CHAPTER XVII
So far as he dared, Peckover began to lose his temper. "I wish you would not smash things," he ventured to remonstrate. "I'll take your word for your muscle."
"My muscle prefers to speak for itself," was the retort.
"It need not talk with such a deuced lot of emphasis," Peckover rejoined. "What do you say," he added, returning to business, "to two hundred pounds?"
"Don't you wish I may take it?" exclaimed the fair Lalage with infinite scorn.
"You can't expect any more," Peckover urged. "Lord Quorn is a very poor man."
"Is he?" Lalage asked, becoming thoughtful.
"Certainly he is. Really not worth looking after. Now," he added, coaxingly. "Can't you put a fair price on your journey?"
"What price my glorious sister's broken heart?" bellowed Mr. Leo, truculently maudlin.
"Damaged goods half price," was Peckover's inaudible reply.
"Eh, you scallywag?" The big man advanced upon him threateningly. "Let me go into figures with your beautiful Lord Quorn. Once before a man played the fool with Lalage, and we got five thousand pounds out of his executors."
"Executors?" repeated Peckover, interested in spite of more urgent considerations. "Poor fellow died then?"
"Yes, you see Carnaby called upon him," Lalage explained sweetly.
"Now," proceeded Mr. Leo, always with unnecessary volume of tone, "before I proceed to extremities, I should like to know from you, as his lordship's friend, how we stand."
It occurred to Peckover that the chances were that either he or both would stand on two stumps before long if the weather did not change. "Name your own sum for the return ticket," he said desperately.
Mr. Leo walked up and placed his hands upon Peckover's shoulders with such energy that the smaller man wondered he did not collapse into his boots. "Does he mean it?" he cried, glaring tipsily into Peckover's contorted face. "Not he! Look at his eye; it's shifty."
The victim considered he might esteem himself lucky if the feature in question did not shift out of his head forthwith.
"We must take time," said Lalage, laying a repressing hand on her brother's arm.
"We'll stay a week or two with you," Mr. Leo declared; "till his lordship has decided whether he will remain on above ground or not."
It occurred to Peckover that the property would be considerably out of repair by that time, but he recognized that a refusal was at the moment quite out of the question. Then, as Mr. Leo, having given him a preliminary shake, released him from his clutch by sending him backwards with uncalled-for violence against a floor lamp which was not improved by the contact, the door opened and Miss Ethel Hemyock looked in. "Oh, Mr. Gage, I have only just got rid of poor Mr. Sharnbrook."
The young lady came in with a smile for Peckover and a doubtful glance at the strangers. Perhaps Miss Leo's appearance suggested to her ignorance that she had not much to fear from that quarter in the way of rivalry; anyhow, her look changed to one of easy graciousness as Peckover, awkwardly enough, introduced them.
"Let me present some Australian friends of mine," he said.
"Very great friends," added Lalage, with a significant smile.
"More than friends; brothers, eh, Gage, my boy," put in Carnaby taking the cue from his sister, and accompanying the words with a slap which nearly dislocated Peckover's shoulder.
"Oh," said Miss Ethel, rather drawing back, and looking enquiringly at Peckover.
"So pleased to know all your friends, dear," observed Lalage with mischievous significance. "I am sure we shall be great friends, Miss—Miss——"
"Ethel Hemyock," the young lady supplied frigidly, the word "dear" having congealed her.
Lady Agatha and Dagmar came in. The hostess' look of enquiry at the sight of the abnormal visitors was cut short by Ethel's anxious enquiry. "Where is Mr. Sharnbrook?"
The tone suggested to her mother's sharp ears that something was wrong.
"Mr. Sharnbrook has just gone."
"He is staying to luncheon?"
"No," Dagmar answered. "Mother did not ask him."
"He must!" Ethel exclaimed, making for the door.
"Ethel!" Dagmar cried, as she sprang after her.
Lady Agatha, scenting mischief, turned to Peckover. "Will you present your—friends?" she said coldly.
Peckover, roused from the natural preoccupation induced by his position, did so. "Miss Leo, Mr. Leo——"
"Friends from the Bush?" Lady Agatha enquired superciliously, eyeing through her "witherers" Lalage's short hair and short dress.
