EVEN bores have their _raison d’être_. Maurice Brennett had long
speculated on the purpose of Colonel Percy’s creation. One sunshiny
afternoon in New Orleans he seemed to have solved this problem, for,
chancing to meet the old gentleman, he detained him in conversation for
a few moments on the street, and then, arm in arm, they turned into the
St. ---- Hotel, close at hand, and repaired to the reading-room.
Colonel Percy’s natural manner, if ever he had a natural manner,
had been so long and so utterly submerged beneath his mannerism,
that not the faintest vestige of the hypothetical original tissue
was discernible. He conserved, mentally and physically, a pose of
portly pomposity and benign condescension, which would have implied
repletion of self-approbation but for its covertly insatiate demand
for responsive homage. He was emphatic, and oracular, and eminently
Socratic--not that he was verbally interrogative, but the whole man was
himself a huge interrogation point, seeming to ask continually, “Do you
comprehend--can you appreciate _Me_?”
He was an exemplification of the driving force of prosperity. It had
carried him far along the grooves of convention, and he occupied an
enviable place in public esteem. To the impartial observer, however,
seeing things as they are, uninfluenced by tradition and worldly
consideration, he merely proved how very creditably a man can sustain
a high social and financial position on how very little mental capital,
confirming the old belief that fools are Fortune’s favorites, and
making wise men “ambitious for a motley coat.”
But in his happy, ignorant pomposity he thought he knew it all. He took
it for granted that his brain-pan was as handsomely furnished as his
purse, and the world in general took it for granted, too.
It was not Brennett’s habit to fly in the face of established usage. He
did not resent the old gentleman’s condescension, for, when it suited
his designs to take a low seat, it mattered very little who said, “Sit
thou here.” Conventionalities are the pawns of the chess-games of life,
and by their adroit management he frequently gave checkmate without
mooting graver radical questions--the expediency or the inexpediency of
the relative position of knights and bishops.
“You have seen the evening papers, eh?” said Colonel Percy, as he sank
into a chair. “Sad state of affairs in France--sad state--sad state.
Riotous.”
Colonel Percy had a habit of iteration. He chanted continually an
acquiescent refrain to his own words. His speech was like a Greek
chorus, strophe and antistrophe blending in one harmonious whole.
“I had expected to go to Paris this spring,” he continued. “But now, I
hardly know, I hardly know.”
He looked as if the Commune were especially invented for the
frustration of this praiseworthy intention.
“It has been some time since you were abroad, I believe,” Brennett
remarked.
“Years, years. I have not been off American soil for years; not since
my brother and I made a little tour together--a little tour.”
“He died in Germany, did he not?”
Was Brennett talking merely for time, that he should thus steer the
conversation into the dull channel of these personal interests? An
eager expectation, foreign to the subject, was in his countenance. An
intense anxiety and excitement had kindled in his eyes. Once he turned
his head toward the door--only once--and afterward there was a rigidity
in the muscles of his face and neck, as if he would avoid, by an effort
of the will, the gesture to which an unruly impulse rendered him prone.
Nothing of all this did old Walter Percy see or imagine; absorbed in
the subject, he prosed on.
“Yes, yes; his health was not good, and travel was advised by his
physicians. He was a great sufferer during his latter years, and died
at last from spinal meningitis--he died from it.”
“I remember meeting him at Interlaken.”
“Interlaken? Yes, Interlaken. I recollect Interlaken, Mr. Brennett.
Nice scenery there, very nice scenery indeed. The scenery at Interlaken
is certainly very nice,” repeated Colonel Percy, with about as much
imagination as a primary geography.
“Very nice,” Brennett assented.
The afternoon sunlight was streaming in at the windows; the lace
curtains stirred softly to and fro in the fresh breeze, and, as they
moved, the long, yellow rays were broken and deflected into fantastic
shimmers. Now an arabesque of golden light in a network of gray
shadow--the etherealized similitude of the curtain itself--was waving
on the frescoed ceiling; and now it was slipping insidiously over the
carpet. Sometimes the radiance encircled the old man’s white hair like
a halo; sometimes it played over his withered features with a scornful
brilliancy; sometimes it flashed full on Maurice Brennett’s bright
eyes. Once it surprised a strange expression there. He was looking
intently at the pier-glass--not at his own reflection, for he was so
placed that he could see only the indistinct image of a man in the
dim perspective of the hall without. And the man could see Maurice
Brennett’s reflection, lounging in a green velvet chair as he talked to
a garrulous graybeard. Could it be that a swift glance, charged with
a deep meaning, flashed between the _simulacra_ in the mirror?
