Gwendolen Page 17

  "What in the world is the matter with him?" asked Campaspe in awestruck tones.

  "Oh, I daresay he did not like the sound of a clergyman," Gwendolen said tolerantly. "I let him think he was eloping with me in order to get him to take me to Bristol, you see, and then when we had arrived there, I was obliged to speak to him very strongly so that he would agree to take me on here to rescue you, Cammie. I expect it made him rather nervous, and not quite capable of thinking things through properly, so that when he heard there was a clergyman involved, he was afraid I might have made him marry me." She looked at Lyndale accusingly. "Of course, it is a sham clergyman, and he is your accomplice in this dastardly plot of yours to seduce my sister," she said.

  Lyndale's shoulders were shaking, though he was making a valiant attempt to control his mirth. "Oh, Gwen, Gwen, my darling Gwen, how could I ever have imagined that you wouldn't be more than a match for Wilfrid?" he said. "He'll never get over this—"

  "What do you mean—'my darling Gwen'?" Gwendolen interrupted him wrathfully. "I am not your darling, my lord!"

  "Oh yes, you are!" declared Lyndale. "Whether you wish to be or not! You have been so since the first moment I set eyes on you. But come inside out of this rain and I'll explain it all to you. I have made a devilish muddle of it, it seems, but after all you can't hang a man for trying!"

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE LANDLORD OF the White Hart, who had been roused out of peaceful slumber by the sound of an unusual amount of activity in his inn-yard in the middle of a stormy and disagreeable night, was even further astonished to see walk into his inn shortly afterwards four persons in evening dress: two ladies and two gentlemen, all obviously Quality and all extremely wet.

  The taller of the gentlemen, introducing himself as the Marquis of Lyndale, at once demanded that they be shown to the private parlour that had been bespoken in his name, and, when this had been accomplished, issued orders concerning the building up of the fire and the bringing of suitable spirituous liquors with which to ward off the possibility of any of the company's taking a chill, that sent the landlord scurrying for his minions.

  When these orders had been fulfilled, Gwendolen, who had ignored Lyndale's invitation to seat herself in one of the comfortable Windsor armchairs but had stationed herself instead before the fireplace with something of the air of a judge waiting for the criminal to be brought before him, said in an extremely chilly tone to Lyndale that if he had any explanation of his conduct, he had best give it now.

  "Yes, I daresay I had," Lyndale agreed amicably. 'The only thing is, I don't know quite where to begin, and, also, I refuse to say a word until you have taken some of this brandy. It's not necessary for you to stay stone-cold sober in order to ring a peal over me, you know," he added, as Gwendolen appeared to be about to give voice to a determination to have nothing to do with any brandy provided by so black a scoundrel. "In fact, I shouldn't wonder if you made an ever better job of it if you had some of this first."

  As he spoke, he had poured a generous amount of brandy into a glass, which he now offered to her, and Gwendolen, deciding that for Campaspe's sake she must not take a chill that would deprive her of her protection, accepted it with an air of hauteur and took a cautious sip.

  "I have no desire to ring a peal over you, as you express it, Lord Lyndale," she said, with as grand a manner as Lady Otilia herself could have managed. "Your conscience, I should think, would tell you how badly you have behaved. To plan to seduce an innocent young girl—"

  "Now look here," said the Marquis, interrupting her without heat but with considerable emphasis, "that's the second time you've said that, and it won't do, you know. I haven't been planning to seduce anyone, innocent or otherwise. In fact, all I have really been trying to do is to marry you."

  "To marry me!" If a bomb had exploded in the cosy parlour at that moment, blowing the well-polished table and chairs to bits and sending the ceiling crashing down upon her head, Gwendolen could not have felt more surprise. The surprise in that case, however, would scarcely have had the effect of sending the kind of delicious thrill down her backbone that the Marquis’s words had produced, an effect somewhat similar to the first stages of intoxication, which she at once put down to the brandy. "I do not think, Lord Lyndale," she said, hastily collecting herself and succeeding in speaking almost as icily as before, "that this is a suitable moment for jesting!"

