A TOAST TO THE PAST
The middle of June found the Deppinghams leaving London once more, but
this time not on a voyage into the mysterious South Seas. They no longer
were interested in the island of Japat, except as a reminiscence, nor
were they concerned in the vagaries of Taswell Skaggs's will.
The estate was settled--closed!
Mr. Saunders was mentioned nowadays only in narrative form, and but
rarely in that way. True, they had promised to visit the little place in
Hammersmith if they happened to be passing by, and they had graciously
admitted that it would give them much pleasure to meet his good mother.
Two months have passed since the Deppinghams departed from Japat, "for
good and all." Many events have come to pass since that memorable day,
not the least of which was the exchanging of £500,000 sterling, less
attorneys' and executors' fees. To be perfectly explicit and as brief as
possible, Lady Deppingham and Robert Browne divided that amount of money
and passed into legal history as the "late claimants to the Estate of
Taswell Skaggs."
It was Sir John Brodney's enterprise. He saw the way out of the
difficulty and he acted as pathfinder to the other and less perceiving
counsellors, all of whom had looked forward to an endless controversy.
The business of the Japat Company and all that it entailed was
transferred by agreement to a syndicate of Jews!
Never before was there such a stupendous deal in futures.
Soon after the arrival in England of the two claimants, it became known
that the syndicate was casting longing eyes upon the far-away garden of
rubies and sapphires. There was no hope of escape from a long, bitter
contest in the courts. Sir John perhaps saw that there was a possible
chance to break the will of the testator; he was an old man and he would
hardly live long enough to fight the case to the end. In the
interregnum, his clients, the industrious islanders, would be slaving
themselves into a hale old age and a subsequently unhallowed grave, none
the wiser and none the richer than when the contest began, except for
the proportionately insignificant share that was theirs by right of
original possession. Sir John took it upon himself to settle the matter
while his clients were still in a condition to appreciate the results.
He proposed a compromise.
It was not so much a question of jurisprudence, he argued, as it was a
matter of self-protection for all sides to the controversy--more
particularly that side which assembled the inhabitants of Japat.
And so it came to pass that the Jews, after modifying some twenty or
thirty propositions of their own, ultimately assumed the credit of
evolving the plan that had originated in the resourceful head of Sir
John Brodney, and affairs were soon brought to a close.
The grandchildren of the testators were ready to accept the best
settlement that could be obtained. Theirs was a rather forlorn hope, to
begin with. When it was proposed that Agnes Deppingham and Robert Browne
should accept £250,000 apiece in lieu of all claims, moral or legal,
against the estate, they leaped at the chance.
They had seen but little of each other since landing in England, except
as they were thrown together at the conferences. There was no pretence
of intimacy on either side; the shadow of the past was still there to
remind them that a skeleton lurked behind and grinned spitefully in its
obscurity. Lady Agnes went in for every diversion imaginable; for a
wonder, she dragged Deppingham with her on all occasions. It was a most
unexpected transformation; their friends were puzzled. The rumour went
about town that she was in love with her husband.
As for Bobby Browne, he was devotion itself to Drusilla. They sailed for
New York within three days after the settlement was effected, ignoring
the enticements of a London season--which could not have mattered much
to them, however, as Drusilla emphatically refused to wear the sort of
gowns that Englishwomen wear when they sit in the stalls. Besides, she
preferred the Boston dressmakers. The Brownes were rich. He could now
become a fashionable specialist. They were worth nearly a million and a
quarter in American dollars. Moreover, they, as well as the Deppinghams,
were the possessors of rubies and sapphires that had been thrust upon
them by supplicating adversaries in the hour of departure--gems that
might have bought a dozen wives in the capitals of Persia; perhaps a
score in the mountains where the Kurds are cheaper. The Brownes
naturally were eager to get back to Boston. They now had nothing in
common with Taswell Skaggs; Skaggs is not a pretty name.
Mr. Britt afterward spent three weeks of incessant travel on the
continent and an additional seven days at sea. In Baden-Baden he
happened upon Lord and Lady Deppingham. It will be recalled that in
Japat they had always professed an unholy aversion for Mr. Britt. Is it
cause for wonder then that they declined his invitation to dine in
Baden-Baden? He even proposed to invite their entire party, which
included a few dukes and duchesses who were leisurely on their way to
attend the long-talked-of nuptials in Thorberg at the end of June.
The Syndicate, after buying off the hereditary forces, assumed a half
interest in the Japat Company's business; the islanders controlled the
remaining half. The mines were to be operated under the management of
the Jews and eight hours were to constitute a day's work. The personal
estate passed into the hands of the islanders, from whom Skaggs had
appropriated it in conjunction with John Wyckholme. All in all, it
seemed a fair settlement of the difficulty. The Jews paid something like
£2,000,000 sterling to the islanders in consideration of a twenty years'
grant. Their experts had examined the property before the death of Mr.
