with the next season he allowed her to accept the loan of her sister carrie’s house in town; that lady having gone on a little trip to japan. she hated the wisbeach house, which was dark, ugly, and situated in the dreary district of portman square. carrie wisbeach, who was but little in town, and was a sportswoman renowned in more lands than her own, had little heed of all the artistic and graceful luxuries with which her younger sister had always required to be surrounded, and had left her husband’s old london house very much as his grandparents had made it.
mouse detested it unspeakably, but it was roomy and a good way off harrenden house, and she put up with it, trusting that she would be almost always out of it. for her tyrant favored rather than discouraged her perpetual appearance in society; it prevented people talking, and in society alone could she favor his interests social and political.
she was still altered; she had still that harassed apprehensive glance backward over her shoulder; but she was familiarized with her captivity, and had learned to make bricks without straw for her bondmaster without too plainly betraying to others the marks of the sand and the clay in which she was forced to kneel.
ever since her first season she had done whatever she had pleased, and amused herself in any manner she desired. but she had never got into trouble, never been compromised, never felt her position shake beneath her. a woman, young and popular, who has great connections behind her, can, if she have tact and skill, easily avoid being injured by scandal. if she knows how to conciliate opinion by certain concessions, she can enjoy herself as thoroughly as any young cat gambolling about a dairy; and no one will seriously interfere with her. society had certainly “talked”; but when a woman has a brother like[346] hurstmanceaux, and a father-in-law like the good duke of otterbourne, and many other male relatives high-spirited and innumerable, people do not talk very incautiously or very loudly.
now through “billy,” for the first time, she saw her position jeopardized. that low-bred creature, whom she had made fetch and carry, and wince and tremble at her whim and pleasure, had now the power to make her, if he chose, in the eyes of the world, that miserable, contemptible, and despicable creature, a femme tarée.
sometimes, too, a more tragic, a more sickening, fear assailed her, when she thought of the possibility of her tyrant telling the truth, in boastfulness or in revenge, to her brother. it was not likely, but it was always possible; for she saw that in william massarene, at times, temper—the savage, uncontrolled temper of the low-born man—got the better of good sense, of caution, and even of ambition. she could never be sure that it might not do so some day in her case, and that for the ruffianly relish of dragging the pride of the head of the house of courcy in the dust, he might not throw to the devil all his cherished triumphs, all his hardly-bought distinctions.
happily for her hurstmanceaux was almost always in the country, or on the sea, and the sight of him in london streets seldom tempted the fiend to rise in her gaoler.
meanwhile the london season came on and ran its course with its usual plethora of pleasure and politics, its interludes of easter and whitsuntide weeks, and its comings and goings of people, who could not live without running to rome, flying to biskra, shipping over to new york, and taking a breathless scamper to thibet.
katherine massarene came up to town in the spring, sorely against her will, and she went through the routine which was so wearisome to her, and rejected many offers of the hands and hearts of gentlemen with whom she had exchanged half-a-dozen sentences at a dinner-party or riding down rotten row.
“lord, child, what do you want that you’re so particular?” said her mother, who did not approve this incessant and ruthless dismissal of suitors.
“i want nothing and no one. i want to be let alone,”[347] replied her daughter. “as for the life of london, i abhor it, i am asphyxiated in it.”
suitors who might fairly have expected her to appreciate them solicited her suffrage in vain; she did not give them a thought, she abhorred them—everyone. she only longed to get away from it all and have finished for ever with the pomp, the pretention, the oppressive effort which seemed to her parents the very marrow of life.
“mr. mallock calls this the best society of europe,” she thought again. “if it be so, why does it all come to us to be fed?”
had she possessed the disposal of her father’s fortune she would not have fed it. being obliged to stand by and see it fed, in such apparent acquiescence as silence confers, she lost all appetite herself for the banquet of life.
such slight cutting phrases as she permitted herself to speak were repeated with embittered and exaggerated emphasis in london houses until london society grew horribly afraid of her. but it concealed its fear and wreathed in smiles its resentment, being sincerely desirous of obtaining the hand of the satirist for one of its sons.
more than once the press announced her betrothal to some great personage, but on the following morning was always forced to retract the statement as a snail draws in its horns. to her mother it seemed heathenish and unnatural that a young woman should not wish to be “settled”; she thought the mischief came from the education katherine had received, reading books that had even a different alphabet.
“you want all the hideous vulgarity of a fashionable wedding, my dear mother,” said katherine. “if ever i should marry i assure you i shall wear a white cotton gown and go alone to some remote village church.”
“my dear, how can you say such things? it is quite shocking to hear you,” said the mistress of harrenden house, infinitely distressed.
