The Lion's Skin Part 19

"I'll present him to your grace," said Rotherby shortly. He had pretentions at being a beau himself; but his grace--supreme arbiter in such matters--had never yet remarked it.

They moved across the room, greetings pa.s.sing as they went. At their approach, Mr. Caryll looked up. Rotherby made him a leg with an excessive show of deference, arguing irony. "'Tis an unlooked-for pleasure to meet you here, sir," said he in a tone that drew the attention of all present.

"No pleasures are so sweet as the unexpected," answered Mr. Caryll, with casual amiability, and since he perceived at once the errand upon which Lord Rotherby was come to him, he went half-way to meet him. "Has your lordship been contracting any marriages of late?" he inquired.

The viscount smiled icily. "You have quick wits, sir," said he, "which is as it should be in one who lives by them."

"Let your lordship be thankful that such is not your own case," returned Mr. Caryll, with imperturbable good humor, and sent a t.i.tter round the room.

"A hit! A shrewd hit, 'pon honor!" cried Wharton, tapping his snuff-box.

"I vow to Gad, Ye're undone, Charles. Ye'd better play at repartee with Gascoigne, there. Ye're more of a weight."

"Your grace," cried Rotherby, suppressing at great cost his pa.s.sion, "'tis not to be borne that a fellow of this condition should sit among men of quality." And with that he swung round and addressed the company in general. "Gentlemen, do you know who this fellow is? He has the effrontery to take my name, and call himself Caryll."

Mr. Caryll looked a moment at his brother in the silence that followed.

Then, as in a flash, he saw his chance of vindicating Mistress Winthrop, and he seized it.

"And do you know, gentlemen, who this fellow is?" he inquired, with an air of sly amus.e.m.e.nt. "He is--Nay, you shall judge for yourselves. You shall hear the story of how we met; it is the story of his abduction of a lady whose name need not be mentioned; the story of his dastardly attempt to cozen her into a mock-marriage."

"Mock--mock-marriage?" cried the duke and a dozen others with him, some in surprise, but most in an unbelief that was already faintly tinged with horror--which argued ill for my Lord Rotherby when the story should be told.

"You d.a.m.ned rogue--" began his lordship, and would have flung himself upon Caryll, but that Collis and Stapleton, and Wharton himself, put forth hands to stay him by main force.

Others, too, had risen. But Mr. Caryll sat quietly in his chair, idly fingering the cards before him, and smiling gently, between amus.e.m.e.nt and irony. He was much mistaken if he did not make Lord Rotherby bitterly regret the initiative he had taken in their quarrel.

"Gently, my lord," the duke admonished the viscount. "This--this gentleman has said that which touches your honor. He shall say more.

He shall make good his words, or eat them. But the matter cannot rest thus."

"It shall not, by G.o.d!" swore Rotherby, purple now. "It shall not. I'll kill him like a dog for what he has said."

"But before I die, gentlemen," said Mr. Caryll, "it were well that you should have the full story of that sorry adventure from an eye-witness."

"An eye-witness? Were ye present?" cried two or three in a breath.

"I desire to lay before you all the story of how we met my lord there and I. It is so closely enmeshed with the story of that abduction and mock-marriage that the one is scarce to be distinguished from the other."

Rotherby writhed to shake off those who held him.

"Will ye listen to this fellow?" he roared. "He's a spy, I tell you--a Jacobite spy!" He was beside himself with anger and apprehension, and he never paused to weigh the words he uttered. It was with him a question of stopping his accuser's mouth with whatever mud came under his hands.

"He has no right here. It is not to be borne. I know not by what means he has thrust himself among you, but--"

"That is a knowledge I can afford your lordship," came Stapleton's steady voice to interrupt the speaker. "Mr. Caryll is here by my invitation."

"And by mine and Gascoigne's here," added Sir Harry Collis, "and I will answer for his quality to any man who doubts it."

Rotherby glared at Mr. Caryll's sponsors, struck dumb by this sudden and unexpected refutation of the charge he had leveled.

Wharton, who had stepped aside, knit his brows and flashed his quizzing-gla.s.s--through sheer force of habit--upon Lord Rotherby. Then:

"You'll pardon me, Harry," said he, "but you'll see, I hope, that the question is not impertinent; that I put it to the end that we may clearly know with whom we have to deal and what consideration to extend him, what credit to attach to the communication he is to make us touching my lord here. Under what circ.u.mstances did you become acquainted with Mr. Caryll?"

"I have known him these twelve years," answered Collis promptly; "so has Stapleton, so has Gascoigne, so have a dozen other gentlemen who could be produced, and who, like ourselves, were at Oxford with him. For myself and Stapleton, I can say that our acquaintance--indeed, I should say our friendship--with Mr. Caryll has been continuous since then, and that we have visited him on several occasions at his estate of Maligny in Normandy. That he habitually inhabits the country of his birth is the reason why Mr. Caryll has not hitherto had the advantage of your grace's acquaintance. Need I say more to efface the false statement made by my Lord Rotherby?"

