CHAPTER XXXIV
The sight of yesterday's visitor seemed to paralyse both men, and the grim fascination that had held them before now clutched them again. Gage, who had, under the influence of Lady Ormstork's bitterly persuasive tongue, began to pluck up courage, and to view the magnificent Miss Buffkin once more in a proprietary right, now visibly wilted. He even glanced round at the door, as though meditating flight. Peckover whistled uncomfortably and tunelessly through his clenched teeth; a more elaborate expression of feeling he did not feel equal to. Then they both glanced somewhat helplessly at Lady Ormstork in search of some indication of a plan of campaign.
"Actually intruding here again," the lady exclaimed indignantly, as the duke's purposeful strides took him out of sight behind a hedge of laurels. "If I were you, Lord Quorn, I would not hesitate in ordering him out of your grounds."
Gage did not look the least inclined to act upon the suggestion. "Oh, let him walk about there, if he likes," he replied with a weak laugh.
"Walk about?" repeated the lady warmly. "But he's walking after Ulrica. It is not to be tolerated. I was under the impression that I had given him his congé. Lord Quorn—Mr. Gage," she turned fiercely upon Peckover, "as Lord Quorn seems content to endure this intolerable conduct rather than be man enough to protect his future wife from this tiresome person, perhaps you will go and intimate to the duke that his presence is undesirable."
Peckover's reception of the order did not suggest alacrity. "No affair of mine," he protested with a resolution born of care for his own skin. "Don't believe in interfering in other people's business. My motto is——"
"Motto!" cried Lady Ormstork scornfully. "Is chivalry quite dead, that a lovely girl like dear Ulrica must be persecuted and victimized by an under-sized desperado, and two Englishmen stand by tamely and allow it?"
Notwithstanding this somewhat pointed appeal, the two Englishmen seemed still disinclined to sally out and try conclusions with the Spanish terrorist. Luckily, however, the argument was diverted by the appearance on the lawn of three persons, the duke, Miss Buffkin, and Lord Quorn, all with looks of stress on their faces.
"Ah, here they come," said Lady Ormstork with her teeth set ready for battle. "Who, may I ask, is that person with them?" she asked, lowering her eye-glasses and turning to the men who were for the moment preoccupied in weighing the merits of the respective courses of standing their ground or seeking a sanctuary in the wine cellars.
"That? Oh, that's Jenkins," answered Gage, wondering what he was doing in the galère.
"Jenkins?" Lady Ormstork echoed the name, as though it did not convey very much to her.
"One of my people," Gage explained, in an agony of indecision as to the propriety of flight.
By this time the approaching trio had reached the window, inside which Lady Ormstork stood grimly waiting for them. Next instant the duke had thrown it open and was with a flourish and a bow inviting Ulrica to enter. A similar though modified pantomime having been gone through in the case of Lord Quorn the three at length stood inside the room, with the irate Lady Ormstork facing them, and with Gage and Peckover within jumping distance of the door.
"Duke," Lady Ormstork's sharp tone rang through the room like a defiant bugle-call, "this is most extraordinary, not to say unseemly, conduct on your part."
The representative of the Saloljas was, however, far too busy in distributing elaborate bows and extravagant greetings all round to be in a position to give heed at once to the lady's challenge. In Spain punctilio gives way to nothing, not even to an angry old lady's impatience.
Presently when Messrs. Gage and Peckover had been favoured with bows and compliments into which they were inclined to read their death warrants, the duke raised the top of his coercive head the whole of his five feet three inches from the floor and observed blandly—
"Ten million apologies, most noble lady. I am ashamed to confess I did not hear the remark you did me the undeserved honour to make."
In no wise disconcerted, the most noble lady repeated the remark, slightly strengthening the language in which it had originally been couched.
"Ah—h!" The duke's grimace and pantomime expressed deprecation with a more elaborately hideous vim than that feeling had probably ever been clothed with before. "Most illustrious lady," he protested, "what would you have? The state of my unworthy heart is well known to you. And the heart excuses everything—everything."
The repetition of the last word had a sinister sound in the ears of Gage and Peckover. With its dire comprehensiveness it seemed to include their lives in its sweeping embrace.
But Lady Ormstork, with sundry material reasons to influence her judgment, was far from accepting the proposition. "It does not," she objected stoutly. "To force your attentions where they are distasteful is inexcusable."
"It is," rejoined the duke, with the light of battle in his eyes, "clearly my duty to render acceptable the homage of my affection."
"It is quite hopeless," declared Lady Ormstork curtly.
"I believe not," insisted the duke with, under the circumstances, an admirable display of assurance.
Lady Ormstork glanced with equal confidence at her protégée. "Miss Buffkin will bear me out."
"Yes. It's no good, duke," said the young lady with discomfiting promptness. "You are not my sort."
The duke accepted the verdict with a shrug, and at once proceeded to misread it. "The Dukes of Salolja," he said with a touch of defiant pomposity, "have never permitted inequality of birth to be a bar in affairs of the heart."
Lady Ormstork had also her personal rules of life. And one was never to allow herself to be bluffed out of a possible advantage. "You mistake, duke," she said suavely. "Miss Buffkin wishes delicately to suggest that she does not return your affection, and therefore, the alliance you propose is out of the question."
"I can," replied the duke, in no way abashed, "afford to wait for the return of my affection."
As he glanced significantly round at the three silent men he seemed a very monument of determination.
"But," Lady Ormstork maintained, "we do not wish you to wait. There would be no point in your waiting. Miss Buffkin has made up her mind to contract a quite different alliance."