“pray set your mind at ease,” said her daughter. “i shall never marry, for the best of all reasons that no man whom i could respect would ever marry me.”
“not respect ye! how can you say such things?[348] you’re the daughter of one of the richest men in the whole world, and he’ll be noble as well, he says, afore he goes to kingdom come.”
the younger woman lifted her head, like a forest-doe who hears the crack of a carter’s whip.
“to belong to the peerage is not necessarily to belong to the nobility; and you may belong to the nobility without being included in the peerage. sir edward coke laid down that law. surely, my dear mother, you cannot for a moment pretend that if my father be given a peerage he will become noble?”
katherine massarene knew that she might as well have spoken to the clodion on the staircase, as said these reasonable things to her mother; but now and then she could not wholly keep back the expression of the scorn of her father’s ambitions which moved her—ambitions, in her eyes, so peurile and so poor.
“who was edward coke?” said mrs. massarene sullenly.
“the greatest lawyer england has ever seen. the greatest exponent of common law.”
“well, then, i think he might have known better than to deny as his sovereign can make a gentleman of anybody if so be she choose,” said her mother doggedly.
“you might as well say that the sovereign can cure the king’s evil!”
“well, they say she can?”
“oh, my dear mother! can you live in the world and keep such superstitions?”
“you’ve no belief in you!”
“i at least believe enough in true nobility to hold that it is a gift of race and breeding beyond purchase, and uncreatable by any formula.”
“if the queen makes your father a lord, a lord he will be with the best of them.”
“she can make him a lord; she cannot make him either noble or gentle. his nobility will be a lie, as his armorial bearings are already.”
“that’s a cruel thing to say, kathleen!”
“it is the truth.”
“why do i try to reason with her?” she thought.[349] “one might as well try to persuade the stone supporters on the gateway?”
but margaret massarene, although she would not allow it, did, in her own mind, think that her man was soaring too high in his aspirations. to look up where he meant to rise to, made her feel giddy and afraid.
“they’ll never give it to ye, william,” his wife ventured timidly to say one day, by “it” meaning his peerage.
he smiled grimly.
“why not? ’cos i ain’t a radical turncoat? ’cause i ain’t a birmingham sweater? ’cause i ain’t a hebrew broker? they’ll give it me, old woman, or i’ll know the reason why. you’ll be ‘my lady,’ if you live.”
he devoutly hoped she would not live; but if she did live, she should be lady cottesdale.
he had decided on his title, which he intended to take from a little property that he had purchased in the midlands, and he had already ordered a dinner-service of gold plate, with a coronet on all its pieces, which was to be a work of art, and would take some years to finish. before it would be ready for him he would be ready for it, with his baron’s crown to put on everything, from the great gates to the foot-baths.
any man who is very rich can become an english peer if he has kept clear of scandals and dabbled a little in public life. and who was richer than he? nobody this side the herring-pond. the conservatives were in office. the flying boats of the fair, to which he had once irreverently compared the two political parties, had made their see-sawing journey, and the one was temporarily up and the other temporarily down. the owner of vale royal was beginning to make them feel that they would lose him if they did not please him, and that they could not afford to lose him. he had a forty-horse power of making himself dangerous and disagreeable.
“a very dreadful person,” said lord greatrex always, when in the bosom of his family; but he knew that it was precisely this kind of person who must be conciliated and retained by a prime minister on the eve of the twentieth century. a chief of government has only a certain quantity of good things in his gift, and he does not waste[350] them on those who, being neglected, will not avenge themselves. william massarene worried the heads of his party extremely; they were well aware that if he did not get what he wanted from them, he would rat and make terms with the enemy. governments are accustomed to john snob, whom nothing will pacify, except to become lord vere de vere; but john snob is never beloved by them.
william massarene did not care whether they loved him or hated him. the time had long passed when a “how do?” in the lobby from one of them could thrill him with pleasure and pride; or a careless nod in the dusk on the terrace send him to dinner with a joyously-beating heart. he could corner the gentlemen of the carlton as easily as he had cornered a company in other days in dakota. you could not buy society as you bought a corporation or a department in the states; the matter required more dressing-up and glossing over. still, the principle of purchase remained the same, and massarene recuperated himself for what he spent so largely in belgravia by his commercial successes and financial fame in the city.
in the freemasonry of business he had been at once recognized in the city as a grand master. many a london gold broker, railway contractor, and bank chairman felt himself a mere child, a mere neophyte, when this silent, squat, keen-eyed man from the northwest came down into the precincts of mincing lane and threadneedle street.
in the city he knew his power, and made it felt. he united the american rapidity, daring, and instinct in business with the englishman’s coldness, reserve, and prudence. the union was irresistible. he had quaked and crouched before fine ladies; but when he met the directors of the bank of england he felt like napoleon at tilsit.
