Anyone who had seen Lord Drummuir ten minutes after Jack Jardine's
remark must have echoed it, for a more complete _volte face_ of
manner, speech, and apparently temperament than that which overtook
the baron in the dower house could not be imagined. Still in his
bath-chair, which Marmaduke had dutifully pushed in through the French
windows on to the green-grounded, cabbage-rosed drawing-room carpet,
he beamed round on his daughters and their chaperon with a paternal
affection which was almost pathetic. The Honourable Miss Muirs were
three in number and they had all greeted their younger half-brother
with reserved kisses. But then everything they did was reserved. Miss
Mary, the eldest, was reserved even about her tendency to grow stout,
which, all things considered, was the strongest interest in her life.
Miss Elizabeth, the second, a very elegant looking woman, was equally
reserved about her undoubted intellect, while Miss Margaret, a great
tall, strapping figure with all her father's force of character and
all his soundness of constitution, held both in check, except when she
managed a lonely walk with her dogs in the woods. Then her voice would
ring out deep and true, and at the crack of her whip every puppy
within miles would come in contentedly to heel.
Her father liked her the least, probably because of the contrast
between her and his ricketty male heir, so in the shabby Victorian
drawing-room she generally sat mumchance, showing up badly against her
sisters' exquisite manners. For no one knew better than Lord Drummuir
what a gentlewoman should be, and therefore he had been extremely
particular about his daughters' education. To what end, heaven alone
knew, since they lived on, year after year, in the dower house,
occasionally visiting in stately fashion the late minister's wife
(though this distraction was no longer theirs owing to the State
appointment of a bachelor to the living), and, very occasionally,
seeing some of their father's older and more respectable friends. In
regard to this, however, and to kindred matters no grand Turk could
have been more autocratic than was Lord Drummuir. So he sat and
discoursed on Shakespeare and the musical glasses, on his delight at
seeing his dearest boy again, leading the latter on to detail some of
the more instructive portions of his foreign life, until the full
half-hour which he daily bestowed on his daughters was up. Then with
the utmost punctuality he took out his watch, said he feared he must
be off, and congratulated himself and the three young ladies on a
charming conversation.
"You are too good, papa," replied the young ladies, as they deposited
a decorous kiss on his bald head. So they stood and watched the
bath-chair roll along the lawn till it reached the turn by the
rhododendrons which hid it from view, and then they waved their
handkerchiefs. And the baron waved his in return, thereinafter using
it to mop his forehead relievedly, while he ejaculated, "Thank God,
that's over!"
Whereat Marmaduke smiling, the old man went on serenely.
"Never forget, my boy, how to treat women of good character. The other
comes naturally, but I'm damned if I ever forgot my manners with a
really good woman. And you will find it pays, Duke, it pays. So now
have not you got some bit of spice, or an _on dit_ to amuse the old
man with? Curse me, but I lead a miserable life here, tied down by
this infernal complaint; but I am paying now for the follies and
indiscretions of youth. Confound you, Marmaduke, you might think of
your poor old father's joints and not rush your fences in that way!"
"I beg your pardon, sir," replied Marmaduke, meekly glad of the turn
he had given the conversation by deploying the bath-chair into the
gravel walk; for, in good truth, he had no great relish for spicy
stories. Not that he was a prig, but that he had been born a
sportsman, to whom indoor life was dull and irksome. So he welcomed
another interruption in the shape of a young man who came hastily down
the path to meet them.
"Why, I believe it's Peter!" he cried joyously, and the next minute
was shaking hands with his young half-brother, the fruit of Lord
Drummuir's third but not last marriage; for his wives never lived
long, except the first, who had lingered for years, only giving him
useless daughters. "Why, Peter, how you've grown!" remarked Marmaduke
unnecessarily, seeing he had been away ten years.
"So've you--you're a giant beside the rest of us, except Meg! Pitt and
I----" The lad pulled himself up sharp. "Well, I say, sir, we must
have a rousin' night to celebrate Duke's return!"
Marmaduke, looking at the slender, fair-haired youth with a weak mouth
and an excited manner, thought he had probably roused too much.
Instinctively, therefore, since he had often been drunk himself--it
was the fashion of the time--he changed the subject again to one that
had come uppermost in the old familiar surroundings.
