Part 18

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.

He did not go down to the terrace, but sat at his window until long after midnight. He felt sick and disgusted, little elated at the successful termination of his visit and the prospect of a year or two’s peace of mind. A thousand pounds seemed to him a poor compensation for his descent into those foul depths of human nature where the civilized brute slays with his mind even if he withhold his hand. It was his disposition to dwell on the fair and splendid surfaces, harming no man and ignoring the primal passions that crawled over their sands below. Had he, upon his majority, realized the expectations of his careless boyhood, it is doubtful if he ever would have experienced a mean, much less a criminal, impulse, for, although this may be said of many men, Ordham had true refinement of mind and a surpassing indolence. He was a fair sample of all that civilization has yet accomplished for its aristocracies, and had no desire even to be reminded of elemental instincts, much less to be their victim. And the wretched want of money, of a petty thousand pounds, had transformed himself and his brother into two aboriginals. He might in time banish the sensations and impulses he had experienced to-night, but he doubted if he could ever forget the bestial degradation of the head of his house.

And what excuse for such deterioration? His mind flew to Margarethe Styr, who had lifted herself from untold horrors to the very heights of character, intellect, fame. Where had she found that strength? What mysterious arrangement of particles had enabled her to rise from that abyss in which thousands of her sort burned out their brief lives? Was it genius alone? Genius availed little those that began life in the dark back-waters of society unless propelled by force of character, an indomitable will. She too, in her determined seclusion, lived a selfish life of a sort, but at least she gave delight to thousands, she spent freely on promising young singers, and she was an example for all women, dreaming ambitiously, to follow. More, she was an inspiration. And she had come out of what? The picture was not to be invoked, but the bare fact made the man downstairs, who had been born one of the inheritors of the earth, the more unfit to live.

He realized suddenly that he felt closer to Styr than he had ever felt before. And she was the one person on earth to whom he could confess the horrid experience of this night. He made up his mind to return to her at once, no matter where she was. They could meet in the various cities where she sang, as freely as in her home, although not, of course, as delightfully.

Then his mind swung to the future, the future he must face upon his second return from Munich. He should never willingly exchange a syllable with his brother again. There was not the faintest hope that Bridgminster would increase his income. Nor was the man’s health, as far as he could judge, seriously impaired. He might go mad and be chucked into an asylum, but lunatics lived forever. True, he might fall on his gun, or break his neck on the hunting field, but these were mere contingencies. Meanwhile, save for this passing relief, his own problem was as serious as ever. He should spend five times his present income in any capital to which he was accredited, and he could think of nothing he would not rather do than force his mother into heavy sacrifices. Turn over the detestable question as often as he might, he could find but one solution. He had disliked the prospect of matrimony before he knew Margarethe Styr, and it was doubly hateful now. He did not want to marry her, nor could he spend his life dawdling at her skirts; but—well—once more he was forced to admit that he could not have everything in life he wanted at once. There should be that last long visit to Munich, however, and then he would return and swallow his medicine.

XXX LADY BRIDGMINSTER, POTTER

But he was not to return to Munich and Margarethe Styr at present. That excellent friend of his, Princess Nachmeister, having ascertained throughout the summer that, although indefatigable in his attendance upon the prima donna, he wore neither the hopeless mien of rejected love nor that of sublime content, had kept her lance in rest. Moreover, she well knew that the vestal Lutz would never have lent her countenance to a liaison, neither could it have escaped eyes sharp with an old maid’s resentful curiosity. Therefore, although uneasy, Excellenz had not thought it worth while to interfere with his studies; but upon the day she learned of his departure for London she wrote to Lady Bridgminster, with whom she had some time since fallen into correspondence, advising her to prevent her son’s return to Munich. Only he could have resisted Styr during long months of intimacy, and then only because she had chosen that he should. But he was growing older every hour, there was no telling in what moment he might awake and call himself an ass, nor, in faith, when Styr would recover from her long attack of virtue. Sudden interruptions in deep but continent intimacies had proved fatal before. They would not be the first to discover that they could not exist apart. Better divert his mind at once.

Therefore, when Ordham drove up to his mother’s house on his return from the north, he was surprised to find the curtains up, the door opened by a footman instead of the caretaker that had attended to his wants during his previous visit. He wished that he had driven from Paddington to Victoria, for he was in no humour to meet any other member of his family at present; but when the footman informed him that her ladyship would expect him for tea in the drawing-room in half an hour he summoned what grace was in him, and sent her word that he would join her as soon as he had rid himself of soot and dust.

His bath braced him somewhat, and he went downstairs resignedly to answer his mother’s questions. He hated questions, and she could ask more than any one he knew. Lady Bridgminster was seated at the tea-table, and knowing better than to wait for him, had just finished her first cup. She rose and met him halfway, for it was several years since she had treated him negligently, and even her kiss, if not too maternal, was something more than a peck. He told her that she was looking very handsome, and in that rosy light she seemed little older than her portrait. She wore clinging trailing garments of smoke-colored chiffon embroidered with peacocks’ feathers, and long strands of dull green and blue beads covered her flat chest and were wound through the mazes of her beautiful silvery blonde hair. She looked as æsthetic as Wilde himself, and, indeed, he designed more than one of her gowns.

“Glad to see you so fit, Johnny dear,” she said in a very light musical voice. “It is too delightful that you have passed those tiresome examinations. How is Bridg?”

“Beastly drunk, probably.”

Lady Bridgminster, who had floated back to her chair, opened her eyes very wide. She rarely altered her expression, as it was then the belief that immobility made for perpetual youth, but she allowed her well-trained orbs to shed forth her astonishment.

“What? Does Bridg drink?”

“Rather.” Ordham had selected the most comfortable chair in the room and pushed it to the table. He received his cup of tea and disposed himself in the depths.

“Don’t be tiresome. Has he taken to drink as a habit?”

“He can barely handle a gun, eats next to nothing, and is now quite, instead of half, a boor. His face is twice its former size. There is no doubt that he is going the pace in his own quiet way.”

“And his health?”

“Good enough.”

“That accounts for several things I noticed when I was there last, but never thought of attributing to drink. Of course you did not get the money?”

“I got it.”