"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's
_fiancee_, 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."