  “But I'm not jesting!" Lyndale assured her, with a rather rueful grin. "Oh, I'll admit I've made a proper mull of it, but my intentions were beyond reproach. Here—look at these!" he adjured her, drawing from his pocket a pair of folded documents, which he proceeded to lay before her upon the table. “Do you know what these are?"

  "No, nor do I care to," said Gwendolen superbly.

  But Campaspe, in whom curiosity was far stronger than resentment, picked them up and, after examining them critically, said she thought they were special licences.

  "But why two?" she demanded. "You needn't have one each for the bride and the bridegroom, need you? I thought one was enough to marry two people."

  Lyndale said she was quite correct on that point, but that as he had hoped that two weddings might be performed that night, he had therefore been obliged to procure two licences. Campaspe, who had been looking much more cheerful ever since Lieutenant Fairhall's arrival upon the scene, at this point relapsed into horrified apprehension once more.

  "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Do you mean you were planning to marry both me and Gwen? But you couldn't—not here in England! You can't set up a harem in England!"

  "Don't be a goose, Cammie!" said Gwendolen severely. "Of course Lord Lyndale had no intention of marrying either you or me. No doubt these documents are forged."

  “You will think the worst of me, won't you?" complained his lordship. "And after I spent a devilish dreary week and more in London making all these arrangements! Do you know you can't get a special licence from anyone but a bishop? And as for young Alain de Combray—he may be a very personable, intelligent halfling, with some of the bluest blood in France in his veins, but finding someone who is willing to help him to a place suitable to his talents is one of the labours of Hercules to a man who has been out of Europe as long as I have! Fortunately, I am well acquainted with General Lord Cathcart, and through his interest I have been able to assure young M. de Combray of a position that will allow him to take a wife and presently, I hope, to progress up the ladder in the diplomatic service. It will mean, of course, that you will be obliged to part with your sister Jane for a time, since his first assignment will take him to Brazil, but I am sure that for the sake of her happiness you will undergo the separation cheerfully—" He broke off, observing that Gwendolen was looking at him with an absolutely dumbfounded expression upon her face. "Is something the matter?" he enquired politely.

  "The matter!" Gwendolen strove for words. "Of course there is something the matter!" she said. "Do you mean to stand there and tell us, my lord, that you—you!—have interested yourself in finding a position for Alain de Combray so that he will be able to marry Jane?"

  "Well, it seemed the only way to make sure you wouldn't expect me to marry her myself, you see," Lyndale explained. "I know Campaspe has always been very much set against that, but I had an idea that you, on the other hand, might have held it against me if Jane had found herself without a husband while I went off and married someone else. In point of fact," he added, "that was my reason for arranging to have Campaspe married tonight, as well. Knowing your peculiar sense of family loyalty, my darling Gwen, I thought you might expect me to respond to her determined courtship by marrying her, too—I mean, of course," he added hastily, seeing from the expression upon Campaspe's face that it was possible she would regard this statement as an invitation to begin talking about harems again—"instead of Jane. At any rate, I thought I should feel safer if she were married, too."

  "Married to who?" Campaspe asked, her brow very much furrowed as she attempted to follow the drift of his lordship's conve
rsation. "You can't mean—to Neil!"

  "Can't I?"

  A slow, furious flush arose in Campaspe's cheeks. "Do you mean—do you mean that you never had any intention of marrying me yourself?" she enquired wrathfully. "That you brought me here tonight to marry me to Neil?"

  "Well, it didn't turn out exactly as I had planned it, you see," Lyndale said apologetically. "Fairhall was to arrive in the nick of time to rescue you from me, after which you would of course fall into his arms and, a clergyman and a special licence being providentially at hand, agree to reward him by bestowing yourself upon him in matrimony. But I'm afraid that both Fairhall and I were so disconcerted by your sister's apparent elopement with Wilfrid that we neglected to act our parts properly—"

  He broke off, for Campaspe had turned upon the tall young lieutenant with very much the air of an infuriated kitten about to launch itself into an attack upon a large, innocent dog.

