"It would be sheer lunacy," he said to himself. "Perhaps she is carrying on like this to annoy me—punishing me for——"
He rode home a little way behind those other two, full of vexation and bewilderment. Nothing had happened of which he could reasonably complain. He could scarcely kick this man out of his house because he inclined his head at a certain angle—because he dropped his voice to a lower key when he spoke to Christabel. Yet his very attitude in the saddle as he rode on ahead—his hand on his horse's flank, his figure turned towards Christabel—was a provocation.
Opera bouffe duets—recitations—acted charades—bouts rimés—all the catalogue of grown-up playfulness—began again after dinner; but this evening Leonard did not stay in the drawing-room. He felt that he could not trust himself. His disgust must needs explode into some rudeness of speech, if he remained to witness these vagaries.
"I like the society of barmaids, and I can tolerate the company of ladies," he said to his bosom friend, Jack; "but a mixture of the two is unendurable: so we'll have a good smoke and half-crown pool, shilling lives."
This was as much as to say, that Leonard and his other friends were about to render their half-crowns and shillings as tribute to Captain Vandeleur's superior play; that gentleman having made pool his profession since he left the army.
They played till midnight, in an atmosphere which grew thick with tobacco smoke before the night was done. They played till Jack Vandeleur's pockets were full of loose silver, and till the other men had come to the conclusion that pool was a slow game, with an element of childishness in it, at the best—no real skill, only a mere mechanical knack, acquired by incessant practice in fusty public rooms, reeking with alcohol.
"Show me a man who plays like that, and I'll show you a scamp," muttered little Monty in a friendly aside to Leonard, as Jack Vandeleur swept up the last pool.
"I know he's a scamp," answered Leonard, "but he's a pleasant scamp, and a capital fellow to travel with—never ill—never out of temper—always ready for the day's work, whatever it is, and always able to make the best of things. Why don't you marry one of his sisters?—they're both jolly good fellows."
"No coin," said Monty, shaking his neat little flaxen head. "I can just contrive to keep myself—'still to be neat, still to be drest.' What in mercy's name should I do with a wife who would want food and gowns, and stalls at the theatres? I have been thinking that if those St. Aubyn girls have money—on the nail, you know, not in the form of expectations from that painfully healthy father—I might think seriously of one of them. They are horridly rustic—smell of clover and beans, and would be likely to disgrace one in London society—but they are not hideous."
"I don't think there's much ready money in that quarter, Monty," answered Leonard. "St. Aubyn has a good deal of land."