THE BRACKNELS
THE BRACKNELS
A FAMILY CHRONICLE
BY
FORREST REID
Author of
“The Kingdom of Twilight” “The Garden God”
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1911
[_All Rights Reserved_]
In compliance with current
copyright law, the University
of Minnesota Bindery
produced this facsimile on
permanent-durable paper to
replace the irreparably
deteriorated original volume
owned by the University of
Minnesota. 1994
THE BRACKNELS
CHAPTER I
Amy Bracknel, the morning sunlight picking out threads of gold from the
loose mass of her dark-red hair, and accentuating the delightful purity
and freshness of her complexion, watched her father for a moment of
meditative silence. A faint smile passed across her face, a smile which
became more pronounced as her glance encountered her sister’s rather
small brown eyes expectantly fixed upon her from the other side of the
table. “What is he like, papa?” she asked. “Is he good-looking?”
Her voice was firm, and its extreme clearness seemed to lend a certain
boldness to her question, a suggestion almost of cynicism. The other
persons present at the breakfast-table were probably accustomed to it.
May, sitting opposite, waited a moment for her father’s reply, but as
none was forthcoming offered her own opinion: “I’m sure he isn’t. I
can’t imagine anyone who teaches being good-looking.”
The profound wisdom of this remark passed unchallenged, an apparent
acceptance of its truth being conveyed by Amy’s next question. “But he’s
only a beginner, papa, isn’t he?”
Mr. Bracknel looked up from his newspaper. He drank a mouthful of tea
and sucked the ends of his moustache. His dark eyes rested
discontentedly on Amy, and he paused deliberately. “He told me he had
coached his young brother for some examination, and that he had passed
it,” he said dryly.
“How old is he, papa?”
“Twenty-three.” This time Mr. Bracknel did not look up.
“A year older than May! How romantic! Is he dark or fair?”
“He’s fair,” her father snapped. “And if you’ve asked all your
questions, be so good as not to mention his name again.”
Amy made a face but otherwise did not appear to be particularly
impressed. She exchanged a second glance across the table with her
sister.
“Don’t worry your father, Amy dear,” Mrs. Bracknel murmured timidly from
behind her tea things. She watched every movement of her husband with
dark, lustrous, melancholy eyes that seemed very large in the thin,
sallow face with its hollow cheeks and bloodless, colourless lips. She
was forty-six, and her eldest child, Alfred, was twenty-five. Her thin,
smooth hair was already white about her temples, so often racked by
abominable headaches. The eyes, in fact, were all that appeared to live
in a discoloured, dried, emaciated countenance. When she met her
husband’s glance her expression was of a mingled nervousness and
fascination. She was painfully fragile. Her body seemed like a slender
husk hardly capable of retaining the life that appeared to be burning
quickly away within it, as if without any intervals of rest or sleep.
Her pale yellow hands were as delicate as the petals of a flower, and
her voice was sweet, soft and expressive, exquisitely pure, with a
curious lingering charm, something winning and delightful, that made one
wonder if she had not, as a young girl, been beautiful.
The boys, the two sons, the eldest and youngest members of the family,
were neither of them present at the breakfast-table, a fact which Mr.
Bracknel presently commented upon.
“Where is Alfred? Where is Denis?” he asked, peevishly, and looking at
his wife as if he suspected her of having persuaded them to stay away
for his particular annoyance. A servant who had just entered the room
ventured to reply to his question:
“Master Denis went out this morning early. He’ll be to have forgotten
the time.”
Mr. Bracknel glared again at his wife who had made some little murmuring
ejaculation. “It seems to me that that boy is allowed to grow up exactly
as he likes, and to do exactly as he likes. I hope when his new tutor
comes there will be no more of this.”
“Dear Hubert will hardly be able to prevent him from getting up early,”
said Amy carelessly.
