Borderland

It was a dull morning in October, with a gray sky, low-hanging clouds, and muddy lanes. The Tees Valley Hunt breakfasted that morning at Sir Thomas Winthrop’s, and the brothers, Michael and Gilbert Langstroth, rode slowly in company towards the house. Michael was now twenty-five, and Gilbert just turned twenty-three. They had ridden and hunted ever since they had been able to stick on the back of a pony, and, despite their changed fortunes—for the house of Langstroth was no more a flourishing house—they rode and hunted still. They felt a deeper degree of interest than usual in this particular breakfast, for it was known to them, as to all the rest of the neighbourhood, that the long-closed doors of Thorsgarth had at last been thrown open; Otho Askam’s minority was over, and he had come, or was on his way, to take possession of the house of his fathers, and the abundant revenues and possessions which had been accumulating for him. It was now several months since he had come of age, but he had not immediately repaired to his home. Now, Otho Askam, Michael and Gilbert Langstroth, and their friend Roger Camm, had all played together as children in the Thorsgarth garden, had shouted through its avenues, chased each other amongst its discoloured marble fauns and nymphs, and almost succeeded, more than once, in drowning themselves in the waters of swiftly-rushing Tees, who flowed beneath the lowest terrace of the garden. That had been more than ten years ago, and many changes had taken place since then. The Askam fortunes had accumulated; the deaths of both Mr. and Mrs. Askam had left their children—Otho, and a girl, Eleanor, several years younger than him—under the care of guardians, while their property increased. The Langstroths, on the contrary, had gone downhill to a certain extent. Poor then, they had become poorer since, till now, Mr. Langstroth, their father, was a hopeless, helpless invalid; Michael, the elder, was by way of earning his living as a country doctor, this chance having been given to him by the kindness of the old family friend and adviser, the little Quaker Doctor Rowntree, whose assistant Michael was supposed to be. Gilbert stayed at home, tended his father, and devoted his distinguished arithmetical powers to an endeavour to extricate the family fortunes in some degree from the confusion into which they had fallen. As for Roger Camm, whose father had been the curate of Bradstane-on-Tees, he had vanished for years past from the scenes of his childhood; but he and Michael, who had been friends in those former days, were friends still, keeping up a close correspondence. And if Roger by any chance imagined that Gilbert had forgotten him, he was mistaken. Gilbert Langstroth had a long memory.

It was not only these brothers who looked forward with interest to the possibility of young Askam’s presence at the meet that morning. All the country-side was more or less agog on the subject. Thorsgarth was a very considerable house; the Askams were very considerable people in the neighbourhood. Every one was excited; many fair creatures had gone so far as to say that they were ‘dying to see him,’ dying to know what he was like, and if he were going to be an acquisition, or not, to their society. People began to recall things, and to say to one another, ‘Ay, I remember how his mother used to ride to hounds; what a woman she was! How handsome, and what a temper!’ And then the voices would sink a little, while for the benefit of some stranger it would be related how the late Mrs. Askam had come to her untimely end; how she would go out one day, despite her husband’s expostulations; how she put her horse at a certain fence, which he refused; how she flogged him on till he unwillingly took the leap, and caught his legs in the top rail, pitching his rider head foremost off him; and how Mrs. Askam was carried home with a broken neck.

Half-forgotten things like these were talked about. Amongst all the wondering and speculation there was little kindness, little personal feeling. There was no matron who said, ‘Ah, his mother and I used to be great friends; I know I shall like him for her sake.’ For, as a matter of fact, this reckless young woman, who had so untimely died, had not made many friends during the years of her married life in Bradstane. Therefore, every one wondered; no one really cared what sort of young man Otho Askam might be.

Michael and Gilbert rode slowly on through the deep lanes with their tangled hedges (for some of the folk thereabouts were not as particular about their clipping as they might have been) in the damp morning air, and, emerging from the lanes, struck the stony road, with its rough walls, over which they had to travel to arrive at Brigsdale Hall, Sir Thomas’s place. They were to look at, as goodly a pair of brethren as any in whose company they were likely that day to find themselves.

‘Is Magdalen coming to the meet?’ asked Gilbert suddenly.

‘Yes. She’s driving Mrs. Stamer to it. She’s staying with Miss Strangforth, and Magdalen doesn’t know what on earth to do with her.’

‘Ah!’ said Gilbert, with his slight, careless smile. ‘A meet must be a godsend under such circumstances.’ And by and by he made some further observation, to the effect that it was a picture of a day, and that the scent would be grand, to which Michael assented cheerfully; and having got that question settled, they rode up to the hospitable door, delivered their horses over to a groom, and were shown into the dining-room.

