the picture was painted a quarter of a century ago. How she had ever
contrived to produce six strapping boys was one of those mysteries which
Nature will explain one day, no doubt, with other paradoxes. But they
had cost her few pains, and nurses and tutors had brought, were
bringing, them up. At Ordham Castle, where they had lived the year
round, until the older boys went to school and the father’s death
consigned the younger to the dower house in Kent, she had complained of
their noise, but as a matter of fact she had not a nerve in her body.
She was as hard and supple as a Toledo blade, with all the brain she
really needed, and an internal organization practically flawless. With
an appearance of the most æsthetic delicacy, she had never had so much
as an attack of indigestion, never succumbed to the blues, when that
malady was raging, and had no more emotional capacity than an incubator.
Oscar Wilde once said of Lady Bridgminster that she would tempt St.
Anthony to keep his vows; and true it was that, although only
thirty-nine at the time of her husband’s death, still reigning as a
beauty, and a great lady of whom any husband might be proud, not even an
ambitious merchant had sought her hand. But by this time she knew her
limitations far better than people fancied, and had neither the hope nor
the wish to marry again. But she was a restless dissatisfied creature,
bitterly regretting Bridgminster House and Ordham, and always flitting
about in search of novelty and distraction. Her son, lying on the sofa
in the drawing-room during the warm hours of the afternoon, contrasted
her with Margarethe Styr, and pitied her, not the woman whose past was
so black that even his imagination dared not lift the curtain.
XXIX
THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS AGAIN
It is possible that Ordham would have delayed paying his respects to his
brother from week to week, had not a flattering paragraph in one of the
newspapers brought upon him the immediate attentions of his creditors.
He ground his teeth, flung their reminders into a drawer of the desk in
his bedroom, ordered a telegram sent to Lord Bridgminster and his boxes
packed, and started for the north next morning.
Of course he reserved a first-class carriage for the all-day journey. He
would have patronized a train de luxe had there been one, or a motor,
had the more brilliant extravagance come into being. To spend less
to-day that he might have more to-morrow was a principle that only a
long period of dire privation could have etched into his creed, and, no
doubt, he would have managed to be a luxurious pauper.
During the journey his uneasy apprehensions were varied with remorseful
memories of three old servants that had adored and spoilt him since he
had come into the world, and to whom he had not given a thought during
the past four years. These were the housekeeper, Mrs. Felt, Biscom, the
butler, and Cobbs, the coachman. The sure instincts of childhood had
driven him to take his little woes, not to his mother’s sterile bosom,
but to the warm and pillowed surfaces of the personage who had inherited
certain of the honours of Ordham, even as Lord Bridgminster had
inherited his. Biscom, sovereign of the pantries, had permitted him to
make himself ill as often as he desired, and Cobbs had taught him how to
ride and had now his dogs in charge. Then there was Craven, the old
gardener—he turned hot and cold at the thought that he had not brought
a present to one of them!
Cobbs, in a rusty livery, awaited him at the little moorland station,
and Ordham made up in the warmth of his greeting for the lack of a more
substantial proof of his affections. There was no footman with the
wagonette, and while Hines was attending to his boxes, he asked Cobbs if
all the old servants were alive and at the castle. He was not surprised
to learn that the immense staff kept during his father’s lifetime had
been reduced to ten, including those within and without. But at least he
should see the older faces, and the prospect cheered him somewhat as he
drove through the purple dusk of the moors. For a wave of homesickness
had swamped his spirits, then regret, anger, astonishment. For twenty
years this beautiful moorland had practically been his, no doubt would
come to him in time; but now, now, in the day of his youth, when he most
wanted lands and riches and power (it is, until decay sets in, always
the immediate time that seems the one desirable period for the great
gifts of life), he came as a suppliant to the brother he detested, a man
who was even too mean to live as became his position, and who, no doubt,
would barely extend to him a welcome. It was a wonder he had sent the
wagonette. Ordham had fully expected to go on to the next town and make
the rest of the journey in a fly.
Cobbs volunteered the information that the shooting was uncommonly good
this year, but Ordham felt no interest in the subject until it occurred
to him that if he wished to accomplish the purpose of his journey he
must take pains to propitiate Bridgminster in every way. At this
detestable thought his haughty crest went up at least two inches. But he
had wise moments, as we have seen, and it was seldom he was not capable
of cool rational thought. He reflected presently that, after all, he was
very young and that it was not only a close relative to whom he had come
to ask a good bit of money, but the head of his house, to whom he stood
next in succession. Bridgminster should have been a father to his brood
of younger brothers, and it was incredible that he did not accept his
obligations. It was time he did, and Ordham felt himself in a temper to
bring him to his senses.
