peckover assured her uneasily.
"Yes," responded Quorn with dismaying suggestiveness. "I am particularly all right. About the only man on the place who is all right, it strikes me."
Peckover, reduced to an apprehensive and gloomy silence, noticed that Quorn's eyes were fixed on Ulrica with a look of unmistakable and more than passing admiration. The aggressive manner was softening too, clearly for the lady's benefit, and indeed Miss Buffkin showed signs of a temptation to laugh at the embarrassment of her cavalier.
"Right you are," Peckover said, nodding to Quorn as pleasantly as the situation permitted, and at the same time trying to get a chance of winking at Ulrica to intimate thereby that she need not take the new-comer seriously. "Well, we must be getting up to the Towers now."
But Quorn showed no intention of budging from their path. His eyes were still fixed in the same resolute admiration on the fascinating Ulrica, and it was manifest that the spell of her beauty was holding him more strongly every moment.
"You run off to the Towers, old man," he ordered Peckover, with a wave of the arm, while his eyes never left the object of their attraction. "You're wanted up there at once. I'll escort the lady."
There was a note of determination in his voice that Peckover had not noticed before. Doubtless it was derived from the enchantment of Miss Buffkin's personality. Peckover dared not disobey. Happily a ruse suggested itself to him. He nodded to Ulrica; "See you again presently," and made off down the winding path.
Scarcely had Quorn time to pull himself together in his overmastering admiration, and frame the preamble of a rough flirtation, when Peckover came rushing back with apprehensive face.
"Well, what's the matter now?" Quorn demanded, upset by the interruption.
"Lions on the prowl," Peckover announced in a loud whisper.
"Lions?" cried the exasperated Quorn. "What do you mean. You must be dr——" Then the meaning flashed upon him, and he grew white. "Not Leos?" he demanded hoarsely.
Peckover nodded warningly. "Both of 'em. Looking nasty. They'll be round the corner in a moment."
Lord Quorn had decided before that moment elapsed not to stay to test the truth of the statement. With an exclamation which savoured less of good manners than of abject, if wrathful, fear, he sprang without a word of leave-taking or excuse into the bushes and disappeared.
Then Peckover winked at the astounded Miss Buffkin.
"That was clever of you," she remarked with a puzzled laugh. "How did you do it?"
"Superior power of intellect," was his somewhat vague and unsatisfying explanation. "Mind can start muscle any day. Never mind that poor chap. Where did we leave off?"
"You wouldn't," she replied significantly. "If I remember rightly."
"No more I won't," Peckover exclaimed, with boldness increased by his late coup. "Wasn't I just——? I don't mind beginning again, if you don't."
His impudence made her burst out laughing. "You are absurd. And you are not treating your friend well."
"P'raps not," he returned. "But when I look at you I feel called upon to treat myself well. Besides, he'll never miss it."
"Miss what?" she asked, innocently or by design falling into his trap.
"A kiss," he answered. "You'll let me have one, Ulrica?"
Miss Buffkin was saved the trouble of dealing with the—perhaps embarrassing—request, by the appearance of Gage, who came up somewhat heated and resentful, followed by Lady Ormstork, whose face wore the look which dowager peeresses wear when their plans, matrimonial and financial, succeed.
Gage,soi-disantQuorn, was, to put it mildly, anything but pleased at Peckover's manoeuvre, Nevertheless he did not take the first opportunity of proposing to the fascinating Miss Buffkin. In point of fact he preferred the role of Philander to that of Benedick. He was in no hurry to settle down, however strongly the superb Ulrica might tempt him to matrimony. He was more than rich enough to treat her wealth as a negligible quantity; added to which he desired to taste the sweets of life as dished up to a bachelor peer, and this was the first of them which had not turned sour in his mouth.
Naturally he was not going to allow any interference or competition on the part of his paid confederate, Peckover. That gentleman, had, he considered, put off the trappings of nobility for a handsome consideration, and was in honour bound not to start an opposition business on his own account, nor to obtain credit in the guise of a millionaire, within an equitable radius from Staplewick, or, indeed, from the person, wherever it might be, of the peer by purchase.
The first practice of the scheme not having produced the desired effect, namely a proposal, it was arranged to repeat it next day; but Gage was too resentfully wide-awake to be taken in again. He stuck to Peckover with all the persistency, and much more than the annoyance, of his shadow, and finally took care as the hour of their visitors' arrival drew near to post himself at the point of interceptance; the wily Peckover remaining at the house in a state of tantalizing discomfiture.