“Be silent, miss.... And Alfred!--where is Alfred? I suppose he will
come down about twelve! I insist on his breakfast not being kept hot for
him. Remember--I insist on it.” His voice took a higher pitch and his
brown eyes opened wider in his fat, dark face, as they always did in
moments of excitement. “This is the result of their training in
childhood--or I should say of their want of training. It is just what
might have been expected.”
“Why weren’t we trained, papa?” asked Amy pertly.
“Amy dear!” her mother reproved.
Mr. Bracknel wiped his mouth, leaving a greasy stain on his napkin. He
rose from the table. His right hand, large and white, with thick
fingers, two of which were adorned with rings, rested a moment on the
back of his chair. The throbbing of the motor drawn up before the
hall-door beat into the room.
“I shall drive Rusk home with me to-night,” he said, ignoring his
daughter’s impertinence. “He will be here for dinner.”
He left the room. They could hear him for a minute or two moving about
in the hall. Then the front door closed, and he was gone for the day. A
kind of unconscious sigh of relief seemed to be breathed into the air.
Almost at the same moment Alfred appeared in his dressing-gown.
“Governor away?” he asked softly, as he crossed the room and peered out
of the window from behind the curtain. “There he goes. Looks rather
pegged about something.” He turned to the others with a little laugh.
“Alfred dear,” Mrs. Bracknel remonstrated, “couldn’t you manage to come
down a little earlier in the mornings? You know how it annoys your
father when you are late.”
“I never saw him when he wasn’t annoyed,” said Alfred calmly. “At any
rate he likes having something to jaw about. Chuck over the paper, Amy,
and ring the bell.”
He began to scan the sporting news with his dull little eyes while his
mother poured out his tea. She had almost finished doing so when he
happened to glance up. “Oh, I say, I’m not going to drink that, you
know. How long has it been in?”
“It came in with the rest of the breakfast.”
“Ah, well, you’d better keep it for Denis, then. I’ll have some fresh.”
He turned again to his newspaper, over which he bent a heavy,
unintelligent face that somehow did not inspire confidence.
“I suppose you will be home for dinner to-night?” his mother said, as
she was leaving the room to give her orders to the servants.
“I don’t think so,” he mumbled. He always mumbled when he was asked
questions that he did not wish to answer. It was his way of intimating
that he did not want to be interfered with, and that if other people
would only mind their own business he could be counted on to mind his.
“Mr. Hubert Rusk is to be here,” said Amy irrepressibly. “Don’t you want
to see him? We are all dying to.”
“Who’s Mr. Hubert Rusk ...? What a name!”
“What’s the matter with his name? He’s a charming young man, at any
rate--just a year older than May! He is Denis’s new tutor.”
Alfred grunted. “He’ll have a fat time of it then. I thought Denis’s
education was supposed to be complete!”
“It’s a good deal more complete than yours is ever likely to be, dearest
boy,” said Amy politely, patting him on the head.
He pushed away her hand. His thick, carefully parted, black hair was
slightly ruffled by the contact and he growled out something
unintelligible. In an adjoining room May could be heard trying over a
new waltz on the piano.
Amy stood watching her brother, and smiling half-derisively,
half-affectionately. For some obscure reason she preferred him to the
other members of her family. She felt there was a bond of sympathy
uniting them, though what constituted it she could not have told. But
his very brutality appealed to her and she could understand him,
understand the kind of life he led, his deliberate pursuit of the
particular pleasures he cared for, in perfect disregard of what other
people said or thought. She threw him over a cigarette from a box on the
chimney-piece and he accepted it with another grunt. Alfred’s
communications with his fellow-creatures very often took this simple
form. He was a young man of few words, and conversation for its own sake
had never appealed to him. “What’s the matter with him, anyway?” he
asked brusquely, flinging away his newspaper.
“The matter with whom? With Mr. Rusk?”
“Oh, hang Mr. Rusk. What’s the matter with Denis? What’s wrong with
him?”
“There’s nothing wrong with him.”
“I’ll swear there is,” said Alfred simply.
