there was an old friend of his mother to whom hurstmanceaux was much attached, a mrs. raby of bedlowes, with whom he invariably spent a few days at whitsuntide. bedlowes was a romantic and historic old manor in hampshire, famous for its gigantic yew-trees, and a bowling-green on which charles the first had played. to this elderly lady mouse frankly unfolded her budget of matrimonial projects; and mrs. raby, who shared the prejudices of hurstmanceaux against novi homines, but was persuaded to conquer them for the general good, consented to allow the massarenes to be presented to her at a marlborough house party, and graciously invited them to go to her for a couple of days in whitsun week. when the time came mr. massarene, who was told nothing, but surmised that this was the place at which the meeting with hurstmanceaux was arranged, took his daughter down to this historic and romantic old house; it had belonged to john of gaunt, and had sheltered in the centuries of its existence many noble and unfortunate personages, the traditions of whose sojourn did not agree with the visit of “blasted blizzard” to its stately guest-chambers and its tapestried halls.
mrs. raby was a person genial, kind-hearted, and of great simplicity of manner and taste, who pleased katherine and did not alarm her father; indeed he thought, irreverentially, to himself, “blast me if she don’t look like an old new england shaker sempstress,” for the châtelaine of bedlowes wore her own grey hair in the fashion of the year ’40, had plain black gowns made by her women, and a very simple and homely manner. there was a large party assembled, of notable and interesting people, amongst whom william massarene was as a false note in a beethoven rendering. but society, even the best society, has grown used to such false notes, and does not mind them. there is the ring of gold in the discord.
[199]daddy gwyllian, who was there—as where was he not?—said to his hostess, who was his cousin, as were ninety-nine out of every hundred persons:
“why, bless us and save us, my dear adela, have you been brought to recognize the new man from north dakota? i thought you were the last tory stronghold still left standing in the country? do you mean you have capitulated to harrenden house?”
mrs. raby’s sweet temper was a little ruffled.
“the man is a sound tory,” she said pettishly. “if i have him here i have a very good reason for doing so.”
daddy drew back a step and stared at her in mock amazement.
“everybody who has him anywhere has a very good reason for doing so. but do you mean to say, adela, that you want to get on a company, or sell a spavined racer, or weed your gallery of dubious holbeins or spurious romneys at a profit, or get useful hints as to canadian or pacific booms?”
mrs. raby laughed.
“no, i don’t want to do any of those things. i want ronald to have a chance to admire his daughter.”
daddy laughed his inward chuckling laughter; and indulged in a prolonged whistle.
“well, my dear adela, you won’t want a commission for bringing the match about as most of ’em would do. but i think i know who’d get a pretty high one if it ever come off. lady kenny set you on, of course?”
his hostess, who did not like the phrase “set on” as applied to herself, replied stiffly:
“it would be a good thing in many ways. she is charming. she could not look more thoroughbred if she were an archduchess, and you know he is very poor despite all his self-denial. i would not for worlds,” she continued with warmth, “be privy to any marriage in which either the man or the woman were sacrificed for mere money. but if they should like each other there could be no harm done but a great deal of good; and you know that any woman who marries ronnie will have a heart of gold in her keeping.”
daddy nodded.
[200]“ronnie’s all right. but he’s a horse you may lead to the water; he aren’t a horse you can make drink. when is he coming?”
“to-night. you know he is the most punctual and faithful of persons. he has spent the whitsun week with me ever since his first year at eton.”
daddy chuckled. “lord, it will be a rare sight when he finds out what you’ve let him in for! his sister has been hammering at him for two years to make him know those people.”
“‘it is well to begin with a little aversion,’” quoted mrs. raby. “don’t say anything to him, pray; you would spoil it all.”
“i never say anything indiscreet,” replied daddy, with truth. “but he’ll twig it for himself in a jiffy; ronnie’s real sharp.”
“what odious vulgarisms!” said mrs. raby. “you grow very vulgar, daddy.”
