Part 8

"_Bramber_. It isn't Bramber. I met him in the park. He took me to the House and gave me a beastly lunch. But he didn't notice it as he couldn't eat and looked very pale and savidge. He tiped me.

"_De Vere_. It's not the poetry rotter. He wants me to stay with him and look after the dogs. He said if I had a sick one he'd rather have it than not. He said he was desprit. I don't know why, but suppose it's Pen. He tiped me."

"Now where am I at?" he said, blankly. "I've written down it isn't any of 'em. And that's what granny says. But I don't believe her."

He chewed his pencil till it was in rags, and then a sudden idea struck him.

"I'll buy all Sherlock Holmes and read him right through," said Bob. "That's the way to find out anything. I wish I knew the man that wrote him. I wonder if De Vere knows him? I'll ask Baker to get a sick dog from the vet's, and I'll go down and stay with De Vere if I can make granny say 'yes.' I wonder why old De Vere wants a sick dog, though. I can't understand poets."

It was no wonder Gordon wished he had a boy like Bob.

*CHAPTER XIII.*

It was all very well for Bob to declare that his grandmother was altogether "off it" when she said that Penelope wasn't married at all. For, little by little, after furious discussions in ten thousand houses, in the court, the camp, and the grove, that came to be the general opinion.

Titania expressed the general opinion:

"She is mad, of course. What can one expect when her mother was an American? All Americans are mad. Bradstock assures me there is a something in the air of the United States (oh, even in Canada) which makes one take entirely new views of everything. And that, of course, is madness, my dear, madness undoubted and dangerous. He assured me, poor fellow, that six months in that absurd country made him tremble for his belief in a constitutional monarchy! He adds that he has only partially recovered, by firmly fixing his eyes on what a limited monarch might be, if he tried. Yes, she was an American, and adored our aristocracy, not knowing what we are, poor thing. And yet where Penelope's ideas come from I do not know. I firmly believe Bradstock is the cause of them. When she was a little girl he would take her on his knee and pour anarchism into her innocent ears. You know his way; he runs counter to everything, though now comparatively silent. And Penelope was always ready to go against me, though she loves me. This was an early idea of hers; Augustin owns that he suggested it humourously to her years ago. There is nothing so dangerous as humour; it is always liable to be taken seriously. Mr. Browning, the poet, said so to me at a garden-party; he said he was a humourist, and he said Mr. Tennyson (oh, yes, Lord Tennyson) lacked humour, while he himself had too much of it. He explained Sordello to me, and made me laugh heartily. But as I was saying, Penelope took up the idea and gave it out, and now is sorry, and, not having the courage to say so, she has taken refuge in what I am reluctantly compelled to characterize as a lie, and it is a great relief to me. The scandal will blow over; already the halfpenny papers are tired of her. I expect she will marry by and by. Oh, no, of course she isn't married!"

And as Penelope's ideas were in every way absolutely contrary to what one has a right to expect, it is only natural that, proof of the contrary being lacking, the whole world began gradually to come around to Titania's opinion. A duchess has a great deal of influence if she only likes to use it, and the public is no more proof against her than the public offices are.

And Pen set her teeth together and ignored every one, and had very little to say to society. Her apparent passion was for motor-cars, and she went out in the sixty-horse Panhard almost every day. And every end of the week she disappeared, coming back on Monday or Tuesday.

"I could tell 'em something," said Geordie Smith, "couldn't I, old girl?"

The "old girl" he referred to was the machine he loved next best, at least, to Lady Penelope.

"Me and Bunting could wake 'em up some," he said. "I'd like Bunting if he'd only get rid of the notion that horses are everything. I hope to see the time when there won't be any except in parks, running wild like deer."

It was an awful notion, and it was a wonder that he and Bunting got on without fighting.

"My lady _uses_ your bloomin' tracking engine," said Tim, contemptuously, "but she _loves_ 'orses. You can't give carrots to your old thing, and it ain't got no smooth and silky muzzle to pat. Faugh! the smell of it makes me sick; give me the 'ealthy hodour of the stable, Smith!"