he was a magnate in the city, whilst he was still a neophyte in the great world. but his ambitions were of another kind than those which the city gratifies. they were social and political. he meant to die a cabinet minister and a peer. he went to walmer one easter[351] and looked at the portraits of the wardens. “guess mine’ll hang there one day,” he said to himself.
everything in his new life was still, in reality, most uncomfortable to him; the very clothes he had to wear were tight and oppressive; he had to drink hocks and clarets, when he longed for gin and beer; he had to eat salmis and relevés when he hungered for bread and cheese and salted pork; he longed to spit on his own carpets, and dared not; he was in awe of his own servants; he was awkward and ill at ease in his own houses; he quailed before the contemptuous eye of his own secretary; and he could not read the bill of fare of his own dinners; and yet, though he pined to be once more in his shirt-sleeves, with a clay pipe in his mouth and a glass of hot grog at his elbow, he was happy in his misery, for he “had arrived.”
not arrived at the apex as yet; but in full view of it, and within an ace of planting his flag on the summit. and so in all probability he would have done in the opening years of the new century but for one of those small, very small, mistakes, which upset the chariot of successful life as the loose rivet, the weak plank, the uncovered valve destroys the stately steamship, the colossal scaffolding, the rushing and thundering steam-engine.
one day in the autumn of the year the american consul-general in london received a letter from his “great country” which, although ill-spelt, ill-writ, and signed by a poor workingman, startled his secretary so considerably by its contents that he brought the epistle direct to his chief for instructions.
this letter ran thus:—
“’onored ’xcellence, theer’s a-living in london town a man as is callt willum massarene; ’e was known in this ’ere township as blasted blizzard. b. b. made a big pile an’ went ’ome, and they says as ’e’s a swell an’ kings an’ lords mess wi’ him. that’s neither ’ere nor theer. but theer’s a pore fellar arsts me to writ this, ’cos he hev hisself no larnin’, an’ ’e hev workt many a year on massarene’s line—kerosene, issoura, and chicago main trunk—an’ he’s a platelayer an’ hev allus bin ’onest an’ ’ard-workin’, an’ ’ad[352] his left arm cut hoff two summers ago by a goods-train, and hev arskt for ’elp an’ got no ’elp ’cos ’e be a non-union man, and the line say as how ’twas ’is own fault ’cos ’e ’ad gone to sleep on the metals. now this ’ere man, sir—name as is robert airley, native o’ haddington, n.b.—says as ’ow he ’ud be a rich un now but ’e med a mistek: ’e sold a claim to a bit ’o ground as ’ad tin in it to this ’ere massarene when he was young an’ starving an’ ’is wife in pains o’ labor. robert airley ’e say he found some sparkles sticking to roots o’ grass, an’ didn’t know wot ’twas, an’ show it to massarene, who was thin kippen a drink and play saloon in kerosene, and massarene bought his claim to the land for thirty dollars and ever arterwards dared robert to prove it, and prove he couldn’t, but says as how ’tis god amighty’s truth as he owned the tin and sold ’is rights un-be-known as i tell ye. bein’ allus very pore he couldn’t git away from kerosene, and went on main trunk as platelayer, an’ now he arsks yer ’onor to see blasted blizzard and tell ’im as ’ow ’e can work no more and ’e must be purvided for. i writt this for ’im ’cos robert can’t writt ’isself an’ i be your ’onor’s ’umble servant,
“george mathers,
“lamp-cleaner on k.i.c. line.
“written in engine-house.
“native o’ sudbury, suffolk, england, and out in this damned country sore agen his will. direct robert airley, post office, kerosene city, north dakota, u. s. a.”
the consul-general read this letter twice through very carefully, for its spelling and its blots made it difficult of comprehension. it did not astonish him, for he knew a good deal about the antecedents of the owner of harrenden house and vale royal. he had never alluded to them in english society, because if american consuls once began to tell what they know, society in europe would be decimated at once.
the letter did not astonish him but it made him very uncomfortable. he was a person of amiable disposition and he felt that it would be unkind to wholly neglect so pitiful and just an appeal. yet to address the owner of[353] harrenden house and vale royal, on such a subject was an extremely unpleasant task, one which he was not disposed for a moment to accept. to tell solomon in all his glory that he had kept a drink and play saloon, and cheated about a placer-claim, demanded a degree of audacity which is not required by governments from those excellent public servants who sit in consular offices and in chancelleries to indite reports which are to be pigeon-holed unread, and throw oil on the troubled waters of international commerce.
he had no doubt whatever that the statements of the letter were true; he remembered having heard it said by some members of congress in washington a score of years before that the penamunic tin mine had been obtained by massarene through a chance more fortunate than honest, and nothing which anyone could have told him of the past of blasted blizzard would have ever found him incredulous. he knew too well on what foundations the fortunes of such men are built.
