It is possible that Ordham would have delayed paying his respects to his brother from week to week, had not a flattering paragraph in one of the newspapers brought upon him the immediate attentions of his creditors. He ground his teeth, flung their reminders into a drawer of the desk in his bedroom, ordered a telegram sent to Lord Bridgminster and his boxes packed, and started for the north next morning.

Of course he reserved a first-class carriage for the all-day journey. He would have patronized a train de luxe had there been one, or a motor, had the more brilliant extravagance come into being. To spend less to-day that he might have more to-morrow was a principle that only a long period of dire privation could have etched into his creed, and, no doubt, he would have managed to be a luxurious pauper.

During the journey his uneasy apprehensions were varied with remorseful memories of three old servants that had adored and spoilt him since he had come into the world, and to whom he had not given a thought during the past four years. These were the housekeeper, Mrs. Felt, Biscom, the butler, and Cobbs, the coachman. The sure instincts of childhood had driven him to take his little woes, not to his mother’s sterile bosom, but to the warm and pillowed surfaces of the personage who had inherited certain of the honours of Ordham, even as Lord Bridgminster had inherited his. Biscom, sovereign of the pantries, had permitted him to make himself ill as often as he desired, and Cobbs had taught him how to ride and had now his dogs in charge. Then there was Craven, the old gardener—he turned hot and cold at the thought that he had not brought a present to one of them!

Cobbs, in a rusty livery, awaited him at the little moorland station, and Ordham made up in the warmth of his greeting for the lack of a more substantial proof of his affections. There was no footman with the wagonette, and while Hines was attending to his boxes, he asked Cobbs if all the old servants were alive and at the castle. He was not surprised to learn that the immense staff kept during his father’s lifetime had been reduced to ten, including those within and without. But at least he should see the older faces, and the prospect cheered him somewhat as he drove through the purple dusk of the moors. For a wave of homesickness had swamped his spirits, then regret, anger, astonishment. For twenty years this beautiful moorland had practically been his, no doubt would come to him in time; but now, now, in the day of his youth, when he most wanted lands and riches and power (it is, until decay sets in, always the immediate time that seems the one desirable period for the great gifts of life), he came as a suppliant to the brother he detested, a man who was even too mean to live as became his position, and who, no doubt, would barely extend to him a welcome. It was a wonder he had sent the wagonette. Ordham had fully expected to go on to the next town and make the rest of the journey in a fly.

Cobbs volunteered the information that the shooting was uncommonly good this year, but Ordham felt no interest in the subject until it occurred to him that if he wished to accomplish the purpose of his journey he must take pains to propitiate Bridgminster in every way. At this detestable thought his haughty crest went up at least two inches. But he had wise moments, as we have seen, and it was seldom he was not capable of cool rational thought. He reflected presently that, after all, he was very young and that it was not only a close relative to whom he had come to ask a good bit of money, but the head of his house, to whom he stood next in succession. Bridgminster should have been a father to his brood of younger brothers, and it was incredible that he did not accept his obligations. It was time he did, and Ordham felt himself in a temper to bring him to his senses.

But as the carriage approached the high fell upon whose broad table-land the castle stood, he felt more keenly still the freak of fortune which had deprived him of his inheritance. That cold, splendid, formal mass of white and sculptured stone, a palace of the Italian Renaissance rather than an English castle, built by Inigo Jones in 1622-26, and raised above the lofty fell again by a triple terrace, surrounded by Italian gardens, and over-looking thousands of acres of moorland, woods and farms, and a hundred little stone villages, was one of the show places of the north, and it was wasted on a boor whose favourite literature was The Pink ‘Un, and who would not even permit others to enjoy what he could not appreciate. There had not been a house party at Ordham since his father’s death, and, no doubt, the lovely gardens were a wilderness, the superb rooms rat-eaten. To-night there was not a point of light in the vast façade. Ordham lowered his eyelids until they covered the unpleasant glitter of his eyes, and drew his lips against his teeth. Hines, covertly watching him, wondered if he were in pain.