Skaggs; they were not investing blindly in the great undertaking.
Mr. Levistein, the president of the combine, after a long talk with Lord
Deppingham, expressed the belief that the château could be turned into a
money-making hotel if properly advertised--outside of the island.
Deppingham admitted, that if he kept the prices up, there was no reason
in the world why the better class of Jews should not flock there for the
winter.
Before the end of June, representatives of the combine, attended by
officers of the court, a small army of clerks, a half dozen lawyers and
two capable men from the office of Sir John Brodney, set sail for Japat,
provided with the power and the means to effect the transfer agreed upon
in the compromise.
In Vienna the Deppinghams were joined by the Duchess of N------, the
Marchioness of B------ and other fashionables. In a week all of them
would be in the Castle at Thorberg, for the ceremony that now occupied
the attention of social and royal Europe.
"And to think," said the Duchess, "she might have died happily on that
miserable island. I am sure we did all we could to bring it about by
steaming away from the place with the plague chasing after us. Dear me,
how diabolically those wretches lied to the Marquess. They said that
every one in the château was dead, Lady Deppingham--and buried, if I am
not mistaken."
The party was dining with one of the Prince Lichtensteins in the Hotel
Bristol after a drive in the Haupt-Allee.
"My dog, I think, was the only one of us who died, Duchess," said Lady
Agnes airily. "And he was buried. They were that near to the truth."
"It would be much better for poor Genevra if she were to be buried
instead of married next week," lamented the Duchess.
"My dear, how ridiculous. She isn't dead yet, by any manner of means.
Why bury her? She's got plenty of life left in her, as Karl Brabetz will
learn before long." Thus spoke the far-sighted Marchioness, aunt of the
bride-to-be. "It's terribly gruesome to speak of burying people before
they are actually dead."
"Other women have married princes and got on very well," said Prince
Lichtenstein.
"Oh, come now, Prince," put in Lord Deppingham, "you know the sort of
chap Brabetz is. There are princes and princes, by Jove."
"He's positively vile!" exclaimed the Duchess, who would not mince
words.
"She's entering upon a hell of a--I mean a life of hell," exploded the
Duke, banging the table with his fist. "That fellow Brabetz is the
rottenest thing in Europe. He's gone from bad to worse so swiftly that
public opinion is still months behind him."
"Nice way to talk of the groom," said the host genially. "I quite agree
with you, however. I cannot understand the Grand Duke permitting it to
go on--unless, of course, it's too late to interfere."
"Poor dear, she'll never know what it is to be loved and cherished,"
said the Marchioness dolefully.
Lord and Lady Deppingham glanced at each other. They were thinking of
the man who stood on the dock at Aratat when the _King's Own_ sailed
away.
"The Grand Duke is probably saying the very thing to himself that
Brabetz's associates are saying in public," ventured a young Austrian
count.
"What is that, pray?"
"That the Prince won't live more than six months. He's a physical wreck
to-day--and a nervous one, too. Take my word for it, he will be a
creeping, imbecile thing inside of half a year. Locomotor ataxia and all
that. It's coming, positively, with a sharp crash."
"I've heard he has tried to kill that woman in Paris half a dozen
times," remarked one of the women, taking it as a matter of course that
every one knew who she meant by "that woman." As no one even so much as
looked askance, it is to be presumed that every one knew.
"She was really responsible for the postponement of the wedding in
December, I'm told. Of course, I don't know that it is true," said the
Marchioness, wisely qualifying her gossip. "My brother, the Grand Duke,
does not confide in me."
"Oh, I think that story was an exaggeration," said her husband. "Genevra
says that he was very ill--nervous something or other."
"Probably true, too. He's a wreck. She will be the prettiest widow in
Europe before Christmas," said the young count. "Unless, of course, any
one of the excellent husbands surrounding me should die," he added
gallantly.
"Well, my heart bleeds for her," said Deppingham.
"She's going into it with her eyes open," said the Prince. "It isn't as
if she hadn't been told. She could see for herself. She knows there's
the other woman in Paris and--Oh, well, why should we make a funeral of
it? Let's do our best to be revellers, not mourners. She'll live to fall
in love with some other man. They always do. Every woman has to love at
least once in her life--if she lives long enough. Come, come! Is my
entertainment to develop into a premature wake? Let us forget the future
of the Princess Genevra and drink to her present!"
"And to her past, if you don't mind, Prince!" amended Lord Deppingham,
looking into his wife's sombre eyes.