"Ah?" The duke opened his mouth wide and emitted an exclamation in tone and mode of utterance worthy of a surprised hyæna. Then shutting his mouth and opening his eyes whose light the facial contortion had absorbed, he added with, to certain of the party at least, disquieting significance, "Our Spanish proverb says, 'He who buys ground may rest under it before he can repose above it.' May I, without offence, ask the ever gracious Miss Buffkin whether you correctly interpret her sentiments and intentions?"
The ever gracious Miss Buffkin looked as defiant as her questioner—and much less polite, as she answered, "That's right enough. I'm going to marry an Englishman, for one thing."
"Ah?" Again the zoological grimace. "Has the radiant Miss Buffkin honoured any particular Englishman with her much-to-be coveted preference?"
The question, accompanied as it was, by a sweeping and minatory glance, had the immediate effect of making two Englishmen in the room try to look severely recusant and anti-matrimonial.
And under the influence of that fell glance Gage took a desperate resolve.
Lady Ormstork, who believed in coming to the point where her own interests were concerned, answered with bold preciseness, "Certainly. Miss Buffkin is going to marry Lord Quorn."
At the declaration the duke made a face which raised his bristling moustache till his eyes glared through a fan-like screen of hair, the real Lord Quorn uttered an exclamation which conveyed no definite sentiment, Gage turned the colour of the fruit associated with his name, and Peckover, trying to persuade himself that the discussion did not touch him, whistled softly through his teeth.
"Lord Quorn!" repeated the duke in a tone of bland surprise. "No. That may have been. But I fancy, most illustrious lady, you are mistaken. Milord Quorn has renounced all pretentions to the lady's hand."
"Lord Quorn has done nothing of the kind," Lady Ormstork denied stoutly.
The duke turned to Gage, polite yet threatening. "Doubtless milord Quorn will do me the honour to confirm what I have stated."
"Lord Quorn," interrupted the old lady, "will do nothing of the sort."
The duke raised himself on tip-toe and fixed the apprehensive Gage with his fiercest glare. "Milord Quorn will do so—or lay himself open to the consequences," he insisted, with a truculent nod of command.
"I—er—of course I—I have no wish to stand in the lady's light," Gage stammered weakly.
"Light?" echoed Lady Ormstork in a high-pitched voice. "I fancy, my dear Lord Quorn, we are the best judges of the quarter the light shines from."
"It shines," observed the duke with grim imperturbability, "from Spain."
"It shines," retorted the dowager with haughty insistence, "from Staplewick Towers."
"I am deeply grieved," said the duke, "to sound a discordant note in the symphony of your distinguished plans. But I declare that the adorable Miss Ulrica shall never marry Lord Quorn."
"I say she shall," retorted Lady Ormstork defiantly.
"She shall not—even if a regrettable necessity should dictate that there be no Lord Quorn for her to marry."
Thus the duel proceeded; the passes growing hotter and keener every moment. Miss Buffkin had subsided on a sofa and from her attitude might have been an uninterested and slightly bored spectator. And all the while the three men who looked on said nothing, wisely, perhaps. But their interest in the encounter was not to be judged by their silence, as they watched their champion's efforts with mixed feelings. They were, all three, in love with the beautiful Miss Buffkin, but each was likewise consumed by an intense regard for his own safety.
"It is not," said Lady Ormstork with dignity—and that aristocratic matrimonial agent could be very dignified when she chose—"the fashion among English gentlemen to indulge in absurd threats when their pretensions are rejected. In this country we took leave of the Dark Ages long ago."
"Absurd threats, eh?" the little duke repeated, with a laugh which fell chill and jarring on, at any rate, Gage's ear. "We shall see. Yes, we shall see—those of us"—he glanced fiercely round the room—"who are alive next week—how far my threats are vain."
"Ridiculous nonsense!" Lady Ormstork exclaimed with a scornful and somewhat stagey laugh.
The duke bowed. "I have the honour, most illustrious lady, to receive your ultimatum, and to accept it. It is horribly unfortunate that we find ourselves diametrically opposed. But so it is; and I have no more to say—to you, except to bid you au revoir, with my most distinguished compliments."
He bowed very low to her, then to Ulrica, after which with a kind of fiendish politeness to each of the three men, taking Gage with marked intention last. "Milord Quorn," he said, drawing back his lips till his moustache stood up like two wings against his cheeks, "I regret that my friendly hint has not been taken. You have called the game. I shall have the honour of playing it—as," he raised his voice, "as my honoured and distinguished ancestors have always played it."
"Don't talk nonsense, duke," said Lady Ormstork sharply.
The representative of the distinguished and bloodthirsty Saloljas raised himself abruptly from a bow he was elaborating, and faced the lady. "A Salolja," he said, with as much dignity as a short stature coupled with a long nose is capable of, "never talks nonsense."
"If you presume," she continued threateningly, "to annoy Lord Quorn——"
"A Salolja," he interrupted, with a significant smile, "never annoys."
"Or threaten—' pursued Lady Ormstork.
"A Salolja," he returned, with a Castilian gesture of deprecation, "never threatens. It is only within the last hundred and fifty years that he has condescended to warn."
"We can warn too," retorted the lady doggedly. "Warn the police."
The duke looked quite tickled. "Most gracious lady," he replied, showing his teeth in a grin from which none of his male listeners derived any mirth, "you make me smile. I think the question of your police we have already analysed, I and the excellent Lord Quorn. If your graces have no more notable argument to put forth to arrest the traditions of the Saloljas I will ask your gracious permission to take my leave—for the present."
He accompanied the last three words with a glance which boded battle, murder and sudden death to at least one of his hearers. Then, with a sweeping bow, he turned to the door.
"Stop!" cried Gage in a voice resonant with fear. "You are all making a mistake. I am not Lord Quorn!"