The carriage drove through the unlighted tunnel into the courtyard. The old butler, the gardener, and a footman stood at the foot of the grand staircase, and as Ordham, banishing his gloomy thoughts, descended and shook hands with them, asking intimate personal questions of each, the mask of dignified servitude fell from their faces, and they gazed, smiling and tearful, upon the young man who had lorded it over and bewitched them for twenty years. Ordham almost laughed outright as he realized how they yearned to say, “My lord.” He wished to God they could. There was no affected philosophy about Ordham. He longed as ardently to be a peer of the realm as he did for the income of the estates. But after he had convinced them that they had barely left his thoughts during the years of his exile, he added wistfully that he was glad to see the old place again and wished that death might have spared his father. Ordham was always adored by servants. With neither familiarity nor condescension, always kind (save to Hines, who sometimes got the benefit of his tempers), with a smile of peculiar sweetness and an impenetrable reserve, a careless acceptance of devotion, yet with a tacit admission of a minion’s claim to call himself a man, generous, yet never so lavish as to suggest that perhaps his was not the divine right to be waited on hand and foot,—he fulfilled the ideal of the great lord to the most exacting class of mortals in the world. And these old men had all the retainer’s pride in his uncommonly fine manners, in which there was still nothing old-fashioned, in his aristocratic if not strictly handsome face, in the languid but dignified carriage of his well-knit figure.

He followed the footman up the wide marble staircase to his old suite, immense rooms, with lofty frescoed ceilings, and still sparsely furnished with the mahogany pieces he had carved when a boy. He felt a thousand years old and sick at heart. When he saw Felt standing there to greet him, he nearly fell into her great bosom, but contented himself with taking her hand in both his own and shaking it for a full minute. She told him (tearfully) that he had grown and improved, and he bade her invite him for tea in her sitting room on the following day, adding bitterly that he should feel at home nowhere else.

“I suppose there is no company in the house?” he asked, with intention.

“Oh, no, sir. His lordship never entertains. Come four years now we have never had a visitor save her ladyship, and she found it so dull she could never stay long. The first year there was a hunt breakfast, but it was stiff and sad, Mr. Biscom said, and now the county gentlemen don’t even call at the castle. It’s not like the old days, Mr. John.”

“What on earth does he do with himself?” He could surrender something of his reserve to this old woman who had given him many a shaking, and he was anxious to know more of the brother of whom he had seen so little.

Mrs. Felt shook her head. “He mopes terrible, sir. You wouldn’t think it of a man who loves a gun and a horse as he does—but those long evenings all alone! He don’t seem one to read—not like you, Mr. John. He’s changed a good bit, even since he come—and the last six months or so, before the shooting began—” She paused significantly.

“Does he drink?” No one can be as blunt as a diplomatist.

“There’d be no hiding it from you, sir. You’d see it in a minute for yourself. We’ve known he was getting more comfort out of drink these two years past, and, as I said, these last few months—well, you can’t burn bottles, and his man, for all his solemn pretending that his lordship is perfection, don’t take the trouble to bury them, neither. We all have our suspicions that Mr. Flint drinks with his lordship.”

“What?”

“No wonder it turns your stomach, sir. It do ours. The Ordhams, begging your pardon, have never been like that. There’s been wild ones, and most of them could drink themselves under the table, I’ve heard from my father and grandfather; but never one that lived familiar with his man and had naught to do with gentlemen. If his mother hadn’t been such a young thing when she died, and straight from the schoolroom, we’d have our suspicions.”

Ordham laughed shortly. “The King of Bavaria, whose royal blood is a thousand years old, consorts wholly with his lackeys. He has a rotten spot in his brain, and so, no doubt, has my brother. What else can be expected of a recluse that never opens a book? He can’t shoot and hunt the year round.”

Hines entered and Mrs. Felt departed. When Ordham had finished dressing, half an hour later, the footman knocked, and informing him that all the rooms on this floor, with the exception of his own and his lordship’s suites, the dining room, and a small room adjoining, were closed, escorted him down the long familiar corridors to the sanctum of his brother. It was a square room, whose old frescoes had been whitewashed, and furnished with several leather chairs, a couch, a desk, and a table, the last littered with racing calendars and sporting magazines. It was empty and Ordham sniffed in disgust; it was the sort of room he hated—utterly, baldly, savagely masculine. He had supposed that at least he could console himself in the beautiful rooms devoted to entertaining, and now felt that even the old boudoir of his paternal grandmother, done up in “tapestries” worked with her own hands, and replete with Victorian horrors, would have made him gratefully sentimental. Again his spirits took a downward plunge. He felt nauseated. And through what avenue could he approach the man? He was even more demoralized than he had counted upon.