"False? Do you dare give me the lie, sir?" roared Rotherby.

But the duke soothed him. Under his profligate exterior his Grace of Wharton concealed--indeed, wasted--a deal of shrewdness, ability and inherent strength. "One thing at a time, my lord," said the president of the Bold Bucks. "Let us attend to the matter of Mr. Caryll."

"Dons and the devil! Does your grace take sides with him?"

"I take no sides. But I owe it to myself--we all owe it to ourselves--that this matter should be cleared."

Rotherby leered at him, his lip trembling with anger. "Does the president of the Bold Bucks pretend to administrate a court of honor?"

he sneered heavily.

"Your lordship will gain little by this," Wharton admonished him, so coldly that Rotherby belatedly came to some portion of his senses again.

The duke turned to Caryll. "Mr. Caryll," said he, "Sir Harry has given you very handsome credentials, which would seem to prove you worthy the hospitality of White's. You have, however, permitted yourself certain expressions concerning his lordship here, which we cannot allow to remain where you have left them. You must retract, sir, or make them good." His gravity, and the preciseness of his diction now, sorted most oddly with his foppish airs.

Mr. Caryll closed his snuff-box with a snap. A hush fell instantly upon the company, which by now was all crowding about the little table at which sat Mr. Caryll and his three friends. A footman who entered at the moment to snuff the candles and see what the gentlemen might be requiring, was dismissed the room. When the door had closed, Mr. Caryll began to speak.

One more attempt was made by Rotherby to interfere, but this attempt was disposed of by Wharton, who had const.i.tuted himself entirely master of the proceedings.

"If you will not allow Mr. Caryll to speak, we shall infer that you fear what he may have to say; you will compel us to hear him in your absence, and I cannot think that you would prefer that, my lord."

My lord fell silent. He was breathing heavily, and his face was pale, his eyes angry beyond words, what time Mr. Caryll, in amiable, musical voice, with its precise and at moments slightly foreign enunciation, unfolded the shameful story of the affair at the "Adam and Eve," at Maidstone. He told a plain, straightforward tale, making little attempt to reproduce any of its color, giving his audience purely and simply the facts that had taken place. He told how he himself had been chosen as a witness when my lord had heard that there was a traveller from France in the house, and showed how that slight circ.u.mstance had first awakened his suspicions of foul play. He provoked some amus.e.m.e.nt when he dealt with his detection and exposure of the sham parson. But in the main he was heard with a stern and ominous attention--ominous for Lord Rotherby.

Rakes these men admittedly were with but few exceptions. No ordinary tale of gallantry could have shocked them, or provoked them to aught but a contemptuous mirth at the expense of the victim, male or female. They would have thought little the worse of a man for running off with the wife, say, of one of his acquaintance; they would have thought nothing of his running off with a sister or a daughter--so long as it was not of their own. All these were fair game, and if the husband, father or brother could not protect the wife, sister or daughter that was his, the more shame to him. But though they might be fair game, the game had its rules--anomalous as it may seem. These rules Lord Rotherby--if the tale Mr. Caryll told was true--had violated. He had practiced a cheat, the more dastardly because the poor lady who had so narrowly escaped being his victim had nether father nor brother to avenge her. And in every eye that was upon him Lord Rotherby might have read, had he had the wit to do so, the very sternest condemnation.

"A pretty story, as I've a soul!" was his grace's comment, when Mr.

Caryll had done. "A pretty story, my Lord Rotherby. I have a stomach for strong meat myself. But--odds my life!--this is too nauseous!"

Rotherby glared at him. "'Slife! your grace is grown very nice on a sudden!" he sneered. "The president of the Bold Bucks, the master of the h.e.l.l Fire Club, is most oddly squeamish where the diversions of another are concerned."

"Diversions?" said his grace, his eyebrows raised until they all but vanished under the golden curls of his peruke. "Diversions? Ha! I observe that you make no attempt to deny the story. You admit it, then?"

There was a stir in the group, a drawing back from his lordship. He observed it, trembling between chagrin and rage. "What's here?" he cried, and laughed contemptuously. "Oh, ah! You'll follow where his grace leads you! Ye've followed him so long in lewdness that now yell follow him in conversion! But as for you, sir," and he swung fiercely upon Caryll, "you and your precious story--will you maintain it sword in hand?"

"I can do better," answered Mr. Caryll, "if any doubts my word."

"As how?"

"I can prove it categorically, by witnesses."

"Well said, Caryll," Stapleton approved him.

"And if I say that you lie--you and your witnesses?"

"'T is you will be liar," said Mr. Caryll.