But Lady Ormstork, who had not lived in vain in a world where even peeresses play "beat my neighbour," was equal to the occasion, and more than equal to the suddenly alert Mr. Gage. Perhaps she had anticipated his move; anyhow, she was prepared with a prompt counter.
As Gage met the carriage by the lodge, the driver, being either new or instructed, did not pull up for a hundred yards or so. Then Lady Ormstork quickly alighted and the carriage bowled on at a good pace towards the Towers.
With a wealth of amiability the lady advanced towards Gage who was hurrying up with a lowering face.
"Where's Miss Buffkin?" he cried in a cold, exasperated voice.
Lady Ormstork held out both hands gushingly. "So delighted to come again. So sweet of you to have us!" she crowed. "Another quite heavenly day. And the dear old park looking more lovely than ever."
"But where's Miss Buffkin?" Gage demanded hoarsely, clutching the old lady's double-dealing hands and thinking unutterable things.
"Oh, dear Ulrica is rather tired," was the plausibly artless reply. "She went for a walk to the Scotton Woods this morning. So she has gone on in the carriage and will make herself at home till we come. I am sure that you, as the soul of hospitality will not mind that."
Mr. Gage looked as though he did mind it very much indeed. However, he shut his lips, perhaps to keep back the unspeakable, and began to move on towards the house.
"The park is truly delightful to-day," exclaimed his companion with studied rapture. "The air is simply life-giving. Do let us stroll up by the beech avenue, dear Lord Quorn. It is a sin to hurry indoors on an afternoon like this. Ulrica will not mind."
Gage's face suggested thoughts too poignant for words.
"Shall we stroll round by the rhododendron walk?" Lady Ormstork suggested with a fine air of ignorance of anything abnormal in the situation.
"Must go up to the house first," Gage insisted bluntly, his rage being almost too great for coherent speech. "Was on my way there when you drove in. Just remembered, forgot to give Bisgood an important order."
"Oh, then do let us go by all means," the lady assented graciously, her heartiness stimulated by a wave of satisfaction in thinking that the proposal could not be far off now. "If only you had told us, you might have got into the carriage and driven up with Ulrica. What a pity."
Considering the steps she had taken to obviate such a contingency this was a somewhat bold speech on Lady Ormstork's part. But the grand manner carries a certain, if not altogether convincing, plausibility with it, and disarms rude censoriousness.
So they walked towards the house together; the gracious dowager finding, as was natural, the slight incline up to the Towers rather against anything like pace.
"We have had rather a disagreeable surprise to-day," said Lady Ormstork, summoning back to her side the irritated Gage whose impatience kept him farther in front of her than politeness might have dictated.
"Oh?" he responded discouragingly, wishing she would keep her breath for the pedestrian effort and defer conversation till the Towers and the elusive Miss Buffkin were reached.
"Yes," she proceeded. "I think I told you—or was it Mr. Gage?—of a very persistent suitor of dear Ulrica's, the Duke of Salolja, a fiery Spaniard, who had been paying her great attention in town last season. In fact it was mainly to escape his importunities that we came down here."
"Oh, then you didn't come to see Staplewick?" he observed, between chafing and chaffing.
"That was my object," the lady maintained with dignity. "And I brought dear Ulrica with me to Great Bunbury as to a sanctuary where we could be safe from the duke. Judge, then, of our embarrassment when, driving up the High Street, we saw him coming from the station."
"Awkward, if you've been fed up on him in town and don't want any more," Gage commented.
"Very. He proposed five times at least to Ulrica, and would not take a refusal."
"It's a way they have in Spain, I believe," remarked Gage, wondering gloomily how this new development might interfere with his amusement.
"Still," continued Lady Ormstork, "as I think I told Mr. Gage, one cannot have the dear girl forced into a marriage, even with a Spanish duke, against her inclination. One cannot blame him, poor man; she is lovely, and altogether most adorable; but from our point of view why should she exile herself in Spain for the sake of a man she does not care for?"
"Why, indeed?" assented Gage, wondering what the odds were on the Spanish duke's being a creature of the old lady's imagination.
Meanwhile the fatigued Miss Buffkin had come as an agreeable surprise upon the baffled Peckover, and that alert opportunist had lost no time in making the most of his good fortune.