Or was it only the vagary of the wanton sunshine, flying on the wings
of the wind, and filling the room with its quiverings, and bright
distortions, and bizarre effects?
Suddenly the shadow in the hall was merged into substance. There
was entering a tall, well-dressed man, with a handsome face and a
singularly effective manner. He had a certain air of high breeding,
but his appearance gave a sharply contradictory suggestion of reckless
living. He looked as if he ought to be the finest type of gentleman,
and yet could not, or would not--for there was something distinctly
vicious in his handsome eyes.
The two friends by the window were rising; their conference was
terminated. The stranger had paused near one of the tables, and was
listlessly glancing over a newspaper as he stood. Occasionally he
looked with faint and fleeting interest at the other occupants of the
room, until his eye chanced to fall on Colonel Percy. Then he laid the
paper down and advanced.
“I believe I had the pleasure of your acquaintance a long time ago,” he
said.
The smile of amiable condescension which had for so many years adorned
Colonel Percy’s face had become the habit of his muscles. Just now it
was more bland and mollifying than usual, because he was in the painful
position of not recognizing the man who knew him long ago.
“Why, you have forgotten me,” cried the stranger, with a fresh buoyancy
of laugh and manner simply indescribable. “You used to know me well
enough--John Fortescue.”
“Ah, my dear sir,” exclaimed the old gentleman, eagerly extending his
hand, “I had only mislaid your name for a moment--yes--mislaid for a
moment. But as soon as you came into the room I knew I had seen you
somewhere. And yet you have changed greatly in personal appearance.
Appearance, you know.”
“Everybody tells me that,” said Fortescue, carelessly. “Very few of my
old friends recognize me at first. It is hardly a matter for wonder,
and I ought not to expect anything else, as I have not been in this
part of the country for nearly thirty years.”
He bore himself with a most discouraging affability, before which even
the condescending old gentleman wilted a little. When Colonel Percy
partially recovered from the novel sensation, he sought to assume an
air as of taking Mr. Fortescue under his wing, and the stranger, with a
certain imperious good humor, permitted himself to accept the position
_protégé_.
“I am glad to welcome you back,” said Colonel Percy pompously.
“Yes--glad. I knew your father well. Intimately. In some respects you
remind me of him--yes, very much,--especially in your manner and the
tones of your voice. You have the family traits very strongly marked. A
chip of the old block--ch? Yes--a chip.”
The several groups about the room observed this scene with some
interest. Maurice Brennett was still standing near the window. The
old gentleman suddenly recollected him, and at once introduced him to
Fortescue. The two men looked into each other’s eyes in the agitation
of elation, and gravely shook hands.
Thus in re-entering New Orleans society Mr. Fortescue had as a voucher
Colonel Walter Percy--a man of great wealth and social consequence, and
as well known there as the custom-house.
In these early days of his return, Fortescue often dined with the
punctilious old Pattern at his club, went about with him to exclusive
reunions of the very elect, had the run of his house.
“I pledge you my honor, sir,” the old fellow said to a mutual
acquaintance, “I feel rejuvenated after a choice symposium of
this sort. Symposium. I talk. I tell about my college days--his
father was my chum--great times we had. Great times. He is fond of
hearing me talk about his father; he likes our old-world stories.
I tell him that he is his father over again--build, gait, voice,
manner--wonderful resemblance--wonderful! But I _don’t_ tell him,”
added Colonel Percy, with a sort of cumbrous slyness, “that he is his
father--_sublimated_. He is the only _handsome_ Fortescue I
ever saw. He has far more than fulfilled the promise of his youth--oh,
yes--I remember him when he was an ugly, harum-scarum, smooth-faced
cub. Yes--ugly cub. The only handsome Fortescue I ever saw--he
is, now. They were all men of fine presence--but a hard-featured
race--hard-featured to a degree.”