But as the carriage approached the high fell upon whose broad table-land
the castle stood, he felt more keenly still the freak of fortune which
had deprived him of his inheritance. That cold, splendid, formal mass of
white and sculptured stone, a palace of the Italian Renaissance rather
than an English castle, built by Inigo Jones in 1622-26, and raised
above the lofty fell again by a triple terrace, surrounded by Italian
gardens, and over-looking thousands of acres of moorland, woods and
farms, and a hundred little stone villages, was one of the show places
of the north, and it was wasted on a boor whose favourite literature was
_The Pink ‘Un_, and who would not even permit others to enjoy what he
could not appreciate. There had not been a house party at Ordham since
his father’s death, and, no doubt, the lovely gardens were a wilderness,
the superb rooms rat-eaten. To-night there was not a point of light in
the vast façade. Ordham lowered his eyelids until they covered the
unpleasant glitter of his eyes, and drew his lips against his teeth.
Hines, covertly watching him, wondered if he were in pain.
The carriage drove through the unlighted tunnel into the courtyard. The
old butler, the gardener, and a footman stood at the foot of the grand
staircase, and as Ordham, banishing his gloomy thoughts, descended and
shook hands with them, asking intimate personal questions of each, the
mask of dignified servitude fell from their faces, and they gazed,
smiling and tearful, upon the young man who had lorded it over and
bewitched them for twenty years. Ordham almost laughed outright as he
realized how they yearned to say, “My lord.” He wished to God they
could. There was no affected philosophy about Ordham. He longed as
ardently to be a peer of the realm as he did for the income of the
estates. But after he had convinced them that they had barely left his
thoughts during the years of his exile, he added wistfully that he was
glad to see the old place again and wished that death might have spared
his father. Ordham was always adored by servants. With neither
familiarity nor condescension, always kind (save to Hines, who sometimes
got the benefit of his tempers), with a smile of peculiar sweetness and
an impenetrable reserve, a careless acceptance of devotion, yet with a
tacit admission of a minion’s claim to call himself a man, generous, yet
never so lavish as to suggest that perhaps his was not the divine right
to be waited on hand and foot,—he fulfilled the ideal of the great lord
to the most exacting class of mortals in the world. And these old men
had all the retainer’s pride in his uncommonly fine manners, in which
there was still nothing old-fashioned, in his aristocratic if not
strictly handsome face, in the languid but dignified carriage of his
well-knit figure.
He followed the footman up the wide marble staircase to his old suite,
immense rooms, with lofty frescoed ceilings, and still sparsely
furnished with the mahogany pieces he had carved when a boy. He felt a
thousand years old and sick at heart. When he saw Felt standing there to
greet him, he nearly fell into her great bosom, but contented himself
with taking her hand in both his own and shaking it for a full minute.
She told him (tearfully) that he had grown and improved, and he bade her
invite him for tea in her sitting room on the following day, adding
bitterly that he should feel at home nowhere else.
“I suppose there is no company in the house?” he asked, with intention.
“Oh, no, sir. His lordship never entertains. Come four years now we have
never had a visitor save her ladyship, and she found it so dull she
could never stay long. The first year there was a hunt breakfast, but it
was stiff and sad, Mr. Biscom said, and now the county gentlemen don’t
even call at the castle. It’s not like the old days, Mr. John.”
“What on earth does he do with himself?” He could surrender something of
his reserve to this old woman who had given him many a shaking, and he
was anxious to know more of the brother of whom he had seen so little.
Mrs. Felt shook her head. “He mopes terrible, sir. You wouldn’t think it
of a man who loves a gun and a horse as he does—but those long evenings
all alone! He don’t seem one to read—not like you, Mr. John. He’s
changed a good bit, even since he come—and the last six months or so,
before the shooting began—” She paused significantly.
“Does he drink?” No one can be as blunt as a diplomatist.
“There’d be no hiding it from you, sir. You’d see it in a minute for
yourself. We’ve known he was getting more comfort out of drink these two
years past, and, as I said, these last few months—well, you can’t burn
bottles, and his man, for all his solemn pretending that his lordship is
perfection, don’t take the trouble to bury them, neither. We all have
our suspicions that Mr. Flint drinks with his lordship.”
