"It is too bad of you, Ethel. I do wish you would mind your own
business and confine your attentions to either old Sharnbrook or Lord
Quorn. The way you try to flirt with Mr. Gage is disgraceful. Even
you ought to be ashamed of it."
"My dear Dagmar," her sister replied blandly, "Sharnbrook is, as you
always said, after finding he preferred me to you, an idiot. Only fit
to be a keeper at the Zoo, or curator of a Natural History museum.
Four thousand a year is utterly wasted on him."
"No reason why it should, or should not, be wasted on his wife,"
returned Dagmar shrewdly.
"Lord Quorn," pursued Ethel, "falls to you by right. A coronet, when
he can afford one, will no doubt suit your style of beauty."
"Thank you," retorted Dagmar, "I happen to prefer reality to mere show.
Quorn hasn't a penny to speak of, Mr. Gage is as rich as anybody need
be."
"He is hopelessly vulgar, and has an unhappy knack of making himself
ridiculous," Ethel argued.
"All millionaires are vulgar and absurd," her sister rejoined. "It is
expected of them. People wouldn't believe in their money if they
didn't bound and make fools of themselves. Mother says Mr. Gage's
vulgarity is as good as an auditor's certificate--whatever that may be.
And if he has taken a tremendous fancy to me----"
Dagmar flared up. "What conceited impudence! You want everybody. You
are the elder and Lord Quorn properly falls to you. Failing him,
Sharnbrook."
"John Arbuthnot," said Ethel dreamily, "has the bad taste not to be
very keen, and Gage is."
"Quorn's all right," Dagmar suggested.
"Then you have him, dear," her sister retorted. "Plain Percy Gage is
good enough for me."
As Ethel was clearly holding to her point, and that not a point of
honour, Dagmar saw that a mere appeal to her better feelings was
futile. "Tell you what it is, my dear," she said, changing her
tactics. "If you go on like this we shall lose Quorn and the
millionaire bounder and old Sharnbrook into the bargain. We must have
the coronet and the million in the family."
"All right," Ethel agreed, after a few moments' calculation. "Let's
compromise and give each other a fair chance with Gage. Suppose we
take it in turns to bring him to the scratch." She took a pack of
cards from a box. "Cut for first innings. First knave; two out of
three."
"Why knave?" Dagmar objected, "Gage is more of a f--the other thing."
"Perhaps," Ethel agreed. "Anyhow, the knave is the nearest approach to
him in a pack of cards' catalogue of humanity."
They began to cut with business-like eagerness. Presently Ethel held
up the desired card. "Hurrah! Knave!" she cried exultingly.
From the amiable Miss Dagmar's protracted lips came the sound of an
exclamation not unlike that which profane men are said to utter when
the last match is puffed out with the pipe still unlighted. "Two out
of three," she insisted, and with the next turn cut a knave also. But
fate favoured Ethel, who cut the third.
"My first try," she cried.
"Wish you joy of Gage," said Dagmar spitefully.
"Now, Dagmar," her sister protested, "it's a bargain. Half an hour of
uninterrupted running."
"All right," replied Dagmar hopefully. "Then I relieve guard, and you
turn out. I take up the running and so on alternately, till one of us
lands him." "Which shall not be so very long first," she promised
herself.
"Let's find out where he is." Ethel, with business-like promptitude,
sprang to the bell and rang it. "Of course," she observed
complacently, "whichever of us does not bag Gage will have the
reversion of Quorn or old Sharnbrook."
"Of course," Dagmar agreed with a suggested determination that the
privilege in question should not be hers. "Fancy Sharnbrook! Ferrets
in one's bedroom."
"Rats where you least expect them," Ethel chimed in, hilarious at what
she was resolved should be her sister's fate.
"That idiotic one-legged partridge," cried Dagmar.
"Pet mice asleep in your boots," responded Ethel.
"Pattern of the carpet undecipherable for fox-terriers."
"Wouldn't I put my foot down on them," declared Ethel grimly. "Is Mr.
Gage visible yet, Bisgood?" she inquired of the butler who now appeared.
A very faint film of suppressed amusement seemed to spread over the
well regulated face of Mr. Bisgood. "Mr. Gage went out riding this
morning," he answered woodenly. "His lordship accompanied him."
"Have they returned?"