“this is very dreadful,” he said to the vice-consul, when the latter had read the letter. “but you see the man is a native of haddington. i cannot admit that he should apply to us. we are clearly only here to assist american subjects. if it were a matter of a kind on which i could approach mr. massarene as amicus curiæ, i would do so. but on such a matter as this it would be impossible to speak to him without offence. will you be so good as to write to the man mathers, and tell him that our office is not the channel through which his friend—er—what is his name?—robert airley, can apply; tell him he should address the english consul-general in new york.”
“poor devils!” said the vice-consul, who knew well what is meant by the dreary and interminable labyrinth of official assistance and interference.
“you know massarene very well,” he ventured to add. “couldn’t you suggest to him——”
“certainly not,” said his chief decidedly. “massarene is an english subject. so is robert airley. so is george mathers. we have nothing to do with any of them. they have never been naturalized. the application is[354] entirely irregular. return the letter and tell them to address the english consul-general at new york.”
the vice-consul did so; and in due time a similar letter was sent to the english consul-general at new york by george mathers, who added to it that the wife of robert airley had died a week earlier of pneumonia brought on by want of food.
the english consul-general returned the letter addressed to him, and informed the writer that he could not interfere between employer and employed, or in any private quarrel at any time; the matter was not within his competence.
then the suffolk man, who worked in the engine-house and cleaned railway lamps, wrote direct to william massarene, london. this address was of course sufficient. the letter found its way in due course to harrenden house and arrived there a week after the opening of parliament, amongst many coroneted envelopes, appeals for subscriptions, and political pamphlets. it was candid, simple, ingenuous, but it was certainly not politic, and was extremely impolite. it began abruptly:—
“william massarene, sir—blasted blizzard, as we used to call yer—you’ll remember robert airley, though they say you figger as a swell now in lonnon town. we’ve wrote to consuls and they won’t do nought, so i write this for robert to you. you bought robert’s claim; you knew ’twas tin, yet ye niver giv ’im nought but thetty dollars. robert has workd on yer line twenty year if one, an’ ’e can work no more. ’is wife she ded last month, ’cos she were out o’ food, an’ ’is son be ded too—rin over on yer line. ye’re bound to give ’im enuff to kip ’is life in him. not to speak o’ the placer-claim as ye took and found yer mine in it. robert’s a ole servant on the line, an’ ye be bound to kip life in ’im. ye was allus close-fisted an’ main ’ard, and a blackgud in all ways, but they ses as ’ow ye be a swell now, an’ it won’t become ye to let a ole servant starve as was allus god-fearin’ an’ law-abidin’, an’ ’ave workt as ’ard as a ’oss, an’ never brott the tin claim agen ye, tho’ ye cheated so bad.”
the letter was signed as that to the consul had been, and massarene read it from the first line to the last.
[355]he had two secretaries at this time, young men of good family and university education, of whom he stood in perpetual awe; but he never allowed these youths to see his correspondence until it had been examined by himself. he received too many letters menacing and injurious, containing too many references to his past existence, for the bland and supercilious young gentlemen to be trusted with their perusal. therefore the letter from the two railway men in north dakota came direct into his own hands as he sat in his library before a table covered with papers and blue books, and surrounded by well-filled book-shelves off which he never removed a volume. when he had read it his face was terrible to behold. one of his footmen coming in to look at the fire was frightened at its black savage terrible scowl. it is hard for any man to find his past always rising up like banquo’s ghost against him; to william massarene it was insupportable.
he had a long memory; he never forgot a face or a name. he remembered all about robert airley the moment his eyes fell on the letter. it was thirty years before that the lowland scotch emigrant, who had none of the proverbial canniness of his race, but was a simple and trustful lad of some twenty-four years old, had come into kerosene city, one of a wagon-full of weary folks; there were no railways then within a thousand miles. but he did not trust only to memory. he had brought with him to england all his old ledgers, account books, folios of every kind filling many cases, and all now filed, docketed, and arranged in locked cases in a small study of which he kept the key on his watch-chain. he went to this little room now, and, with the precise and orderly recollection for which his brain was conspicuous, went straight to the books which referred to the tenth year of his residence in dakota. it took him some forty minutes to find the entry which he required, but he did find it.