That notably exclusive circle in which John Fortescue had been
welcomed by virtue of the high position formerly held by his family
sustained something of a shock when _outré_ stories of his
extravagant dissipation began to be bruited abroad. A few people with
long memories now recalled sundry mad pranks of his early youth, and
said he was exactly what might have been expected,--as the twig is
bent the tree is inclined. He persistently sought to conserve the
hereditary consideration which had been accorded him, but he also
greatly affected a certain clique of fast men, in which he rapidly
became a prime favorite. His never-failing gayety, his vitality, his
prodigality, above all, his talent and invention in the noble art of
killing time, were qualities not to be lightly appreciated. A sudden
impression here prevailed that he was a man to be imitated, and many
a young fellow’s merely frivolous tendencies took a turn downward to
positive dissipation that might be dated from Fortescue’s reappearance
in New Orleans.
Now and then, over the smooth surface of this shallow-seeming life,
there played ripples which might have told of strange movements in the
unmeasured depths below. Several of the incidents that stirred the
waters came about in this way:--
In some sort, Maurice Brennett had begun to dog John Fortescue about,
and although not philanthropic, and by no means a temperance man, he
made every effort to restrain this chosen intimate from inordinate
drinking. One day, as Travis opened the door of his friend’s room in
the hotel, after a slight annunciatory tap on the panel, he heard
Brennett call out in a strained, excited voice--“You are drinking like
a damned fool! And if you keep it up, I’ll cut the whole thing, by God!”
The sound of the opening door interrupted Fortescue’s reply, and both
turned sharply.
“What does it matter to Brennett how hard Fortescue drinks,” thought
Travis, in great mystification. But the impression was soon effaced,
and the occurrence forgotten in the vicissitudes of fighting the tiger
and cognate pursuits.
A very observant man might have detected the fact that Mr. Fortescue
was merely veneered, as it were, by his seigniorial manner--the wood
beneath was of coarse grain. Then concerning his age there was a
strange discrepancy. He said that he was fifty-two, and he looked
barely forty. And the life he lived does not tend to preserve youth.
It was noticeable, too, that he seemed at first singularly unfamiliar
with the streets of New Orleans, considering the circumstance that he
was born and bred in that city, but he explained that many places about
it had in the thirty years of his absence slipped from his memory, for
he had “no head for locality.” He possessed other peculiarities, one of
which occasioned some remark, slight, however, and transitory enough.
When he was to a certain extent under the influence of wine he did not
answer readily to his name. He was known to sit in motionless silence
after some direct appeal, such as--“Will you come, Fortescue?” as
though another person were addressed whose reply he was awaiting. When
roused to a perception of the fact, he was deft at subterfuges, and the
matter passed as an accident.
Once a more significant episode took place in Brennett’s presence.
While walking with Fortescue along Canal Street one day they
encountered Colonel Percy, who with wonted benign condescension paused
for a few words. He was accompanied by his nephew, of whom he was
superlatively proud and fond, and, as he could never have done with
making an impression, his manner of bland importance in introducing his
kinsman to Fortescue seemed to say--“This, you will note, is Horace
Percy,--a man, young, rich, of fine parts, and greatly favored in that
he is my nephew.”
The flourishing nephew was a tall, lithe fellow of twenty-four or five
years of age, with regular features, a fresh complexion, black hair,
dark gray eyes, and a delicate dark mustache that curled upward at
the ends, and had rather a pampered appearance. His deportment was a
contrast to his uncle’s. He was unconstrained, propitiatory, and seemed
altogether unaware of his consequence. It may have been that from the
plenitude of his self-satisfaction he could afford some concessions,
but the very sight of him predisposed one in his favor.
His superficial glance changed suddenly to an intent gaze as it rested
upon Fortescue, and the idea slowly percolated through Colonel Percy’s
thick skull that instead of impressing his own merits his nephew was
distinctly impressed. And certainly there was something peculiarly
admirable in Fortescue’s manner. Those strong intimations of pride, a
fine candor, and a generous ardor, gave value to his imposing bearing,
his height, and personal effectiveness. A marked individuality was
attendant on his slightest gesture. His light laugh was full of
an infectious gayety. He was like a high wind--he brought his own
exhilarating atmosphere with his buoyant, untamable spirit.
