_Wherein we are obliged to Spend a Brief Moment in the Company of the
Titled Aristocracy_
Anthony Baddlesmere stood brooding in the middle of his room, his hands
behind his back, and his wits hammering in his skull.
“Tsh--sh!”
He wondered how it was that he had not seen this tangle until now.
The boy was gone; into his place had stepped a youth--Noll was on the
verge of manhood. And the lad had the firm mouth and the strong jaw of
the Baddlesmeres.
It had all flashed upon him suddenly; thus:
As he came up the steps to enter the house, the door had opened and
there had stepped thereout a very beautiful girl of near sixteen, her
skirts not quite as long as they might have been; and beside the girl
had walked a handsome youth--his son Noll.
Ought this thing to be?
This girl’s father, Modeyne, was a gentleman--as a matter of fact
of as good blood as himself, if they came to the arbitrament of the
Heralds’ Office. But he was utterly unclassed! The fellow was become
an Outsider. He was only to be seen in the city, and--pah! with
such a rank gang of vulgarians! men whose loud clothes were always
aggressively well-brushed, whose hats, worn rakishly to a side, were
aggressively shiny, whose glittering boots were always aggressively
new and suggestive of the aggressively expensive, whose aitches were
the only articles of subtlety and rarity that they paraded, whose
manners were overbearing and authoritative. God! Modeyne, even when
drunk, shone, for all his falling away, the only man of breeding in the
company.
Still--he was the falling star.
The girl had not a chance. So Anthony argued--with what is called the
world’s wisdom--and proceeded to take the most elaborate precautions
that she should not have a chance.
Noll’s calf-love for the girl must be killed. By Venus! she was
uncommon handsome--there was that excuse for the lad.
But how?
At any rate, there was no time to be lost.
This boy Noll was come within two lives of the Cavil property--there
was only one between his mother and the peerage.
He thought it would be a mistake to say anything to Caroline about it.
She might go into opposition.
He would make the journey to Cavil and see the old lord at once. It
would mean the eating of much pride; it would choke him; but----
Stay. An alienated relative makes but a treacherous ally. Yet----
Lord Wyntwarde strode up and down the great library at Cavil, where
he transacted his business, and all such other like unpleasantnesses,
amongst the books he never read, his hands in his breeches pockets;
and he laughed harshly. He was just in from riding; and his pink
hunting-coat, his breeches and long boots were splashed with mud.
Anthony, standing in a window, grimly watched him prowling.
The old lord threw back his head as he tramped the floor:
“Ho, ho!” he bawled, “friend Anthony! I spoke like the damned minor
prophets, after all, hey!... So you come to me!... By the dogs, I said
it. But you are three years before my prophecy.... You play the cat and
banjo with my dates. You make me too previous.” He turned, clinking his
spurs as he trod his heels into the thick carpets. “I saw the cub’s
birth in the papers ... seventeen years and a while ago. But, the
cast-iron joke of it! that _you_ should come to prevent a marriage with
an undesirable. Hoho--ho!... I swore it--I swore it should be so....
Gods! how the world goes round! Round and round and round. And no one
grows a peppercorn the wiser.... Not a damn peppercorn. Tshah! _I_ did
it. But then I foresaw that all the Wattleses would pour their vast
wealth into our coffers--they love to have a lord in the family down
by Birmingham. Nevertheless, _I_ married a vicar’s daughter against my
father’s will--and she brought forth Ponsonby!... Gods! have you seen
the Thing?”
Anthony said not a word.
The old lord took to his pacing again:
“By the dogs, an abortion. He cannot stay on a horse long enough for it
to kill him. A horse! Dogs, he hasn’t even the blood of the Wattleses
in him--he’d turn giddy on an office-stool unless he were strapped
to it. He is the very pick of dancing-masters--he has cast back to
the bank-manager, except that he can’t count. There he stands against
God’s heaven, a knock-kneed reproach to his Maker.... The nearest thing
he gets to a horse is to wear riding-breeches and long boots on the
parades of fashionable watering-places. But he has thrown out a virtue
we none others have had--he has not gone into opposition to the head
of his house. He will be the twenty-sixth in the title, and the other
twenty-four have pulled their fathers’ beards. He has promised never
to marry without my approval....” He tramped silently for awhile, and
burst out again: “And so you think I will refuse to have a word to
say to your cub! Well, you are mistaken. But it is on conditions--you
understand--on conditions.”
Anthony nodded:
“I must know the conditions,” he said.
“You must? Hoho! still the organizer of victory, eh!”
Anthony said nothing.
He stood and watched the striding figure before him, and bit his teeth
on all repartee. He had a dogged desire to win that which he had come
to ask; and he was not going to lose it for the sake of a score in
grooms’ badinage.
He left the waggeries to the noble lord.
“Look here, friend Anthony--your uncle sold the estates, and rotted
in Boulogne. And the county dropped him--he only had the portraits
with him when he died. Well! does the world remember that _you_ come
of the Plantagenets? does the county remember that your sires were
William of Normandy and Charlemagne and Louis Debonair? Not a whit. It
thinks you are a damned scribbling fellow; and, by the dogs, you are.
