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Then there came from the compound the soft "pad-pad" of camels "thieves' camels," the bikaneer breed that don't bubble and howl when they sit down and get up. After that I don't know what happened. This much is certain. Peythroppe disappeared vanished like smoke and the long foot-rest chair in the house of the Three Men was broken to splinters. Also a bedstead departed from one of the bedrooms.
It would have been cheaper for Peythroppe to have assaulted a Commissioner with a dog-whip, or to have burned the records of a Deputy Commissioner's Office, than to have contracted an alliance with the Castries. It would have weighted his after-career less even under a Government which never forgets and NEVER forgives. Everybody saw this but Peythroppe.
Reiver, won Tarrion his appointment in the Foreign Office, and was defeated in open field by Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil. She heard of the lamentable condition of Peythroppe, and her brain struck out the plan that saved him. She had the wisdom of the Serpent, the logical coherence of the Man, the fearlessness of the Child, and the triple intuition of the Woman.
He was going to marry Miss Castries, he was being of age and drawing a good income and woe betide the house that would not afterwards receive Mrs. Virginie Saulez Peythroppe with the deference due to her husband's rank. That was Peythroppe's ultimatum, and any remonstrance drove him frantic. These sudden madnesses most afflict the sanest men.
There was a case once but I will tell you of that later on. You cannot account for the mania, except under a theory directly contradicting the one about the Place wherein marriages are made. Peythroppe was burningly anxious to put a millstone round his neck at the outset of his career and argument had not the least effect on him.
But but but . Well, she was a VERY sweet girl and very pious, but for many reasons she was "impossible." Quite so. All good Mammas know what "impossible" means. It was obviously absurd that Peythroppe should marry her. The little opal-tinted onyx at the base of her finger-nails said this as plainly as print.
Had a Subaltern, or a Tea-Planter's Assistant, or anybody who enjoys life and has no care for to-morrow, done what he tried to do not a soul would have cared. But when Peythroppe the estimable, virtuous, economical, quiet, hard-working, young Peythroppe fell, there was a flutter through five Departments. The manner of his fall was in this way.
Mrs. Hauksbee said that Mr. Peythroppe was shooting in Rajputana with the Three Men; so we were compelled to believe her. At the end of the month, Peythroppe was gazetted twenty days' extension of leave; but there was wrath and lamentation in the house of Castries.
Peythroppe was in hard, tough condition, rather white, and more self-contained than ever. One of the Three Men had a cut on his nose, cause by the kick of a gun. Twelve-bores kick rather curiously. Then came Honorary Lieutenant Castries, seeking for the blood of his perfidious son-in-law to be.
Never no, never as long as a tonga buckets down the Solon dip, or the couples go a-riding at the back of Summer Hill, will there be such a genius as Mrs. Hauksbee. She attended the consultation of Three Men on Peythroppe's case; and she stood up with the lash of her riding-whip between her lips and spake. Three weeks later, Peythroppe dined with the Three Men, and the Gazette of India came in.
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