There was a shuffling step on the hard floor of the passage that led in from the corridor, and Lord Bridgminster entered. He was a big man who, once strong and athletic, was now merely heavy. His face was large and red, his eyes small and dull. He wore a full beard and mustache, which made him look older than he was and hid but little of the scar that disfigured the right side of his face. Nor did it lend him any of the dignity of his younger brother, and he carried his shoulders loosely and moved his hands incessantly. In his youth he had been handsome, with well-cut features and the fresh colouring of his race, but not a vestige of either youth or beauty remained.

“How d’y do?” he said politely enough, extending a limp hand. “I’m a bit off my feed, but you look fit—why shouldn’t you? Wish I were twenty-four.”

They walked into the dining room together, and Ordham, whose languid eyes missed little, noted a flicker pass between Biscom and Thomas. It said as plainly as speech, “O lud, what a contrast!” Involuntarily he drew himself up, and at the same time resented that any brother of his should be scorned by the very servants as unworthy of the great position to which he had been born. It was almost as if a changeling had been slipped into the family cradle, and yet he knew that there were many like him, for the race is always reverting to its primitive types.

The dinner, served at a small table by an open window, consisted of the heavy joints and vegetables that Ordham detested; but it surprised him that his brother, whom he remembered as a man of mighty appetite, barely picked at it. Nor would he talk. The amenities—as he understood them—over, he responded with but an occasional grunt to the guest’s attempts at conversation, and finally the silence became so oppressive that Ordham lost what little appetite the sight and odours of the repast had left him. When the pudding appeared, hopeful of starting a congenial topic, he asked Bridgminster why he did not go up to London and consult a doctor.

“There are doctors in every town in Yorkshire,” growled his lordship. “Why should I go to London? Haven’t seen it for eighteen years. Should lose my way.”

“There are cabs,” suggested his brother, delicately. “Or I should be happy to guide you. If you have lost your appetite, there must be something serious the matter.”

“Not at all!” Bridgminster raised his voice shrilly. “There’s nothing the matter worth mentioning. Can’t a man be a bit off his feed without taking a day’s journey to pay two guineas to some damned swindler?”

“One can be seriously upset without being threatened with extinction; and when doctors were invented to keep one fit, why be uncomfortable?”

“I thought you wanted a week’s shooting. Wasn’t that what you said in that letter you honoured me with after you passed those examinations?”

Ordham blushed at this sarcastic reference to the only excuse he had been able to think of when inviting himself to the castle of his fathers. But it must be made to serve. He answered suavely: “One gets so little of that sort of thing on the Continent. Do you go out every day?”

“Certainly. Am I really to have the pleasure of your company on the moors from morning till night?”

“Well—a good part of the day. Remember that I am a bit out of practice, and not as hard as you are.”

“I’m no longer hard, but I go out and potter about. It is a damned sight better than sitting in the house. And I loved it once! God! how I loved it.”

Ordham glanced at him with a fleeting pity. The creature was mournfully without resources. No wonder he drank during the long dark winters of the north. This might be the auspicious moment for the opening of his campaign; he asked abruptly: “Why don’t you have some of the boys to stop with you if you don’t like outsiders—”

“They are outsiders so far as I am concerned. I want no one. That’s all I have to say on the subject.”

Ordham relapsed into silence. After dinner he smoked on the upper terrace, Lord Bridgminster in his study. They did not meet again even to part for the night.

But they met at breakfast and went together to the covers. It was a long, hot, silent, fatiguing, hideous day. And on the morrow followed its duplicate, and again on the morrow. The bags were small. Bridgminster’s hand was unsteady, and Ordham more and more indifferent as to whether he hit a bird or a bush. (The beater kept out of the way.) Each dinner was a repetition of the first, a cold and tasteless luncheon was served on the moor, and he had to appear at the early breakfast. On the third night he went to bed feeling like a weary soldier on the battle-field, a cow-boy, a day labourer. They were the three most detestable days of his life; even that period of apprehension induced by the vagaries of Frau von Wass was as nothing to this unremitting physical discomfort in the society of a boor that never opened his mouth.