And the lordship of the manor is gone to some cheesemonger from down
South--and, hoho! I swear it, your arms are on his carriage panels, the
great damned peacock’s tail for crest, and the scarlet torteaux and
the blessed chevron. All taken over with the lordship of the manor.
Yes, by the three scarlet tortoises, their women are wonderful! brand
new popinjays on a brand new stick. Nothing old and dingy in the old
home, I can promise you--Chippendale and the eighteenth century all
thrust out o’ doors, gone to the workmen’s cottages--and the rooms
heavy with full-bellied comfortable saddle-bag lounges and the Latest
Thing. But--mine host is in Burke, and glitters in Debrett. And you?
Beelzebub! you scribble. You are gone down to the bottom of an ink-pot.
And the boy! our good Oliver--where will _he_ go? Yet, by my soul, you
did one clean thing--you called him after me--you had sufficient pride
to put aside your dirty conceit and give him the name of the house.
Wherefore, since he is an Oliver, and since he has gone into opposition
to his father, who went into opposition to me--and since two negatives
make an affirmative--therefore and whereby and notwithstanding, I’ll
help the boy; but I say it shall be on conditions.”
Anthony’s one dread was lest he should discover that Caroline was not
in the surrender.
“And the conditions?” he asked.
“Now, don’t you begin hectoring me!”
The bloodshot eyes turned glaring upon the silent figure of Anthony
that stood sullenly in the window.
Anthony laughed sadly.
“There is very little of Hector left in me,” he said. “I had hoped
to have made a decent competency for the boy--but I have failed....
Perhaps I ought to say that it was not on my own account that I came
here. I remember another and very serious reason--one that I thought
would appeal to you--and--I think it is the real reason at bottom for
your sudden burst of generosity.”
The clinking of the spurs and the striding up and down the room began
again:
“I have not forgotten that there is only Ponsonby between master
Oliver’s mother and me. I have not forgotten why you married his
mother, Master Anthony.... That was why I prophesied.... Prophecy?” He
snorted: “Prophecy be hanged! It was a jabbering of dead certainty.”
Anthony’s face flushed hotly:
“There is one thing I will not allow--though the boy rot for it--the
lie of omission,” he said.
“Who lies?”
The tramping ceased.
Anthony looked him steadily in the eyes:
“You have forgotten something, Lord Wyntwarde. There was a time when
you were not so pat with a lie.”
“I have forgotten nothing.”
“You have forgotten to add that you had four children alive--and a
brother. We scribbling folk call that the lie of omission; we consider
it the lowest of falsehoods. We even hold it a dishonour to utter it.”
The bloodshot eyes ceased their glare; and the striding began again:
“Still the damned authority on all the moralities,” said my lord.
As a fact, he was pleased at the show of fire. He had begun to think
this man had lost courage; and he would have trampled him under foot
for it. Your braggart only understands courage when it is announced by
trumpet. As it was, he remembered the ugly threat of a whip that he had
once been under from this fellow. It came to him that he had played the
bully to the limits.
He went to the bell and rang it; and got to pacing the room again,
brooding, until a footman opened the door.
“Tell Mr. Fassett I wish to see him,” said his lordship.
“Yes--my lud.”
A silent chaplain entered the room almost before the servant was gone,
and, glancing at his striding lord and his guest, he obeyed the sign
to sit down at the desk, noiselessly took his way to it, and placed
himself thereat.
“Fassett,” said Wyntwarde, prowling the while--“I want notes made upon
these points: My kinsman, Oliver Baddlesmere, a young fellow about to
go up to Oxford, is to go to Magdalen. The day he writes to me for
supplies from Magdalen he is to receive three hundred pounds--and
he is to receive it each year he goes up. Any bills in reason for
hunters, or in relation to hunting, I will pay--and all wine that shows
a gentleman’s judgment. Hatch, my wine-merchant, shall give him open
credit--and be judge between us. I expect him to live at the university
for his intellectual pleasure and in the society of gentlemen; not like
a damned curate or a schoolmaster. And the day he enters Parliament or
the Guards or some other club where gentlemen live decent unlaborious
lives, his income will be doubled, and, if need be, trebled. Otherwise
he may go to the devil--I forget how a parson puts it, Fassett--and
whistle down his nose for sixpences, or draw little pictures for the
illustrated papers, or whatever else that is the low way these sort of
people grub up a livelihood in the arts.”
He went to the bell and rang it; and turning to Anthony he added:
“There are a lot of handsome women with dull husbands staying in the
house, friend Anthony.” He laughed roughly: “But I suppose it’s no use
asking you to stay for dinner.”
He turned to the footman who appeared at the door; and, before Anthony
could answer, he said:
“This gentleman must catch the next train to town.”
He waved his hand with a curt “Good-day”; and tramped out of the room
on clanking heels.
Anthony decided, thinking it out in the train, to tell Caroline of what
had passed, and of the need for getting Noll coached at once for the
next term at Oxford.
He did not see any particular reason why the lad should go to
the university; but everyone did go--it was the thing to do. And
then--there was the girl----
He thought, all things considered, there was no need to mention Betty
Modeyne.