“must keep pace with the times,” replied daddy; “secret of keeping young, as bulwer says somewhere. it’s kind of you to give me this little bit of comedy. why on earth do people go to nasty draughty theatres and get cricks in their neck when they have society all around ’em to make ’em laugh?”
it was the tea-hour on the following day when hurstmanceaux arrived. everyone was in the library, a long, fine room worthy of the volumes it enshrined, of which many were rare and all well-chosen. daddy, comfortably ensconced in a corner, with a cup in his hand and some hot buttered scone at his elbow, waited for the coming scene. the library was dimly lighted by the descending sun, which itself was dim. he saw that hurstmanceaux did not on his entry perceive the massarenes, and stood by mrs. raby’s chair for some minutes talking with her and greeting old friends; but he also saw, which surprised him, that katherine massarene, who was at some distance from that table and seated at another, changed countenance visibly and rose as if to leave the room, then sat down again with a pained and startled expression on her face.
“she aren’t in the game,” thought daddy. “but why[201] the deuce does she look like that because he’s come into the room?”
mr. massarene drew near his daughter and whispered to her: “that man just come in is hurstmanceaux; mrs. raby’ll bring him up to us. be civil.”
daddy was too far off to hear the words, but he guessed what they were; he saw that katherine looked distressed, annoyed, perplexed, and began hurriedly to talk with the people round her. “she knows what they’re after, and she don’t like it,” thought daddy. he could not tell that in her ears and in her memory were resounding the scornful sentences, the withering sarcasms, which had been spoken to her in the walk over the frozen fields to great thorpe.
after a time, while daddy watched them from his snug corner, mrs. raby rose and put her hand on hurstmanceaux’s arm.
“let me present you to some friends of clare’s whom i think you don’t know as yet,” she murmured softly; and ere he could be aware of what was being done with him, he was led off to katherine and her father.
daddy watched the arrival of the unsuspecting chief actor with that lively interest which he always felt in his own amusement. he had no kind of sympathy with such prejudices as ronald’s; he would himself have dined with a sweep if the sweep could have given him something unusually good to eat; but he liked prejudices in others as an element of human comedy which frequently produced the most diverting situations.
“he’s the toughest fellow in creation,” he thought. “they’ll no more change him than they’ll make an ironclad into a lady’s slipper.”
ronald, although the most easy-going and unconventional of men in intimacy, had the coldness and the stiffness of the englishman of rank when he was annoyed or felt himself outwitted. he was perfectly correct in his manner, but that manner was glacial as he realized the trap which had been laid in his path; he looked eight feet in height as he bent his head in recognition of katherine massarene and her father.
she was as cold as himself, and mr. massarene was[202] divided between a feeling of great embarrassment and a desire to propitiate a person whom he saw was not easy to win over by any means. in his difficulty he said the worst thing he could have said:
“i hope, lord hurstmanceaux,” he stammered, pronouncing correctly the name as society pronounced it, hurceaux—“i venture to hope we shall be friends; your sister, lady kenilworth, wishes it so much.”
“my sister’s friends are seldom mine,” replied ronald with extreme incivility; then, fearing he might be thought to imply—as he did—something to her prejudice, added in icy accents, “i mean that her set is not mine.”
“indeed! is that so, sir?” said mr. massarene, surprised; for the mystery of “sets” was still unmastered by him, he only understood classes. “the prince is coming to stay with me at vale royal,” he added; “might i hope that you too——?”
“i am not in the prince’s set,” said hurstmanceaux curtly, and seeming to the eyes of mr. massarene to become ten feet in height. the reply was altogether beyond him.
“not in the prince’s set,” he thought to himself; “what on earth can the fellow mean?”
“don’t you go to court, my lord?” he said aloud in his bewilderment.
ronald’s severity relaxed despite himself; he laughed outright. katherine stood by, indignant, ashamed, frozen by humiliation and anger into a statue. at last, in desperation, she turned to her father:
“lord hurstmanceaux would hardly care to come to us at his cousin’s place. he must have shot there many seasons. i think mrs. raby is looking for you. someone has arrived.”
mr. massarene hurried toward his hostess and her tea-table; with a chilly inclination of the head his daughter followed him, and left hurstmanceaux to his own reflections.
the foremost of these was, that it was a pity so thoroughbred-looking a woman has such an unutterable brute for a sire. the second was that he had been guilty himself of discourtesy and incivility toward a lady to whom[203] he already owed some apology. but he was extremely angry at the snare which had been spread for him in this innocent old house of bedlowes.
he stayed three days in the same house with them, because he had no decent pretext to hasten his departure, but he avoided all chance of increased acquaintance as he would have avoided the bubonic plague in his travels through thibet.