“paid robert airley the sum of one dollar for specimens of tin ore.” “paid robert airley the sum of thirty dollars for his claim at penamunic.” the transaction was perfectly legitimate and legal. appended were the receipts of the said airley and the deed which transferred the land. twenty-nine years had gone by and the ink[356] had rusted and the paper grown yellow, but the record was there.
the fool had sold his bit of prairie land out and out and the tin under the soil of it. he had done it with his eyes open. who could complain of free contract?
to robert airley it had seemed a poor bit of soil, good for naught in husbandry, and his young wife had been ailing and her first delivery at hand; and he had been glad to get the dollars to buy her what she wanted. many men were in the settlement who could have told him not to sell his placer-claim for a mess of pottage, but there was no one who cared to go against blasted blizzard, and, in new townships where shooting-irons are arguments, men mind their own business.
william massarene locked up the ledger and the case containing it, and went back to his library. he then sat down and wrote a cypher telegram to his manager in kerosene city: “tell platelayer airley he won’t get a red cent from me. accident was due to his own carelessness.”
he wrote this because he was in a towering rage at the manner in which he had been addressed. perhaps at some other moment, or if addressed more humbly, he might have bought off these men as he had previously bought off others; but this letter had come to him in an hour when he was filled with vainglory and self-satisfaction. only the previous day he had been at a banquet given him by the conservatives of the county he represented. his blood was still warm, his vanity still fermenting like yeast, at the memory of the compliments paid to him by the great personages present; the praises of his glorious self-made position, the homage offered to him in the name of great britain. the leader of the house had given him to understand that when there was next any vacancy or change he would be offered a place in the administration; the great county folks at the county banquet had heaped adulation upon him, for they wanted him to make a new short-route railway line to london; the times newspaper had had a leader consecrated to himself and to his admirable promise as a future chief in the political world. and in such a moment of[357] supreme distinction a platelayer and a lamp-cleaner dared to write to him that he had been always a “blackgud”!
acute as his mind was, and vast as had been the sums which he had expended in shipping his own and his wife’s people to australia, so as not to be annoyed by their demands or vicinity, he should have been willing to spend the insignificant sum which would have pensioned and quieted robert airley; he should also have given something to the suffolk lamp-cleaner and thanked him; both men would have praised him in the city where his fortune had been first made. but the wrath which was in him for once clouded his keen perception; he would not have given either of the poor devils a crust of bread to save their life or his own.
the survival of the strongest was the law of nature; he had heard a sociologist say so. even beasts in the woods followed that rule; the bison and the opossum and the jaguar and the bear deferred to that law. how should men defy or dare to demur to it?
because a weak sawney of a long-limbed emigrant had not owned brains enough to see what was under the soil which had been given him, could he blame a keener and stronger man, already on the soil, for having had the wit to know what ore was hidden under the rank grass and the juniper scrub? clearly, no. fortune favored those who helped themselves.
“a blackgud in all ways”!
did a wretched railway hand dare to write this to a colossus of finance whose brain was shrewder and whose pile was bigger than those of any man on the corporation of london? william massarene felt as a burmese buddha, hung with gold and jewels, may be supposed to feel when a cook’s tourist pokes at him with the brass ferule of an umbrella.
on a man of breeding the insults of inferiors fall without power to wound; but to a man of low origin and enormous pretension they are the most intolerable of offences. for one brief moment all his greatness seemed to him as ashes in his mouth if these workingmen out in north dakota did not bow down before his glory. it was delightful to be called “my dear friend” by the proud[358] premier of england; it was delightful to be complimented on his stables and his dinners by royal princes; it was delightful to be consulted as a financial authority by the governor of the bank of england; but all these delights seemed nothing at all if a platelayer and a lamp-cleaner could refuse to acknowledge his godhead. he knew if he drove through kerosene city next month the whole population of it would turn out in his honor; the governor of the state, the mayor of the town, the sheriff of the county, the members it sent to congress, its senators, its solicitors, its merchants, its manufacturers, its hotel-keepers, its white men and its black men, would all be in the streets to cheer and welcome him, to feast and flatter him, to hang out the union jack and the star-spangled banner side by side in the oily, sooty, reeking air from the ten-storied houses and the towering factories. but in the background there would be two grimy railway hands who would shout “blackgud!”
this passing weakness was brief; he was not a man of sentiment. the two railway hands might scream what libellous rubbish they liked. nobody would listen to them. curses many, loud and deep, had followed him throughout his career; but they were a chorus which attested the success of that career. what he heard now were the cheers of the house of commons.
his sense of humiliation was momentary; his sense of his fury was lasting. he would have strangled the two men with his own hands if they had been in sight.
many bones must whiten in the building of a pyramid, and william massarene had but done what the pharaohs did. only their structure was of brick, and his of bullion.
the letter had only moved him to a momentary sense of fear; it passed almost as soon as roused; but his bitter wrath remained, a fire unquenchable.
temper is always a bad adviser. it advised him badly now. a very small annuity would have quieted robert airley, who knew that he had no legal claim, and had not long to live, for he had a tumor in his stomach. but when the manager of the main trunk line gave the reply of its owner to the platelayer, he, who was a gentle and[359] patient man, worn-out with hard work and sorrow, felt a devil enter into him and seize his very soul.
he said nothing, but the manager thought, “the boss might have given the poor fellow a few dollars a week. after all, the penamunic ore was found on his claim, and he’s been on this line ever since the metals were laid.”
but the manager cared too well to keep his own post, and knew william massarene too well to venture to express this opinion.