“What?”
“No wonder it turns your stomach, sir. It do ours. The Ordhams, begging
your pardon, have never been like that. There’s been wild ones, and most
of them could drink themselves under the table, I’ve heard from my
father and grandfather; but never one that lived familiar with his man
and had naught to do with gentlemen. If his mother hadn’t been such a
young thing when she died, and straight from the schoolroom, we’d have
our suspicions.”
Ordham laughed shortly. “The King of Bavaria, whose royal blood is a
thousand years old, consorts wholly with his lackeys. He has a rotten
spot in his brain, and so, no doubt, has my brother. What else can be
expected of a recluse that never opens a book? He can’t shoot and hunt
the year round.”
Hines entered and Mrs. Felt departed. When Ordham had finished dressing,
half an hour later, the footman knocked, and informing him that all the
rooms on this floor, with the exception of his own and his lordship’s
suites, the dining room, and a small room adjoining, were closed,
escorted him down the long familiar corridors to the sanctum of his
brother. It was a square room, whose old frescoes had been whitewashed,
and furnished with several leather chairs, a couch, a desk, and a table,
the last littered with racing calendars and sporting magazines. It was
empty and Ordham sniffed in disgust; it was the sort of room he
hated—utterly, baldly, savagely masculine. He had supposed that at
least he could console himself in the beautiful rooms devoted to
entertaining, and now felt that even the old boudoir of his paternal
grandmother, done up in “tapestries” worked with her own hands, and
replete with Victorian horrors, would have made him gratefully
sentimental. Again his spirits took a downward plunge. He felt
nauseated. And through what avenue could he approach the man? He was
even more demoralized than he had counted upon.
There was a shuffling step on the hard floor of the passage that led in
from the corridor, and Lord Bridgminster entered. He was a big man who,
once strong and athletic, was now merely heavy. His face was large and
red, his eyes small and dull. He wore a full beard and mustache, which
made him look older than he was and hid but little of the scar that
disfigured the right side of his face. Nor did it lend him any of the
dignity of his younger brother, and he carried his shoulders loosely and
moved his hands incessantly. In his youth he had been handsome, with
well-cut features and the fresh colouring of his race, but not a vestige
of either youth or beauty remained.
“How d’y do?” he said politely enough, extending a limp hand. “I’m a bit
off my feed, but you look fit—why shouldn’t you? Wish I were
twenty-four.”
They walked into the dining room together, and Ordham, whose languid
eyes missed little, noted a flicker pass between Biscom and Thomas. It
said as plainly as speech, “O lud, what a contrast!” Involuntarily he
drew himself up, and at the same time resented that any brother of his
should be scorned by the very servants as unworthy of the great position
to which he had been born. It was almost as if a changeling had been
slipped into the family cradle, and yet he knew that there were many
like him, for the race is always reverting to its primitive types.
The dinner, served at a small table by an open window, consisted of the
heavy joints and vegetables that Ordham detested; but it surprised him
that his brother, whom he remembered as a man of mighty appetite, barely
picked at it. Nor would he talk. The amenities—as he understood
them—over, he responded with but an occasional grunt to the guest’s
attempts at conversation, and finally the silence became so oppressive
that Ordham lost what little appetite the sight and odours of the repast
had left him. When the pudding appeared, hopeful of starting a congenial
topic, he asked Bridgminster why he did not go up to London and consult
a doctor.
“There are doctors in every town in Yorkshire,” growled his lordship.
“Why should I go to London? Haven’t seen it for eighteen years. Should
lose my way.”
“There are cabs,” suggested his brother, delicately. “Or I should be
happy to guide you. If you have lost your appetite, there must be
something serious the matter.”
“Not at all!” Bridgminster raised his voice shrilly. “There’s nothing
the matter worth mentioning. Can’t a man be a bit off his feed without
taking a day’s journey to pay two guineas to some damned swindler?”
“One can be seriously upset without being threatened with extinction;
and when doctors were invented to keep one fit, why be uncomfortable?”
“I thought you wanted a week’s shooting. Wasn’t that what you said in
that letter you honoured me with after you passed those examinations?”
Ordham blushed at this sarcastic reference to the only excuse he had
been able to think of when inviting himself to the castle of his
fathers. But it must be made to serve. He answered suavely: “One gets so
little of that sort of thing on the Continent. Do you go out every day?”
“Certainly. Am I really to have the pleasure of your company on the
moors from morning till night?”