With the bookish man’s carefully cultivated sense of the picturesque,
all this addressed itself intimately to Percy. It promised a perpetuity
of interest in the midst of the arid barren conditions of commonplace
life. Naturally he had expected something very different in his uncle’s
friend. He had a sense of acquisition.
“Do you find many changes here?” he asked agreeably.
“They find me,” Fortescue suavely corrected him. “They come trooping up
every street to meet me. They lie in wait for me all along the banks of
that restless old river”--
“Mutation! mutation, sir!” Colonel Percy solemnly interrupted. The word
and the intonation pleased him--so he said “Mutation” once more.
“It must exert a depressing influence,” Horace Percy suggested.
“It exhilarates me!” cried Fortescue unexpectedly. He lightly fanned
away the cigar-smoke from his handsome face, and he laughed a little.
“It lets me know how the world goes thundering on through space. I have
been thinking it a broken-down hack, and I come to America to find it a
fresh young flyer with a prime track before it.”
“The world moves, sir--the world moves. Especially the Western
Hemisphere,” said Colonel Percy. “Advancement--yes--arts and
manufactures--very good--very good. But not _too_ fast.
Moderation. Moderation.”
The odor of sanctity did not cling to Mr. Fortescue’s metaphors,
and the old gentleman was minded to reiterate circumspectly--“Not
_too_ fast--Moderation. Moderation.”
Maurice Brennett had shown some impatience throughout this
conversation--now it took the form of speech. “I fancy Mr. Fortescue
flatters us,” he said, rather incisively. “Or perhaps it is because
he thought so slightingly of us when he was here before, that our few
changes and our equivocal progress exhilarate him--or, it may be, he is
reconciling himself, with the very genius of philosophy, to his sojourn
among us.”
“He needs no ‘genius of philosophy’ for that, I am very sure,” said
Colonel Percy, with healthy self-esteem. “He is singularly favored if
he has not had more serious causes for unhappiness.”
“I have happily survived them. I have a knack at living--other men
are content to breathe,” Fortescue boasted airily. “But I lay no
claim to genius of any sort. Genius,”--he continued, with quick
discursiveness--“Genius is the perfect poise of the highest powers.”
His manner vitalized the phrase, and the old man, whose kind habit
it was to pat Intellect on the back, exclaimed--“Good! Very good!
Epigrammatic.”
He chipped out the syllables of this long word as if he found it very
good, too.
“And I hope, my dear sir, your ‘knack at living’ may never fail you,”
he added, rubbing his hands and looking about him for approbation, for
he fancied he had said a neat thing.
But his little joke limped by unnoticed. It suddenly occurred to him
that the attention of the group seemed to irresistibly gravitate
toward Fortescue. The others spoke only of him, and he was absorbed in
himself. Horace Percy listened with responsive interest to his every
word; Travis, who had joined the party, demonstrated a facility of
acquiescence; and Maurice Brennett was watching him like a hawk. It was
not Colonel Percy’s habit to assist in magnifying the importance of
other men, and to condescend to jests that are cavalierly overlooked;
jealous of his own consequence, he was quick to perceive that his
meaning had escaped the stranger’s negligent attention.
“With me,” Fortescue declared buoyantly, “the theory of failure and its
practical demonstration run in parallel lines--never touching.”
Then he turned with his grand air to Colonel Percy,--“Your good wishes
for my future ought to have much influence in keeping them from
converging,” he said suavely.
The old gentleman acknowledged this tribute with a wrinkled smile, and
he looked about him with portly pomposity, despite an uncomfortable
inward monition that Fortescue was somehow, incomprehensibly, laughing
at him.
To a man of his temperament this was peculiarly irritating. He was
not ill-tempered, and he usually maintained a conscientious reverence
for those behests of polite society which prevent one from walking
rough-shod over his neighbor’s sensibilities, but to him all others
must bow down. He would go any lengths to bring you to your knees.
Mr. Fortescue had withheld the requisite genuflection. It was with a
distinct intention to discipline him that the old gentleman, affecting
an amiable inadvertence, hastily anticipated his nephew’s reply to a
question which the stranger asked.