“my dear child, something has riled your father dreadful,” said mrs. massarene after luncheon that day; “he’s got his black cap on; oh, i always calls it his black cap when he looks thunder and lightning like, as he do to-day, and swallers his food without a word.”
“perhaps the prince is not coming on the tenth,” said her daughter, with that inflection of contempt which she knew was unfilial, and which they told her was disloyal.
mrs. massarene shook her head.
“the prince always comes here. he don’t get better dinners nowhere; and he’s a deal o’ use for your father in many ways. ’tisn’t that. i am afeared ’tis some of the folks out in dakota as bothers him.”
“he must have so many who hate him!” said katherine.
“well, yes, my dear, no doubt,” said his wife mournfully. “did you ever see a hogshead o’ molasses without wasps? he have a very big fortune, has your father.”
katherine was silent.
“do you know, if he were to die, what he would do with it?” she said after awhile.
“why, leave it to you, my dear. who else should have it?”
“i hope he would not. i am sure he would not. i have displeased and opposed him too often. i think he will bequeath it in such a manner that it shall be a perpetual monument to himself.”
“he’ll leave it to you, my dear. nature is nature, even in a man like your father.”
katherine shuddered.
“if i thought there was any fear of that i would speak to him about it.”
[360]“oh, good gracious me, child, don’t dream of such a thing!” said mrs. massarene, in trepidation. “’twould be firing dynamite! in the first place, you’d never turn him—nobody ever could—his mind’s made up, you may be sure, and nothing you could say would change it; but, oh lord! if you was to hint to him that he must die one day, he’d never forgive it; he’s one o’ them as thinks he can square almighty god. ’twouldn’t be decent either, you know. ’twould look as if you was counting on his going and wishing for his pile.”
“if you think it would look like that i will say nothing. but i should beg him to leave me out of his will altogether.”
“he wouldn’t believe you meant it,” said her mother. “he wouldn’t believe anybody could mean it. he would think you was trying to find out how much he’s worth and how much you’ll get.”
katherine massarene sighed and abandoned the argument. she went to ride in the park with a heavy and anxious spirit. the season was odious to her; all which to most women of her age would have been delightful was, to her, tedious and oppressive beyond description. the sense that she was always being pointed out as william massarene’s daughter destroyed such pleasure as she might have taken in the music, the art, the intellectual and political life of london. the sense that she was continually on show shut up her lips and gave her that slighting contempt and coldness of manner which repelled both men and women. the many offers for her hand which were made were addressed to her father; no one was bold enough to address them to herself. everybody, except a few aged people, thought her a most disagreeable young woman.
“refuse every offer made to you—i do not mean to marry,” she had said once to him; and he had replied:
“you will marry when i order you to do so.”
but there was something in her regard which restrained him from ordering her, though he received various proposals which tempted him. what he wished for, however, was an english duke if a royal one was not to be had, and there was no duke in the market, they were all married or[361] minors. so for the present he left her in peace concerning her settlement in life.
her heart was heavy as she rode over the tan, her thoroughbred mare dancing airily beneath her. she was a fine rider and quite fearless; but she hated park-riding amongst a mob of other people with a staring crowd at the rails. “a circus would be better,” she thought. she passed hurstmanceaux, who was riding a young irish horse; he lifted his hat slightly with a very cold expression on his face.
jack was with him, promoted to a welsh pony of fourteen hands, tom tit having passed to the use of his brother gerald. jack and boo had been sent for by their mother, who had again the loan of the wisbeach house, her sister being this year in nebraska for shooting.
jack was feeling quite a man, his pretty long curls had been cut off, he had a tutor chosen by lord augustus, he had a hunting-watch in his pocket, and he was wondering when he should be allowed to smoke. manhood was not all roses. he never heard anything of harry, and he did not see much of boo.
jack looked after katherine massarene and her beautiful mare.
“that’s the daughter of the old fat man who gives mammy such a lot of money,” he said, as he rode onward.
“what do you mean?” said hurstmanceaux, startled and stern.
jack was frightened.
“what do you mean?” repeated his uncle.
“old man is made of money,” he said evasively; his uncle, very high above him, very erect and severe, looking down with sternly searching eyes, was an object of fear to jack.