"Dear old Ormstork has hooked Quorn down by the lodge," she explained laughingly. "But I expect they'll be up here before long by the look on his face as she fastened on him and he saw me bowling on up here."
"Shouldn't wonder," said Peckover with a grin. "Well, if we've got to make him jealous, don't let's lose any time in preliminaries."
"Mr. Gage, you are too absurd," Ulrica remarked as she unwound her feather victorine.
"Don't see much absurdity in that suggestion, anyhow," he returned. "What's the good of a chance if you don't take it?"
"We need not exactly act in earnest," she suggested.
"I've always thought that make-believe was poor sport," he rejoined engagingly. "We were getting on nicely yesterday; if only——"
"Ah, yes," she continued archly; "there's always an if only——"
"If only," he continued, "Quorn wasn't on our track, we need not be in such a hurry to say what's uppermost in our minds. As it is——"
His arm seemed, to her alert eyes, to have a caressing twitch about it. "Shall we go out into the garden?" she proposed, by a plausible manoeuvre putting the table between them.
"Too many men about, setting the place straight," he objected knowingly. "Safer here, and snugger too, Ulrica!"
"Oh, Mr. Gage!" she expostulated, as by a swift dart he got round to her side of the table.
"Ulrica," he said seriously, for since yesterday a wild design and hope had taken possession of him, "Ulrica, need you marry Quorn? Tell me, like a dear girl. You don't love him as much as all that, do you?"
She laughed. "How do you know? I'm not going to tell you."
"It's only for the title," he pleaded, feverishly anxious to arrive at an understanding while the chance lasted. "That's nothing. It can be bought, if you go the right way about it. Ulrica, I don't believe you like him as well as you like me. Tell me you don't. Tell me the truth, dearest."
He seized her hands insistently. There was no doubt about his earnestness and she could hardly laugh at him now.
"I like you well enough," she answered.
"Darling!" he cried with genuine rapture. "Then you'll marry me? Won't you? Say yes. You're your own mistress. Say you'll marry me?"
"How can I?" she laughed evasively. "I've got to marry Quorn."
"Because he's a lord?"
She nodded.
"Is that all?"
She shrugged.
"You like me best?"
"You're more my sort," she was fain to answer. "But it is no good." Then suddenly breaking away she said, "I've just seen another of my admirers, a real Spanish duke."
"Oh, that chap! I've heard of him," said Peckover with sovereign contempt. "Well, you wouldn't look at him again?"
"I daren't," she replied. "I was afraid he'd see me."
"You leave him to me," said Peckover in his grand manner. "I'll settle the Dook. I'll slice the top off the Spanish onion. Ulrica, you'll have me? Hang the title. Have the man you like."
She looked at him. He was very different from the reckless little fugitive who had once tried to put an end to his existence at theQuorn Arms. Prosperity, high living, and a general good time had transformed him, smartened him up, and, backed by a certain native shrewdness, made him fairly presentable. Still—— Ulrica laughed. Her ideas and original breeding were but middle-class in spite of her wealth and expensive education. But for certain successful speculations on the part of Buffkinpère(who knew his striking limitations, and wisely kept in the background) there would have been nothing very unequal in the mating of his daughter with Peckover. And, after all, in spite of the transmuting power of wealth, of changed circumstances and surroundings, human nature has always a tendency to seek and revert to its old level; to find most pleasure and ease in the society of those who are as it once was.
So it was that she made answer to her eager wooer. "I like you well enough, but a rich girl can't choose as she likes."
"I should have thought," he urged, "she can like where she chooses."
"So she can," Ulrica rejoined. "But she can't marry him."
"I'm just as much a gentleman as Quorn," he argued. "He happens to have the title, but I might have had it and fitted the part just as well as he," he added with hidden truth.
"So you might," she agreed. "But you haven't got it. And that makes all the difference."
"I'll get one if you'll marry me," he pleaded, vaguely optimistic on the subject. Then he fancied he heard Gage's voice outside. "I say," he urged with desperate affection, "here they come. Quick. If you love me give me a kiss."
"I don't know that I do," she objected, her voice rising to a half scream of remonstrance as he clutched her.
"Give me the benefit of the doubt," he insisted drawing her face towards him.