On the morning of the fourth day he deliberately remained in bed until noon, sending his brother word that his wrist was lame. The afternoon he idled about the park, almost happy in visiting every nook associated with his boyhood, and lay for an hour on the edge of the pool in the sunken garden surrounded by its silent rigid pointed trees, reflected like the spires of a submerged city. He had made a bare dash through Italy, and determined to visit it during the autumn with Margarethe Styr. Later he descended into the village at the base of the fell and renewed many old friendships, and promised to take a hand at cricket on the green on the following Saturday. But the cordial welcome he received from these simple folk, who had always regarded themselves as his future tenants, and their ill-concealed dislike of the man who never gave them a nod in passing, revived his despondency and futile annoyance with fate.

He learned upon his return to the castle that his brother had not gone out that day, and when he appeared in the dining room it was apparent that he had been drinking. He made no response to Ordham’s greeting and sat through the dinner speechless, his face purple, his breath hot and fevered, barely touching his food. But when the servants had left for the last time, he opened his mouth and spoke:

“Should you be willing to break the entail of this property?”

Ordham, by this time in a state of boiling wrath, disgust, and gloom, which made him wholly reckless, shot a look of contempt at the noble lord at the head of the table and replied curtly, “Of course not.”

“Then you are a fool. A new millionnaire would pay a cool half million for it.”

“What do you want of more money? You do not spend nine-tenths of what you have.”

“The mills are on their last legs. Money is money. What is the use of a silly ark like this? I have done with it in any case. I’m going back to my box in Scotland—lived too long in a house. This Italian thing should be turned into a barrack or a sanatorium. What rot, what insensate pride, to build a palace too big for the biggest family ever born! I believe it is haunted anyhow. I hate it—and my own shootings are better.”

“You might lend it to my mother and the boys, with the necessary income to keep it up.”

Bridgminster merely laughed at this practical suggestion. His laugh was still well-bred, almost silent, but his loose cheeks shook, his eyes watered. “As if she did not spend enough as it is. I have no desire to die a pauper.”

“You seem to forget that you could not. Do you mind telling me who or what you are saving for? You have no boys to educate, as my father had—unless you contemplate marrying.”

“Marrying!” He hurled out the word with a coarse violence, which, however, failed to disgust his next of kin. “I read somewhere that in America they use Chinamen as house servants. I have a mind to turn out Felt and the rest of them and put in the pig-tails. I’d never see a woman if I could help it.” And then he indulged in observations not to be repeated.

“You are fortunate in being able to indulge your antipathies. There is nothing for me but to marry some woman with money, and this I must do in short order whether I like her or not.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you like her or not; you’d hate her before long.” Hopefully: “She might buy this place.”

“You forget that I have gone in for diplomacy. I shall be little in England.”

“Well, then, help me to dispose of it to this vulgarian for half a million of money.”

Ordham made no reply, but helped himself to a glass of chartreuse.

“Why don’t you drink port? I didn’t know those silly liqueurs were in the house.”

“I dislike heavy wines.”

“You aren’t half an Englishman, anyhow. You haven’t eaten a breakfast since you came. Tea and toast—by God! You might be a woman. No wonder you can’t shoot. You haven’t answered my question.”

“I answered it at the beginning of this edifying conversation.”

Bridgminster hesitated perceptibly; then, with evident reluctance, but very clearly, he put another question: “Would you help me to break this entail if I gave you five thousand pounds?”

Ordham turned upon him his heavy glittering eyes. “Not for the entire half million.”

“You look upon it as your own, I suppose?”

“I have tried to make you understand that I should not be able to live here; but if I can help it, it shall never go out of the family. Good God! Have you no family pride?”

“Family pride! Who cares for it nowadays? Half the peerage is made up of tradesmen. I want to know that the half million this museum represents is invested in consols.”

“I don’t fancy that it would all be invested in your name. Did I, as heir presumptive, give my consent—But I shall not give my consent. If you will excuse me, I will go out and smoke. And it is likely that I shall leave in the morning.”

“What did you come here for?”

Ordham had risen; looking down into the disagreeable eyes of his brother, he answered deliberately: “To ask you for a thousand pounds. I am in debt for that amount. Also, to ask you to increase my income. I have not one quarter enough to keep me properly.”

Bridgminster laughed again, and for fully a minute the two men looked deep into each other’s eyes, unaware, perhaps, of all they revealed.

The older brother, his thick upper lip almost flattened in a leer, spoke first: “Do you wish I were dead?”

“How can you say such a thing?”

The formula, with which he so long had been wont lightly to extricate himself from corners, sprang from his lips. He turned on his heel and walked the length of the room. It was a very long room, and when he stood before his brother once more, the flutter in his nerves had subsided. Again the eyes met and held each other, until Ordham said distinctly:

“I do.”

