But when it is said that all the world knew of it, Penelope herself must be excepted. She knew nothing for some time, and, whoever her husband was, he certainly never acquainted her with the horrible details of all the good men who sacrificed their honour in the noble attempt to save her from the results of the terrible misfortune they believed had happened to her. It was, indeed, Miss Mackarness who told her about it, and Miss Mackarness was the old governess whom Penelope had once sacked and sent away. The poor woman was in a terrible state of mind about the affair, and in that was no different from all the rest of the world. To her went Timothy Bunting with the strange story.
"If you please, ma'am, Geordie Smith 'as just brought in a paper wiv a true and pertic'ler account of 'ow all the gents that was courtin' our lady told the Duchess of Goring as 'ow they 'as married 'er!"
"What!" said Miss Mackarness.
"A true and perticuler account as 'ow they 'ad hall married our lady, sayin' as they 'ad concealed it till they could no longer!" repeated Timothy more loudly.
"Good heavens!" said Miss Mackarness, trembling very much, "I fear it will upset Lady Penelope, to say nothing of the infant. Do they all claim the infant, Bunting?"
"I presume so, ma'am," said Bunting. "It looks likely."
"Under these circumstances, Bunting," cried Miss Mackarness, "I feel it is my duty to communicate the facts to our lady. Give me the paper, Bunting!"
Bunting said he would get it, and came back with a hatful of fragments.
"If you please, ma'am, this is hall I can rescue of the details. The cook and the parlour-maid and the two 'ousemaids 'ave fought over it in the servants' 'all, and are now in tears, not 'aving read a word."
And Miss Mackarness took the hatful up to Penelope, who sat with her nurse and the cause of all the trouble in a south room overlooking the moat.
"In the name of all that is wonderful, what's in that hat?" asked Penelope.
"It is Timothy Bunting's hat, my lady," replied the Mackarness.
"So I perceive," said Penelope. "Is a bird in it?"
"Oh, no, my lady. It's the bits of a newspaper," replied the housekeeper, as if she served up the Times in a groom's hat every day. "It's Timothy's hat, but a clean new one."
"But why do you bring it, and why do you put newspaper in it?" asked Penelope.
"If you please, my lady, I cannot help it. The cook and the parlour-maid and the two housemaids fought over it in the servants' hall, and are now in tears, not having read a word of it."
To all appearance the housekeeper had lost her senses. Though this was no wonder, Penelope wondered at it.
"Well," she said at last, "I see what's in the hat, but what's in the newspaper?"
"If you please, my lady, according to Timothy Bunting and Smith, who appear to have read it, it contains the true account of what happened at Goring House the other day, when all the gentlemen staying there, hearing from the Times that your ladyship had a fine boy on the eighteenth, and no husband named by your ladyship's particular directions, all got up one after the other, and, requesting private interviews with her upset Grace, the duchess, declared upon their oaths, though in secret, that they had married you themselves!"
She recited this in a strange, mechanical way, which would have been extremely effective upon the stage, as a picture of hopeless conventionality wounded to death, and at last dying in sheer indifference to all things.
"Dear me!" said Penelope, "dear me!"
"It furthermore appears, my lady, begging your pardon for mentioning it, and I have reproved Bunting bitterly for daring to do so, though I haven't read the fragments in the hat, that no one believes your ladyship's word at all as to your being married."
"Oh, how shameful!" said Penelope. "Why, here's baby!"
The nurse coughed and hid her mouth with her hand.
"Yes, my lady, so he is," said Miss Mackarness. "There doesn't seem any doubt whatsoever about that, but—"
And Penelope sighed. Suddenly her face lighted up.
"Ah!" she said, "I see why they said it to aunty. How very, very noble of them! I knew they were all splendid men; men of the highest character and attainments and possibilities. Will you have telegrams written out to all of them, saying, 'Your conduct is noble, and I am deeply grateful'?"
"Yes, my lady," replied the housekeeper, "and how will you sign it?"
"Sign it Penelope Brading," said Penelope. "And tell Smith to take his car as quickly as he can to Spilsborough, and send them from there."
She lay back in her pillows.
"They are noble fellows," she said. "I have done them an immense amount of good. A year ago not one of them could have risen to such heights of abnegation, such love, such tenderness. I shall see them bringing in a new era yet. Leopold Gordon will inaugurate a new and pure finance. The dear marquis will abolish anti-Semitism and duelling in France. De Vere will write poems of a purity appealing equally to Brixton and Belgravia, and my dear friend Carew will vindicate the Royal Academy's policy of showing that charity begins at home. And the rest—ah, me! Poor dear aunty, how I love her!"
And by the time that she had pondered over a renewed world, Geordie Smith was sending off the wires from Spilsborough with wonderful results.
"I like this," said Smith. "This is what I like! There's nothing dull about it. I wonder what'll happen now? I'll lay five to one I can guess!"