Sir Thomas and his son Byrom were there, and the room was full of men, old, young, and middle-aged, standing about, waiting till their host should give the signal to be seated.

It was immediately on going into the room that they saw Otho Askam—for he it must be, and no one else—leaning his elbow on the shelf of an oak sideboard, and listening to some remarks of a neighbouring squire. He was at one end of the room as they entered, and they at the other; but it so happened that there was a little lane or vista from him to them, so that they saw him very plainly.

They looked upon a tall young man, as big, as strong, and as broad as themselves; and there all resemblance ended. It would have been difficult to say whether that face were young or old for its years. Young Askam had a round, bullet-shaped head, a dark complexion, and one which was also red—a deep, but not yet a coarse red. His forehead, though narrow, was not devoid of power. His smooth dark hair was clipped close. He wore a slight moustache, a mere line on his upper lip, save for which his face was hairless, so that the full play of his lips was seen; and there was something fierce in the expression of those lips; indeed, the whole face was a strange and fierce one. The dark eyes were sullen; the brows had a trick of drawing down and together, quickly and savagely, and then the whole face flushed, and the mouth tightened, and the fingers closed with a suggestive grip upon whatever might happen to be in them at the moment. It was truly an angry-looking face, devoid of beauty; and yet, if one came to analyse the features, it would be found impossible to pronounce it a plain face. The voice, the manners, were such as might be expected from the general outward appearance; that is to say, the voice was abrupt, the sentences curt, and the words often chopped off short in utterance; the manners were brusque, and had a touch of defiance in them.

At the moment when the Langstroths entered the room, Otho had his eyes fixed upon his whip, which he was drawing slowly through the fingers of his left hand. He smiled, and the smile showed a set of very white and very strong teeth; it was not a gracious or a genial expression. Michael Langstroth, looking at him keenly and attentively, said to himself—

‘Humph! he is a magnificent animal, at any rate. I wonder if he is anything else. I should not like to pronounce at a venture whether he were a gentleman or a blackguard; perhaps a bit of both.’

At this juncture, Askam, the curious, sinister smile still on his face, raised his eyes, and encountered those of Michael Langstroth fixed upon him. The smile vanished, the frown descended, above a defiant and inquiring stare. Evidently he said within himself, ‘Who is that man? I ought to know him.’

‘Halloa, Michael,’ cried the master of the house, at this point, ‘good morning to you. I’m glad to see you. How is your father to-day?’

As he listened to this, young Askam’s frown disappeared, and his look cleared, as if the thing that puzzled him had been made plain. By the time that Michael had done talking to Sir Thomas, Otho was at his side.

‘I say—I ought to remember you. You are Michael Langstroth, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am. I was just coming to speak to you. This is my brother Gilbert; you ought to remember him, too, if you remember me.’

Otho shook hands with them. His countenance was not the best suited for expressing pleasure and geniality, but in a certain saturnine manner he seemed glad to see them both, though he did not say he was, but showed it by asking them many questions, with an air of interest—questions as to what they had been doing ‘all these years.’ And he stood talking with them, and occasionally with Byrom Winthrop, who joined them, until the voice of Sir Thomas summoned them to the table, when, by some means, Otho and Gilbert found themselves seated side by side, and Michael was not very far away from them.

Otho Askam betrayed none of the awkwardness which would have been natural to, and excusable in, a very young man, who suddenly finds himself a person of condition and importance amongst others, much older and much better known than himself. At the same time his manner was utterly destitute of anything like suavity or grace, or of aught that could give a clue as to his real habits or tastes in the matter of society; none could discover from it whether he most haunted and best loved drawing-rooms, studies, clubs, or stables.

He appeared to be at his ease, and yet there was nothing easy about him. He did not laugh at all. Michael, who watched him attentively, could not detect anything more mirthful than that peculiar smile which had been on his face when he first saw him; and it was a smile which might have been called sinister.

Gilbert and he seemed to keep up an animated conversation, but Michael, though near, could not hear, for the hum of talk around him, what they said. He could only feel silently surprised that they had found any subject in common, for Gilbert, when not engaged in calculations, was something of a bookworm, and loved the flavour of a play or an essay, and was well read in some of our older and less known dramatists. Michael, though still uncertain whether Otho were most like a gentleman or a blackguard, had an inner conviction that he was neither literary in his tastes nor yet devoted to accounts.

Suddenly, in a momentary lull in the talk around him, he heard Otho say—

‘But Dusky Beauty was bred in these parts. I’d take my oath of it.’

