HIS LORDSHIP’S WILL
The movement of the vehicle made Lord Polperro drowsy.
In ten minutes he seemed to be asleep, and Gammon
had to catch his hat as it was falling forward.
When the four-wheeler jolted more than usual he uttered
groans; once he shouted loudly, and for a moment stared
about him in terror. The man of commerce had never
made so unpleasant a journey in his life.
On arriving at their destination it was with much
difficulty that Gammon aroused his companion, and
with still more that he conveyed him from the cab
into the building, a house porter (who smiled significantly)
assisting in the job. Lord Polperro, when thoroughly
awakened, coughed, groaned, and gasped in a most alarming
way. His flat was on the first floor; before
reaching it he began to shed tears, and to beg that
his medical man might be called immediately.
The door was opened by a middle-aged woman dressed
as a housekeeper, who viewed his lordship with no
great concern. She promised to send a messenger
to the doctor’s, and left the two men alone in
a room comfortably furnished, but without elegance
or expensiveness. Gammon waited upon the invalid,
placed him at ease by the fireside, and reached him
a cellaret from a cupboard full of various liquors.
A few draughts of a restorative enabled Lord Polperro
to articulate, and he inquired if any letters had
arrived for him.
“Look on the writing table, Greenacre.
Any thing there?”
There were two letters. The invalid examined
them with disappointment and tossed them aside.
“Beggars and blackmailers,” he muttered.
“Nobody else writes to me.”
Of a sudden it occurred to him that he was forgetting
the duties of hospitality. He urged his guest
to take refreshment; he roused himself, went to the
cupboard, brought out half a dozen kinds of beverage.
“And of course you will lunch with me, or will
it be dinner? Yes, yes, luncheon of course.
Excuse me for one moment, I must give some orders.”
He left the room. Gammon, having tossed off a
glass of wine, surveyed the objects about him with
curiosity. An observer of more education would
have glanced with peculiar interest at the books;
several volumes lay on the table, one of them a recent
work on gipsies, another dealing with the antiquities
of Cornwall. For the town traveller these things
of course had no significance. But he remarked
a painting on the wall, which was probably a portrait
of one of Lord Polperro’s ancestors—a
youngish man (the Trefoyle nose, not to be mistaken)
in a strange wild costume, his head bare under a sky
blackening to storm, in his hand a sort of hunting
knife, and one of his feet resting on a dead wolf.
When his host reappeared Gammon asked him whom the
picture represented.
“That? That’s my father—years
before I was born. They tell me that he used
to say that in his life he had only done one thing
to be proud of. It was in some part of Russia.
He killed a wolf at close quarters—only
a knife to fight with. He was a fine man, my father.
Looks it, don’t you think?”
