CHAPTER XLII
Sharnbrook had called at Staplewick for an authoritative version of certain blood-curdling rumours which had reached him, and he stayed to luncheon.
"Wish I'd known you were having such a thrilling time," he said regretfully. "I'd have come up and helped. Well, I say, with this new twist of the Quorn title our fair friends at the Moat will get a nasty shake, eh? I'm ever so grateful for the way you fellows have relieved the pressure of the fair dodgers; they've eased off wonderfully of late, and I've got my wind again."
"Glad to hear it," observed Peckover. "Always willing to oblige a sportsman."
"Ah," said Sharnbrook in a gratified tone, "if I'd only known you were having fits with that little Spanish bantam, I'd have brought along a rare good bull-dog that would have reduced him to fragments and pulp inside three minutes. A nailing beast, knows his business from A to Z and quite a picture when he's——"
"The little devil of a duke would have put a bullet through him," said Gage, "and that would have been a pity."
"Yes," Sharnbrook agreed, "that wouldn't have suited me. I've only had the beggar a month, and have just got fond of him."
"Even a Spanish bluffer has his uses," observed Gage. "He has knocked the stuffing out of Quorn's bush-ranger."
"Yes," said Quorn, "that brute has no more terrors for me; I suppose, though, I shall have him and Lalage hanging about the place till I can afford to send them back."
"Better keep the fire-irons out of the way," remarked Peckover.
"I'll send the precious pair back home for you, if you don't get the Buffkin money," said Gage magnanimously. "After all, I owe you something. I can't say I've had much fun out of your title, and hope you'll do better with it. But it has been an experience, and I certainly shan't hanker after the peerage again."
Quorn thanked him. "Hope you'll stay on here as long as you fancy," he said.
Gage shook his head. "No thanks. I'm off to-morrow. Too much Hemyock about for me. But I'll run down later and see what you're making of it."
"What's going to become of you?" he asked Peckover. "Got anything more to sell that doesn't belong to you?"
"You can't blame me," Peckover protested. "I kept to my part of the bargain as long as you had any use for it. And I couldn't help it. If you hadn't made a bid for the title I should have had to take it on myself."
"Right you are," responded Gage good-humouredly. "Well, you had better come with me and show me round. You can draw £300 a year as my secretary."
"I'm your man," said Peckover with alacrity. "What I don't show you won't be worth seeing."
Lady Ormstork with Mr. and Miss Buffkin was announced.
The dowager was full of gush. "Dear Lord Quorn! What an amusing incognito! Quite like the lord of Burleigh. One can quite understand your wishing to put people's real affection to the test."
"We won't inquire how the article stood it," Quorn replied bluntly.
"Quite romantic, as dear Ulrica was saying," the lady proceeded, quite unabashed. "May we, before going out, look round the picture gallery? Mr. Buffkin would so like to see the interesting family portraits and wonderful old armour."
If Mr. Buffkin's expression was meant to be corroborative it was a distinct failure. Whatever sentiment might have been read in his commercial face, a yearning for the satisfying of an artistic curiosity was not there.
No objection to the proposal being made, the party proceeded to what Peckover called the ancestral showroom.
"Won't you look after dear Ulrica and show her round?" Lady Ormstork said pointedly to Quorn when the somewhat dreary gallery was reached.
Quorn, nothing loath, attached himself forthwith to Miss Buffkin, who had somehow gravitated to the now negligible Peckover. "Now, Mr. Peckover," he said bluffly, "you ought to know all about these fifth of November Johnnies. Give us a bit of the showman. Take us round the effigies, and don't be too long about it."
On account, perhaps, of Miss Buffkin's obvious preference, Peckover was in higher spirits than his lot seemed to warrant.
"All right," he responded, pulling a ramrod from an ancient gun for use as a showman's wand. "Here goes! Lord Quorn, ladies and gentlemen: with a view to combining instruction with amusement, I propose to give you some points concerning these noble effigies with which the spacious apartment is lined. True, it is only the outer crusts of these distinguished warriors and sportsmen that I am able to bring to your notice. The kernels are all gone, and the shells are—hem!—left tenantless. But, as in these days the tailor makes the man, so we may say that in olden times the blacksmith made him, from which we may conclude that we have the best part," he tapped a suit of armour with his wand, "of the noble house of Quorn remaining with us to this day."
