The Actress in High Life Part 34

"A concert detain him! I do not understand that."

"Nor I, Sir Rowland," said Bradshawe coolly. "I only heard it without pretending to understand it."

Sir Rowland looked puzzled, but his unfinished dispatch claimed his attention, and he turned again to his secretary.

Meanwhile Lord Strathern was in high spirits. "The hour has come, but not the man!" he said, and began to triumph over Conway, and laugh at L'Isle so merrily, that he would have soon found it in his heart to forgive the latter all his offensive strictures on him. But, suddenly, his merriment gave place to a look of surprise and disappointment.

Conway, turning to ascertain the cause, saw L'Isle walk into the room as if he had come hither at his leisure; yet, something in his bearing, betrayed that his pride was in arms.

"I am glad to see you, L'Isle," said Sir Rowland. "I were loath to close my dispatch without adding the intelligence you might bring me. By the bye, some of these gentlemen thought that you would not be here so soon."

"They must have supposed that I had not received your order, sir,"

said L'Isle, glancing haughtily round on Lord Strathern; "but, having got it, I am here."

"It seems to have cost you hard riding though, and more fatigue than you are yet equal to," said Sir Rowland, remembering his late wounds. "And you have had a fall," he added, observing some marks on his clothes.

"Not from my horse," said L'Isle, shortly and somewhat bitterly. "But it is of no consequence," and he hastened to produce his notes and furnish Sir Rowland with the information expected from him.

Besides the unerased marks of a fall, L'Isle's clothes were travel-stained, and his face was pale, less, perhaps, from fatigue and loss of sleep, than from the violent excitement and revulsion of feelings he had lately undergone. But he soon withdrew Sir Rowland's attention from himself to his full and precise account of the state of the Andalusian reserve, and the garrison of Badajoz.

"I am glad to find that this body of Spanish troops are not, like too many Spanish armies, men of straw, an army on paper," said Sir Rowland. "The French are trying to occupy so extended a position here in Estremadura, that our Andalusian friends may do capital service in hara.s.sing their out-posts, and cutting off their convoys."

"If they can be kept out of the plains, and induced not to fight,"

said L'Isle, smiling. "But the Spaniard is always seeking to surround the enemy, and force him to battle."

"At all events," said Sir Rowland, "I can now give Lord Wellington a definite and reliable account of their condition;" and, making a sign to L'Isle to accompany him, he walked across the room and seated himself at the larger table. Here he held a somewhat prolonged conference with Lord Strathern, in which the other gentlemen were, at times, called upon to take part. When compelled to speak, L'Isle distinguished himself by giving admirable specimens of the lapidary style, not one spare word. Sir Rowland had many questions to ask and instructions to give; but, these over, he gave a less professional turn to the conversation, and then said: "I hope, my lord, you and these gentlemen will share my poor dinner to-day; but remember, I am not at home in Alcantara, and cannot feast you, as you do your friends at Elvas; neither can we sit long and drink deep, as I must return to-night to Coria."

"We will dine with you with pleasure," said Lord Strathern. "Pray, Bradshawe, who could have told Sir Rowland that we sit long and drink deep at Elvas?"

"Some thirsty fellow," said Bradshawe, "who had drained the last drop from his last bottle."

"Oh, my lord," said Sir Rowland, laughing, "I meant no insinuation. But I must finish my despatch," and he returned to his secretary.

While Lord Strathern and his companions awaited Sir Rowland's leisure, L'Isle sat moodily apart, turning an unsocial shoulder toward his lordship, giving him a glimpse of his back.

Lord Strathern smiled; he saw the earth stains, and saw, moreover, evident marks of anger and chagrin in L'Isle's demeanor. His curiosity was strongly excited, and he resolved to make the silent man find his tongue.

"Pray, L'Isle how came you to let your horse slip from under you, and measure your length in the road?"

"You are mistaken, my lord," said L'Isle, formally; "my horse did not throw me."

"You are so used to success that you will acknowledge no failure, not even a fall from your horse, or your hobby-horse. Perhaps you got tired, and took a nap by the roadside, which accounts for your getting here no sooner."

L'Isle was too angry to trust himself with an answer, but Major Conway, turning to Bradshawe, said gaily: "Colonel L'Isle is here soon enough for me; he is within the time, and I have won the fifty guineas."

L'Isle started. Here was a revelation! His last night's adventure was no secret. There were more parties to the plot than he had imagined.

"Sir!" said he, turning upon Conway, with a cold, hard manner. "Am I to understand that you have done me the honor to bet on my movements?"

"Here is grat.i.tude for you," exclaimed Conway, pacifically appealing to his companions, and his voice attracted Sir Rowland's attention.

