"Oh, I'll be polite," he growled. "By God, I'll be polite! One may be suffering the tortures of the damned, but one must smirk and be polite!"
He snatched up the first thing to hand, a helmet that stood on a case, and brought it down below the screen.
"Katherine, Viviette says I'm not delivering my lecture properly. I beg your pardon. I'm rather shy at first, but I get warmed up to my subject. What would you like to hear about?"
Katherine exchanged a glance with Austin.
"Don't you think we might put off the rest till another day?"
"Yes, old chap. Put it off till to-morrow. It's your birthday, you know."
"Birthday? What's that got to do with it? Who knows what may happen between then and now? No--no. I'm all right," he cried wildly. "You're here, and you've got to listen. I'll get into fine form presently. Look!" he said, pointing to the helmet he was holding. "Here is a Cromwellian morion. It was picked up by an ancestor at Naseby. It has a clean cut in it. That's where an honest gentleman's sword found its way into the knave's skull--the puritanical, priggish, canting knave."
He threw the helmet with a clatter on to the table as if it had been the knave's canting head. He caught up a weapon.
"This is a partisan. All you had to do when you got it inside a man was to turn it round a bit, and the wound gaped and tore. This tassel is for catching the blood and preventing it from greasing the handle. Here's a beauty," he went on, taking a sword from the row he had laid out for display, and holding it out for Katherine's inspection. "One of the pets of the collection. A French duelling sword of the middle of the eighteenth century." He gave a fencer's flourish. "Responsive to the hilts, eh? Ah! It must have been good to live in those days, when you could whip this from your side at a wrong done and have the life of the man that wronged you. The sweet morning air, the patch of green turf, shoes off--in shirt and breeches--with the eyes of the man you hate in front of you, and this glittering, beautiful, snaky thing thirsting for his heart's blood. And then--"--he stood in tierce, left hand curved, holding in tense fierceness the eyes of an imaginary opponent--"and then a little clitter-clatter of steel, and, suddenly--ha!--the blade disappears up to the hilt, and a great red stain comes on the shirt, and the man throws up his arms, and falls, and you've killed him. He's dead! dead! dead! Ha! what a time to live in!"
Katherine uttered a little cry of fear, and grew pale. Viviette clapped her hands.