He had expected that Bridgminster would laugh again, and it had crossed his mind that if he did the port bottle might fly at his face. But to his astonishment his brother cowered in his chair, his purple face paling, and put out his hands with feebly warding motions.

“Don’t say that!” He stammered and his tongue was thick. “I—I fancy I am superstitious. I’m a bit off my feed—worse than ever to-day. It’s this damned haunted barrack. I’ll go back to Scotland to-morrow.”

Ordham moved a step closer. Transfixing the wretched man with his cold contracted eyes, he made no reply. Bridgminster stirred uncontrollably. “It is a big sum,” he muttered.

Still Ordham made no reply, but his eyes were little more than glittering lines. Bridgminster’s chest heaved, a flash leaped into his injected eyes.

“I believe you’d kill me if you got a chance—if you thought you wouldn’t be found out.”

“I would.”

“And every damned servant in the castle would swear you free,” whimpered his lordship. “Do you think I can’t see what silly asses they are about you? They hate me. I haven’t a friend in the world but my man, and he could be bought by anybody. You’d be a murderer all the same, though.”

“That would not disturb me for a moment.”

Bridgminster felt of his flabby muscles. His jaw fell, his eye rolled. “Do you mean to murder me?” he gasped.

Ordham hesitated deliberately, never removing his eyes. “No,” he said finally. “It would be a nasty business. But I want that money.”

Bridgminster rose heavily. “Come into the office,” he said.

Ordham followed the lord of the manor into his shabby sanctuary. The air was stale, the windows unopened. There was a bottle of Scotch whiskey on the table. Bridgminster sat down at the desk, and after some fumbling found his check book and wrote an order for a thousand pounds. The act seemed to restore his equilibrium for the moment. He tore out the check and flung it at his brother, who stood negligently beside the desk, but with nothing of indifference in the eyes into which he seemed to have thrown the whole weight of his brain.

“There!” he shouted. “Take it and be damned. And not another penny as long as I live—as long as I live—Oh! I’m off my feed! I’m off my feed!” He broke down, and flinging his head into his arms, wept aloud.

Ordham, who had had as much as he could endure, left the room and went up to his own. His forehead was damp and cold, he trembled slightly. He doubted if ever again he should be equal to a similar concentration of his faculties, even over a demoralized drunkard; certainly he had no desire to repeat the hideous experience. Better marry and have done with it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Beastly drunk, probably.”

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

“What? Does Bridg drink?”

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

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

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

“And his health?”

“Good enough.”

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

“I got it.”

Lady Bridgminster drew a deep sigh of relief. “Then those wretched creditors of yours can be disposed of. The interviews I have had with them! What is the world coming to? My own are not more vulgar and impertinent. But this is only a respite, Johnny. Two years hence you will be in the same predicament; worse, no doubt. Bridg is good for twenty years yet. Did you persuade him to increase your income?”

“No, and he never will.”

“Then you must marry at once. Let us not beat about the bush.”

“I am not ready to marry. Please remember that I am barely twenty-four.”

“Fiddlesticks! You are forty. You are the sort in whom years count for next to nothing. Besides, your father was married at twenty-two, my father when he was six months younger. But that has little to do with it. There are certain times in life when opportunities seem fairly to fly at one. Ignore these caprices of Fortune, and you may spend the rest of your life chasing her. One of the greatest heiresses in England is dying to marry you. Not only have I carefully prepared her mind, but she has always been more or less in love with you, although she has not seen you now for five years.”

“Who can she be?”

“Manlike! Probably you will not even recall her when I tell you her name, for when she used to come to Ordham with her mother you were following the yellow curls of Jessie Middleton about her father’s park and never looked at poor Rosamond.”

A dark flush rose to Ordham’s very hair and he drew his brows together. “You surely do not mean Rosamond Hayle?”

“Ah! You do remember her?”

“Her front teeth stuck out. Her hair was like tow. Her pasty skin was covered with green freckles—”

“Oh, that was years ago. She has vastly improved.”

“Time cannot have altered the formation of her upper jaw. I doubt if it could put colour into her hair. You know quite well that I shall never marry an ugly woman. I even hate ugly men and children. I don’t set up to be an æsthetic ass, but beauty I will have if I can command it, and at least I need not fasten myself for life to a woman whose ugliness is not even distinguished. As I recall Rosamond Hayle she was the apotheosis of the commonplace—and that was only five years ago.”