"Here have I been showing for him the height of friendship, hazarding my best friends, my guineas, on his infallible fulfillment of duty; and my full faith in him is received as an outrage."

"I suppose, sir," said L'Isle, turning on Bradshawe, with freezing politeness, "it is you who have so obligingly afforded my volunteer backer so singular an opportunity of proving his friendship?"

"I cannot claim the credit of it," answered Bradshawe, with easy urbanity. "I am not even a stakeholder in the game; though, as a mere looker-on, I confess having watched it with keen and growing interest." And with a little wave of the hand he pa.s.sed L'Isle gently over to Lord Strathern.

L'Isle looked from the imperturbable colonel to the pacific major, who professed to be so zealously his partisan, and back again to the former. Not seeing how he could fasten a quarrel on either, he turned somewhat reluctantly on Lord Strathern, who complacently awaited him.

"As for you, my lord, I might have felt surprise at your making me the subject of such a bet, but it is lost in astonishment at the means you took to win it!"

"And, after all to lose it," said Lord Strathern, in a mocking, dolorous tone. "Is it not provoking?"

"No scruple," continued L'Isle, "seems to have stood in your way, my lord, in the choice of either means or agent."

"On the contrary," said Lord Strathern, blandly, "I always scrupulously choose the best of both."

"You must have contrived this plot," L'Isle persisted, "though the chief actor be in Elvas. But I will say no more here."

"A few words more, I pray," said Lord Strathern, smiling. "I understood that you were to have been detained in Elvas. How the devil did you get away?"

L'Isle turned abruptly away, seeing that the more anger and mortification he showed, the more gratified Lord Strathern seemed to be. Rising from his seat, he walked up to Sir Rowland, who had been watching him with much curiosity, and said: "I suppose, sir, you have no further use for me here. If so, pray excuse my absence from your table to-day, as I have occasion to return at once to Elvas."

Sir Rowland bid his secretary go and send off the despatch at once; then looking fixedly at L'Isle, said: "I may need you here for a day or two."

L'Isle bit his lip till the blood came, while Sir Rowland, stepping over to Lord Strathern, asked in an undertone: "What is the matter with L'Isle, my lord? he seems strangely out of humor."

"The truth is, Sir Rowland," said his lordship, in a confidential tone, "somebody in Elvas has been quizzing L'Isle, and a man of his vanity cannot stand being quizzed."

"Quizzed!" said Sir Rowland. "Does quizzing make a man mad?"

L'Isle dared not trust himself longer in Lord Strathern's company; he wanted time to recover his self-command; so he again addressed Sir Rowland: "That I left Elvas so suddenly, and unprepared for a prolonged absence, matters little, Sir Rowland; but I have been so little with my regiment of late, that--"

"Let your major take care of it a few days longer," Sir Rowland answered, in a positive tone.

"You had better let L'Isle go, Sir Rowland," said Lord Strathern. "He is afraid to lose sight of his regiment, lest they become banditti."

L'Isle's flushed cheek and compressed lips, showed that he felt the taunt, while Sir Rowland exclaimed, in surprise: "Are they so unruly?

Then you must look to them yourself, my lord, for I shall keep Colonel L'Isle a while with me. The truth is, L'Isle, I divine your urgent business at Elvas. Some one there has given you gross offence, and you seek revenge under the name of satisfaction. There is always sin and folly enough in these affairs; but here, within sight of the smoke of the enemy's camp, and now, when we are about to fall upon them, these personal feuds are criminal madness. I would put you under arrest, sooner than let you post off to Elvas on so bloodthirsty an errand."

Sir Rowland uttered this speech with an air worthy of his Puritan uncle, of Calvinistic memory; but, in spite of the respect due to the speaker, it was too much for the gravity of his hearers. Lord Strathern and his companions burst into a roar of laughter, and even L'Isle, amidst all his anger, felt tempted to join them.

"Gentlemen," said Sir Rowland, in grave astonishment, "I like a joke as well as any of you. Pray explain this, that I may share your enjoyment."

Bradshawe, with an effort, cut short his laughter, to say: "As a neutral party, Sir Rowland, I will be Colonel L'Isle's surety, that in whatever mood he may set out for Elvas, as soon as he finds himself in the presence of his enemy there, he will be gentle as a lamb."

"You deal in mysteries; who in Elvas is so safe from L'Isle's resentment?"

"n.o.body but Lady Mabel Stewart."

"Lady Mabel Stewart!" exclaimed Sir Rowland, looking at Lord Strathern. "If a lady contrived this plot, I shall never unravel it; so you must do it for me."