But before his lips could reach hers, Lady Ormstork's shrill voice called "Ulrica!" The handle of the door was turned, and Peckover sprang guiltily over as much carpet as he could cover from that interesting take-off, as Gage burst in upon them with a face of suppressed fury which was not diminished by the obvious suggestiveness of the attitudes of the conscious pair.
"Look here, old man," said Gage to Peckover, as they settled down to their cigars after dinner, "you're not playing the game."
"What about?" his confederate inquired blandly. He had felt from Gage's sulky attitude all dinner that something was coming and was consequently prepared for it.
"Your carrying on with Ulrica Buffkin," was the blunt answer. "She is my girl; and you know that as well as I do."
"It's not in our contract that all the girls belong to you," Peckover suggested gently.
Gage frowned. "She came for me. She was after me," he returned in an exasperated tone. "That was the arrangement. And I don't pay you five thousand a year to interfere in my love affairs."
"It's not my fault," Peckover urged coolly, having drunk champagne sufficient for a reckless enjoyment of the controversy, "if the girl fancies a change. It's your business to make yourself sufficiently interesting to keep her affection. If you don't, well, I may as well take her on as any other fellow."
"Don't you talk a lot of conceited nonsense," retorted Gage, keeping down his fury with an effort. "The girl's all right: but she's led by your infernal monkey tricks into thinking that I'm neglecting her; so naturally she pretends to take up with you."
"Well, that's one way of looking at it," Peckover observed with vinous sarcasm.
"It's the only intelligent way," Gage returned.
"From your point of view," his friend rejoined, tossing off a glass of port wine.
"It's from my point of view that we've got to look at the affair," Gage said, with rising anger, for the other's coolness and confidence were more exasperating than his words. "And," he proceeded, banging his fist on the table, "my view of the case is, that if you don't stop your little game and sheer off the Buffkin there's going to be a row."
"I wouldn't," observed Peckover sententiously, "have anything to do with a girl, however good-looking, for whom my sole attraction was my title, and who didn't mind showing as much."
"Has she told you that?" Gage snapped.
Peckover shrugged. "Practically."
"Of course," Gage returned with an ugly mouth, "that's because she's huffy with me, thinking I'm not so keen on her as I ought to be, and you are."
"I suppose her feelings don't count," Peckover retorted, being pretty sure of himself with the fair Ulrica.
"Mine do, at any rate," Gage declared wrathfully. "I've been humbugged enough over this precious title. And as to your expecting me first to take on your revolting Australian pet and then to give up a girl like Ulrica Buffkin, why, you don't diagnose my character right, that's all. This is my show. I'm paying for it, and I'm going to run it."
"Then," returned Peckover, still cool and unmoved by his friend's thumping and shouting, "you'd better make it your business to see who that is prowling round the booth."
Gage's irate eyes followed Peckover's nod to the window. Outside, just discernible in the dusk, the figure of a man was moving to and fro. Gage jumped up and threw open the French window.
"Who are you? What do you want here?" he demanded in a rough and unnecessarily loud tone. Peckover rose and lounged against the mantelpiece, cigar in mouth, lazily interested in the encounter.
The man outside stopped, turned, brought his heels together, and made a low bow. "Have I the honour to address myself to his Excellency the Lord Quorn?" he asked in a high-pitched voice and foreign accent.
"You have. What do you want?" was the ill-matching, even brutal, reply.
The man approached the window; then bowed again. "I have the honour of the friendship of the most gracious Lady Ormstork," he said. "As one who enjoys that privilege, I trust I may not be regarded as a trespasser."
He spoke with such ceremonious politeness that Gage was shamed into gulping down his ill-humour and softening his mode of address. "What can I do for you?" he inquired.
"I have," said the stranger with another courteous flourish, "already given myself the high pleasure of surveying your charming park and castle by moonlight. It is romantic, it is enchanting. And now there but remains to me to crave the honour of a short conference with your lordship. Am I permitted, then, to flatter myself that my request is granted?"
"Oh, yes. Step in," said Gage, not over cordially.
"Before I so unceremoniously cross the threshold of your window," observed the man with another bow, "permit me to announce myself—my name and condition." With more flourishes he produced a pocket-book almost entirely covered with an immense gold coronet and cypher, extracted therefrom a card of unusual dimensions, and with a deep bow presented it to Gage, who drew back into the light, glanced at it, and showed it with a wink to Peckover; that worthy greeting the information it conveyed with a low whistle of amusement.
"Your friend——?" said the stranger with a low bow to Peckover.
