"Been riding instead of going to church, the young rascals," he said to himself, as he rang the bell.
A small, shrewd-faced man opened the door and ushered Mr. Delane into the hall. Then he stopped.
"If you go straight on, sir," said he, "through that baize door, and across the passage, and through the opposite door, you will find Mr. Bannister."
"Mr. Bannister, sir," the man explained, "don't like visitors being announced, sir. If you would be so kind as walk in----"
It was a harmless whim, and the Squire nodded assent. He passed through the baize door, crossed the passage, and paused before opening the opposite door. The sounds which came from behind it arrested his attention. To the accompaniment of a gentle drumming noise, as if of sticks or umbrellas bumped against the floor, a voice was declaiming, or rather chanting, poetry. The voice rose and fell, and Mr. Delane could not distinguish the words, until it burst forth triumphantly with the lines:
"Love grows hate for love's sake, life takes death for guide; Night hath none but one red star--Tyrannicide."
The voice dropped again for a few moments, then it hurled out:
"Down the way of Tsars awhile in vain deferred, Bid the Second Alexander light the Third. How for shame shall men rebuke them? how may we Blame, whose fathers died and slew, to leave us free?"
The voice was interrupted and drowned by the crash of the pianoforte, struck with remorseless force, and another voice, the voice of a woman, cried, rising even above the crash:
"I think I'd better go in," thought Mr. Delane, and he knocked loudly at the door.
He was bidden to enter by the former of the two voices, and, going in, found himself in a billiard room. Five or six people sat round the wall on settees, each holding a cue, with which they were still gently strumming on the floor. A stout, elderly woman was at the piano, and a young man sat cross-legged in the middle of the billiard-table, with a book in one hand and a cigar in the other. There was a good deal of tobacco smoke in the room, and Mr. Delane did not at first distinguish the faces of the company.
The young man on the table uncoiled himself with great agility, jumped down, and came forward to meet the newcomer with outstretched hands. As he outstretched them, he dropped the book and the cigar to the ground on either side of him.