“but why do you say your mother has his money? you must have some reason. answer,” said ronald, in a tone which did not admit of refusal.
“the—the—person who told me knew. but i can’t tell you who it was,” said jack, with a resolute look on his face.
the “person” had been boo. hurstmanceaux placed a great effort on himself to desist from further enquiry.
[362]“you are right not to betray your friends,” he said. “but you would do better still not to repeat their falsehoods.”
jack did not reply, but from the expression on his face it was plain that he did not think he had repeated falsehoods.
ronald was about to say something to him about his obligation to protect his mother from such calumnies, but it was not the time or place for lectures on duty; and he was painfully conscious that, the older jack grew, the less esteem would he entertain for his mother and the more true would such statements be likely to seem to him. what the child had said was like a thorn in his own flesh. he had thought better of his sister since her surrender of the otterbourne jewels, and he had tried to persuade himself that all her previous faults and follies had been due to the wrongdoing of her husband. the boy’s unfortunate speech was like a bolt in a clear sky. for it was certain that jack could not have had such an idea himself without suggestion from others, and though it was probably the mere garbage of the servants’ hall, it was nevertheless miserably certain that some such story must be in circulation.
he continued his ride in great anxiety.
he knew nothing of the affair with beaumont, but many other things rose to his memory; the sale of vale royal, the sale of blair airon, her incessant patronage of the massarenes, the persuasion used by her to induce great and royal persons to go to their houses—all this recurred to him in damning confirmation of the suspicions raised by jack’s words. he felt that he must not question the child further; he could not in honor put her little son in the witness-box against her; but the charge contained in jack’s words seemed so horrible to him that as he rode past harrenden house he was tempted to stop and enter, and take the owner of it by the throat, and force the truth out of him.
he remembered how much money she had spent that he had never been able to account for; how large her expenditure had been, despite the slenderness of her jointure since the death of cocky; how obstinately roxhall had[363] always refused to tell him anything whatever about the conditions of the sale of vale royal, alleging that it was a thing he was ashamed of and of which he would never speak; and roxhall he knew had always been in love with her, and turned by her at her will round her little finger.
something of this kind he had long ago suspected and feared, but the truth had never been visible to him in its naked venality before this morning ride with jack. so long as cocky had been alive, although it had been disgraceful enough, it had not seemed so utterly abominable as it did now to know that his sister obtained her luxuries by such expedients. what to do he could not tell. she did not acknowledge his authority in any way, and set the law at defiance as far as she could, even as concerned his jurisdiction over her children. he could not accuse her without proof, and he had none; accusation also was useless—she was wholly indifferent to his opinion and censure. her position in the world remained intact, and it was not her brother’s place to proclaim her unworthy to occupy it. that which he longed to do—to take william massarene by the throat and shake the truth out of him—was impossible by reason of his own habits, manners, and social sphere, in which all such brawling was considered only fit for cads.
“how very angry he looks!” thought jack, and was glad when he had got away and changed his riding-clothes, and run upstairs to boo. it was not very often now that he was allowed to scamper up to the children’s tea and daub himself with honey and marmalade, and pile sugar on hot buttered toast. the servants called him “sir,” and boo’s governess called him “m. le duc.” it was all deadly dull, and jack envied the hall-boy.
“you will have a great stake in the country,” said his tutor.
“a beefsteak?” said saucy jack, and was set to write out a line fifty times, which was very hard work to a little man who could only move a pen with extreme slowness and stiffness in letters an inch high, for his education had been extremely neglected.
he admired his uncle ronald because hurstmanceaux[364] was the kind of man whom boys always do admire; but he was afraid of him, and he sighed for his beloved harry. there was nobody like harry in all the wide world, and where had his idol gone?
“not ever to write!” said jack to himself, with tears in his eyes. he did not say anything about his anxiety even to boo, for boo was at no time sympathetic, and was at this moment delirious with town joys, having gone to a morning performance, some tableaux vivants, and a water-color exhibition all in one day, wearing a marvelous picture-hat and a new bracelet-watch.
except by jack, brancepeth was wholly forgotten, consigned to that oblivion which society spreads like a pall over even the memories of the absent. his father and mother heard from him at intervals; no one else. he was one of the many who have gone too fast, who pull up perforce, and drop off the course: such non-stayers interest no one. the men with whom he had gone out to the south pole, and later to the cape, returned, and said they had left him there. that was all. he had spoken of exploration. they supposed that meant he had gone “on the make.” he had been a very popular man, but popularity is a flame which must be kept alight by the fuel of contact and of conversation: absence extinguishes it instantly.
jack thought about a great many things, especially when he was shut up for his sins all alone, an event which occurred frequently.
the sum of his thoughts were not favorable to his mother.