"Mr. Gage."
"Ah? I have heard of him too. Mr. Gage, I have the honour." And he bowed again.
When at last he resumed an upright position with some prospect of permanency, the friends could see what manner of man the stranger looked. He was small, wiry and rather bald. His bristling moustache turned up from under the longest nose and above the most prominent jaw nearly into the fiercest eyes they had ever seen. With less aggressively piercing eyes he would have been rather a comical figure; as it was, except when he shut them (which he had a trick of doing), or hid them by bowing, he was no laughing matter. His jutting chin wore a closely clipped Vandyck beard, and his clothes were black.
Both men, as they regarded him, tried to persuade themselves that they were amused, without, however, the result being quite convincing.
"I have the honour," said the stranger, inclining his head and shutting his eyes, "to request—I do not say, demand—the grace of a few words with my Lord Quorn and his honourable friend."
"Have a glass of wine?" Gage proposed.
The stranger made a stately gesture of refusal. "We have a proverb in my country, Spain," he said, "'The thistle before the fig.' You are too kind. But with your permission I will defer the acceptance of your gracious hospitality for the present."
"Not a cigar?" Peckover suggested, pushing along the box.
Again the pantomime of refusal. "At considerable pain to myself, I must decline—at least till I have done my poor best to make myself understood," the man replied, with his eyes shut. "Nevertheless, you will not impose upon me the heavier penalty of seeing you forego the enjoyment of your own cigars?"
They bowed, none the less appreciatively that neither man had entertained the slightest intention of doing so. But they were strangely subdued. Somehow, ridiculous as they assured themselves it was, the stranger's personality chained and fascinated them. He was a little man with an absurd nose, but—— They found themselves staring at him, drinking in every detail, every flourish, as he drew forward a chair with a gesture of asking permission, then sat down and faced them with a quiet mastery of the situation which was horribly disconcerting. So they waited in a silence, half apprehensive, half quizzical, for him to begin, not without a shrewd idea of the purport of the approaching communication.
At length with a preliminary flourish of a ringed hand, and an effective raising and dropping of the fierce eyes, he began.
"You will have already graciously noted by the acceptance of my poor card that it is the Duke of Salolja, Hereditary Grand Sword Bearer to his Most Gracious Majesty the King of Spain, Lord Keeper of the Royal Vaults, Duke also of Oswalta, Marques of Risposta, with many other titles and offices, and a Grandee of Spain,"—at the recital of each succeeding dignity he raised his voice till at the culminating title the reverberation made the glass rattle—"who has the honour to address your grace."
Both men bowed, and at the same time did their best not to feel much smaller than the diminutive duke who held them as an undersized rattlesnake might fascinate a couple of finches.
"I must begin," said the duke, with what looked like the dangerous calm of a quiescent volcano, "by craving your grace's most amiable patience while I touch, very briefly, on a few points which stand out in my family history, the chronicles of the noble House of Salolja, of which I have the honour to be the present unworthy representative."
Peckover glanced at Gage and his look said, "Family history. We've got hold of a crank," and they both looked less uneasy.
"Families have their characteristics and idiosyncrasies," pursued the duke, nodding his head to and fro sententiously. "In my country, Spain, this is peculiarly the case. Family tradition is strong, it is tenacious, inexorable, immovable." At each succeeding adjective his voice rose till it reached the climax in an intense scream. Then he dropped back quite casually into a conversational tone, and proceeded—
"It is a notorious tradition in my family that we never suffer an interloper in affairs of the heart."
The faces of his two listeners indicated a realization that he was now coming to business, and their interest visibly quickened.
"In the year," the duke threw back his head, as though searching for the date in the ceiling, "1582, my noble ancestor, Alfonzo de Salolja was pleased to love a Castilian lady of great beauty, Donna Inez de Madrazo. A certain vain Hidalgo, one Lopez de Fulano, was rash enough to cast eyes on her and enter the lists with him. Alfonzo did not insult the lady by questioning her preference. He ran de Fulano through the heart. His blood is still to be seen on the Toledo blade which hangs in my poor palace in Segovia."
He paused to let the anecdote soak in, before pouring out another. His audience looked interested, but uncertain in what spirit to take the recital.
