A Poached Peerage Part 15

"Look at the blamed thing going off," Gage cried. "Let go! She'll be a quarter of a mile away directly."

But Peckover was not to be shaken off. "You don't go and leave me here," he insisted wildly, "for any old punt."

The situation was an interesting one, and as such, no doubt the four spectators acknowledged it. Their comments, however, had not so far been directed to the performers.

"What are you going to do?" Peckover asked, still gripping the plunging Gage.

"Going for a swim," he answered unfeelingly, at the same time making spirited but futile efforts to dive.

"No, you don't," Peckover returned, restraining his companion's attempts with all the energy that the chill and unusual element allowed him.

Gage, kicking and struggling, was at length obliged to desist, after having furnished a several minutes' novel and exhilarating exhibition to the puzzled spectators. Short of actual murderous violence, it was not possible for him to free himself from the tenacious Peckover. It was difficult, he had to own, to do much in the way of natation with a desperate person hanging like grim death on to his legs, moreover, Peckover's embrace had a tendency to send Gage's head under water and to keep it there. So, exasperated and vindictive as he felt, he had to compromise.

"Well," he said, veiling his displeasure and sense of defeat with a cheerless grin, "am I going to save your life or not--before we catch our death of cold?"

"You've got to," was the dogged reply. "Five thousand a year is too good to say good-bye to in the middle of a pond."

"It is all your silly rot that has stuck us here," Gage returned. "If you hadn't played the drivelling idiot, the life-saving performance would have been comfortably over half an hour ago."

"Well, get it over now," retorted Peckover, "as quick as you like, and no tricks."

"All right; come on," said Gage ill-humouredly. "Let's hope those fools won't see through the fake."

"This way," said Peckover, starting off breast-high in the water, towards the nearest sh.o.r.e, and still holding tightly to his companion.

"You are not going to walk?" Gage exclaimed aghast.

"I'm going to do what I can do best, and I can't swim," Peckover replied, with a determination which was apparent even through his s.h.i.+vering. "We'll have to try this life-saving joke in some other form. It's getting a bit stale this way."

Slowly their progress towards the sh.o.r.e, impeded by mud and thick weeds, began. They had not noticed that the farmer, actuated by humanitarian motives or with an eye to reduction of rent, had run off to an old boat-house, and was now hurrying back with an oar and a coil of rope.

"All right, my lord!" shouted the butcher, as taking credit for his friend's action. The two men, s.h.i.+vering and struggling unromantically through the jungle of weeds, smiled unpleasantly at the cry.

Suddenly Peckover became aware that the water was up to his chin.

"It's getting deeper," he gasped, trying to hold his companion back.

"Let it," Gage retorted sulkily. "We've got to get to sh.o.r.e, dead or alive."

With an energy which suggested his preference for the latter mode of arrival Peckover threw his arms around Gage and tried to draw him back.

"Try another way," he panted.

"You can. I'm going straight on. You should learn to swim," was the unkind response. "If you don't let go, not another penny of my money shall you see," Gage added, beginning to have doubts about his own ultimate safety in those dreadful weeds.

"You're not going to leave me here to drown?" Peckover remonstrated, shaking with terror.

"You can go back."

"What's the good of that?"

"I'll fetch a boat."

Water had become so utterly distasteful to Peckover that even the comparative shallows had no longer the slightest attraction for him.

"What am I to do?" he shrieked. "Gage, you must save me!"

"Don't feel up to it now; too cold," was the unfeeling reply.

Peckover now found that the extra six inches in the depth of the water made all the difference when it came to a struggle. The margin below the breathing point was too small to permit of a sustained effort.

Gage struck out, and Peckover, choosing what a momentary consideration suggested as the lesser of the two evils, let go his hold and stayed behind where at least his mouth was above water.

What the four people on the bank now saw was this. The supposed Lord Quorn leaving his companion, and energetically striking out for the sh.o.r.e, while the head which was all that was visible of the pretended millionaire remained a weird and ghastly object on the green expanse of water. To add to the interest of the scene, Peckover, finding the mud on which he stood, had a tendency to give way beneath him, was forced, as he gradually sank, to keep jumping, with the object of maintaining his head well above water. That the situation had grown critical was now fairly apparent, and it became borne in upon the farmer and his friend that heroic measures were indicated.

Directed by the butcher, who a.s.sumed an important (and dry) superintendence of the operations, the farmer now waded to the tops of his gaiters into the lake, and flung out the oar with the rope attached towards the wildly struggling Gage.

"There you are, my lord. Lay 'old!" shouted the butcher. "Then you can go back for the gentleman. You'll 'ave to get a little farther out, Mr. Purvis; the rope's a bit short."

"Wish you'd come and lend a hand yourself, Mr. Fanning, instead o'

telling me what any fool can see," Mr. Purvis called back testily, as the water lapped over the rim of his gaiters.

"You're all right, Mr. Purvis," Mr. Fanning cried encouragingly, ignoring the invitation. "Pull the oar in and throw it out again to his lords.h.i.+p."

"Thought you could swim, Fanning," observed Mr. Purvis, wrestling uncomfortably with the difficulties of the situation.

"Never," Mr. Fanning protested promptly and mendaciously. "Wish I could. Now, out with it! Take care of his lords.h.i.+p's 'ead."

Once more the oar hurtled through the air, and fell this time within a yard of Gage's blanched face. Making a desperate and supreme effort, he seized it, and, once sure of the timely support, clung to it panting and exhausted. As he rested there, his feet naturally sank till they met with an obstruction. Moving them about to clear himself, Gage found that they had touched the bottom; he forthwith stood up and disclosed the fact that he had been swimming for his life in three feet of water.

"Look to the other gentleman, Mr. Purvis," directed Mr. Fanning from his post of high and dry observation.

Mr. Purvis and Gage accordingly directed dubious glances at the bobbing head of the unhappy Peckover.

"If your lords.h.i.+p would swim out with the oar to the gentleman," Purvis suggested, "I can pull you both in."

"I dare say," returned Gage with chattering teeth. "I'm not going back, the fun doesn't pay for the trouble. You wade out as far as you can and throw the oar to him, and let your friend hold the rope. Hi!"

he called, to the complacent Mr. Fanning, "come here and catch hold.

Hurry up or there'll be an inquest."

The dictatorial Mr. Fanning's expansive face, together with his self-centred spirits, fell at the invitation. "Sorry I can't swim, my lord," he objected, advancing along the margin with dry and lagging steps.

"No one wants you to," retorted Gage as he heavily emerged, dripping and pitiful from the water. "Go in, and hold the rope," he commanded, "or my friend will be drowned."

And indeed Peckover's sharp cries, uttered so as to fill the opportunities when his mouth was above water, gave colour to the statement.

Mr. Fanning, perhaps by the nature of his trade, rendered somewhat indifferent to the question of life and death where he was not personally concerned, had been congratulating himself on being well out of the affair; and now the order coming as it did from so important a personage and customer as Lord Quorn, was neither pleasant nor to be disregarded. Personal discomfort was a thing to be endured by him only in other people, and now as he waded reluctantly into the water he resolved to avenge his outraged feelings and damp extremities by an extra penny a pound all round on his future deliveries at Staplewick Towers.

"Now throw me the end of the rope, Mr. Purvis," he commanded when the water reached half-way up his calves.

"You must come right out, Mr. Fanning," was the peremptory reply, "or we shall never reach the gentleman."