"Do you mean what you say?" he asked.
"Yes."
"You point me out before all these people—"
"One moment, Mr. Delamayn. I admit that I may have been wrong in directing the general attention to you. You have a right to complain of my having answered too publicly the public challenge offered to me by your friends. I apologize for having done that. But I don't retract a single word of what I have said on the subject of your health."
"You stick to it that I'm a broken-down man?"
"I do."
"I wish you were twenty years younger, Sir!"
"Why?"
"I'd ask you to step out on the lawn there and I'd show you whether I'm a broken-down man or not."
Lady Lundie looked at her brother-in-law. Sir Patrick instantly interfered.
"Mr. Delamayn," he said, "you were invited here in the character of a gentleman, and you are a guest in a lady's house."
"No! no!" said the surgeon, good humoredly. "Mr. Delamayn is using a strong argument, Sir Patrick—and that is all. If I were twenty years younger," he went on, addressing himself to Geoffrey, "and if I did step out on the lawn with you, the result wouldn't affect the question between us in the least. I don't say that the violent bodily exercises in which you are famous have damaged your muscular power. I assert that they have damaged your vital power. In what particular way they have affected it I don't consider myself bound to tell you. I simply give you a warning, as a matter of common humanity. You will do well to be content with the success you have already achieved in the field of athletic pursuits, and to alter your mode of life for the future. Accept my excuses, once more, for having said this publicly instead of privately—and don't forget my warning."
He turned to move away to another part of the room. Geoffrey fairly forced him to return to the subject.
"Wait a bit," he said. "You have had your innings. My turn now. I can't give it words as you do; but I can come to the point. And, by the Lord, I'll fix you to it! In ten days or a fortnight from this I'm going into training for the Foot-Race at Fulham. Do you say I shall break down?"
"You will probably get through your training."
"Shall I get through the race?"
"You may possibly get through the race. But if you do—"
"If I do?"
"You will never run another."
"And never row in another match?"
"Never."
"I have been asked to row in the Race, next spring; and I have said I will. Do you tell me, in so many words, that I sha'n't be able to do it?"
"Yes—in so many words."
"Positively?"
"Positively."
"Back your opinion!" cried Geoffrey, tearing his betting-book out of his pocket. "I lay you an even hundred I'm in fit condition to row in the University Match next spring."
"I don't bet, Mr. Delamayn."
With that final reply the surgeon walked away to the other end of the library. Lady Lundie (taking Blanche in custody) withdrew, at the same time, to return to the serious business of her invitations for the dinner. Geoffrey turned defiantly, book in hand, to his college friends about him. The British blood was up; and the British resolution to bet, which successfully defies common decency and common-law from one end of the country to the other, was not to be trifled with.
"Come on!" cried Geoffrey. "Back the doctor, one of you!"
Sir Patrick rose in undisguised disgust, and followed the surgeon. One, Two, and Three, invited to business by their illustrious friend, shook their thick heads at him knowingly, and answered with one accord, in one eloquent word—"Gammon!"
"One of you back him!" persisted Geoffrey, appealing to the two choral gentlemen in the back-ground, with his temper fast rising to fever heat. The two choral gentlemen compared notes, as usual. "We weren't born yesterday, Smith?" "Not if we know it, Jones."
"Smith!" said Geoffrey, with a sudden assumption of politeness ominous of something unpleasant to come.
Smith said "Yes?"—with a smile.
"Jones!"
Jones said "Yes?"—with a reflection of Smith.
"You're a couple of infernal cads—and you haven't got a hundred pound between you!"
"Come! come!" said Arnold, interfering for the first time. "This is shameful, Geoffrey!"
"Why the"—(never mind what!)—"won't they any of them take the bet?"
"If you must be a fool," returned Arnold, a little irritably on his side, "and if nothing else will keep you quiet, I'll take the bet."
"An even hundred on the doctor!" cried Geoffrey. "Done with you!"
His highest aspirations were satisfied; his temper was in perfect order again. He entered the bet in his book; and made his excuses to Smith and Jones in the heartiest way. "No offense, old chaps! Shake hands!" The two choral gentlemen were enchanted with him. "The English aristocracy—eh, Smith?" "Blood and breeding—ah, Jones!"
As soon as he had spoken, Arnold's conscience reproached him: not for betting (who is ashamed of that form of gambling in England?) but for "backing the doctor." With the best intention toward his friend, he was speculating on the failure of his friend's health. He anxiously assured Geoffrey that no man in the room could be more heartily persuaded that the surgeon was wrong than himself. "I don't cry off from the bet," he said. "But, my dear fellow, pray understand that I only take it to please you."
"Bother all that!" answered Geoffrey, with the steady eye to business, which was one of the choicest virtues in his character. "A bet's a bet—and hang your sentiment!" He drew Arnold by the arm out of ear-shot of the others. "I say!" he asked, anxiously. "Do you think I've set the old fogy's back up?"
"Do you mean Sir Patrick?"
Geoffrey nodded, and went on.
"I haven't put that little matter to him yet—about marrying in Scotland, you know. Suppose he cuts up rough with me if I try him now?" His eye wandered cunningly, as he put the question, to the farther end of the room. The surgeon was looking over a port-folio of prints. The ladies were still at work on their notes of invitation. Sir Patrick was alone at the book-shelves immersed in a volume which he had just taken down.
"Make an apology," suggested Arnold. "Sir Patrick may be a little irritable and bitter; but he's a just man and a kind man. Say you were not guilty of any intentional disrespect toward him—and you will say enough."
"All right!"
Sir Patrick, deep in an old Venetian edition of The Decameron, found himself suddenly recalled from medieval Italy to modern England, by no less a person than Geoffrey Delamayn.
"What do you want?" he asked, coldly.
"I want to make an apology," said Geoffrey. "Let by-gones be by-gones—and that sort of thing. I wasn't guilty of any intentional disrespect toward you. Forgive and forget. Not half a bad motto, Sir—eh?"
It was clumsily expressed—but still it was an apology. Not even Geoffrey could appeal to Sir Patrick's courtesy and Sir Patrick's consideration in vain.
"Not a word more, Mr. Delamayn!" said the polite old man. "Accept my excuses for any thing which I may have said too sharply, on my side; and let us by all means forget the rest."
Having met the advance made to him, in those terms, he paused, expecting Geoffrey to leave him free to return to the Decameron. To his unutterable astonishment, Geoffrey suddenly stooped over him, and whispered in his ear, "I want a word in private with you."
Sir Patrick started back, as if Geoffrey had tried to bite him.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Delamayn—what did you say?"
"Could you give me a word in private?"
Sir Patrick put back the Decameron; and bowed in freezing silence. The confidence of the Honorable Geoffrey Delamayn was the last confidence in the world into which he desired to be drawn. "This is the secret of the apology!" he thought. "What can he possibly want with Me?"