The silent man opposite looked at him, still silent, still smiling; but into his eyes there crept a shade of pity. There was, indeed, something pitiable in this pomposity so fallen, in this tyranny so powerless—in Sir Arthur, brandishing his rag of defiance, standing the while in all the nakedness of his cause.
"You are witness, Châtelard," he was insisting.
M. Châtelard, pinching the wire of his glasses, lifted his gaze to inspect the portrait which hung in the panel over the mantelpiece; then brought it solemnly back to Harry English's countenance. He turned and spoke, not without enjoying the consciousness of the weight of his own adverse verdict.—Expect no bowels of mercy from one whose life-work is the study of other people's brains.
"Alas! my excellent Sir Gerardine; I fear there above hangs a witness with a testimony more emphatic than ever mine could be."
Sir Arthur rolled his bloodshot eye towards the picture—another of those infernal daubs! From the first instant he had set eyes on them, all over the place, he had thought it in bad taste—in confoundedly bad taste. Last night, in the bedroom, the sight of one of them had put him off his balance altogether. But he had been, then, in a nervous state. He knew better now.
"Pooh!" He tried to laugh, but his mouth twitched down at the corners, with a childish tremble. "If every black-haired man is going to claim to be my wife's first husband——"
But everything was against Sir Arthur this morning. Who knows how far he might have gone in convincing the inconvenient English that he could not possibly be himself, if that objectionable person, Bethune—it was most reprehensible of Rosamond to have received the fellow in her husband's absence—had not marched in upon them.
The Major of Guides stood a second, with beetling brows, measuring the situation. Then, without a word, he strode across the room and took up his post beside his comrade, so close that their shoulders touched. It was mute testimony, but more convincing than spoken phrase.
M. Châtelard experienced one of those spasms of satisfaction which the discovery of some fresh trait characteristic of the race under his microscope never failed to cause him.
Those two silent ones, with what force they imposed themselves! "Voilâ bien, l'Angleterre—sa morgue, son arrogance! She steps in—her mere presence is enough. She disdains argument, she stands passive, massive, she smiles—she remains. As for my poor Sir Gerardine, he represents here the enemy. Ah, sapristi, it is not astonishing if it makes him enraged."