“he’s only a second-class earl and gives himself such airs as that!” said mr. massarene, in great displeasure, to his daughter when he could speak to her unheard.
“what do you mean by a second-class earl? it is an expression unknown in ‘burke,’” asked his daughter in her coldest accents. mr. massarene explained that he meant an earl who had very little money, whose chief estates were in ireland, and who was not a knight of any order or anything of that decorative kind.
“and he said that he doesn’t even go to court,” he ended as a climax.
“he said nothing of the kind,” replied katherine. “he said he was not in the prince’s set, which means—well, which means—never mind what it means. as for his rank, it is a very old creation; at least, very old for england; the courcys of faldon go back to the conqueror.”
mr. massarene looked sharply at his daughter. “i thought you didn’t like the man?”
“i neither like nor dislike him. i do not know him.”
then as this seemed to her sensitive conscience something approaching to an untruth, she added: “i met lord hurstmanceaux as i came to vale royal in the train that snowy day, but that can scarcely be called an acquaintance. i think you had better not ask him there, if you will allow me to say so, for he seemed much irritated at his cousin’s sale of the place to you.”
“the damned starched puppy! what is the sale to him? roxhall’s old enough to know his own business, eh?” muttered mr. massarene, as he thought to himself that the pet project of lady kenilworth would not be easy of realization. it was certainly not farther advanced by her careful arrangement of the visit to bedlowes.
[204]“why did you set up your back like that, ronnie?” said daddy to him in the evening. “man is a beast, but girl is good form.”
“i have not a word to say against her,” replied hurstmanceaux. “but as it is impossible to know her without knowing her father, i relinquish the pleasure of doing so.”
“buckram!” said daddy. “’tisn’t worn nowadays. even soldiers don’t have stocks any longer.”
“it is not buckram. it is common decency. that infernal cad is living in gerald’s house.”
“well, that is gerald’s fault, i suppose, for selling it. you are wrong, ronnie—quite wrong. miss massarene is well-bred enough to get her father accepted. in point of fact he is accepted; he goes everywhere.”
“she is very distinguished-looking. but i don’t know what that has to do with it,” said hurstmanceaux in his stiffest and crossest manner. “as for your seeing him anywhere, you won’t see him at faldon. i wish mrs. raby had told me of her intentions; i should not have come here. i have avoided these people everywhere for two years.”
“people don’t send a list of their guests on approval except to royalty. they’d never fill their houses if they did. miss massarene knows your sentiments, don’t she? her back was up as well as yours.”
“certainly she knows them. i have never made a secret of them. who could suppose that at bedlowes of all places one would come across that cad?”
daddy yawned and shut his eyes.
“i think you know,” he said drowsily, “that as your sister has run ’em you ought to back ’em. must back one’s own stable!”
“my sister’s stable is not mine,” replied hurstmanceaux quickly. “she runs her dark ’uns wholly on her own responsibility.”
“of course, of course,” said daddy. “but the young woman’s fit for any stables. how she came by it i don’t know, but she’s uncommonly well-bred.”
“she appears so,” said ronald. “but she must dree her weird. she can no more escape the penalty of being[205] her father’s daughter than a hangman’s daughter can escape hers.”
it was not a liberal sentiment, but it was one which seemed perfectly natural and just to the views which he took of life.
he was deeply angry with his sister and mrs. raby. it seemed to him a monstrously bare-faced piece of intrigue to have brought him and the massarenes under the same roof. he did not think katherine herself privy to it; there had been surprise and trouble as well as embarrassment in her eyes when he had been led up to her; but he was sure that her father had been in the plot.
he spoke in his usual tone; not loud, but not very low. he had his back turned to a grand piano of erard’s which stood in a recess; but daddy gwyllian had his face turned to it, and he could see through his sleepy eyes that katherine massarene, who with some men around her was at that moment approaching the instrument, had, though at some distance, heard the last part of this speech regarding the hangman’s daughter. he was certain that she had done so by a flush which rose over her face and a momentary pause which she made. in another instant she had reached the erard and seated herself by it. if she had felt any emotion it did not make her touch less clear, her memory less perfect, as she played through the grand passage of beethoven’s sonata in e flat.