Again the haze of enjoyment seemed to blur the suave features. "No,
miss," Bisgood answered, and there might have been detected a slight,
ever so slight, catch in the unctuous voice; "Mr. Gage did not get far.
Harlequin was rather fresh."
"Did--did anything go wrong?" It was Dagmar who asked the question.
This time there was no doubt about the abnormal expression on the
butler's sleek face. "Well, miss," he replied, with an apologetic
grin, "I believe Mr. Gage came off."
Without trusting his dignity to carry him through any elaboration of
the bare and pointed statement, Bisgood, turned abruptly from the room.
Miss Ethel tried to laugh off a certain sense of annoyance. Till she
had tried and failed Gage was more or less her property. "Poor Gage,"
she exclaimed. "Fancy his taking a toss. I hope he has not damaged
himself. That brute Harlequin!"
"Now, Dagmar, dear, honour between--knaves. You will take Quorn and
Sharnbrook off while I have my innings, won't you? I'll do as much for
you."
"All right," she answered, still rather sulky. "But mind, no unfair
advantage. No running me down, or falling into his arms."
"No, no," Ethel assured her; "that's a last resort. We may have to
toss for that later on."
"There's mother coming across the lawn," Dagmar remarked with a yawn of
indifference. "You had better be off and console the noble sportsman."
And as the fair Ethel vanished through the door, Lady Agatha Hemyock
came in by the French window. She was a woman of somewhat stately
presence, acquired by long practice of standing on ceremony and on her
dignity. Her face was well set off by white hair dressed straight up
from her forehead, pompadour fashion, which had the effect of bringing
into rather aggressive prominence her sharp physiognomy which she could
make, when she chose, the vehicle of a gamut of remarkable expressions.
In French phrase, her face jumped at you; nevertheless, had not the
nose been rather too long and too sharp she would have been as
good-looking as she was wily. Among her ladyship's more prominent
accomplishments was an interesting trick of carrying on a conversation
with one person while she listened to everything else that was being
said in the room; a feat difficult of successful execution, and one
which has a tendency to depreciate the performer's popularity.
"Where's Ethel?" Lady Agatha inquired sharply, after a preliminary
glance round the room to make sure they were alone.
"Gone after Mr. Gage," Dagmar informed her, still sore from the
consciousness of a lost chance.
"How provoking of her," exclaimed her mother, "when I particularly want
her to look after Quorn."
"Just what I tell her," said Dagmar resentfully.
"Mr. Gage," Lady Agatha declared, "will keep. He is a fool, and is to
be secured whenever we choose to bring him to the point. Quorn
is--er--not such a fool, and if the coronet is to come into the family
it is essential that he should be looked after. He ought to have the
choice of you."
"No money, mother."
"Perhaps not. But a nice old place and an aristocratic position."
"You've got most of that, mother," Dagmar observed shrewdly, "and you
are discontented enough."
"Well, you can't both marry Mr. Gage," Lady Agatha argued, ignoring the
personal citation. "And if you don't take care, the one he does not
choose will lose Quorn as well."
"Well, for a peer and a millionaire," Dagmar observed decidedly, "they
are the most hopeless specimens. Neither being in the least like what
he ought to be, I should prefer the money. It is the only thing here
that looks like what it is."
"I am thinking of your position, my dear," her mother replied
insinuatingly. "Millionaires are getting so common and unpopular."
"Peers are common enough," Dagmar retorted. "They made a dozen--and
such a dozen--the other day."
"Not old ones," rejoined Lady Agatha. "Quorn's peerage is centuries
old, and improves with time."
"But I don't," returned her daughter pointedly. "And the idea of my
descendants swaggering about with a coronet wherever they can put it,
in the year 2147 doesn't amuse or comfort me at all, or reconcile me to
the fact that nobody, without being told, would take Quorn for a peer,
even if he dressed every day in robes and coronet, always supposing he
could afford that somewhat expensive get-up."
"After all, a peerage is above money, my dear," Lady Agatha urged.
"Yes," was the quick reply, "it ought to be above it, and have the
money underneath to support it. No, I prefer to take my chance of
cutting out Ethel, and buying a peerage with some of Gage's money."
Lady Agatha shrugged. She could not bring herself to let Quorn slip
through their fingers when they had him in hand. "There is as much
difference between an old title and a new one as between new wine and
old," she asserted dogmatically.