"Nearly a hundred years after that," the duke resumed, chattily reminiscent, "a rash Frenchman, the Comte de Gaufrage, suffered himself to indulge a passion for the lovely Donna Astoria de Rivaz y Cortano, heiress of the de Rivaz lands and wealth. Duke Miguel de Salolja, who at that date represented my honoured family, heard of this breach of punctilio on the morning of the day he had appointed for offering the fair Astoria his hand and dukedom. By noon the Comte de Gaufrage was in Purgatory and Duke Miguel in Paradise."
"Both killed?" asked Gage.
"Cut him out?" suggested Peckover.
"My ancestor," the duke replied in stately tones and with a flash of the eyes, "did not die till thirty years later. And," he turned to his second questioner with a bow and a wave of the hand, "permit me to tell your Excellency, no duke of the Saloljas ever stooped to 'cut out' as you term it. We do not enter into competition. We have a shorter and more effectual way. I may explain that by noon the Comte was in his coffin, and Duke Miguel accepted by the lady."
The tone seemed to snub their denseness of comprehension. Peckover accepted the elucidation with a faint and inept smile.
For a few moments there was silence as the duke sat immobile; confident in, as it were, the cloak of homicidal tradition in which he had wrapped himself.
Then with a suddenness which made the two jump (for he was beginning to get on their nerves) he plunged again into his blood-stained narrative.
"To pass over many like instances of this family trait, and come to comparatively modern times," he said pleasantly, "it happened to my great grandfather, Duke Christofero, to commit a deplorable mistake. He and his neighbour, the Prince de Carmona, unknown to each other, loved two sisters, the daughters of the Marques de Montalban. One night they both determined to serenade their respective lady-loves. When the duke arrived at the Castle he heard a guitar, and came upon the unfortunate Prince beneath the windows of the ladies' apartments. Only when he was drawing his rapier out of the Prince's left lung did he learn that it was Donna Maria and not Donna Lola for whom the compliment had been intended. It was unfortunate; nevertheless it tends to illustrate the working of the traditional law which governs our house."
"Oh, yes. I believe that sort of mistake did often happen in the good old times," was the not altogether confident remark of Peckover, who felt he must make a stand against this sanguinary catalogue.
A flash from the duke's remarkable eyes, brought any further tendency to volubility to a full stop.
"Such occurrences," he said pointedly, "are, pardon me, by no means confined to bygone times. The traditions of my house will end only when my race is a thing of the past. In the year—to venture with your courteous permission to resume—in the year 1841, a titled compatriot of your own, Sir Digby Prior, allowed himself at one of the Escurial balls the freedom of paying too much attention to my father'sfiancée, the sainted lady whose unworthy son I have the honour to be. Next morning they met on the Buen Retiro Park, from whence in that same hour Sir Digby was carried with a bullet in his brain. Yes!" He sighed reflectively. "It is not perhaps a cheerful, or agreeable record; still it is curious and interesting to trace the same inevitable characteristic of our blood in almost each succeeding generation."
"Very," Gage agreed.
"Most singular," Peckover chimed in mechanically, as he tried to fall into a pose of polite indifference under the duke's eye.
The little man received their appreciative commonplaces with a grave bow. "We have now arrived at a point," he said glaring at them, but speaking with quiet if significant deliberation, "when it becomes my duty to claim the honour of your unwavering attention."
The request was in the highest degree unnecessary. Both men were incapable of greater heed than they were already giving. "Now it's coming," was the simultaneous and uneasy thought in their minds.
"But I fear the politeness with which your graces have brought yourselves to listen to my long preamble has caused your cigars to extinguish themselves," remarked the duke, with an ambassadorial smile. "Pray let me have the supreme pleasure of seeing you relight them."
"Having now," resumed the duke, when the two men had, with a fine affectation of nonchalance, but with somewhat unsteady hands, lighted up again, "taken you through as much of the history of my family as to persons of your acuteness of perception is necessary, I have the honour to invite your attention to the moral of my house's story."
His listeners, by this time mentally detached from each other, and held pitilessly and without respite by those auger-like eyes, puffed nervously at their now tasteless cigars, and by their apprehensive silence bade him proceed.
"The present unworthy holder of the dukedom of Salolja," that person continued, with a deprecatory gesture, "—to leave ancient history behind us—is for the moment in one of those inexpedient positions to which his ancestors were occasionally liable, and from which they invariably took prompt measures to extricate themselves. In the province where we hold sway there is a proverb, 'A Sololja's rival should make his will.' When one wishes to describe a useless action, 'It is like granting a lease to the rival of a Salolja.' Meaning that he does not live to enjoy it. The phrase is expressive."
