demanded.
“Yes, I have!” he retorted. “It’s a damned expense, puffing her off all over town, and the sooner she’s off my hands the better pleased I shall be.”
“Expense!” she gasped. “
“Your mother did, and that’s what I complain of. I’m not unreasonable, and if you choose to persuade the old lady to fritter away a fortune on presentation gowns, and balls, and the rest of it, I’m not surprised she hasn’t sent me that draft.”
“Mama has promised to send it when Emily is well again,” Lady Laleham said, controlling herself with some difficulty.
“Yes, provided you don’t take the girl away from her! A rare bargain, that! I shouldn’t be surprised if Emily never does get well, and then where shall we be?”
“What nonsense!” she said scornfully. “Emily shall come home the instant we are rid of these vexatious measles. Mama cannot withhold our daughter from us for ever!”
“No, but she can withhold her money, which is a deal more to the point! If you weren’t stuffed so full of senseless ambition, Susan, you’d see whether the old lady wouldn’t be prepared to pay us a handsome sum to let her keep Emily for good!”
“Emily,” said his wife coldly, “will return to us precisely when I desire her to, and she will be married as soon afterwards as Rotherham chooses.”
“Well, the odds are he won’t choose to marry her at all, if I get a clap on the shoulder, so take care you don’t out-jockey yourself, my lady!” said Sir Walter.
“You will not be arrested for debt, if that is what you mean, while your daughter is known to be betrothed to one of the richest peers in the land,” she replied. “If the engagement were to be declared off, it would be another matter, no doubt. You will oblige me, therefore, by going to Claycross, and setting Rotherham’s mind at ease—if any suspicion lurks in it that Emily is reluctant to marry him!”
“I don’t mind going to Claycross, because Rotherham has a devilish good sherry in his cellars; but if Emily bolted to your mother because she didn’t want to marry Rotherham it stands to reason she’ll come home if he cries off, and as soon as she does that the old lady will hand over the blunt. Which will be all the same to me. In fact, if she don’t like him, I’d as lief she didn’t marry him, for I’ve nothing against her, and I don’t like him myself.”
“She does like him!” Lady Laleham said swiftly. “She is very young, however, and his ardour frightened her. It was nothing but a piece of nonsense, I assure you! I blame myself for having allowed them out of my sight: it shan’t happen again.”
“Well, you can make yourself easy on one count: Rotherham won’t cry off.”
“I wish I might be certain of that!”
Sir Walter shook his head. “Ah, it’s one of the things I never could teach you!” he said regretfully. “You will just have to take my word for it: a gentleman, my dear, doesn’t cry off from a betrothal.”
She bit her lip, but refrained from speech. Sir Walter was so much pleased with his triumph that he rode over to Claycross the very next day.
He was ushered into Rotherham’s library twenty minutes after Lord Spenborough, paying a ceremonial visit, had left it: a circumstance which possibly accounted for the expression of impatient boredom on his host’s face. He was accorded a civil, if unenthusiastic, welcome, and for half an hour sat talking of sporting events. Since this was his favourite subject, he might have continued to discuss for the remainder of his visit the form of various race- horses, and the respective chances of Scroggins, and Church, a reputedly tiresome customer, in a forthcoming encounter at Moulseyhurst. But when Rotherham rose to refill the glasses he said: “What news have you to give me of Miss Laleham?”
Reminded of his errand, Sir Walter replied: “Oh, tol-lol, you know! Better: decidedly better! In fact, she’s fretting to come home.”
“What prevents her?”
“Measles. Can’t have the poor girl coming out in spots! However, it won’t be long now! There aren’t any more of them to catch ’em. William was the last—no, not William! Wilfred? Well, I’ve no head for names, but the youngest of them, at all events.”
“Is Miss Laleham well enough to receive a visit from me?” asked Rotherham.
“Nothing she’d like better, I daresay, but the deuce is in it that her grandmother’s not well. Not receiving visitors at present. Well, she can’t: she’s in bed,” said Sir Walter, surprising himself by his own inventiveness.
He found to his discomfort that his host was looking at him in a disagreeably piercing way. “Tell me, Laleham!” said Rotherham. “Is Miss Laleham regretting her engagement to me? The truth, if you please!”
This, thought Sir Walter bitterly, was just the sort of thing that made one dislike Rotherham. Flinging damned abrupt questions at one’s head, no matter whether one happened to be swallowing sherry at the moment, or not! No manners, not a particle of proper feeling! “God bless my soul!” he ejaculated, still choking a little. “Of course she isn’t! Nothing of the sort, Marquis, nothing of the sort! Lord, what a notion to take into your head! Regretting it, indeed!”
He laughed heartily, but saw that there was not so much as the flicker of a smile on Rotherham’s somewhat grim mouth. His curiously brilliant eyes had narrowed, in a measuring look, and he kept them fixed on his visitor’s face for much longer than Sir Walter thought necessary or mannerly.
“Talks of nothing but her bride-clothes!” produced Sir Walter, feeling impelled to say something.
“Gratifying!”
Sir Walter decided that his visit had lasted long enough.
Returning from attending his guest to where his horse was being held for him, Rotherham walked into the house, a heavy frown on his face. His butler, waiting by the front-door, observed this with a sinking heart. He had cherished hopes that a visit from his prospective father-in-law might alleviate his lordship’s distemper, but it was evident that it had not done so. More up in the boughs than ever! thought Mr Peaslake, his countenance wholly impassive.
Rotherham stopped. Peaslake, enduring that disconcerting stare, rapidly searched his conscience, found it clean, and registered a silent vow to send the new footman packing if he had dared yet again to alter the position of so much as a pen on my lord’s desk.
“Peaslake!”
“My lord?”
“If anyone else should come to visit me while I remain under this roof, I have ridden out, and you don’t know when I mean to return!”
“Very good, my lord!” said Peaslake, not betraying by the faintest quiver of a muscle his heartfelt relief.
There was never anything at all equivocal about his lordship’s orders, and no one in his employment would have dreamt of deviating from them by a hairsbreadth, but this particular order cast the household, two days later, into a quandary. After a good deal of argument, some maintaining that it was not meant to apply to the unexpected visitor left by the head footman to cool his heels in one of the saloons, and others asserting that it most certainly was, Peaslake fixed the head footman with a commanding eye, and recommended him to go and discover what his lordship’s pleasure might be.
“Not me, Mr Peaslake!” said Charles emphatically.
“You heard me!” said Peaslake awfully.
“I won’t do it! I don’t mind hearing you, and I’m sorry to be disobliging, but what I don’t want to hear is
“I will ask Mr Wilton’s advice,” said Peaslake.
This announcement met with unanimous approval. If any member of the establishment could expect to come off scatheless when his lordship was in raging ill-humour, that one was his steward, who had come to Claycross before his lordship had been born.
He listened to the problem, and said, after a moment’s thought: “I fear he will not be pleased, but I am of the opinion that he should be told of it.”
“Yes, Mr Wilton. Such is my own view,” agreed Peaslake. He added dispassionately: “Except that he said he did not wish to be disturbed.”