"Hear! hear!" cried Sharnbrook, with more appreciation than tact, while Miss Buffkin laughed sympathetically.
"The clockwork has long since run down," continued Peckover finding the vocabulary of his former vocation coming in usefully; "the striking gear is out of order, on account of the dust getting into it. The hands can point no longer, and the faces have lost their enamel. But we have still the cases—some plain, like this,"—he tapped a suit of plate armour—"some engine turned, like that," pointing to an inlaid suit, "some with open faces, like this yawner," he rattled his wand in the cavity of a vizorless helmet, "some hunters, like this prancer," indicating an equestrian portrait. "To begin at the beginning." He held up a dilapidated helmet in one hand and in the other a fragment of armour. "Sir Guy de Quorn, founder of the family."
There was a laugh from everybody, although Lady Ormstork's was rather belated, that astute dowager's sense of humour being outweighed by her concern at seeing that Ulrica was paying more attention to the flippant little showman than to the more solid worth of Lord Quorn.
"Not much of him remaining," Peckover went on. "Ladies and gentlemen of vivid powers of imagination may reconstruct in their minds from these scanty materials the noble mien, the imposing figure, of this doughty warrior. Pass on to Sir Nicholas de Quorn," he pointed to the suit of armour that stood next, "in a high state of preservation. A mighty man of valour, who had the advantage of living in times when he could knock a man out for sneezing in his presence without being liable to forty shillings or a month. Sir Nicholas spent a useful life in trying his muscle and weight on other people, and was getting his name up nicely, when unfortunately setting out to attack the castle of an absent neighbour in a thunderstorm, his lance acted as a lightning conductor, and he was prematurely cremated. Notice the aperture through which the electric fluid tunnelled its way to his knightly vitals, and the look of blank astonishment with a dash of 'uffiness on the champion's visage."
The said visage being indeed a blank, this fancy seemed to tickle even the unimaginative Mr. Buffkin. Peckover now directed attention to a weird-looking portrait. "Sir Penning de Quorn, surnamed the Feckless. He never did anything distinguished, and only escaped being made Commander-in-Chief through one of the Royal Family fancying himself in a cocked hat." He passed to another canvas. "Sir Brian de Quorn—sometimes called the Buffer, as nothing made any impression on him. He married four wives, three of whom survived him."
Sharnbrook guffawed, and Lady Ormstork looked scandalized.
"Sir Walter the Willing," proceeded Peckover, working up the showman business, as he pointed to the next portrait, "a distinguished advertising politician. He pushed his way to the front and became a Cabinet Minister by his imitations of popular jesters, and by dyeing his raven locks crimson with a secret wash which he purchased from a bald Crusader who had no further use for it. When at length the supply failed and the substitutes he tried to manufacture turned his hair green, and by their offensive odour left him alone on the Treasury Bench he was soon sent to the Upper House, becoming first Baron Quorn."
Mr. Buffkin, for an out-of-place, commercial Philistine seemed, to Peckover's gratification, to be taking in the lecture with genuine amusement.
Thus stimulated, the showman proceeded, "Harboro' de Quorn," he tapped a sporting portrait, "second Baron Quorn, and inventor of the Quorn Hunt. He induced the noble Normans to abandon the shooting of foxes which they consented to, owing to gunpowder being in its infancy, guns taking a quarter of an hour to load and fire, and the wily animal being hard to hit with a bow and arrow. He was the first M.F.H., and having an impediment in his speech he originated the expression, Yoicks! which, being interpreted, was his bovrilized way of cursing people who rode over the hounds."
"Good man," ejaculated Sharnbrook.
Peckover, encouraged by Ulrica's animated interest, went on with his lecture in spite of Lady Ormstork's obvious impatience. His next object was a big suit of armour on which he irreverently rattled his wand. "We now come to the third Baron, Marmaduke, surnamed the Masher. His fatal gift of beauty was the cause of some anxiety—to the married nobility, clergy and gentry of his acquaintance. He was, as you will observe, very particular about the cut of his armour and the shape of his helmet, which was constructed with an extra-size pigeon-hole, in order that the full extent of his handsome physiognomy might be utilized to dazzle the doting damsels. His end, ladies and gentlemen, was, I regret to say, a somewhat melancholy and unusual one. While drinking a stirrup-cup, and trying at the same time to wink over the brim of the goblet at the young lady behind the bar, a portion of the pick-me-up went down the wrong way; to correct which mistake his faithful squire seized a spade and smote him therewith on the back. The clang of the blow on his armour startled his horse, which took to bucking, and at the first attempt laid the coughing nobleman in the ditch. He never wunk again. Notice the rectangular impression of the shovel between the shoulders, also the extra-sized sliding kissing-trap of the helmet so contrived for the purpose of simplifying the process of osculation to which he was addicted."