Amy watched him a moment in silence. “I don’t know what you mean. What’s
wrong with you, I suppose, is that you’re jealous.”
The remark provoked a loud laugh from her brother.
“Jealous of Denis? Do say it again.” He leaned back in his chair, his
hands in his pockets. “Denis ’ll never be a man. And at any rate he’s
mad.”
“He’s only clever,” answered Amy, carelessly.
She was leaning against the chimney-piece, and she seemed, as she stood
there, with her large limbs and superb red hair, to be filled with a
tremendous fund of reckless, tumultuous life.
“What does Birch say? Does _he_ think Denis is all right?”
Amy continued to look at him with clear, untroubled eyes. “All right?”
she repeated, emphasising the words. “What horrible ideas you get hold
of!”
“Well, Birch must have said something: and he never talks to me of
course. He doesn’t like me. He’s too superior.”
“He never talks to anybody ... Denis is a genius.”
Alfred looked sceptical.
“May thinks so: she thinks he’s going to be something wonderful.”
“Oh, May!”
“She’s a genius too, you know. Just look at that lovely picture on the
wall.”
“Ah well, May’s not so bad,” Alfred replied. “She’s all right: she’s all
right in lots of ways.”
“Whatever are you talking about now? It’s only you who are ’so bad.’
Papa is perfectly furious.” This last remark was thrown out half
seriously and it had the effect of making her brother look at the clock.
“By Jove!... I suppose I’d better be getting away. What’s this chap Rusk
like? Is he all right? I hope he won’t be a nuisance in the house.... I
hate those sort of fellows that are supposed to be clever and all that:
simply a lot of rotters, every one of them.”
“Nobody but papa has seen him yet,” said Amy, good-humouredly. “We all
hope for the best. He’s English and he comes from Cambridge.”
“I’ll bet my life he’s _not_ the best then, or the second best, and I’m
not going to tow him about with me. Full of side! If he’d been a Trinity
man he might have been all right--but those other blighters.... Always
stuck up--a lot of rotters. I hate a chap like that in the house: you
never know what to do with him or how to treat him.... What sort of a
screw is he knocking out of the governor? If it’s anything decent he’s a
genius too.”
“I don’t know what it is,” said Amy. “It was Dr. Birch who brought him.”
She paused a moment, her eyes fixed on him. “You’d better come home
to-night,” she added suddenly.
Alfred frowned impatiently. “I can’t possibly. I have an engagement.”
“Don’t keep it then. What is the use of irritating papa more than is
necessary?”
Alfred stared, but he looked more doubtful. “He’s got it badly, you
think?”
Amy made a little face. “We didn’t see you all last week, you know. Papa
is worried about something. He wasn’t in the sweetest of tempers at
breakfast.”
Her brother pondered this: then he looked at her once more. “I suppose
he’s backed the wrong horse somewhere?” he murmured interrogatively.
Amy shrugged her shoulders. “Like me,” she answered.
This reply had the effect of amusing Alfred. His countenance gradually
expanded in a broad grin. “Well, you know, confound it all, it wasn’t
_my_ fault,” he said. “You’d think I’d made the beastly thing lose. I
told you it was practically a certainty and so it was. The brute only
lost by half a head. At any rate you might give it a rest now. I dropped
a good deal more over it than you did.”
Amy did not seem impressed by this. “You can make it up in other ways,”
she answered. “I can’t. And I had to borrow the money from May to begin
with. However, I forgive you.”
“And I’d better come home to-night?”
“_I_ think so.” Then she turned away impatiently. “You can please
yourself, of course, but it seems to me rather stupid to be perpetually
having rows with papa.”
Alfred threw the end of his cigarette into the grate as he yawned and
slowly rose to his feet. For a minute or two he regarded himself with
much complacency in the mirror over the chimney-piece. “Well, I’ll see,”
he murmured as if he were conferring some special favour. “I’ll see what
can be done.”