“Yes--yes--Horace has been out of town--or you would have met earlier.
He has visited his plantations. He plants extensively now. He plants.
By the way the old Paturin place has recently come into his possession.
Paturin,--you remember?”
He looked at his interlocutor with a world of speculation in his eye.
Fortescue removed his cigar from his lips, turned a smiling face full
upon the old gentleman, and responded,--“Paturin!--I think I remember.
A fine body of land.” Then he replaced his cigar and pulled away with
coolest unconcern.
The old fellow stared. _He thought he remembered Paturin!_ Colonel
Percy himself would never forget the night--in the times of the heavy
gambling on the Mississippi steamboats--when he had seen this man, then
a young sprig, barely come to his majority, stake this same “fine body
of land” and its growing crop of cotton, and lose on a reckless “two
pair” against “three of a kind.”
And now he thought he remembered Paturin!
Colonel Percy felt that there was an infinite impudence in this
seeming indifference--or perhaps Fortescue was only unwilling that one
should know how deep were the wounds made by this chance thrust--this
reminder of his flung-away fortune. But it coerced a respect for the
personal pride which he held like a sword between himself and too close
an advance from a grossly inquisitive world.
After this Brennett seemed feverishly anxious to get away, and
presently he and Fortescue left the others and walked together up the
street.
Travis lingered only a few moments. As he overtook them he heard
Brennett saying in a tense, sneering, half-suppressed voice: “What is
the use of all this display--_ep-i-gram-mat-ic_ wisdom! _It
can’t_ be in character.”
Fortescue said nothing, for at that instant the puzzled Travis joined
them. As he walked abreast with them he noted in surprise the surly
look in the faces of both men. He came at once to his sage conclusion.
“These intellectual fellows are too devilish jealous!” he said to
himself. “How they do grudge each other their little innings!”
Perhaps Maurice Brennett’s impressions of the scene might be most fully
gauged by the fact that he, assisted by Mr. Fortescue or assisting him,
spent the next few days in a laborious examination of sundry records on
which the name of Fortescue appeared, and thenceforth this scion of the
family so far overcame his pride and sensitiveness as to allude often
and readily to various pieces of property which had passed from his
hands, his memory being greatly refreshed by exhaustive lists obtained
during his researches into the arcana of real estate.
Fortescue’s reckless prodigality had convinced Travis, after some
observation, that the project of buying the claim to the Graftenburg
houses was feasible, but he was much surprised by the readiness and
cheapness with which the purchase was effected.
Brennett deemed it expedient to add a contingent element to the
transaction.
“We must make it to Fortescue’s interest that the compromise shall
actually go through,” he said privately to Travis, “or it may be
difficult to get him to bestir himself enough to effect it. The affair
is obliged to be carried on in his name, and ostensibly by him,
although we furnish the money for lawyer’s fees and all that. But we
can’t show at all, you know. So it is best to give Fortescue only five
thousand dollars now, and five thousand if we succeed in making the
compromise. Hold out that prospect to Fortescue and it will keep him
down to his work. He will exert himself to see the lawyers and have the
thing pushed through at once.”
On this basis the negotiation was consummated and, to Fortescue’s
lively satisfaction, five thousand dollars changed hands.
After he had left the room with the check in his pocket-book, Travis
commented on the transaction. “That’s the greediest man to gobble up
a little dab of money I ever saw,” he said to Brennett. “If I were in
his place I’d plough for a living before I would sell my claim to a
splendid property like that for such a pittance.”
He thought it over in silence for a moment--then shook his wise head.
“I can’t understand it, Brennett. It gets away with me.”
And Brennett said nothing.
For the remainder of the afternoon Travis pondered deeply at intervals
upon this problem. It was a long time for any one subject to occupy
his attention. Hours after the consultation, he remarked, apropos of
nothing, “It’s a conundrum, Brennett,” and still later he broke a
brooding silence with the exclamation, “Give it up!”. On each occasion
there was a swift expression of alarm among the anxious lines on
Brennett’s face--lines which it had not known a month ago. But the
absorption gradually relaxed its hold upon Travis, and that evening,
in the glare of gas-lights, the popping of corks, and the special
Providence of filling a “bob-tail flush” at a critical juncture, the
last lingering recollection of the “conundrum” slipped through his
sieve of a mind according to the habit on which Brennett had relied.