  "Neil Fairhall!" she addressed him in militant tones. "You are a traitor! To—to conspire against me with this—this—"

  "But it isn't conspiring against you to want to marry you, Cammie," the young lieutenant protested feebly. "And, dash it all, how else was I to bring it off? You've turned a cold shoulder to me ever since we had that silly disagreement—"

  "It wasn't a silly disagreement! You said I was making a cake of myself and that you didn't want to be married to me!'* Campaspe said vengefully. "And if you think for a single moment that you and Lyndale between you are clever enough to trick me into marrying you—well, you had best think twice, is all I can tell you!" She trod over to Gwendolen, who was still standing before the fireplace. "Come, Gwen!" she said superbly. "Let us go! No doubt Lieutenant Fairhall and Lord Lyndale will be able to think of some stratagem between them by which they can persuade two females more credulous than we are to marry them, so they will not be obliged to waste those very expensive licences!"

  There was nothing, Gwendolen told herself, that she would have liked better than to order up a post-chaise and a pair of horses and, shaking the dust of the White Hart from her shoes, return to Cheltenham with her sister. Unfortunately the same circumstance that had required her to make use of Lord Wilfrid in pursuing Campaspe prevented her from doing so: she had not sufficient funds. She gazed in frustration from Lyndale to Lieutenant Fairhall, and then, choosing the latter as the lesser of two evils, said to him in dignified tones, "I fear I must request a loan of you, sir. If you will allow me to have a sufficient sum to hire a post-chaise to take my sister and myself back to Cheltenham—"

  "No you don't, my lad!" said Lyndale promptly, as Neil began obediently to pull out his pocketbook. "If we let them get away now, we'll be bachelors for the rest of our lives." He turned to Gwendolen. "I am extremely sorry. Miss Quarters," he said to her with great formality, "but at one and tuppence per mile for each horse, the sum required is quite beyond Lieutenant Fairhall's means."

  "Coach-fare, then!" Gwendolen said, ignoring him and again addressing Lieutenant Fairhall. "You can't be so mean as to refuse us that!"

  "Oh yes, he can!" Lyndale intervened once more. *'Not a shilling, not a penny, not a farthing do you wheedle out of either of us, my girl! You have got yourselves into this, and the only way you will get out of it is by marrying us."

  "Oh, I say!" protested Lieutenant Fairhall, unable to subscribe to this high-handed method of obtaining a bride; and at the same moment a deep, rumbling voice said apologetically behind them, "I fear my lord, that I come somewhat tardily upon my time. The truth is, I believe that, owing to the lateness of the hour, I fell into a light slumber—"

  The entire company turned in surprise towards the door, where a rotund elderly gentleman in an old-fashioned, rusty, full-skirted coat, knee breeches, and square-toed, steel-buckled shoes, the whole with the rather rumpled appearance of having been slept in, stood blinking at them amiably. Lyndale, recovering himself first, moved towards him and shook him cordially by the hand.

  "Ah, Mr. Broadfute!" he said. "Better late than never, as the saying goes! May I present Mr. Broadfute—Miss Quarters—Miss Campaspe Quarters—Lieutenant Fairhall—"

  Mr. Broadfute, beaming impartially upon the company, advanced upon Gwendolen and clasped her hand warmly in his, seeming quite oblivious of the very damp and somewhat dishevelled appearance she presented, with her fair hair curling in wild tendrils about her face and her rain-wet gown steaming gently before the fire. He then enquired, with an air of uttering a mild pleasantry, to which of the gentlemen before him he was to have the honour of uniting her in the bonds of holy matrimony—"for it does not do to err in these matters! No, indeed!" he concluded, with a jocosely meaningful look, which, however, elicited no suitable response from Gwendolen.

  Instead, she withdrew her hand from his abruptly, and said, with a vehemence that surprised him a good deal, "To neither of them, sir! I have no wish to be married, nor has my sister!" She then astonished him even further by continuing, in the same earnest tone, "If you are indeed a clergyman, sir, I must appeal to you to assist us! My sister and I have been lured to this place by the grossest deception, and our only wish now is to return to our home in Cheltenham. Unfortunately, we have not sufficient money by us to pay post-chaises, or even coach-fare, and if you do not come to our aid, we shall be obliged to remain here, at the mercy of these—these—"