He guessed right as to some, for in about four hours Rufus Plant arrived in Spilsborough on his racing-car, and put up at the Grand Hotel.
"I guess she must be somewhere in this neighbourhood," said Plant. "And here I stay till I find her. And by the tail of the sacred bull, whatever happens, I'll marry her right here in this hyer noble pile of a cathedral. And if she'll do it, I'll restore it for the authorities free of charge, till it's as gawdy as a breastpin and right up to date."
He ran against Gordon, and the two men fell back in horrible surprise.
"You—"
"You!"
"Oh, yes," said Plant, "I'm here on business connected with the cathedral."
"And I'm to see the—bishop, who will join the board on allotment," mumbled Gordon.
And then Goby roared into town on his motorcar. The others saw him, and he saw them, and ignored them palely. He, too, put up at the Grand, but never spoke to them. And De Vere came in while they were at dinner, and sat down opposite to Goby. He said, "Oh!" and, rising, at once bolted from the table.
"I'm damned," said Goby, and he lost his appetite.
"How many more of us?" they asked themselves.
They looked up at every one who entered.
"Bramber will be in any moment," said Plant.
Poor De Vere sat in his bedroom and was ill.
"If I look out into the corridor, I know I shall see that beast Williams," he sobbed.
"Where's that French fool, Rivaulx?" asked Gordon. They all believed the other was the scoundrel of the dreadful drama.
And then the evening papers came in. They declared in big lines that there had been "A Fracas in High Life." They added that it had taken place in the Row at four o'clock that very afternoon. They went on to say that Lord Bramber and the Marquis de Rivaulx, well known as a great sportsman and a balloonist, had fought in a flower-bed, and had been torn from each other's arms and a big rhododendron by two dukes, three earls, and a viscount. They further declared that it was a matter of public notoriety that all the trouble rose out of the mystery connected with the Times and Lady Penelope Brading. They promised more details in later editions.
"They'll fight," said Gordon, savagely. "I hope they'll kill each other. But especially I hope that the marquis will be killed first and most!"
And about eleven o'clock Rivaulx turned up with his chauffeur and a bad black eye.
"He shall fight me here," said Rivaulx. "This is a quiet town. No one will think of Spilsborough! He does not know that she sent me a telegram from here!"
He put up at the Angel, and escaped seeing the others for the time. On his way up he had sent a defiant telegram to Bramber, desiring him to come to Spilsborough, and fight there with swords or pistols or any weapon that commended itself to him. This telegram Bramber never got, for, on reaching home and washing away the traces of the struggle in Hyde Park before all the loveliness of London, he had found his telegram from Spilsborough sent by Geordie Smith. After looking in the ABC guide, and finding no good train, he pelted off in his motor-car, leaving a note for Rivaulx, saying that, though duels were absurd and illegal, he would not refuse to meet the marquis in France or Belgium, if he desired to make a bigger fool of himself than he had already done in the park.
"Curse and confound them all," said Bramber, who was horribly cross and exceedingly sick of the whole world, even including Penelope. "I wonder what she means by this telegram. I wish I was dead! Is she at Spilsborough?"
Just in the middle of Spilsborough he met Rivaulx and pulled up short, not having the least notion, of course, that he would meet him there. But Rivaulx grinned a ghastly smile and raised his hat, as Bramber stopped.
"Ha, I am pleased to see you," said the French marquis. "You have come quickly. It is a fine night, there is a moon, and close by here under the shadow of the cathedral there is a most beautiful piece of grass. There we will fight. I have brought swords with me. Or have you brought guns?"
"I haven't brought guns," said Bramber, who was entirely stunned and at a loss for a word.
The marquis bowed.
"We will fight with swords, my lord. I think this hotel is good; the lady is amiable; there are rooms to spare. When the moon rises, ha! I will call you forth."
And Bramber went to the hotel to think what he should do.
"The ass! the lunatic! How did he get here? I can't get out of fighting him."
He sat outside in his car.
"No, I won't. I'm damned if I do!" he said.
He went in and wrote a note for Rivaulx, who was out in the cathedral close picking what he considered a good place for a duel. The spot he chose was not far from the dean's house.
"I wish it had been Mr. Plant," he said. "Of Bramber, who is a young ass, I am not jealous. But of Plant I am horribly jealous, and he is a bad man. If I met Plant I would say, 'Fight me at once now, and I will put off Lord Bramber till another day.'"
And, going around the corner, he ran right into Plant, who was raging about the town, wondering where Penelope was and how everything was going to end.
"The scoundrel is that marquis," said Plant. And he ran into the scoundrel's arms.
And just while Bramber was shaking the dust of Spilsborough from the tires of his motor-car, Bob himself came into the town in a hired Daimler, full of the most extraordinary news. And Titania was having a series of fits down at Goring, with Dr. Lumsden Griff in attendance.