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However, he got Marion, and also, as usual, the two men who had made a practice of taking away his money Major Belwether and Lord Alderdene. Plank and Leila Mortimer came down to congratulate them.
Then Alderdene, blinking furiously, emitted one of his ear-racking laughs; and everybody, as usual, laughed too. "You damned cynic," observed Voucher affectionately. "Somebody," said Fleetwood, "insists that she doubled up poor Siward." "She never met Siward until she was engaged to Howard," remarked Voucher. "Well?" "Oh, don't you consider that enough to squelch the story?"
So everybody in the gun-room was civil enough, and he chose Scotch and found a seat beside Alderdene, who sat biting at a smoky pipe and fingering a tumbler of smokier Scotch, blinking away like mad through his shooting-goggles at everybody. "These little brown snipe you call woodcock," he began; "we bagged nine brace, d'you see? But of all the damnable bogs and covers "
Later, Alderdene used him to get rid of an angular, old harridan who seemed to be one solid diamond-mine, and who drove him into a corner and talked indelicacies until Plank's broad face flamed like the setting sun.
This, being the major's cue for an exit, he rose, one sleek hand raised in sprightly protest as though to shield the invisible ladies, to whose bournes he was bound, from an uproar too masculine and mighty for the ears of such a sex. "Ass!" muttered Alderdene, getting up and pattering about the room in his big, shiny pumps. "Give me a peg somebody!"
Which is partly why Alderdene and Voucher were there. And this British sideboard breakfast was a concession wrung from him through force of sheer necessity, although the custom had already become practically universal in American country houses where guests were entertained.
"Engaged girls," mused Alderdene, "never double up except at Bridge." "Everybody has been or is in love with Sylvia Landis," said Voucher, "and it's a man's own fault if he's hit. Once she did it, innocently enough, and enjoyed it, never realising that it hurt a man to be doubled up." Fleetwood yawned again and said: "She can have me to-morrow. But she won't. She's tired of the sport.
"I heard Alderdene talking about it," he said, smilingly inspecting the girl's attire of khaki with its buttoned pockets, gun pads, and Cossack cartridge loops, and the tan knee-kilts hanging heavily pleated over gaiters and little thick-soled shoes.
Caithness must have improved the chance, if he was able to present such gems to his daughter. And now somebody would marry her; perhaps Captain Voucher; perhaps even Alderdene; perhaps, as rumour had it now and then, Plank might venture into the arena. Poor Plank! More of a man than people understood. She understood. She
Lord Alderdene, Major Belwether, and Mortimer were at a table by themselves; stacks of ivory chips and five cards spread in the centre of the green explained the nature of their game; and Mortimer, raising his heavy inflamed eyes and seeing Siward unoccupied, said wheezily: "Cut out that 'widow, and give Siward his stack! Anything above two pairs for a jack triples the ante.
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