"Find me a horse that'd carry her and me a hundred and twenty miles in three hours and damn the expense in fines," replied Smith, "and I'm with you. My lady loves this car a'most as much as I do. Who can catch her and me, flying along? Let 'em come, let 'em try, and I'll put her out to the top notch and let her sizzle. You come out and try, Tim; one drive and you'll be another man, looking on horses as what they are, mere animals and not up to date. My lady's up to date and beyond it."

"When I go in your bally machine hit'll be by my lady's horders," said Timothy, "and it'll be tryin' my hallegiance very 'ard. Come and 'ave a drink, if you hain't too advanced for that! 'Ave you been chased lately as you brought my lady 'ome?"

"I thought I was," replied Smith, "but I shook 'em off. I'm egging her on to get a ninety-horse in case. That young cousin of hers let on to me that she'll be followed up some day, and I told her. She'll do it!"

"I wonder what's her game?" said Tim. "Blowed if I hunderstand."

"So far's I see," replied Smith, "it's a general notion that a party's private biz is their private biz. And the others says it isn't, and there's where the trouble begins. I agree with her in a measure, don't you?"

"I agrees with my lady hevery time," said Tim. "She's a sweet lady, and, my word, if I didn't I'd get the sack, which I don't want. What she says she sticks to, bein' in that different to hany woman I never met. That's what the trouble is, that and reformin' lovers and husbands and law and so hon!"

But the real trouble was that what she said she stuck to. She began to care much less for reform, and now never read Herbert Spencer and the greater philosopher, who has discovered that man doesn't think so much of yesterday as he does of to-morrow. She forgot the Deceased Wife's Sister, and ignored the London County Council, and didn't read the _Times_ except on great occasions. She spent the days in dreaming, and, except when she was devouring the space between London and Lincolnshire, she lay about on sofas and read poetry or listened to Bob, and looked ten thousand times more beautiful than ever, like the Eastern beauties, of whom one reads in the Arabian Nights, returning from the bath. She was wonderfully affectionate to Bob, who was a most considerate boy, and didn't worry her when he had once discovered that asking questions was no use. He told her of his vain efforts to find out whom she had married, and was very amusing. He began to have great ambitions.

"Mr. Gordon says I've a great future before me, Pen. He thinks no end of me. He says being a duke by and by is all very well, but I agree with him there are greater things than merely being one. He says the men with power are the rulers of the world. He told me how he and Rothschild stopped a war in a hurry. He didn't say which war. I asked him why he didn't stop the South African War, and he said that was different. I asked him did he bring it on then, and he said 'No.' But I think he did, somehow. Will you ask old Sir Henry if he did? I don't like Sir Henry, though, do you?"

He went on to tell her about Sherlock Holmes.

"I'm reading him through again, Pen. And when I go down to De Vere's I shall ask De Vere to invite the man that wrote him. I'm going to De Vere's to take him a sick dog. He said he wanted one, and I've got one from Baker. Baker says he must want to vivisect him, and he doesn't like the idea. Baker's a very kind man to animals, but I've given my word that the dog sha'n't be vivisected. You don't think a poet would, do you? Did you tell him to learn to be a vet or anything? If you did, that would explain it. I've been through the whole list, Pen, and, though I won't worry you, I've come to the conclusion so far that I don't know which you've married. If I find out I won't tell."

"You're a dear," said Pen, languidly.

"I've got a notion how to find out, though," said Bob. "At least, I shall have when I've finished Sherlock Holmes. I'd rather be Sherlock Holmes than a duke. It seems to me that unless you are the Duke of Norfolk or the Duke of Devonshire you are out of it. Being a common duke is dull, but being Holmes must be very exciting."

One thing that he told her made her think furiously.

"Not one of 'em really believes you, Pen, and they're much more jealous of each other than they were. I believe they'll be fighting presently."

"Don't talk nonsense," said Pen, anxiously.

Bob shrugged his shoulders, a trick he had caught from the marquis.

"It's not nonsense. I can see bloodshed in their eyes. The marquis looks awfully ferocious, and Williams, too. Of course, I don't say that Gordon would fight much. And I should snigger to see old De Vere in a duel, shouldn't you? But if Bramber and the marquis and Williams and Goby get together, I shouldn't be surprised if they fought with swords or guns. I think Rivaulx would like that. He would stick them all and make 'em squeal, I can tell you. He's a whale at fencing. He took me to see him once, and when he stamped and said 'Ha-ha,' like a war-horse, I wondered the other man didn't run."

