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 him asking me if I’m deaf, or can’t understand plain English, thanking you all the same! And it ain’t right for you to tell Robert to go,” he added, as the butler’s eye fell on his colleague, “not after what happened this morning!”
“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.”
“I see,” said Mr Wilton, carefully laying his pen down in the tray provided for it. “In that case, I will myself carry the message to him, if you would prefer it?”
“Thank you, Mr Wilton, I would!” said Peaslake gratefully, following him out of his office, and watching with respect his intrepid advance upon the library.
Rotherham was seated at his desk, a litter of papers round him. When the door opened, he spoke without raising his eyes from the document he was perusing. “When I say I don’t wish to be disturbed, I mean exactly that! Out!” he snapped.
“I beg your lordship’s pardon,” said the steward, with unshaken calm.
Rotherham looked up, his scowl lifting a little. “Oh, it’s you, Wilton! What is it?”
“I came to inform you, my lord, that Mr Monksleigh wishes to see you.”
“Write and tell him I’m ruralizing, and will see no one.”
“Mr Monksleigh is already here, my lord.”
Rotherham flung down the paper he was holding. “Oh, hell and the devil confound it!” he exclaimed. “Now what?”
Mr Wilton did not reply, but waited placidly.
“I shall have to see him, I suppose,” Rotherham said irritably. Tell him to come in!—and warn him he isn’t staying more than one night!”
Mr Wilton bowed, and turned to leave the room.
“One moment!” said Rotherham, struck by a sudden thought. “Why the devil are you being employed to announce visitors, Wilton? I keep a butler and four footmen in this house, and I fail to see why it should be necessary for you to perform their duties! Where’s Peaslake?”
“He is here, my lord,” responded Mr Wilton calmly.
“Then why didn’t he come to inform me of Mr Monksleigh’s arrival?”
Mr Wilton neither blenched at the dangerous note in that harsh voice, nor answered the question. He merely looked at his master very steadily.
Suddenly a twisted grin dawned. “Pigeon-hearted imbecile! No, I don’t mean you, and you know I don’t! Wilton, I’m blue-devilled!”
“Yes, my lord. It has been noticed that you are a trifle out of sorts.”
Rotherham burst out laughing. “Why don’t you say as sulky as a bear, and be done with it? I give you leave! You don’t exasperate me by shaking like a blancmanger merely because I look at you!”
“Oh, no, my lord! But, then, I have known you for a very long time, and have become quite accustomed to your fits of the sullens,” said Mr Wilton reassuringly.
Rotherham’s eyes gleamed appreciation. “Wilton, are you never out of temper?”
“In my position, my lord, one is obliged to master one’s ill-humour,” said Mr Wilton.
Rotherham flung up a hand. “Touché! Damn you, how dare you?”
Mr Wilton smiled at him. “Shall I bring Mr Monksleigh to you here, my lord?”
“No, certainly not! Send Peaslake to do so! You can tell him I won’t snap his nose off, if you like!”
“Very well, my lord,” said Mr Wilton, and withdrew.
A few minutes later, the butler opened the door, and announced Mr Monksleigh, and Rotherham’s eldest ward strode resolutely into the room.
A slender young gentleman, dressed in the extreme of fashion, with skin-tight pantaloons of bright yellow, and starched shirt-points so high that they obscured his cheekbones, he was plainly struggling with conflicting emotions. Wrath sparkled in his eyes, but trepidation had caused his cheeks to assume a somewhat pallid hue, He came to a halt in the middle of the room, gulped, drew an audible breath, and uttered explosively: “Cousin Rotherham! I must and will speak to you!”