Part 46 (1/2)

Whether the duke realized that the refusal contained a certain admixture of defiance is uncertain. Anyhow, he took two strides with his short legs, and, at uncomfortably close quarters, repeated the invitation.

But Peckover sat tight. ”I'm not Lord Quorn,” he maintained doggedly, ”and I've had as much fresh air as I want for one day.” His complexion was green with fear. With the searching fire of those eyes upon him he felt it was as much as he could do to keep from shrivelling up; still, what mind panic had left him was dominated by the a.s.surance that once in the garden it would be all over with his somewhat luridly chequered career. The Salolja eyes held him. He tried to glance round for encouragement, for a touch of companions.h.i.+p even, at the others in the room who, however, watched the scene in grim and more or less embarra.s.sed silence. But though for a moment his eyes sought them, he saw nothing, and next instant they were riveted again on the demon duke, now so near that he could feel his fiery breath. But he kept his seat with a drowning man's desperation.

”Will your grace come?” rang out the sharp, staccato tones. ”Or will it be necessary for me to drag your excellency out by the nose?”

The alternative was not attractive, and its proposer looked quite capable of putting it into execution.

”I tell you I am not Lord Quorn, and never was,” yelled the wretched Peckover, now simply beside himself. ”If you want him, there he is.”

He pointed to the corner where stood the real peer, looking, however, particularly unlike one, and in a high state of doubt as to the line he should take. He compromised with the question by giving, in the first instance, a loud, derisive laugh.

”Very pretty, Mr. Gage, or whatever your alias is. So I'm Lord Quorn, am I, when it suits your book? That's a rich idea. Ho! ho! ho!” And he laughed again with offensive resonance.

”Who,” demanded Lady Ormstork in a tone of disgust, ”is this noisy person?”

”Lord Quorn,” was Peckover's prompt reply.

”What?” cried Gage in bewilderment.

”Milord Quorn, eh?” said the duke, transferring his bristling attention to the latest partic.i.p.ant in that questionable distinction.

”Impossible!” exclaimed Lady Ormstork, obviously judging by appearance, which certainly did not go far to suggest a member of the peerage.

Quorn laughed again, less comfortably this time under the observation of the duke. ”Of course I'm not,” he said, in a tone which lost in the utterance its original intention of irony. ”How can I be, except in these gentlemen's imagination?” For he had a shrewd idea, as things were going, that, at the moment, the t.i.tle carried certain unpleasant contingent liabilities with it.

The duke pursed his face into a quizzical sneer. ”No, I do not think you are milord Quorn, my good fellow,” he concluded, taking Lady Ormstork's view of the badly groomed object of his scrutiny.

”He is Lord Quorn,” Peckover insisted vehemently, ”if anybody is.”

”Of course,” retorted Quorn with withering point, ”I am Lord Quorn when it is necessary.”

The duke, manifestly tiring of the question of ident.i.ty and resolving (possibly Castilian fas.h.i.+on) to settle the point for himself, was about to resume his somewhat drastic argument with Peckover when Ulrica interrupted the genial intention.

”I believe this person is Lord Quorn,” she said, with pointed reference to the real man. ”He told me so himself just now in the garden. He said the other was an imposter and advised me to have nothing to do with him.”

”My dear Ulrica!” cried Lady Ormstork, half doubtingly; then turned to Quorn with a face prepared to beam on the shortest notice.

”What did I tell you?” exclaimed Peckover realizing it was a case of _sauve qui peut_.

The duke, almost forgetting punctilio in his c.u.mulative exasperation, turned again to Quorn, resolved to be at definite issue with somebody, while his jealousy was spurred by Lady Ormstork's evident readiness to establish as Miss Buffkin's suitor the right Quorn, if only she could get hold of him.

”So you are Lord Quorn, my fine fellow,” he exclaimed with a mock bow (for, as we know, Quorn was shabby). ”You are eager to pay your addresses to this adorable lady, and are doubtless prepared to accept the consequences?”

Quorn, at a loss for a reply, stared stupidly at his fierce interrogator, while Peckover judged himself sufficiently reprieved to venture to wink at Gage.

”I don't do anything of the sort,” Quorn at length said weakly.

”Oh, Lord Quorn,” protested Ulrica mischievously. ”You know you said I was to marry the right Lord Quorn, and you were the man.”

”So?” cried the duke, with fell conviction that he had at last got his man. ”It is well. You are Lord Quorn. _Je l'accepte_. May I request the honour of a private word with your ill.u.s.trious lords.h.i.+p in the garden?”