‘Of course she was,’ replied Gilbert, with animation. ‘She was bred in old Trueman’s stables, over in Friarsdale, out of Blue Blood, by——’

Here the words were lost in the hum of renewed talk, and Michael was no less lost in astonishment. He felt quite feeble and bewildered with surprise. In all the years that he had known his brother, he had never heard him utter a word which could have led any one to suppose that racing or horses, beyond his own solitary hunter and riding-horse, had the faintest or most elementary interest for him. And yet, that was he giving information to Otho Askam (not receiving it from him, Michael reflected with astonishment) as to the immediate pedigree of the winner at one of the Spring meetings. More than once since he had finished his studies and been settled in Bradstane, it had been made manifest to him that Gilbert’s character contained complexities which he had not fathomed, and here was another instance—to him the most remarkable of all. With a sense of bewilderment, he finished his breakfast, and when it was over rode forth with the others.

At the end of the day, towards five in the afternoon, it came to pass that the three former playmates and new acquaintances rode through Bradstane town together.

‘I say,’ said Otho—it seemed to be his favourite phrase for opening a sentence—‘I wish you two fellows would look in upon me now and then. I dine at eight, and I am perfectly alone just now. It would be a charity if you would come. I can give you a glass of sherry that isn’t so bad, and show you one or two trifles that might interest you, at any rate,’ and he turned pointedly to Gilbert.

They thanked him for the invitation. Gilbert promised, unconditionally, to go, and that soon. Michael said he would try; he would go as soon as he had time.

‘You see,’ observed Gilbert, turning to Otho, with a worthy, benevolent air, ‘his time is not all his own. There’s a lady in the case.’

‘Oh, indeed! You are engaged?’ asked Otho.

‘Yes,’ said Michael.

‘To some one here?’

‘Yes. To Miss Wynter—Magdalen Wynter. She was at the meet this morning with an elderly lady. I was standing by their carriage for a good while.’

‘That exceedingly handsome girl, who drove those white ponies so cleverly? She had black hair, and a very knowing sort of fur cap,’ Otho said, looking at Michael with interest.

Michael smiled slightly. What a curious way in which to describe his beautiful and somewhat unapproachable Magdalen, was the thought in his mind.

‘The same,’ he answered, ‘though it would never have occurred to me to describe the cap as “knowing.”’

‘Oh, wasn’t it, though!’ said Otho emphatically. ‘Well, I congratulate you. She is exceedingly handsome. There wasn’t another woman there who came anywhere near her. It won’t do to be exacting in your case,’ he went on, with his dubious smile; ‘but, all the same, you will be very welcome if you come.’

‘Are you going to live alone?’ Michael asked him. ‘Doesn’t your sister stay with you?’

‘My sister—Eleanor—she is at school. I see her sometimes,’ said Otho carelessly. ‘She told me, the last time I called upon her, that she was going to college, and meant to carry off honours, if I didn’t.’ He smiled again, and added, ‘We part here, I think. Good day. I am glad to have renewed our acquaintance.’

They separated, going their several ways, and the Langstroths rode on in silence for a little time.

‘Well,’ said Michael presently, ‘it cannot be said that he has turned out an interesting character.’

‘Opinions differ,’ was Gilbert’s reply, in a tone which, for him, might be called curt. ‘I think he is interesting.’

‘Do you? I should have said you were the last—— By the way, Gilbert, you might have knocked me over with your little finger at breakfast this morning when I heard you talking about Dusky Beauty and her pedigree. I didn’t know you knew one race-horse from another.’

‘Well, I am quite certain you don’t,’ said Gilbert, with less than his usual suavity; ‘and it is my principle not to try and entertain people by conversation about things in which they don’t take the slightest interest. Otho Askam, there, does know one race-horse from another.’

‘What, is he horsey, then? Is that his little failing?’

‘He is horsey—I don’t know how much, yet,’ said Gilbert, with his gentle gravity. ‘That’s what I have got to find out, and it is what I mean to find out. I shall give him the pleasure of my company on an early day. You can please yourself when you go. Here we are.’

After Otho Askam’s arrival, which was, as it were, made public by this appearance amongst the gentlemen of his county, he and his sayings and doings furnished endless topics for the gossips of the neighbourhood. It was, of course, only by degrees that public opinion about him took a definite shape, but the process of collecting data on which to form one’s opinion of a person’s character is to many persons an even more delightful employment, and more enjoyable, than the frequent utterance of that opinion when found; though this, of course, must possess the higher quality of benefiting and instructing those who hear it.

The Bradstane neighbours—people in districts like that are neighbours if they do not live more than ten miles apart—abandoned themselves at first with joy and satisfaction, and a keenly pleasurable sense of having found a new interest, to this first branch of the business—the collecting of data. Women asked their men—and declined to be put off with mere vague, general statements in reply—what they thought of Otho Askam; and men said things to each other about him, and laughed, or nodded, or shrugged, as the case might be.