A marked diversion was here created by the entrance at the farther end of the gallery of Bisgood ushering in the entire Hemyock family. Their arrival was not greeted with that cordiality which is usually desirable and customary; it was, indeed, anything but welcome to any except two of the party. As Quorn, followed by the rest, went forward to receive the visitors, Peckover and Miss Buffkin lingered behind together.
"Like to see the view from the Tower?" he suggested with a grin. Ulrica laughed and they slipped unnoticed through a covered door. From an octagonal chamber a winding stairway led up to the tower. "Come along," said Peckover elatedly.
Ulrica with a mischievous laugh followed, and they soon emerged at the top where floated a tattered flag from a tall staff.
"How lovely," Miss Buffkin exclaimed.
"Never mind the view," said Peckover desperately. "How do you like the new Lord Quorn?"
Ulrica pouted. "I don't see myself Lady Quorn," she answered with a certain amount of decision.
"No," Peckover agreed with conviction. "He's not a bad sort, but he wouldn't be my fancy if I were a pretty girl."
"He's too glumpy for me," Ulrica declared. "And what's more I'm not going to have him."
"What'll the guv'nor say?" Peckover asked dubiously.
Miss Buffkin laughed. "Oh, father won't mind. You see," she went on confidentially, "this coronet racket isn't his idea at all. Not it."
"Yours?"
"Not likely. It is old Ormstork's. We ran across her at the Grand Oceanic at Harrogate. She hung on to us like a stoat on a rabbit. We couldn't make her game out, till one day she asked father what odds he would lay her that I didn't marry a peer. And she has been dragging me about the country ever since, till it has fairly come to pall."
"I should think so," observed Peckover sympathetically.
"I don't know," she continued, "how many noble heads I've been thrown at. But somehow I've always managed to rebound, and sometimes hit the old lady in the eye. You see, I like a live man, not a stuffed peer, with about as much soul as a gramaphone."
"I wish I was a peer," he said ruefully. "I'm alive all right."
"So you are," she agreed, gazing round the depressing park.
"Yes," he said with a wistful touch, "you said you liked me once, when you thought I was something else."
"What was that?" she inquired naively.
"A rich chap; a millionaire."
"Well, aren't you?" she demanded.
"Not exactly," he answered rather lugubriously. "That dream's over. We've been playing a queer game, but it has come to an end sooner than I expected. I'm a poor devil again now, and there's all about it."
For a moment Ulrica's violet eyes rested on him sympathetically. Then they looked away and seemed to be interested in the distant figure of Mr. Treacher who was slouching across the landscape.
"If people are poor," she said presently in a low voice from which all feeling was rigidly excluded, "it doesn't make any difference with me, when I like them."
Peckover jumped up. He could do no less. "Ulrica," he said and his voice trembled, "you like me? Yes, you said you did once. But I can't hold you to that for I was a regular fraud when I got you to say it."
Miss Buffkin gave a little sigh, and with a lingering glance at the uninteresting Mr. Treacher, turned towards the stairway. "All right," she said with an affectation of indifference. "I think I hear some one climbing after us."
The steps were steep and awkward. He had to take her hand, and at the touch his resolution (more honourable than many a better-bred man would have formed) gave way. "Ulrica," he said with a diffident tremor, "you couldn't care for a little nobody like me?"
She was gathering up her skirts for the descent. "I always rather liked you," she confessed.
"You wouldn't marry me?"
"What would Lady Ormstork say?" she objected archly.
"Ulrica, you are not fooling me?"
"Not much," she answered. "By the way, my real name is Barbara. Only the old lady thought Ulrica more classy, and so it had to be Ulrica."
In an instant he had sprung to the top step and his arms were round her. "Barbara, my darling."
"Hark!" she protested struggling.
From below came Lady Ormstork's insistent call.
"Barbara, quick! Is it to be?"
"Poor old Ormstork."
"Bother her. It's your father."