“Well—a good part of the day. Remember that I am a bit out of practice,
and not as hard as you are.”
“I’m no longer hard, but I go out and potter about. It is a damned sight
better than sitting in the house. And I loved it once! God! how I loved
it.”
Ordham glanced at him with a fleeting pity. The creature was mournfully
without resources. No wonder he drank during the long dark winters of
the north. This might be the auspicious moment for the opening of his
campaign; he asked abruptly: “Why don’t you have some of the boys to
stop with you if you don’t like outsiders—”
“They are outsiders so far as I am concerned. I want no one. That’s all
I have to say on the subject.”
Ordham relapsed into silence. After dinner he smoked on the upper
terrace, Lord Bridgminster in his study. They did not meet again even to
part for the night.
But they met at breakfast and went together to the covers. It was a
long, hot, silent, fatiguing, hideous day. And on the morrow followed
its duplicate, and again on the morrow. The bags were small.
Bridgminster’s hand was unsteady, and Ordham more and more indifferent
as to whether he hit a bird or a bush. (The beater kept out of the way.)
Each dinner was a repetition of the first, a cold and tasteless luncheon
was served on the moor, and he had to appear at the early breakfast. On
the third night he went to bed feeling like a weary soldier on the
battle-field, a cow-boy, a day labourer. They were the three most
detestable days of his life; even that period of apprehension induced by
the vagaries of Frau von Wass was as nothing to this unremitting
physical discomfort in the society of a boor that never opened his
mouth.
On the morning of the fourth day he deliberately remained in bed until
noon, sending his brother word that his wrist was lame. The afternoon he
idled about the park, almost happy in visiting every nook associated
with his boyhood, and lay for an hour on the edge of the pool in the
sunken garden surrounded by its silent rigid pointed trees, reflected
like the spires of a submerged city. He had made a bare dash through
Italy, and determined to visit it during the autumn with Margarethe
Styr. Later he descended into the village at the base of the fell and
renewed many old friendships, and promised to take a hand at cricket on
the green on the following Saturday. But the cordial welcome he received
from these simple folk, who had always regarded themselves as his future
tenants, and their ill-concealed dislike of the man who never gave them
a nod in passing, revived his despondency and futile annoyance with
fate.
He learned upon his return to the castle that his brother had not gone
out that day, and when he appeared in the dining room it was apparent
that he had been drinking. He made no response to Ordham’s greeting and
sat through the dinner speechless, his face purple, his breath hot and
fevered, barely touching his food. But when the servants had left for
the last time, he opened his mouth and spoke:
“Should you be willing to break the entail of this property?”
Ordham, by this time in a state of boiling wrath, disgust, and gloom,
which made him wholly reckless, shot a look of contempt at the noble
lord at the head of the table and replied curtly, “Of course not.”
“Then you are a fool. A new millionnaire would pay a cool half million
for it.”
“What do you want of more money? You do not spend nine-tenths of what
you have.”
“The mills are on their last legs. Money is money. What is the use of a
silly ark like this? I have done with it in any case. I’m going back to
my box in Scotland—lived too long in a house. This Italian thing should
be turned into a barrack or a sanatorium. What rot, what insensate
pride, to build a palace too big for the biggest family ever born! I
believe it is haunted anyhow. I hate it—and my own shootings are
better.”
“You might lend it to my mother and the boys, with the necessary income
to keep it up.”
Bridgminster merely laughed at this practical suggestion. His laugh was
still well-bred, almost silent, but his loose cheeks shook, his eyes
watered. “As if she did not spend enough as it is. I have no desire to
die a pauper.”
“You seem to forget that you could not. Do you mind telling me who or
what you are saving for? You have no boys to educate, as my father
had—unless you contemplate marrying.”
“Marrying!” He hurled out the word with a coarse violence, which,
however, failed to disgust his next of kin. “I read somewhere that in
America they use Chinamen as house servants. I have a mind to turn out
Felt and the rest of them and put in the pig-tails. I’d never see a
woman if I could help it.” And then he indulged in observations not to
be repeated.
“You are fortunate in being able to indulge your antipathies. There is
nothing for me but to marry some woman with money, and this I must do in
short order whether I like her or not.”
“It doesn’t matter whether you like her or not; you’d hate her before
long.” Hopefully: “She might buy this place.”
“You forget that I have gone in for diplomacy. I shall be little in
England.”
“Well, then, help me to dispose of it to this vulgarian for half a
million of money.”