The first interest gradually but surely turned into disappointment. People in general discovered, or felt that they had discovered, that Otho Askam was a decidedlydecidedly horsey, slangy young fellow. It was soon made manifest that he had a powerful distaste for general society, as found in the country, with its dinners, dances, and lunches. Then again it was said—by whom no one could exactly tell—that he was full of whims and humours and oddities without end—not pleasant oddities; was very lavish of his money on one day, and very stingy with it on the next; had a most moody and uncertain temper, which sometimes would run into fierce, white-hot passions, with little or no cause for them, or, again, into sullen silence, more difficult than the fury to understand or combat.

There was one group of facts eagerly seized upon by the scandalmongers, and even by those who were not scandalmongers, of the vicinity. The matrons and the maids around were alike grieved that a young man so richly endowed with every external advantage should prove so very ungentle, unpromising a character; that he should set at nought their customs, despise their burnt-offerings, and openly neglect their galas and festivities. That alone would have pained the matrons and the maids; but that was not all. There was a thorn more galling still, which he contrived to plant in their sides, so as to wound them shrewdly. After he had been at home a few months, it became universally known that there was one house in the neighbourhood at which he visited often, indeed, constantly, and that one the last which would have been expected to attract him—at Balder Hall, namely, where old Miss Strangforth lived with her niece, who had for more than two years been engaged to Michael Langstroth. Magdalen Wynter had never been a favourite among the women of the country-side; she was exceedingly beautiful, and did nothing to conciliate them; she was penniless, and treated them as if they were beneath her. That winter she became less popular than ever, and the secret thought in many a virgin bosom was, ‘Greedy wretch! Could she not have been satisfied with one?’

This attachment to Balder Hall, and the innumerable times that his horse and he were reported to have been seen travelling over the road thither, was the canker which vexed the hearts of the womankind. A good many of the young men began presently to say that Otho was so cross in his temper that the only way to get on with him was to let him alone as much as possible; and, by and by, prudent fathers, however much they might have approved of him as a husband for one of their spotless daughters, began to think it was as well that their sons should not have too much to do with him. Nothing tangible had been alleged against him during those months; nothing actively bad; but, on the other hand, there was nothing good. In any of the staider pursuits of a country gentleman of his standing, politics, county business, public affairs of any kind, he took not the faintest or most elementary interest; nay, he had been known, when occasion offered, to express a rough kind of contempt for them, and for those who troubled themselves with them. Altogether, Otho Askam, who had been a good deal looked forward to as the coming man, created much disappointment now that he had come.

The last fact which formed food for gossip and wonderment was, that that gentlemanly, well-bred youth, Gilbert Langstroth, against whom scandal had never raised so much as a whisper, who was known to be good—look at the way in which he devoted himself to his failing father—and was said, by those who knew him, to be as clever as he was good—this paragon amongst sons and young men became the chosen friend and associate of Otho Askam, almost from the day of his arrival in Bradstane. Gossip exhausted itself in trying to find reasons for this alliance; in discovering points of resemblance between two such diverse characters, points which might account for the intimacy which had sprung up between them. Gossip spent her breath in vain. Undisturbed, and unheeding what was said about them, the young men remained and continued to be friends, and friends who were almost inseparable. The neighbourhood presently discovered that to stand perpetually with a gape on one’s mouth is undignified, so it ceased to gape, shrugged its shoulders, and said, ‘Well, if I were Mr. Langstroth, I should not like my son to form such an intimacy.’

The neighbourhood could not possibly have been more surprised than was Gilbert’s brother, Michael, though he kept his surprise to himself, and naturally did not hear very much of that felt by other persons. He had often chaffed Gilbert about his having no friends; acquaintances in plenty, but no chum, as the absent Roger Camm was Michael’s own chum. Gilbert had always replied—

‘Wait a bit. Every one does not suit me for a friend. When I do find one, I’ll stick to him.’

And then Otho Askam came. Gilbert appeared to have found the combination of qualities he wished for in a friend, and his words were fulfilled. He ‘stuck to him.’

The intimacy went on for more than a year, during which time the tranquil, gentle countenance of Gilbert Langstroth, with its slight, tolerant smile, was to be seen oftener than not side by side with the strange, fierce face of Otho Askam, with its breathless expression. ‘He looks,’ said a girl to Michael once, ‘as if he were always hunting something, and meant to kill it when he caught it.’

It was undoubtedly a bizarre alliance, but at the end of a year people had, in a measure, got to accept it, and it was an understood thing that its effect upon Gilbert was one which he was quite able to sustain with impunity; in other words, that, whatever might be the case with Otho Askam, Gilbert Langstroth continued to be a respectable member of society, and was not even thinking of going to the bad.