"Yes—just so," Peckover answered in his confusion.
"What?" roared Carnaby. "Bush? I'll bush you!"
"Carnaby," his sister remonstrated, "be calm. Yes, we are just from Australia."
"Friends of Mr. Gage's?" Lady Agatha enquired, in a tone of disgusted resignation.
"Friends of Lord Quorn," Peckover corrected swiftly.
"And of Mr. Gage's, I should hope," Lalage added with an embarrassing show of affectionate insistence.
"Ah!" said Lady Agatha, transferring her attention and her glasses to Carnaby, "Lord Quorn's former sheep partner, perhaps?"
"What?" shouted the worthy fellow, more bellicose than usual under the influence of the sherry. "Sheep partner?"
"It is not necessary," observed Lady Agatha with cutting distinctness, "to speak so loud. I am not aware that any one in the room is deaf."
"What," demanded Carnaby of Peckover in a roaring whisper, "does the old lady mean by calling me a sheep partner?"
"Hush! It's all right," he replied. "She thinks you are an Australian swell—a mutton-king."
"Mutton king?" Carnaby bawled, raising his arm as though to pulverize his insulter.
The evidences of his strength had meanwhile attracted Lady Agatha's attention. "Are you," she asked severely, "the person who has been taking liberties with the fire-irons?"
"Yes," answered Carnaby with justifiable pride. "I just snapped them to amuse this little wombat." Then, as a brilliant afterthought, he suggested—"Shall I ring for some more and show you how it is done?"
"By no means," was the frigid answer. "I should very much object to be shown anything of the sort. And I must request you, if your friends need amusement, to choose some other method of providing it."
"All right, don't be alarmed," replied Carnaby, on whom her grand tone was quite wasted. "Winter's coming on and I won't reduce the stock; I've got something more interesting to break than fire-irons."
"By the way," Lady Agatha observed, "we saw a strange and not very prepossessing person in the shrubbery by the drive just now. Was he by any chance a friend of yours?"
"Not likely, ma'am," Carnaby answered, "unless it was Lord Quorn, and this little wallaby tells us he is in bed."
"It was not Lord Quorn," said Lady Agatha.
The Misses Ethel and Dagmar came in breathless, with Sharnbrook between them, looking as a pick-pocket might under escort of two policemen.
"We caught him, mother, at the drive gate. I told him how sorry you were you had let him go when you meant to insist upon his staying to luncheon."
"Of course," Lady Agatha corroborated, conveniently ignoring the fact that she had practically sent him off as having no further use for him. "Mr. Sharnbrook might have known we never could be so inhospitable."
Sharnbrook gave an enquiring glance at Peckover, who could only helplessly reply by a sign directing his attention to Miss Leo, at sight of whom hope gave way to despair in the Sharnbrook bosom. Bisgood announced luncheon. Lady Agatha's look at Peckover said as plainly as speech—"What are you going to do with these impossible people?" And under the look he felt more limp and nonplussed than ever.
Under the circumstances Peckover was actually relieved when the tension of the situation was snapped by a loud exclamation of satisfaction from Carnaby. "Lunch! Good! I'm all there!" With a stride he placed himself by Lady Agatha's side, and offered her his arm with what might be supposed to stand in the Bush for the grand manner. Ignoring his arm, Lady Agatha crossed her own and walked stiffly and resentfully from the room. By no means abashed, Carnaby looked round and pounced upon Dagmar, who, having lost Sharnbrook in a struggle for him with her sister, was also disappointed of getting Peckover, whom Miss Leo had taken prompt care to annex. But Carnaby was hardly acceptable, even as a consolation prize. Dagmar drew back and made a sudden dart after her mother leaving the rest to follow in various degrees of discontent.
"Oh, mother," she exclaimed breathless with indignation, "what appalling people! We had better keep an eye on the silver. Do you know, I saw that horrid man again in the shrubbery just now."
As the last of the party were pressing through the library door "that horrid man" came up to the window and looked furtively in. It was none other than Lord Quorn, the real Lord Quorn; he who had drunk Peckover's drugged champagne at the Quorn Arms at Great Bunbury.