"If they had a duel, any of them, I shouldn't speak to them again," said Penelope. "I abhor duels and warfare and weapons, and think they should be abolished in universal peace. And as I am married now, Bob, I hope you will do what you can to make them believe it."

"You can make 'em believe it at once," said Bob. "I do think this is absurd. And don't you see it's funny, too, Pen?"

"No," said Pen, "it's not. It's right, and what is right can't be funny."

Bob reflected.

"Well, there's something in that. It ain't much fun generally."

And he returned to Sherlock Holmes.

"I wonder what he would do," said Bob to himself, pensively. "There ain't any footsteps or blood in this. I suppose he'd take a look at Pen and then have a smoke and go out in a hansom and come back very tired. I've looked at Pen a lot, but smoking still makes me sick, and I don't know where to go in a hansom. And I think Holmes would think it mean to follow her when she goes off with Smith in her car. Besides, a hansom can't catch a sixty-horse Panhard unless it breaks down. I think he would get at it by looking at the men."

That put him on the track of a dreadful scheme, a most wicked and immoral scheme, that his hero would have disapproved of.

"I believe I have it," said Bob, starting up in wild excitement. "If I go around to them all and say that I'm sure she's not married, but that she loves the one they hate most, they will jump and be in a rage, won't they? I should be, I know. And the one that doesn't jump will be him. I dare say De Vere won't jump, but he's not a jumping sort, but he'll cry, likely. Rivaulx _will_ snort if it isn't him."

He sat and pondered over this lovely scheme.

"But if she loves one of 'em, why don't she own it to him, and why this mystery? They'll ask that, of course. Oh, but that doesn't matter; they'll do the snorting first. And, besides, I could let on that not all of them are in earnest. Ain't it possible that the one she loves won't ask her now, and she's covering up her disappointment? That would make Rivaulx fairly howl, I know. He's a real good chap, and between howling and weeping he says he wants her to be happy. I'll do it."

He went off to do it at once.

"Ha, ha, my beautiful boy," said the Marquis of Rivaulx, whom he found in his rooms in Piccadilly, "have you come with news for me, the devoted and despairing?"

"Well, I don't know, marquis," returned Bob, soberly. "I've been thinking about it, and I'm in a state of puzzle."

"And I am in a state of the devil himself," replied Rivaulx. "I suspect every one. I am enraged. I suspect you, Bob, my boy."

Bob shook his head.

"I suspect you, too. I've never got over thinking that it may be you," he said, "for you are all just like each other, and it's obvious some one is telling me lies."

Rivaulx smiled, a deep and dark French smile, which was agonizing to behold. It puzzled Bob dreadfully.

"There," he said, "you smile, and so does Pen, and you all smile. But I believe I've discovered something."

"About who or which?" asked Rivaulx. "Is it about that Goby?"

He might loathe Gordon, but he was jealous of Goby. He promenaded the room, and was already in a rage.

"Yes," said Bob, boldly. "I believe she's not married, and I believe she likes him best."

"The hound, the vile one, the unmeasured beast," roared Rivaulx, "it cannot be. If she loves him (no, I can't believe it), why does she not wed him? I shall slay him. Is she unhappy? Does she weep? I adore her, but if she loves him he shall marry her or I will stab him to the heart."

"I dare say he's not in earnest," said Bob. And the marquis ground his teeth and foamed at the mouth, and again tried to tear his close-cropped hair without the least success.

"Not--oh, sacred dog of a man,--ha--let me kill him!"

He tore around the room and knocked two ornaments off the mantelpiece and upset a table, which Bob laboriously restored to its place. After he had put it back three times, he gave it up and cowered under the storm.

"I shouldn't be surprised if this was put on," said Bob, rather gloomily. "I know he can act like blazes; Pen says he can. She said he was finer than Irving or Toole in a tragedy. I don't think it has the true ring of sincerity."

