The unmistakable look of the man who feels that the strain is becoming too much for him came into Lord Shortlands' face. He gave the impression of having definitely given up the attempt to cope with things.
"Married?" he said feebly.
"Yes."
"You and Cardinal?"
"Yes."
"Not you and Stanwood?"
"No."
"But you and Cardinal?"
"Yes."
"My God!" murmured Lord Shortlands, passing a hand across his brow.
"The fact is, my dear Shorty," said Mike, "things have been getting a little mixed, and it has taken some time to straighten them out. There had been mistakes and misunderstandings, not unlike those which occured in Vol. Two of Percy's Promise, a work which you may or may not have read. By Marcia Huddlestone (Popgood and Grooly, 1869). These, however, are now at an end, so brush up the old top hat and get ready for the wedding. The bells of the little village church—or, rather, the little Beak Street registry office—are soon to peal out in no uncertain manner. You may take this as official. Have you seen Augustus?"
The Soul's Awakening expression, which had been temporarily erased, came back into Lord Shortlands' face. After what had occurred on the previous night, he had never expected the name of Augustus Robb to be music to his ears, but this was what it now was. Augustus Robb stood very high on the list of men he liked and respected.
"I have, indeed. I've just left him."
"Why didn't you stay and watch?"
"He wouldn't let me. Said it made him nervous. Very temperamental chap. I told him he would find me here when he was finished."
"How was he coming along?"
"He appeared entirely confident."
"Then very shortly ... Ah!"
Augustus Robb had come into the room, jauntily, like an artist conscious of having done a good piece of work. He had an excellent reception.
"Augustus!" cried Mike.
"Mr. Robb!" cried Terry.
"Did you get it?" cried Lord Shortlands.
"'Ullo, cocky. 'Ullo, ducky. Yus, chum, I got it," said Augustus Robb, replying to them in rotation. "But—"
An unforeseen interruption forced him to leave the sentence uncompleted. "Ah!" said a voice, and they turned to see Lady Adela in the doorway.
Lady Adela was wearing gardening gloves and carrying the shears which had so intimidated Mike at their first meeting. Her eyes, as they rested upon Lord Shortlands, had in them the stern gleam that is seen in those of a tigress which prepares to leap upon the goat which it has marked down for the evening meal. Her righteous indignation, denied expression by his craven flight to London, had been banking up within her since half-past nine that morning, and it was plain that she welcomed the imminent bursting of the dam.
"Ah!" she said. "I would like to speak to you, Father." She looked at the assembled company, and added the word "Alone." What she had to say was not for the ears of others.
Augustus Robb was always the gentleman. His social sense was perfect. Besides, he intended to listen at the door.
"Want us to shift, ducky?" he said agreeably. "Right ho."
Lady Adela, who had never been called "ducky" before and did not like the new experience, raised her eyebrows haughtily. It began to seem as if Augustus Robb was going to get his before Lord Shortlands.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Name of Robb, dearie. Augustus Robb."
"He's Stanwood's valet," said Terry.
"Oh?" said Lady Adela, and left unspoken the words that had been trembling on her lips. Vassals and retainers of Stanwood Cobbold were immune from her wrath. Later on, perhaps, she would suggest to the dear boy that his personal attendant was a little lacking in the polish which one likes to see in personal attendants, but for the moment this chummy servitor must be spared. All she did, accordingly, was to catch his eye.
It was enough. Blinking, as if he had been struck by lightning, Augustus Robb withdrew, followed by Mike and Terry, and Lady Adela turned to Lord Shortlands.
"Father!" she said.
"Well?" said Lord Shortlands.
In the word "Well?", as inscribed on the printed page, there is little to cause the startled stare and the quick catch of the breath. It seems a mild and innocuous word. But hear it spoken in a loud, rasping, defiant voice by a man with his chin protruding and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and the effect is vastly different. Proceeding like a bullet from Lord Shortlands' lips, it left Lady Adela silent and gaping, her feelings closely resembling those which would have come to the above-mentioned tigress had the goat on the bill of fare suddenly turned and bitten it in the leg.
Of all moral tonics there is none that so braces a chronically impecunious earl as the knowledge that he is fifteen hundred pounds on the right side of the ledger. Lord Shortlands had Augustus Robb's assurance that that stamp, for which he had gone through so much, was now as good as in his pocket, and the thought lent him a rare courage. Ancestors of his had been tough nuts on the field of Hastings and devils of fellows among the paynim, and their spirit had descended upon him. He seemed to be clad in mail and brandishing a battle-ax.
"Well? What is it? It's no good you trying to come bullying me, Adela," he said, though perhaps Flaubert would have preferred the word "thundered." "I've put up with that sort of thing long enough."
Lady Adela was a woman of mettle. She tried hard to shake off the illusion that somebody had hit her between the eyes with a wet fish.
"Father!"
Lord Shortlands snorted. One of the main planks in the platform of those ancestors, whose spirit had descended upon him, had always been a rugged disinclination to take any lip from their womenfolk.
"Don't stand there saying 'Father!' No sense in it. I tell you I'm not going to put up with it any longer. I may mention that I have very much disliked your manner on several occasions. In my young days daughters were respectful to their fathers."
This would, of course, have been a good opportunity for Lady Adela to say that they had probably had a different kind of father, but that strange, sandbagged sensation held her dumb, and Lord Shortlands proceeded with his remarks.
"I've decided to leave this bally castle," he said. "Leave it immediately. I have been able to lay my hands on a large sum of money, and there's nothing to keep me. I'm sick and tired of seeing that damned moat and that blasted wing built in 1259 and all the rest of the frightful place. If it interests you to hear my plans, I'm going to buy a public house."
"Father!"
"Will you stop saying 'Father!' Are you a parrot?"
Lady Adela's mind was now so disordered that she could scarcely have said what she was. Whatever it might be, it was something with a swimming head. The only point on which she was actually clear was that she had been swept into the vortex of an upheaval of the same nature as, but on rather bigger lines than, the French Revolution.
"Oh, and by the way," added Lord Shortlands, "I'm going to marry Mrs. Punter."
It is proof of the chaotic condition to which Lady Adela's faculties had been reduced that for an instant the name suggested nothing to her. Mrs. Punter? she was asking herself dazedly. Did she know a Mrs. Punter? A member of the Dorsetshire Punters, would it be? Or perhaps one of the Essex lot?
"Punter?" she whispered.
"Yes, Punter, Punter, Punter. You know perfectly well who Mrs. Punter is. The cook."
"The cook?" screamed Lady Adela.
"Yes, the cook," said Lord Shortlands. "And don't shout like that."
When she spoke again, Lady Adela did not shout. Horror made her words come out in a dry whisper, preceded by an odd, crackling sound which it would have taken a very sharp-eared medical man to distinguish from a death rattle.
"You can't marry the cook, Father!"