Into the strong sweep of Fortescue’s influence Horace Percy had drifted
without resistance, for if he were Hotspur at all, he was Hotspur
with those sturdy elements of obduracy and fierceness left out. His
wilfulness needed only a curb to bring it to naught. He had no coarse
proclivities, but he possessed an infinite leisure; he was malleable,
impressionable, and reflected the moods of the man nearest his elbow.
His chief restraints had hitherto lain in his intellectual tastes,
and although he had sometimes affected the _rôle_ of wild young
blood, and enjoyed the flutter of anxiety his suddenly erratic habits
occasioned among his relatives, he had found the _jeunesse dorée_
were but as sounding brass--dull, commonplace fellows, as a rule, and
ineffectual for mental attrition and congenial companionship. But the
pyrotechnic qualities of Fortescue’s mind dazzled and delighted him;
the man personally impressed and interested him singularly; he even
began to entertain an admiring friendship for him--in common with many
of the same stamp, for Fortescue had his following. To fraternize with
him, however, involved more or less a return to those wild scenes, of
which the joyousness had hitherto seemed a trifle chimerical to the
hesitant and fastidious Percy. Now they were suddenly invested with
a strong actuality of interest and a potent fascination. Fortescue’s
tireless brilliancy, his rampant gayety, his indefatigable vitality and
buoyant spirit were subtly imparted to his associates, and his zest
of enjoyment, even thus warmed over, had a fine flavor. They delighted
in those sensations with which he was wont to shatter the nerves of
a too sensitive public. Enlivening stories of Horace’s participation
in these escapades sometimes reached his uncle’s ears. When they
were supplemented by vivaciously accurate accounts of his reckless
expenditure of money and the sums he lost at cards, they almost broke
Colonel Percy’s heart. In the midst of these beguilements, however,
his nephew was impeded by a threatened attack of pneumonia. “And in
reason,” said the pious old man, humbly submitting to Providence, “it’s
the very best thing that could happen to Horace.”
The physician peremptorily forbade all exposure, and counselled the
patient to keep his room. Horace considered this a lamentable waste of
time, but it did not impair his cheerfulness, for he was not allowed to
be lonely; his wild young friends daily congregated about him, to “keep
up his spirits,” which they did, noisily enough.
One afternoon, Maurice Brennett, still maintaining that anxious
espionage upon Fortescue, deemed it expedient to affect an interest
in the invalid. He found, as he had expected, this choice coterie
of associates grouped about the sofa on which young Percy lay at
length. Among them was Fortescue,--loud, hilarious, flushed with
wine, immensely glad to see Brennett, immensely hospitable to Percy’s
guests, immensely entertained by Percy’s illness, which he evidently
considered a good practical joke. Brennett’s entrance had interrupted
a remonstrance from Travis, which, after the usual greetings, was
resumed by that gentleman in his habitual languid drawl, and with
an expostulatory gesture of his listless hand and arm, held out
expressively as he lounged in the easy-chair on one side of the
fireplace. “It is out of the question,” he said, “to have all this
noise and confusion in a sick man’s room. We ought to stay away from
here until Percy gets better.”
Fortescue, to whom this was addressed, regarded him intently for a
moment. Then dropping into the easy-chair opposite, with Travis’s own
look, with Travis’s own languid manner, with Travis’s own expostulatory
wave of his cigar, held at arm’s length in his right hand, with
every inflection of Travis’s voice, he repeated the words of the
considerate remonstrance, and so marvellously perfect was the mimicry
that a roar of astonished delight went up from the spectators. In the
momentary sensation that ensued, not one of the careless fellows was
observant enough to note that a glance of much significance flashed
from Brennett’s bright eyes into John Fortescue’s laughing eyes; not
one so quick as to detect the sudden paling of the flushed face as
the laughing eyes caught the glance; for a little while there was an
extreme gravity in the demeanor of the lively cynosure of the circle.