“My son, remember that she has forty thousand a year in her own right. They discovered coal mines on unentailed lands in Nottinghamshire and she was the only child.”

“I hope she may enjoy it. What of the American beauty and heiress you were so keen about?”

“Do you mean Mabel Cutting?” Lady Bridgminster dipped her tones in ice.

“Of course. Are there so many?”

“I thought favourably of her at first; but really, Mrs. Cutting was too keen. It was indecent. If we must put ourselves up for sale, let us not admit the fact to these outsiders. Her silly pedantic little daughter may have more money than Rosamond, but she is not our sort.”

“Pedantic?” Ordham had lost the rest of his mother’s observations. A vision of the deliciously pretty empty-headed little chatterbox had risen before him, alluring indeed after the frightful menace of Lady Rosamond Hayle. “Are we talking of the same person?”

“Rather. When the child first came over I liked her. She was a sweet, innocent, well-bred little thing, who knew no more than a young girl should. But the change soon began. Nearly every marriageable man in London ran after her, which was natural enough. I will do several the justice to believe that they were really in love with her, irrespective of the millions. Youth and beauty and sweet manners go far, and I suppose there is romance left even in London. I did not mind her head being turned. That also was natural, with artists painting her for the Academy and all the rest of it—although it was too silly of her to insist upon having that ridiculous LaLa in every picture. Well—when after a mere three months of such a success as few girls enjoy, she suddenly announced herself bored with society, declared that she did not yet know enough to waste so much time, that men talked only nonsense to her, and therefore taught her nothing, she forced her unfortunate mother, who loves society more than any woman I ever met, to retire to the country with a staff of tutors—oh, I have no patience with such nonsense. When girls have youth and beauty, the less brains they have the more attractive they are.”

“Oh?” Ordham had risen to his feet, his eyes very bright.

“Is not that too brief period for enjoyment pure and simple? Intellect does well enough when everything else has deserted a woman. What a waste of time and energy before! It has made this little American insufferable. When I heard yesterday they were in town I went out of common civility—as well as curiosity—to call. The girl looks moonstruck. She had not a word to say. No doubt her brains are addled.”

“Then they are in town? I must call to-morrow.”

Lady Bridgminster rose, and, sweeping over to her son’s side (she never merely walked), laid her hand on his shoulder. Her face was flushed and there were tears in her voice.

“My son,” she said solemnly, “let these people alone. Their ways are not our ways. They never make themselves really like us. It was only my desire to see you care-free in your youth that made me consider Mabel Cutting for a time. I have always disapproved of these international marriages. Americans are a thin, passionless, hybrid race, and, I am sure, vulgar at the core, no matter how deep the veneer. How could it be otherwise? Marry a woman of your own class and race—”

“Not Rosamond Hayle.”

“Don’t be tiresome.” She almost shook him. “No man knows how his wife looks six months after he has married her.”

“Think of those six months.”

“And a plain wife is so safe. In a diplomatic career, of all things, you want no scandals. How should you like being married to a professional beauty?”

“I should not mind a bit. I should find it insufferable to be the husband of a wife that every other man rejoiced was not his.”

“No man ever rejoiced that a woman with forty thousand pounds a year was not his wife.”

“I should if she were ugly.”

“Are you going to Grosvenor Square?”

“Of course. They showed me great politeness in Munich. It is a matter of common decency.”

“I believe they came up on purpose.” Lady Bridgminster’s well-composed features were in disarray. “What else would bring them up at this season? Their excuse, that Mabel wished to attend a series of concerts, was too silly. I might have suspected at once. You will not be such a silly little fly as to rush into their parlour?”

“There is no moat and drawbridge about the house in Grosvenor Square, I suppose? Don’t be foolish, Lady Pat.” (Everlastings rarely train their children to address them as “mother.”) “I must call on Mrs. Cutting. It commits me to nothing. If you can find me a beautiful and not too-English English girl, I will marry her, but not Rosamond Hayle.”

“I don’t know of another English girl of her class with such a fortune. I know these upstarts will get you!”

“Well, I shall not propose to-morrow,” he said lightly. And then he changed the conversation so deliberately that his mother sighed and rested on her arms for the present.