And making his escape from the cyclone, he went off to see Goby, who was hideously jealous of Carteret Williams.

"I hope he won't be as mad as the marquis," said Bob. "That table barked my shins horribly the last time it fell. I wish Frenchmen wouldn't shout so when they're angry; I'm nearly deaf."

There was the devil to pay with Goby. He announced his intention of assaulting Williams at once.

"Oh, I say, you mustn't," cried Bob, in great alarm. "She'll never forgive you."

"That Williams!" said Goby. "I always did hate war correspondents. I don't believe it."

But it looked as if he did.

"I dare say you are putting it on," cried Bob. "I don't know where I am."

Goby said he didn't, either, but that if this turned out to be true he would wring Williams's neck in the park the first fine Sunday in June.

"He would have acted just the same if he was married to her, and thought she loved Williams best after all," said Bob to himself. "I'll try Bramber and Williams, and then give it up."

Bramber was in a furious temper, and when Bob assured him that Penelope loved Gordon best of any one, he swore horribly. As he rarely swore, this was very impressive, and Bob almost shivered.

"I say, you mustn't kick Gordon," he urged. "After all, I may be mistaken."

"I wish you were dead," said Bramber, "and you will be if you don't get out."

Bob got out, and when he was in the open air he sighed.

"I don't think I'll try Williams," he said, thoughtfully. "He's much bigger and stronger even than Goby, and they say he's a terror when he's very angry. My scheme doesn't seem to work; there's something wrong with it."

But there was nothing wrong with it, and it worked marvellously. The report that Bob said positively that Pen wasn't married carried much weight. Goby and Rivaulx both gave it away. And all the men now loathed each other openly. Rivaulx cut Goby and Goby cut Williams and Bramber sneered at Gordon, and there was great likelihood of there being the devil to pay. Pen tried to patch up peace among them, and failed, and wept about it, seeing so much of the good she had done melt like sugar in warm rain. At last she announced her intention of leaving them and the world alone.

"I almost think I'll give up reform," she sighed.

And the season went by and the autumn came, and Titania found herself at Goring in October with a large house-party which didn't include Penelope.

"She is, of course, somewhat ashamed of herself," said Titania, happily. "This comes of having ideas and foolishly attempting to carry them into practice. Now that I am certain she is not married and that she only says so, I feel quite different. I no longer abhor the poor, foolish men who are so much in love with her. I see plainly (for I, too, am naturally a democrat of the proper kind) that they have fine qualities. I have marked my sense of this in a way which appears to amuse Lord Bradstock for some reason that I do not follow,--but then, I never could follow Augustin, poor fellow,--by asking them all down here. I dare say they think Penelope will come, for they have all accepted. I am delighted, for I really admire them. Mr. Carew is the handsomest young man in London, and will paint my portrait between meals. I wonder whether I shall try to get thinner by eating less, or will it be better to tell Mr. Carew to make me thinner in his picture. That seems the easiest course; for if Penelope's conduct has not made me thin, what would? Neither hot weather nor despair has the least effect upon me. I shall trust to Mr. Carew's idea of what is right and proper. I wish I could rely with equal confidence upon poor, dear, misguided Penelope."

There was much discontent in the camp when the lovers learnt that their beloved was not one of Titania's house-party. They were not civil to each other, and with difficulty were civil to Titania.

"Confound the old harridan," said Goby. This was wicked, for Titania was very sweet, and retained much more than a trace of her youthful beauty. She belonged to the modern band of those who sternly refuse to grow old.

"Great Scott!" said Carteret Williams. The others made equally appropriate exclamations. They damned Goring in heaps, and looked at each other like a crowd of strange dogs. Owing to Penelope's influence they all came in motor-cars. Even De Vere turned up in one which was guaranteed by age and its maker not to go more than ten miles an hour. There wasn't room to get them into the temporary garage out of the wet. But the marquis did not come in a balloon or a flying-machine. That was something, at any rate, though Bob growled about it bitterly. Pen's request that he should do his best to make the world believe she was married was entirely forgotten. Without quite meaning to say so, he practically asserted in every word that she was not.