And as the days passed, this phase of their versatile friend’s
abilities was not again obtrusively presented.
During Horace’s illness he was in a measure at the mercy of his uncle,
who thought it his duty to take advantage of the opportunity which the
seizure afforded to badger the young fellow. Colonel Percy ascribed the
attack to the wine-bottle and the spring races. The physicians did not
altogether concur in this opinion. They admitted that too much wine was
bad, and too much races also. But these diversions do not of themselves
tend to produce pneumonia; the faculty took a lower moral ground.
Colonel Percy began with the most important point. “Horace,” he said
solemnly, “you are wasting a great deal of money. Why will you persist
in gambling in this wicked way? Wicked--very wicked. This man Fortescue
has a bad influence on you. He will ruin you, sir. He is ruining
all the young fellows. I happen to know that you have been gambling
heavily. And--losing!”
“Losing! Lost the last stiver. Poor as a church mouse,” assented Horace
easily. He was in his complacently iniquitous frame of mind to-day and
enjoyed his uncle’s uneasiness. “So poor because I will gamble. Will
gamble because I am so wicked. Therefore I’m so wicked because I’m so
poor. Moral--if you don’t want to be wicked you mustn’t be poor. Q. E.
D.”
Colonel Percy listened to this with an intent brow, vaguely conscious
that there was something wrong somewhere, but unable to “spot it.” Then
he sternly attempted to repress this levity.
“I speak for your good. Yes. Your conduct is unseemly. It has been
remarked.”
Which was true. Colonel Percy thought it was bad to be wicked, but to
be remarked in wickedness was far worse. With a weighty manner and
extreme emphasis he repeated--“It has been remarked, sir. Remarked. You
have been _seen_ fantastically tipsy,” he cried, with a shrill
rising inflection. “People laughed, sir! They _laughed_!”
Horace colored. The reproach struck home. He felt that there was cause
for serious mortification in this. He cherished the pre-eminence
with which his fortune had endowed him. He fostered notoriety--to be
remarked was one of the dearest conditions of his life, but with envy
and bated breath, and by no means as a target for the ridicule which
his uncle’s words implied.
As Colonel Percy talked on, Horace fell, as was his wont, under the
influence of whoever was nearest his elbow. He began to repent. The
idea of ridicule, deftly inserted, was more wholesome in its effects
than prayers.
Its effects were unfortunately fleeting. When the old man was gone and
his enlivening young friends returned, Horace, with a bewildering moral
versatility, hedged on his contrition, and throughout his convalescence
there was a fine display of those inconsistencies and vacillations of
character for which he was famous.
About this time, however, he came under the domination of an influence
which his uncle, in the innocence of his heart, welcomed.
Languid and enfeebled by illness, Percy had neither the nerve nor
inclination to keep the gait at which Fortescue pursued pleasure, and
thus gradually fell away from him. His society seemed to have lost,
also, its attraction for Brennett, who hitherto, prompted apparently
by friendship, had openly made earnest efforts to repress Fortescue’s
unseemly exuberance of notoriety. But, in despair, perhaps, he had
relinquished them at last. Fortescue remained the most conspicuous
figure of his conspicuous clique, and his hilarious drunken
_bon mots_ were all over New Orleans--people repeating them,
reprehensively, as in duty bound, but with infinite relish, as the old
Adam constrained them.
Between Brennett and Percy, thus distanced, there had long existed a
friendship of that cool conventional sort which but for accident might
have amounted only to acquaintance. Now it seemed suddenly to intensify
and become an intimacy. Brennett was a man of keenly alert and educated
faculties. In notable contrast with his chosen associates his life
was well-ordered and his habits singularly correct. He had no hold on
Percy through participation in the amusements which the young fellow
had recently affected, but to Horace the companionship was grateful,
for Brennett was one of those rare conversationalists who gently
titillate the intelligence of an interlocutor so that he enjoys without
effort or exhaustion. They found many subjects in common. They spent
much time together in these spring days, and as the season advanced and
the annual exodus began to be talked of, it was natural enough that
Percy should invite his agreeable and unexceptionable friend to make
him a visit at his country home. It was no less natural that Brennett
should accept the invitation. And thus his schemes ramified.