CHAPTER XXII
Wherein we are obliged to Spend a Brief Moment in the Company of the Titled Aristocracy
Anthony Baddlesmerestood 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! thatyoushould 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!Idid 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,Imarried 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 haspromised 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 thatyoucome 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 willhego? 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 Ihave 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’sjudgment. 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.