"Granted, mother," Dagmar assented cheerfully. "But when some idiot
has pulled the cork out, causing the strength and the flavour to
evaporate, and the dust has got in, the old is worse than the new."
"You are most provoking and disappointing, Dagmar," Lady Agatha
exclaimed, losing patience. "To think that the Quorn coronet should go
begging."
"That's exactly what the owner will have to do, it strikes me," the
undutiful one retorted. "And it is what I don't intend to do while
Messrs. Gage and Sharnbrook are handy and bachelors. Here's Ethel.
Hurrah! She doesn't look all over a winner. My turn," she said with a
snap, as that discomfited-looking young lady came in.
"That it isn't," Ethel flung back in a reciprocally pleasant tone. "I
haven't seen the man yet."
Dagmar's look would hardly have been accepted as a testimonial to her
sister's veracity. The statement, nevertheless, was true. Ethel had
raced all over the grounds in pursuit of her quarry, but had just
missed striking the trail; the object of her hunt having contrarily
appeared in the drive as the fair huntress, after drawing it blank,
moved off hungrily to the park on the other side of the house, whence
having prowled herself tired, she had at length come in, spent and out
of breath and patience.
Noting her amiable state of mind, Lady Agatha, prompted by experience,
prepared to withdraw, with a Parthian shot which took the form of the
sarcastic expression of a thoughtful hope that, in case of possible
accidents, the pair of charmers were not entirely losing sight of the
existence and eligibility of a certain John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, nor
were permitting him to ignore theirs.
"You haven't hurt the horse?" Gage inquired, as he and his confederate
walked towards the house together. "Sorry now I didn't think of
stopping to see what happened."
"Hurt him?" Peckover exclaimed, resenting the question as making light
of his own peril. "Never had a chance. It took all my time to see he
didn't hurt me. Hurt the brute? I should like to," he continued
wrathfully reminiscent. "I'd teach him the difference between a
quadruped and a gentleman."
"How did you come to take him on?" asked Gage.
"Take him on? He took me on," returned the discomfited equestrian.
"All right, I'll remember that groom, Wilkins, or rather, I won't
remember him. 'Just throw your leg over Harlequin, sir,' he says, 'and
take him over the turf!' Now, old man, I should describe that animal,
from a safe distance, as an inferior plater; but when I got up my
feeling of contempt changed to one of respect--it usually does. On
foot I'm pretty familiar with horses; once on their back I feel as
though I had not been properly introduced. Well, I mounted in best
jockey style; I haven't shelled out for the saddling paddock for
nothing. 'Me up,' says I, just waking him up with the whip. Next
moment it was me--down, and instead of putting him over the turf, he
very nearly put me under it. I don't think you could have passed a
five-pound note between his hind hoof and my front teeth. His near
plate was so near that my jaw was almost off."
"Good job it wasn't," observed Gage, wondering how much such a
catastrophe would have affected his enjoyment of the pleasures of the
peerage.
"You're right. Well, the fellows were grinning; so, thinks I, if the
horse won't be beaten, no more will I. So I ups into the pigskin
again, and tries the soothing system."
"Did that do better?"
"Slightly. The animal began to feel quite comfortable, and after a bit
sat down."
"Sat down?" laughed Gage. "What became of you?"
"Well, I don't know," answered Peckover, with rueful humour, "whether
it has ever struck you, in Tasmania or elsewhere, that it is a
difficult thing for a horse and its rider both to sit down at the same
time. You see, there is no back to the saddle, so I just slid down
over the tail, with as much side as I could put on, and then footed it
off. It's all very well for you to laugh, my lord," he remonstrated,
as the other man's guffaws grew exasperating, "but it would take you
all your time to keep your back stiff when the horse under you is
sitting up like a cat, and the back of his head trying to play the
castanets with your front teeth. Harlequin? He's a regular pantomime
rally."
"I shouldn't wonder," suggested Gage, "if he was called Harlequin,
because he'll jump through anything."
"Dare say!" replied Peckover dryly. "No doubt he'd have tried jumping
through a brick wall if I'd stayed there long enough. No, thank you.
I prefer seeing these little funniments from the top of the Grand
Stand, not from the top of the performer."