"I say, how about the grouse? Is it to be a good year?"
His eyes as he spoke almost yearned over a swelling purpled horizon
curve which told where the best moors in that part of Aberdeenshire
were to be found.
Five minutes after the old lord, still in his bath-chair, was
discoursing in the most animated and amiable fashion about sport past
and present and to come, while his two sons, one of them sprawling on
the lawn, joined in amicably.
So amicably that Mdlle. Fantine Le Grand, watching them from her
boudoir windows, turned to a man who was lounging in a chair reading
the papers, and said--
"This sort of thing won't do, Compton. That young man is too
charming."
The man to whom she spoke did not look up. He went on reading, as he
said--
"You don't often find them too charming, Fan!"
"Don't be a fool, Tom," she replied curtly, coming to sit beside him.
"You know quite well what I mean. Young men of that sort always are in
debt; besides, I've heard the old man say something about money for a
majority. Now the estate's entailed, so payments of that sort must
come out of what I mean to be mine--and I won't have it!"
"Sound common sense, Fan," said her companion, yawning; "but you are
always in such a hurry to begin. Wait a few days and see how the land
lies first. You've always the best of weapons in your hand."
"What's that?"
"Jealousy. The old man is as jealous as old boots. Once make him fancy
young Marmaduke is sweet on you, and he goes to the right-about."
Fantine sat back and laughed.
"You are always so comforting, Tom."
He rose and put down his paper.
"Always ready to help, my dear; but you remember our compact--half
shares when the old man dies."
"He'll be good for another ten years if I marry him," she called after
her late companion, as he strolled out of the room.
Then she sat down and faced facts. In truth she was getting tired of
her _role_ of _premiere danseuse_ at a London theatre. Perhaps, she
even admitted, she was a trifle too old for the agile cutting of
capers. She felt vaguely that she would like to draw in her horns and
let her waist out, and she was quite ready to take Lord Drummuir as a
means of satisfying both ambitions. In her way she was neither bad nor
unkind, simply egotistic to a degree. In this last episode of an
eventful career which seldom outlasts the age of forty, she had
deliberately played for semi-respectability, and had only come down to
stay at Drummuir Castle under the wing of an impeccable _duenna_. Not
that the fact had in the least imposed on the old lord. He was shrewd
enough to know Miss Fanny Biggs, or, as she chose to style herself,
Mdlle. Fantine Le Grand, down to the ground. But it was something to
have someone to dance for him (as she did to distraction), when he had
a fit of the gout and look quite deucedly pretty at all times. So the
bargain was made. A title in exchange for amusements. But Fantine Le
Grand looked beyond the old man's life; she looked for comfortable
widowhood. So she wandered again to the window and watched the family
trio on the lawn. It was far too filial for her tastes. Tom Compton,
so-called Colonel of Irregulars, one of her oldest friends, had been
right. Jealousy would be a good card to play. And then she laughed
suddenly at the recollection of Marmaduke's filial salute. He was
better-looking than his father must have been at his age, but,
according to the latter, he was "a chip of the old block." So he would
be easy prey.
Meanwhile, Colonel Compton having joined the group on the lawn, the
conversation had drifted round to politics, and the old lord, being an
ardent Whig, had waxed fast and furious on the enormities of the
Tories. A perfectly innocent subject, but one which did not interest
Marmaduke, who thereupon drifted away to find Jack Jardine, from whom
he hoped to hear the truth as to his father's present relations with
the heir, the Master, and also--though this interested him less, since
it was to a certain degree patent--with Mdlle. Le Grand. So, as they
sat smoking Fubaurg's tobacco out of long clay pipes after the fashion
of the times, they discussed the situation.
"You ask how the breach has widened," said Jack Jardine. "Well, I
don't think it has done so abnormally. It has been going on ever since
poor Pitt turned out such a weakling. You know the family history.
After he married Lady Helen, whom he shouldn't have married because
she too, poor soul, was, as it were, doomed to disease, though she was
a duke's daughter and so, satisfied his lordship's pride--a miserable
story, Duke, a miserable story. Well, there was one disappointment
about an heir after another, as you know, Duke, and it hit home into
the peer--for he is no fool. Put it briefly, though he is quite ready
to tell you he is suffering from the indiscretions of youth while he
is in torments with the gout, and at the same time supping every night
on broiled foxes' tongues and mulled claret, he can't bear to see the
results in Pitt. He hates him because he hasn't the physique to carry
on the name. He is a very remarkable man, Duke, is your father."