"Rather neat," commented Peckover, with an effort.
"Now to come to the point," pursued their tormentor, his fierce eyes in singular contrast to his bald head and deliberate speech, "the present Duke of Salolja—to keep the discussion conveniently impersonal—has made up his mind to contract an alliance with a certain English lady; a commoner, it is true, but one whose beauty and wealth may claim to make up, in a measure, for genealogical deficiencies. The lady's name is Miss Ulrica Buffkin."
Both hearers nodded an acquaintance with it.
"It has come to the duke's knowledge," continued that same nobleman, raising his tone to a slightly minatory pitch. "That another person, an Englishman, I should say an English nobleman, has, unwittingly I am ready to allow, been led into paying certain attentions to the lady in question. I am sure that to capable and clever men like yourselves it is not necessary for me to set myself the disagreeable task of pointing out the inevitable result of such an unwarranted and deplorable interference should it be persevered in."
He paused, took out a silk pocket-handkerchief embroidered with a flamboyant coronet and cypher, and passed it lightly across his lips, never taking his vicious eyes off the two men who had by this, under the paralysing gaze, assumed the appearance and almost the condition of a pair of waxworks.
As the lengthening pause seemed to demand a response, Gage with a great effort roused himself from the Tussaudy rigidity, and, with a desperate attempt at boldness, replied—
"You might let us know, while we are on the subject."
"No harm in mentioning it," Peckover chipped in with a somewhat ghastly pretence of a smile.
The little duke thrust back the handkerchief into his breast pocket, and then threw out his hands expressively. "I should have imagined," he replied, with a transcendentally threatening eye, "that men of the sagacity and penetration of your graces would have found no difficulty in deducing from the instances you have just heard with such admirable patience, the fate in store for any one who is rash enough to enter the lists with a Duke of Salolja."
His voice, rising with abrupt suddenness, thundered out the last words with a volume and intensity which made his rivals fairly jump in their uneasy seats. Anyhow, the wordy Grandee had come to the point, and the point had to be faced or run from.
Gage, whose mode of life had kept his nervous system in better order than his companion's, was the first to reply.
"That's all very well," he said, bracing himself to join issue with the fiery little Castilian, and assuming a courage he did not feel. "But this is a free country; and in these enlightened days you can't run a man through the body before lunch because your best girl has the good or bad taste to prefer him."
Fury leapt like a flame in the duke's eyes, but he replied calmly, even suavely, "Your excellency is wrong. What is to prevent me?"
"The police," Peckover suggested promptly, trying to catch boldness from Gage's attitude.
The duke burst into a loud and particularly unpleasant laugh. "The police? Really, your graces compel my amusement. May I ask you three questions?"
"Three dozen, if you like," answered Gage unsteadily.
The duke accepted the bounty with a bow. "Three will suffice." Whereupon very loudly, "One." Then in a normal tone, "How many police have you within a radius of, say, three miles from Staplewick Towers?"
"One or two," Gage was forced to answer rather sheepishly.
The duke bowed, this time with a sarcastic smile.
"Two." Again the disturbing, superfluous shout. "How long would it take you to send for the nearest, supposing you found him at home?"
"Oh, about twenty minutes," Gage tried to reply casually.
Once more the absurdly loud enumeration. "Three. And how long do you consider it would take me to put a bullet through your body?"
Simultaneously with the question a glittering object shone in his hand. It was the highly polished barrel of a revolver which he had whipped out casually with a deftness which seemed born of practice, and with which he now covered his rival.
Both men started to their feet with blanched faces.
"Here, I say!" Peckover remonstrated in ill-concealed terror.
"How long?" sang out the little demon of a duke in his commanding voice. "Oblige me by answering the question."
"A second, I suppose," gasped Gage. "Now please turn that revolver away."
"That is," proceeded the duke in a tone of satisfaction, "nineteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds before the policeman arrives." Still holding the weapon in his hand, but now pointing to the floor, he rose, brought his heels together and bowed. "I trust, milord Quorn and Mr. Gage, my most honourable friends, that at length we understand one another." Then he sat down again, his aggressive eyes moving with mechanical regularity from one man to the other, since the exigencies of the moment had sent the friends apart.
But now, throughly roused by the critical situation, Peckover spoke. "I don't know, my lord dook, whether you are aware that we have strict laws in this country against murder."