On the following morning he rose at the comparatively early hour of ten, and, repairing to Piccadilly, bought presents for the servants at Ordham and even sent them off himself. He had intended to omit this exertion in favour of Hines, but the morning was so fresh, and he felt so young and buoyant, particularly after having turned his check into the bank, and the prospect of meeting the beautiful Mabel once more was so unexpectedly enlivening, that he was equal to almost any form of energy.

He even sauntered into the Green Park, and there he met Mrs. Cutting, taking the famous pug for an airing. She dropped the leash when she saw Ordham, and although there was no warmth in her cold pure eyes, her smile was dazzling.

“Dear Mr. Ordham! What a pleasure! Lady Bridgminster told me that you were in England, but I gathered that you intended to remain in the north and shoot for weeks to come.”

“I do not care for shooting and had rather intended to go back to the Continent for a time—to perfect myself in languages. It may, however, be merely an excuse to put off those six months in the F. O. as long as possible.”

“But you have passed your examinations!”

“Heaven only knows how. But my French and German are really very bad. I need the theatres more than anything else.”

“I won’t attempt to conceal my disappointment. To be sure, I was resigned not to see you for a few weeks—but now that I have seen you—well, if it must be, at least you will come to us before you leave? I must show you what I have made of my little girl. She had an enormous success in society. Just now she thinks she wants to be intellectual, artistic, musical, although she played far better than most girls already. It is rather a bore for me, but I am hoping it will pass. I tell her it is a pity she did not have the seizure while at school. But I fancy it is merely the reaction from the rush of the season, and a little too much frivolity, perhaps too many suitors. But I should not say that!”

“Oh, my mother has told me. I hear she uses her scalps as cotillon favours!”

“How like you! But I wish she had fewer.” Mrs. Cutting wrinkled her brows delicately. “She was so sweetly simple and natural before—do you remember what a chatterbox she was? And all this adulation has made her bored, indifferent. I don’t think she is conceited, but I am afraid she has permitted the idea to take lodgment in that clever little head of hers that all men are far too easy game, and therefore to be despised. I have hinted gently that without the bait of her fortune even her beauty and cleverness might not have made her the belle of a London season, but you cannot convince eighteen that men are mercenary, and no doubt some of the poor fellows were sincere enough.”

“Unfortunately, most men cannot afford to be too sincere.” Ordham smiled grimly. “For instance, I could not dream of marrying a poor girl. And it must be far easier even to love a pretty rich girl than a pretty poor one. We have not been brought up on the love-in-a-cottage ideal, and when we try it generally come a cropper.”

She remembered that he had taken her breath away with his audacious candour more than once during the fortnight of their previous acquaintance, and smiled gayly.

“But a rich girl can be loved. That is the point to bear in mind. It is Mabel’s argument, by the way, and even I believe that a really lovely woman need not be eclipsed by her money. Of course I am quite aware of your point of view. But all the same I believe you to be capable of what the world calls folly.”

“You mean that I would marry a poor girl?”

“You are capable of it.”

“Possibly. But I know of no folly that I have less intention of committing.”

“Oh, I don’t say that you will. It is merely your capacity for the sudden and romantic wrecking of your life that makes you so interesting.” She stooped and recovered the leash. Her face, when she stood upright once more, was flushed, but she looked him straight in the eyes. “I have always hoped that you would marry Mabel,” she said, and her courage touched his chivalric nerve while it flushed his face. “I shall be perfectly frank. I wished it from the moment we met. She was too young to think of such a thing, and you were obliged to remain in Germany. But now—she has developed quite wonderfully, and you are quite free. I shall continue to be frank. When I brought Mabel over Lady Bridgminster took a great fancy to her, and I feel sure that she had some such idea herself, although naturally we could not speak of it; but latterly she seems to have taken a dislike to the poor child, and to have set her heart upon a frightfully plain English heiress—”

“She heard my opinion on that subject last night. I fancy she will not broach it again.” Ordham spoke ironically, but his blush had deepened and he moved about nervously.

Mrs. Cutting shook her head with a little absent gesture of despair. “Your mother is not the woman to relinquish lightly any cherished plan, and this Lady Rosamond Hayle seems to be a particular friend of hers. You could never be married against your will—at least I think you could not. But you will see Lady Rosamond quite intimately, you will become fascinated with her virtues, which no one can dispute, and forget her plainness.”

“I have no intention of entering the possibly dangerous zone of her virtues. But you are very kind. Why on earth have you selected me? There are bigger fish in this great pond.”