"After all," said Bob, "I believe she is capable of deceiving even me, for she is a woman. Horace, in his Odes, seems to think that. It seems to me that classical authors had a very poor opinion of women."

He went to Rivaulx crossly.

"I say, I think you ought to have come in a flying-machine. Why didn't you? Pen will be mad."

He introduced De Vere to Baker (who had been a sergeant in the Dublin Fusiliers), and left him with him, discussing hydrophobia and bulldogs.

"Baker says he has a great admiration for you, sir," said Bob. "He has lots of pups for you to look at. There's a very queer spotted one that Pen said she was sure you would like. It's very cheap for a spotted dog of the kind, Baker says."

But they were an unhappy crowd, and even the shooting, which was fairly good for a poor duke's place, hardly consoled them.

At night the women, who all gambled, naturally were very cross. It appeared that not one of the men would play bridge, because Penelope had made them swear off. There were only three men in the house not in love with Penelope. Titania had a dreadful time, and much regretted her hospitality. Carew was furious, of course, and his notions of colour were very morbid. And he appeared to see the duchess as she was, in spite of the hints the poor woman threw out to the desperate painter, who looked at her sorrowfully and sighed as he shook his head.

"Being painted is an ordeal," she said. Not one of the others consoled her. De Vere wept with her in the drawing-room; Williams wrecked her orchids in the hothouse; Plant and Gordon quarrelled in the smoking-room. And Bramber, who was only there for four days, looked horridly sorry for himself, and sneered at every one. The marquis went around the park in a ninety-horse-power racer seventeen times between breakfast and lunch. The chauffeurs quarrelled furiously; they even fought in the stable yard with Baker as umpire and Bob as timekeeper.

At the dinner-table was the only time of peace, and then it was too peaceful. Nobody but Bob and Ethel Mytton and Titania did any talking. Bob spoke of very little but Penelope, which was natural but awkward. He told them what Baker said, till they all desired to go out and strangle Baker. Bradstock encouraged him, for Bradstock was the only man there who had any apparent desire to be amused. The rest of them played with the soup, toyed with the _entrees_, fooled with the roasts, choked over the birds, and went out and oversmoked themselves. Then they met in the big hall and the drawing-room, and Titania had to assure them all one after the other, that she was certain Penelope was not married.

"Then why does she say she is?" they asked, bitterly.

"It must be to try you," said Titania. "Augustin, don't you think it is to try them?"

Bradstock made that sound which the English write as "Humph" and the Scotch put down as "Imphm." It means a great deal, but is intelligible to the intelligent.

"Yes, it is to try you," said Titania. "She is a dear, sweet thing, but has ideas which do not commend themselves to me. I understand them, of course, but regret them. It may be, of course, that she does not love any of you, and is trying to get out of it. By and by you will find out if that is so. She is enthusiastic and impulsive. Oh, these impulses of youth! How well I remember the delightful impulses of youth, when one feels as if one could fly with wings! Even now I get impulses. Poor Penelope! Ah, dear, I wish she would come. I have written again and again to ask her, but I'm afraid she will not."

And, indeed, no one at that moment knew where she was, unless, indeed, it was Timothy and Geordie Smith and Miss Mackarness and the pirate in goggles of the motor-car who carried her off.

Titania and Bob between them, at any rate, accomplished one thing. No one pretended to assign a satisfactory reason for Pen's conduct, but every one, except one, perhaps, believed she was still single. They were sure of it, and grew surer every day. As a result, they recovered some little peace of mind; they quarrelled less and ate more and shot straighter. Rivaulx only went fifteen times around the park before lunch; De Vere bought more dogs; Plant agreed to go into some scheme of trust robbery with Gordon, who assured the rest of them that he had Rothschild up his sleeve. Williams stamped less on flower-beds and swore half as much as usual. Goby and Bramber went out walks together with Bob and Ethel Mytton. Titania's barometer went up and her size went down in Carew's picture. He saw her less yellow, and did not insist on her wrinkles. Augustin sat in the library and read books which were of so humourous a character that they compelled him to put them down and laugh continually. It was certainly a most amusing house-party.

"I thought there would have been duels in the park," said Augustin. "I wonder what the deuce Pen would think of them if she saw them now."