"And," put in Gage, "against carrying firearms without a licence."
The duke laughed scornfully and with superfluous volume. "Do your Excellencies think we have no such laws in Spain? And do your graces suppose that if the Dukes of Salolja had cared a fig for them the occurrences which I have narrated to you would have happened? You hang a man for what you call murder here. But have you ever heard of your English law hanging a Grandee of Spain? And do you think you would be allowed to do so? Pah!" He snapped his fingers with a noise like the crack of a whip. "What is your English law compared with the immemorial traditions of the Saloljas? NOTHING! Shall it stand between a Salolja and his vengeance, his desire? NEVER!"
He shouted the answers to the last two of his many questions with scornful vehemence. His manner was, no doubt, irritating, and that, perhaps, accounted for Peckover's boldness.
"You don't bluff us you are above the law," he said, trembling at his own temerity. "If we haven't hung a Spanish Grandee as yet, it's because none of you have killed anybody over here that I remember."
The demon duke grinned and spread out his hands before him, as though sweeping away a feeble protest.
"My gracious friend, you jump at hasty conclusions. Who talks of killing, of murder. Faugh! It is a vulgar word. Accidents happen, here as in Spain; deplorable, fatal accidents. Firearms go off, almost of themselves; it is sad to think how easily they go off. I could tell you stories of such miserable fatalities in my own family, but you have probably heard enough of the ways of the Saloljas for one evening. Death is very near us always," he continued sententiously. "So near that the healthiest of us is only just alive. Which of us bears a life worth an hour's purchase? NONE! And the man who trifles with a Salolja cannot call the next moment his own. There it is. Accept it or not, it is the truth, the eternal, bitter, naked truth."
His voice was like a Nasmyth hammer, now pounding, roaring, seeming to shake the room, now gentle and soft as a shy schoolgirl's. As he concluded his speech his tone sank into a solemn hush, indicative of the awesome inevitable. For some moments there was silence in the room, save for the ticking clock. Then, when the tension had lasted as long as was desirable, the duke rose, and advancing to the table took the finest peach in the dish. The flashing had now faded from his eyes, and the expression on his face was truculently amiable.
"I sincerely hope I have not wearied your excellencies," he observed. "It has been most condescending and gracious of you to let me explain myself at such length. A veritable poem of a peach; I have not met its fellow in England. May I now, since our slight misunderstanding is at an end, do myself the honour of drinking a glass of wine with your graces?"
Rousing themselves from the gloomy preoccupation of their discomfiture, their graces, with a quite futile pretence of ease, hastened to minister to their undesirable visitor's request. That worthy proceeded to toss off a couple of bumpers with a relish commensurate with his long and thirst-giving harangue. "If I ask further for one of your graces' excellent cigars," he suggested with a pleasantness which could not seem other than grim, "it is as another proof of how unwilling I am to bear malice. Ah!" He lighted the cigar and blew out a long cloud with evident enjoyment.
"Unlike my ancestors I make allowances," he declared significantly. "Unlike them again, I never strike without warning. Yes," he added, dropping his voice into a genial tone; "it is perhaps well for us that we did not live, and in the same relations one to another, a hundred, two hundred years ago. At least we should not all three be enjoying these superb cigars."
It was a difficult sentiment for the smarting pair to respond to. "Just so," was all Peckover, with an awkward laugh, could think of.
"I am ashamed to have stayed so long," said their guest, with an expressive glance at the clock. "But it is better to risk missing the strict punctilio than to have to intrude again. Your excellency's house and park are delightful. I felicitate myself on my visit. Your cigars are exquisite. I take another, in token of our better understanding, to enjoy on my way to your somewhat depressing Great Bunbury. Good-night, milord Quorn. Good-night, Mr. Gage. A thousand compliments and adieux to you both. May it never be necessary for us to meet on less amicable terms than those which prevail between us at present. Once again my most distinguished homage. Adieu."
With his heels together he made to each man a most profound bow; then turned to the window, opened it with a sure touch upon the latch, turned again, bowed, and disappeared into the night.
For some moments the two men stood staring speechless into the darkness. Then their eyes met.
"This is a glorious title," said Gage, clipping out the words with bitter intensity. "I am having a ripping time with it. It's a fine thing to be alive just now."
"All things considered, it's lucky we are alive," was Peckover's dry but feeling response.