  "Fiends?" Lyndale finished it for her politely. “Unfair, my Gwen! To the best of my knowledge, fiends do not offer lawful matrimony to their victims." He turned to Mr. Broadfute, whose round face now wore a troubled, not to say almost dumbfounded, look. "Pay no attention to Miss Quarters, sir," he said cheerfully. "She has not quite grown accustomed yet to the notion of being married tonight, you see, but I am sure she will come round if you will leave us alone for a few minutes—"

  "No, I shan't!" said Gwendolen, outraged. "How dare you say such a thing, Lord Lyndale! I shouldn't marry you if—if—"

  "Not if I were the last man alive, love!" Lyndale said reproachfully. "You know you wouldn't care to go through life a spinster. Besides, even if there were several other men alive— like Wilfrid, and the gallant Captain Belville—I still think you would do better to marry me. I'm reasonably good-tempered and intelligent; I don't keep a harem; nor have I any intentions along that line, in spite of what your sister will try to tell you; and I'm not a dead bore—at least, I don't think I am—"

  To Gwendolen's horror and amazement, she found that it was on the tip of her tongue to say, "But you don't love me!"—and then burst at once into tears. Why she should be thinking of behaving in such an entirely foolish and outrageous manner she could not imagine, except that the shock of learning, after those wretched hours of suspense during which she had believed the Marquis to be set upon ruining her young sister, that his intention was to marry her, Gwendolen, instead had unhinged her reason.

  But to her great relief she found that she still had sufficient control over herself to say in a very cool voice to Mr. Broadfute that she and her sister really did wish to return to Cheltenham as soon as possible, and that if he could see his way clear to lending them coach-fare, their father would reimburse him at the earliest feasible moment.

  It was obvious, Gwendolen saw, as Mr. Broadfute's doubtful gaze met her own, than an impasse had now been reached. Apparently that reverend gentleman, in spite of his innocent and indeed rather woolly-headed air, had sufficient knowledge of the world to be aware that young ladies who have embarked upon runaway marriages frequently develop nerves and quite unreasonable fears, with the result that they behave in a manner that they are afterwards apt to regret. On the other hand, it was also obvious that he realised Gwendolen exhibited none of the signs of a female about to succumb to an attack of the vapours, and even more so was this true of Campaspe, for that young lady wore an extremely belligerent look and appeared capable of holding him up with a pistol, provided she could lay her hands upon one, and demanding his money if he did not give it to her.

  Gwendolen saw, however, that Mr. Broadfute
was also understandably a good deal in awe of his noble patron, and that it would go sorely against the grain with him to disoblige him in any way. But from this dilemma he was almost immediately rescued—or at least reprieved—by the sound of a commotion of some sort below stairs, following hard upon the rattle of carriage wheels in the inn-yard, which had gone all but unnoticed by the participants of the drama being enacted in the parlour above. A stentorian masculine voice was now heard to demand Lord Lyndale—a voice which seemed to rouse the liveliest amazement in the breasts of both the Misses Quarters.

  "Papa!" they exclaimed simultaneously, while Lyndale, starting towards the door, said, "Quarters! And about time!'— and shouted to the landlord to show him up.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  TO THE FURTHER astonishment of Gwendolen and Campaspe— but not, it seemed, of Lyndale—not only Mr. Quarters but Lady Otilia as well almost immediately appeared upon the threshold.

  “Well, well!" said Mr. Quarters, surveying the scene before him with some satisfaction. "So we're all here eh? Is this your parson, Lyndale? Best get it over with, then. No need to keep us all up any longer. Devilish wet night. Time we were all in our beds."

  Gwendolen and Campaspe merely stood staring at him. This, the former felt, was too much: after all the other shocks to which she had been subjected that night, to have her father and mother appear, like a deus and dea ex machina in a play, obviously prepared to assist at a double wedding ceremony, was more than flesh and blood could be expected to bear. She cast a look of burning reproach upon her parents, turned to Lyndale, and said, “You—you—!" in tones of extreme loathing, found she could think of no words in which to characterise property his lordship's despicable behaviour, and walked out the nearest door.

  It led into an adjoining bedchamber, which was fortunate, for one does not wish to cry in public. She was standing with her face buried in the red curtains when there was a step behind her, a pair of strong arms turned her gently about, and she found herself weeping against a coat of Bath superfine instead of against the curtains.