"I think he likes you. You're rather his sort, and Q. isn't," she said over her shoulder as she went down the winding stairs.
At the bottom stood Lady Ormstork looking properly scandalized. Apart from her charge's escapade, her meeting with Lady Agatha had not been conducive to serenity.
"My dearest Ulrica," she said sourly, "how absurd of you to hide yourself away up in that horrid tower. Lord Quorn is hunting for you everywhere."
"I'm so glad he hasn't found me yet," was the not very soothing reply.
"Are you mad, girl?" cried the dowager.
"Not yet. If I marry Quorn you may inquire again."
Lady Ormstork's indignation was so great that she could only glare, first at Ulrica, then at Peckover. "Is this," she demanded in her most withering tones, "the sort of person you prefer to Lord Quorn?"
"All things considered, it is," answered Ulrica boldly.
"You hear that?" screamed the irate dowager to Mr. Buffkin, who had just appeared in his flight from the embarrassing position of a target for the shafts of the Hemyock family. "Your daughter actually refuses the ennobling alliance which I have been at such pains to arrange for her."
"I'm not exactly surprised to hear it," was the unsympathetic reply.
"Perhaps you will be to learn that your daughter has the unheard-of wrongheadedness to prefer a person of this most equivocal description," Lady Ormstork indicated Peckover with a contemptuous wave of her glasses, "to Lord Quorn."
"Ah," said Mr. Buffkin with provoking foolishness. "I dare say she prefers some one lively, and I don't blame her."
"But—but," urged Lady Ormstork, almost speechless with discomfiture, "do you call this person a good match?"
"I should say he matches her better than the lord," was the hopeless reply.
"That's right, father," observed Miss Buffkin.
Lady Ormstork turned and without another word went into the gallery, the others following at a safe distance.
The enlightenment of the Hemyock family as to the identity of the real Lord Quorn had been, for obvious reasons, delayed by the parties most interested in keeping them in the dark. But now that the new-found peer was not to fall to Lady Ormstork's bag, that spiteful dowager determined to let the cat out of it.
"May I order my carriage, Lord Quorn?" she said in her most distinct and penetrating tones. "It is getting late."
As Quorn rose in his lumbering fashion and rang the bell, the Hemyock girls who had been gaily chattering to Gage became abruptly silent, and Lady Agatha looked stonily nonplussed.
"Lord Quorn?" she said, with a brave attempt at a successful smile. "Surely this is not Lord Quorn?"
"I'm nobody else," Quorn assured her bluffly.
"How very singular," said Lady Ormstork icily, "that you should not have known it."
"Not at all," rejoined Lady Agatha promptly. "We have for weeks past understood this gentleman was Lord Quorn."
"I didn't like to contradict you," said Gage on being indicated.
Lady Agatha, for once too dumfounded for speech, could only give a significant look of appeal to her daughters. And at the look John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, who had taken the precaution to get near the door, opened it quietly and slipped out.
Meanwhile the brown eyes of Miss Ethel and the black orbs of Miss Dagmar were fastened searchingly on Lord Quorn, and they transmitted to their owners the impression that he was not an attractive personage. In truth there was yet a good deal of the Jenkins about him. His clothes looked as though he had been in the habit of going to bed in them, and his hair cried out for the barber. For the moment, at any rate, he was not to be jumped at, and with that conviction the original impulse to spring was stilled. Lady Agatha rose, with a lofty ignoring of Lady Ormstork's exultant smile.
"If," she said to Gage, "you are not Lord Quorn, as you have all along thought proper to pretend to be, may one ask who you are?"
"I am Peter Gage," he answered with a touch of amusement.
The eyes of Lady Agatha and her daughters met, and all that could be read in them was an indignant perplexity.
"It is all very extraordinary." Colonel Hemyock's thin voice sounded through the room, but his family heeded it not. Their minds were busy with the enigma of the position which was too complicated, not to say suspicious, to be comprehended at once. Only one thing in all the business seemed safe, and their minds jumped together to it. They recoiled, as by a single impulse, from the unattractive personality of Lord Quorn, from the doubtful individualities of Gage and Peckover, and their eyes by common consent sought the spot where their sheet-anchor had lately rested.
"Sharnbrook!"
"Where is he?"
They ran a dead heat to the door, charged through it, and so out into the garden. But John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook's start served him well, and he was at that moment sprinting homewards down the drive with a canny smile on his simple face.