daddy did not hear the sonata; he was away in the land of dreams, comfortably hidden behind a huge african palm-tree, his placid round face looking as innocent as a babe’s in his slumber; even his curiosity could not keep him awake any longer.
hurstmanceaux, who loved and understood good music, listened charmed despite himself; but when the last chords thrilled through the air he did not join the group which gathered round her, but walked away to another of the drawing-rooms.
from the distance he could see her as she sat at the pianoforte receiving the compliments of the men about her; but the expression of her countenance was proud, cold and bored. she had looked very different on the woldshire high road and in the market-place of the little town.
[206]he felt sorry for her; there was something in her bearing, in her manner, in her countenance, so far superior to her parentage and position. she looked like the last scion of some great unfortunate race rather than the heiress of new ill-gotten millions.
“où prenez vous ce ton qui n’appartient qu’ à vous?” he thought; and he acquitted her of any conspiracy in the cross-country walk, any complicity in his sister’s manœuvres to make her meet him at bedlowes. she was undoubtedly a victim of circumstances—a square-cut ivory peg which was ill fitted to the round gilded hole into which it was forced. he did not for a moment doubt the sincerity of her dislike to her position; his own nature was one which enabled him to understand the revolt of hers. “but she must dree her weird,” he thought again.
“why are you so uncivil to that charming person who renders beethoven so perfectly?” said his hostess to him that evening.
“there is no harm in the charming person, but there is a great deal in her antecedents,” replied hurstmanceaux very coldly.
“oh, ‘antecedents,’ my dear ronnie! who can look at them? royalty itself disregards them when—when——”
“when there’s money enough! i am not bound to follow the example of royalty.”
“you did what was unworthy of you, my dear old friend,” he added. “of course mouse egged you on; but you should know what mouse is by this time.”
“indeed she meant no harm in this instance. she knows that you want money.”
“i do not want money. i have not got very much at my command: that is another matter.”
“but the boys are such a drag on you?”
“oh, no, they are fine fellows; they interest me, and they do very much what i tell them.”
“you are a good man, ronald, but you are obstinate and prejudiced.”
“on a les défauts de ses qualités. i am not sure that i can boast any especial qualités, but i do know this, that i would be shot to-morrow rather than shake hands with a[207] low brute who comes from god knows where with probably untold crimes upon his conscience.”
mrs. raby shuddered and gave a nervous glance to the far distance where mr. massarene was playing whist. she was a delicate aged woman, and the idea of entertaining an undetected criminal was extremely painful to her.
“he does look very like cruickshank’s burglars in oliver twist,” she thought, regarding the round bullet head and camus nose of her guest as he scowled down on the cards which he held; he was losing, and losing to the principal of an oxford college, whilst a cabinet minister was his (very inefficient) partner; but mr. massarene did not like losing—even at half-crown points and in the best company. he had not had much practice at whist; but he possessed a mathematical brain, and grasped its combinations admirably; and he would have made his inferior hand do the work of a good one if the cabinet minister had not been an ass, but had been able to second him.
“they put men in the government here,” he thought, “who over yonder we should not think had brains enough to drive a sweet stuff barrow on a plank walk.”
for despite the deference which he really felt for the world into which he had entered, he could not help the shrewd good sense in him boiling up sometimes into a savage contempt. to his rough strong temper and his unscrupulous keenness the gentlemen who were now his companions in life did seem very poor creatures.