Ordham made no reply, but helped himself to a glass of chartreuse.
“Why don’t you drink port? I didn’t know those silly liqueurs were in
the house.”
“I dislike heavy wines.”
“You aren’t half an Englishman, anyhow. You haven’t eaten a breakfast
since you came. Tea and toast—by God! You might be a woman. No wonder
you can’t shoot. You haven’t answered my question.”
“I answered it at the beginning of this edifying conversation.”
Bridgminster hesitated perceptibly; then, with evident reluctance, but
very clearly, he put another question: “Would you help me to break this
entail if I gave you five thousand pounds?”
Ordham turned upon him his heavy glittering eyes. “Not for the entire
half million.”
“You look upon it as your own, I suppose?”
“I have tried to make you understand that I should not be able to live
here; but if I can help it, it shall never go out of the family. Good
God! Have you no family pride?”
“Family pride! Who cares for it nowadays? Half the peerage is made up of
tradesmen. I want to know that the half million this museum represents
is invested in consols.”
“I don’t fancy that it would all be invested in your name. Did I, as
heir presumptive, give my consent—But I shall not give my consent. If
you will excuse me, I will go out and smoke. And it is likely that I
shall leave in the morning.”
“What did you come here for?”
Ordham had risen; looking down into the disagreeable eyes of his
brother, he answered deliberately: “To ask you for a thousand pounds. I
am in debt for that amount. Also, to ask you to increase my income. I
have not one quarter enough to keep me properly.”
Bridgminster laughed again, and for fully a minute the two men looked
deep into each other’s eyes, unaware, perhaps, of all they revealed.
The older brother, his thick upper lip almost flattened in a leer, spoke
first: “Do you wish I were dead?”
“How can you say such a thing?”
The formula, with which he so long had been wont lightly to extricate
himself from corners, sprang from his lips. He turned on his heel and
walked the length of the room. It was a very long room, and when he
stood before his brother once more, the flutter in his nerves had
subsided. Again the eyes met and held each other, until Ordham said
distinctly:
“I do.”
He had expected that Bridgminster would laugh again, and it had crossed
his mind that if he did the port bottle might fly at his face. But to
his astonishment his brother cowered in his chair, his purple face
paling, and put out his hands with feebly warding motions.
“Don’t say that!” He stammered and his tongue was thick. “I—I fancy I
am superstitious. I’m a bit off my feed—worse than ever to-day. It’s
this damned haunted barrack. I’ll go back to Scotland to-morrow.”
Ordham moved a step closer. Transfixing the wretched man with his cold
contracted eyes, he made no reply. Bridgminster stirred uncontrollably.
“It is a big sum,” he muttered.
Still Ordham made no reply, but his eyes were little more than
glittering lines. Bridgminster’s chest heaved, a flash leaped into his
injected eyes.
“I believe you’d kill me if you got a chance—if you thought you
wouldn’t be found out.”
“I would.”
“And every damned servant in the castle would swear you free,” whimpered
his lordship. “Do you think I can’t see what silly asses they are about
you? They hate me. I haven’t a friend in the world but my man, and he
could be bought by anybody. You’d be a murderer all the same, though.”
“That would not disturb me for a moment.”
Bridgminster felt of his flabby muscles. His jaw fell, his eye rolled.
“Do you mean to murder me?” he gasped.
Ordham hesitated deliberately, never removing his eyes. “No,” he said
finally. “It would be a nasty business. But I want that money.”
Bridgminster rose heavily. “Come into the office,” he said.
Ordham followed the lord of the manor into his shabby sanctuary. The air
was stale, the windows unopened. There was a bottle of Scotch whiskey on
the table. Bridgminster sat down at the desk, and after some fumbling
found his check book and wrote an order for a thousand pounds. The act
seemed to restore his equilibrium for the moment. He tore out the check
and flung it at his brother, who stood negligently beside the desk, but
with nothing of indifference in the eyes into which he seemed to have
thrown the whole weight of his brain.
“There!” he shouted. “Take it and be damned. And not another penny as
long as I live—as long as I live—Oh! I’m off my feed! I’m off my
feed!” He broke down, and flinging his head into his arms, wept aloud.
Ordham, who had had as much as he could endure, left the room and went
up to his own. His forehead was damp and cold, he trembled slightly. He
doubted if ever again he should be equal to a similar concentration of
his faculties, even over a demoralized drunkard; certainly he had no
desire to repeat the hideous experience. Better marry and have done with
it.