"Very," assented the young man grimly. "I wish the devil he wasn't."
"That's why I, and all the rest of us who have Drummuir interests at
heart, are so glad you've come home. You're presumptive heir now, and
to all intents and purposes you're 'apparent.' And you're straight and
strong, thanks to your poor mother. So we look to you to keep up the
honour of the name. I believe if you play your cards well, you might
easily oust Miss Fanny Biggs, or Mdlle. Fantine----"
Marmaduke burst into a laugh.
"Thank you," he said; "that is most succinct! I needn't ask any more.
But does the old man really mean to marry her?"
Jack Jardine nodded.
"Would have done it three months ago but for the gout. And she isn't
really so bad, but devilish sly; and that man Compton, whom the peer
has taken up with over the railway business, is in with her." He gave
a sigh and knocked the ashes out of his pipe. "I've my work cut out
for me, Duke, I can tell you."
There was a slight pause, and then Marmaduke said curiously--
"I've often wondered, Jack, why you, who by your brains could have
made your own way, have been contented to stick on in this cursed old
place among us cursed people, letting us youngsters call you Jack and
borrow money from you. By the way, I shouldn't have been able to come
home if you hadn't sent me that last hundred pounds."
Jack Jardine said nothing; then he walked to the window.
"You may as well know, Duke, it may help you to steer your way. It is
because I, a poor lawyer, loved your mother--not before, but after she
became Lady Drummuir! Of course she never guessed; but I helped her to
try and keep your father straight. She led an awful life----"
"You needn't tell me that!" broke in Marmaduke, fiercely.
"Yet your father didn't mean ill to her. Anyhow, I tried to help her,
and so I suppose it became a habit. Love is a queer thing, Duke!"
"I believe it is," said Marmaduke, magisterially, "but it has not come
my way yet," and he added joyously, "I hope it won't for some years to
come, for I like enjoying myself."
Apparently he did; for as the summer evening began to close in on
Drummuir Castle and the menkind, with only Mdlle. Fantine and her
_duenna_ to represent the opposite sex, gathered in the huge
dining-room to attack a heavy dinner which would have sufficed for a
regiment, he was the life and soul of the party, and ate through the
_menu_ with a relish which aroused regret and admiration in the old
lord.
"Dash it all," he bawled, "why can't I eat soup, fish, top and bottom
and four sides through five courses like that dashed youngster of
mine, who puts it on to his shoulders instead of his waist like I do?"
And when the claret began to circle round faster and faster Marmaduke
never let it pass; so that when, with sweet decorum, Mdlle. Fantine
and her _duenna_ prepared to withdraw, he nearly killed the Skye
terrier in his flamboyant haste to open the door. Nay, more! He
followed them into the corridor for an instant. What passed there none
saw, but he returned to his seat with flushed cheeks and throbbing
veins, feeling vaguely that the battle of wits had begun.
Of what followed his memory was confused. He remembered that outside
the windows the summer twilight was still flooding the green lawns,
while humanity inside, after guzzling itself stupid with rich food,
was trying to grow witty over the boozing of mulled claret and
whisky-toddy. They began, of course, with the young queen's health,
and went on methodically till they came to the good old Scotch toast:
"Here's to oorsels. Wha' better? Damn few!" After this, which seemed
to afford general satisfaction, they proceeded to particularise, and
Marmaduke had a dim recollection of someone proposing "The future
Commander-in-Chief, coupled with the name of Captain Marmaduke Muir."
But whether he replied, or whether the effort to rise and do so was
too much for him and he rolled under the table, he could not say.
Certain it is that on that first night of his return to the home of
his fathers Marmaduke Muir was hopelessly drunk.
Certain also that he erred in company, the only sober man being Jack
Jardine, who invariably sought the shelter of the table at an early
period and lay there comfortably, his head on a buffet, listening to
the commiserations on his weak head until he fell asleep, to wake when
the carouse was over, and see that the gentlemen's gentlemen sorted
their respective masters to their respective beds.