“if i ever get into the cabinet i’ll show them the time of day,” he thought very often. there was no reason why he should not get into the cabinet as he had once got into the house. he was made of the solid metal, and the plebeian respectability, with which patrician conservatism, trembling in its shoes for its own existence, is delighted to ally itself; and knew that he would make a very good minister of the type which works hard, pleases the public, is always mentioned with praise by the press of the party, and lends itself to the illustration of admirable public dinner speeches in praise of the constitution, and of that constitutional bulwark the middle class. he was a very shrewd man and he had the golden gift of[208] silence. he knew his shortcomings better than his wife knew hers, and so concealed his ambitions more successfully. nobody could “draw” him. men in the smoking-room of his own or other houses often tried after dinner to make him “give himself away,” but they never succeeded. he was never warmed by wine or friendship into indiscreet reminiscences or revelations.
moreover in business he was facile princeps; no one could beat him in the supreme knowledge of money or how to make it. and indeed the thorough knowledge of and capacity for business does carry its own weight with it in an age in which the mercurius of mart and change is chief of all the gods.
in society he was a heavy, awkward, common-looking man, who did not know what to do with his hands, and always sat on the edge of his chair, with his legs very wide apart. but in a clubroom, a committee-room, a board-room, a bank parlor, anywhere where there was question of the sowing and reaping of gold, he was a totally different person; he was at his ease, on his ground, master of his subject and of his hearers; his hands rested on his knees with a firm grip, his words were trenchant, convincing, logical; and on his pallid, fleshy, expressionless face there came a look, very hard, very unmerciful, very cunning, but a look of intelligence and power, and of entire command of his object. the mind showed through the envelope of flesh.
it was a money-making mind, a harsh astute grasping mind, a mean ignoble greedy mind, but it was a master mind in its way, and as such impressed itself on all those who encountered it on its field of combat. and the men that came into contact with him knew that he had been a day laborer who had, entirely by his own ability and industry, become the possessor of a colossal fortune, and all men respect this successful self-help, and few inquire if the self-help had been made with clean hands.
he was what is called an essentially worthy man, and he was an essentially modern product of modern energies.
he had no perceivable sins, he conformed to all religious observances, he had always kept on the right side[209] of the law, he never made a jest, and he never lost a shilling. as a husband he was faithful, as a father exemplary, as a christian devout, and as a citizen blameless. if thousands of people had cursed him, if tens of thousands of workmen had sweated for him, if hundreds of thousands of cattle had perished for him, if gambling hells and drinking-shops and opium dens had enriched him, if rotten ships and starved crews, and poisonous trades and famished families had helped to make the splendors of harrenden house and the glories of vale royal, these facts did not matter to either society or christianity, and were mere personal details into which nobody could enter. william massarene was one of those persons who are the pillars of the great middle class and the sources of that healthy plebeian blood from which a decaying patriciate is recruited.
“i stand by all as upholds property,” he said one day to lord greatrex, the great conservative leader.
“the northern farmer has said it before you,” murmured that gentleman. “the creed is sound and simple, if not popular.”
massarene dared not swear in such a presence, but he thought, “damn popularity!”
he did not want to be popular. he despised the people: which was very natural, for he had come from them. he liked to drive behind his sleek high-bred carriage-horses and see the crowd part in the strand or on the embankment, and women and children scurry and stumble to make way for his progress; it made him realize the vast distance which now separated himself from the common multitude.
he would have liked, if it had been possible, to knock down half-a-dozen of the rabble as a sign of his superiority. but he was in a country full of policemen and prejudices, and so he had to show his superiority in another manner. one morning, when he was driving to a meeting in the city with a member of parliament, who was a noted philanthropist, in his brougham, his high-stepping bays did knock down an old woman, lame and very poorly clad. william massarene held all women in slight esteem, but old women were in his estimate wholly useless and obnoxious;[210] he would have put them all at forty years old in lethal chambers. when cattle were past bearing they went to the shambles, eh?
but, having a philanthropist beside him, and two policemen at his carriage-door, he busied himself about this maimed old female, had her put in a cab, told his footman to go on the box with her, and ordered his card to be given to the authorities of the nearest hospital.
“say i will provide for her for life,” he said to his servant rather loudly.
the people in the street cheered him.
“that’s a real gemman!” said a baker’s boy.
william massarene threw the discerning lad a shilling.
“dear friend,” said the religious philanthropist with emotion, “how glad i am to see that your immense prosperity has not driven out the warmth of human sympathy from your heart.”
massarene was sorely tempted to put his tongue in his cheek, but as he saw that the philanthropist’s face was quite grave he kept his own equally serious.
“you’ve an uncommon lot of barebacked poor for a christian country, sir,” he said in return—a reply which somewhat disconcerted the philanthropist.