“mother has driven harry away,” he said to himself.
why?
perhaps because harry had come to an end of his money? perhaps harry had finished it all buying that punch which his mother had taken from him?
“if i was sure of that, and if i knew where he was, i’d walk all the world over till i found him,” thought jack; and wondered how he could make out where harry was gone. no one ever even spoke of harry. who could he ask? he asked his groom one morning when he had halted under a tree very early in the park.
[365]“i have no idea, sir, where lord brancepeth is,” said the groom, who was a miracle of discretion.
“couldn’t you ask?” said jack.
“i don’t think i could, sir.”
“wherever he is, he’s got cuckoopint.”
“has he indeed, sir?”
“yes; because he promised. he always keeps a promise.”
“that’s a very good quality, sir.”
“he’s all good,” said jack solemnly.
the discreet groom smothered a smile.
“i’ll give you five shillings, philips, if you can find him and cuckoopint,” said jack, pulling two half-crowns out of his knickerbockers.
“make it ten, sir, and i’ll do it,” said the virtuous groom.
“i’ll make it ten,” said jack. “but it must be next week, for i’ve spent all they give me except this.”
“next week will do, sir,” said the groom, slipping the half-crowns in his waistcoat pocket.
jack did not speak of this transaction to anyone, not even to boo. he loved his sister, but he had discovered of late years that boo, to “get in with mammy” and get taken to a garden party or a pastoral play or a picture exhibition, would not hesitate to betray him and his confidences.
“i wouldn’t ever betray you,” he said once in reproach.
“then you’d be a silly not to, if you’d get anything by it,” said boo, with her little chin in the air and her big eyes shut up into two slits, which was her manner of expressing extreme derision.
“you’re so dishon’able ’cause you’re a girl,” said jack, with more sorrow than anger.
every day for a week jack asked philips breathlessly, “well?” but philips prudently would not admit any knowledge until the next week arrived, when jack entered into his month’s allowance and produced the third and fourth half-crowns.
“if you please, your grace,” then said this prudent person, “the cob as is called cuckoopint is down at market harborough, in lord brancepeth’s box there.”
[366]“he did buy him, then?”
“yessir.”
“and he—harry?”
“his lordship, sir, went to the south pole the summer before last with lord tenby and sir francis yorke and two other gentlemen; his lordship have left the service altogether, sir.”
“left the guards!”
jack was dumbfounded. he had always been so pleased to see harry riding down portland place or kensington road with all those beautiful horses and cuirasses and jackboots.
“where’s the south pole?” he asked piteously. of the north pole he had heard.
“i don’t know, sir,” said philips, much bored; he had had enough of a subject which only brought him in four half-crowns.
jack had to wait till his ride was over and he could go in the house and get down his atlas and look for the south pole; he did not make the position out to his satisfaction in the atlas and he turned to the terrestrial globe; then indeed he realized how many weary leagues divided him from his friend. he leaned on the great globe and put his head down on it and cried bitterly. oh, how he hated his mother! it was his mother who had sent harry away!
“’cause he’d done all his money!” he thought indignantly. but how good it was of harry with no money to keep his word and buy cuckoopint!
his tutor came in and found him crying; poor jack had the penalty of position—he was never left alone.
the tutor asked in a rather dry tone what was the matter. jack, ashamed of his grief, brushed the hot tears from his eyelashes and tried to check his sobs.
“it is quite a personal matter,” he said with much dignity as he steadied his sobs. “it doesn’t concern anybody but me. please don’t ask.”
the tutor, though a severe man, had some tact and judgment; he did not ask, but took a volume from one of the shelves and went out of the room.
to his mother it was convenient and agreeable that[367] brancepeth was out of london. she was not sensitive, but still it had been disagreeable to her to see him there when she had broken with him. ruptures have always this unpleasantness, that people notice them.
but he was away at the other end of the world, where they all went when they were in trouble, and where they were as good as dead—somewhere distant and barbarous—and in being so he showed more tact than usual, for with that loveliest and most useful of all qualities he had not been gifted. when she thought of his parting words to her she wished a lion or a bison to make an end of him.
she had been fond of him certainly a good many years, but in women of her disposition a wound to self-esteem is the death of affection. their love is rooted in their vanity, and you cannot offend the latter without killing that which springs from it. at times she wished that he were there that she could make him murder william massarene; but then murder was unknown in her world, and she could not have told him what made her wish the brute stuck in the throat like a pyrenean boar; and so things were best as they were.
poor harry; if he had remained in england, he would only have been an additional complication. he would have seen, as this horrible brute saw, that shame and disgust and terror were ageing her fast and painfully.