“That is as it may be. But I am very exacting. I want far more than a title—which, no doubt, you will inherit in due course. You see I am really frank! I got to know you very well in Munich, remember, and of all the young men I have ever met you are the only one to whom I care to intrust my daughter. That is, if you really could love her.”

“Oh! Love!” Ordham’s eyes stared far beyond his companion in a manner not at all to her taste. She resumed sadly:

“Of course she might not be able to interest you after your experience of so many complicated European women. And she—well, Mabel is a mystery even to me—what girl is not a mystery? When we left Munich I fancied that you had made an indelible impression upon her cloistered little heart. But now—as I told you—she affects to despise all men; and so much has happened since then. A girl is no sooner launched in the world than she grows a year every day. And I did not feel that I should be justified in keeping your memory green in her mind, for how could I know that you would not have loved and married before we met again? But I wish! I wish! If she does not marry you, I hope it will be many years before she marries at all. Of course there are many fine men in the world, and she can afford to wait. A fortune hunter shall never have her. Of that I am determined.”

“There are thousands of fine fellows in the world,” said Ordham, generously, increasingly desirous of meeting the enigmatic and difficult Mabel. “When may I call? I should not think of leaving London without renewing that delightful acquaintance. I had intended to try my luck this afternoon.”

“Come at five. And perhaps you will dine with us before you go? You cannot be rushed with engagements at this season, and it will be pleasant to see a bit of you, even if—”

Ordham laughed and shook hands with the handsome charming woman, who looked so unconventionally eager in spite of her cool eyes. “I have never been so flattered in my life, and it is wonderful of you to be so enchantingly frank. Men must get so sick of transparent angling—I wonder that anything induces the big fish to bite. Please don’t let Miss Cutting know that you like me, or she will be sure to hate me. Of course I shall call at five to-day. And dine with you to-morrow? May I?”

He walked to his club in a very thoughtful mood. Here, no doubt, was the natural solution of his difficulties. But with the prospect of that easy escape came a passionate wave of protest, the protest of masculine youth at paying the price. He had not the faintest idea that he could fall in love with Mabel Cutting; and were her millions an adequate compensation for the loss of his precious liberty? He felt that a man’s youth should last until thirty. Time enough then for shackles: wife—and children! He blushed angrily at the thought. This cursed question of money! If his brother would settle two thousand a year on him, he would not consider matrimony with the most beautiful girl that walked.

And deep down in his heart he heard a murmured demand for the woman by the Isar. Was this woman, perchance, his mate? He stopped, appalled at the thought, in the middle of Piccadilly, and was nearly run over by a hansom cab. To what end? The difference in their ages meant nothing to him, but he could not ask the various diplomatic circles of the world to accept Margarethe Styr. Nor was there the least probability that she would renounce her career to keep house for him and devote her talents to the advancement of his own. Even if she loved him—and did she?—how could he demand such a sacrifice? Society would be a poor substitute for art, for the adulation of the multitude. Moreover, there was the question of money again. She might possess small fortune, but it would not go far in his world. To permit her to remain on the stage he would not consider for a moment. He would neither abandon his career nor would he live on a woman’s earnings. To marry a girl with a large inheritance was one thing, but to loaf about while his famous wife sang to a public ignorant of his very name, that neither might want for the luxuries to which they were accustomed—good God!

He wondered, as he turned abruptly from the door of his club and strolled down into St. James’s Park, that the idea of marrying Margarethe Styr had postulated itself. It had not even occurred to him before. He had looked forward to seeing her as often as he could manage, to keeping her in his life, but not even to being her lover. Did he love her? Had he loved her during those enchanting months, and been too contented, too occupied, to understand? Had she purposely refrained from exercising those seductions of which she must be passed mistress, because she knew that love would devastate the lives of both? For a moment he seemed to be peering over the edge of a round wall into the great wells of human nature. He had a passing impression that Margarethe Styr was Nature herself, that in her bosom were all the mysteries, the secrets, the treasures of life, and that they were his, whether he could ever take them or not.

Did he love her? He drew his brows together in the deepest perplexity he had ever experienced. There was no turbulence of emotion in him, no madness of passion, no desire. It was a mental longing—that and something deeper, which he did not pretend to define, but which, so far at least, did not affect his senses. Were they on fire, with the instinct of man for his mate, he knew that he should take the next train for the Continent. But they were not, and the idea suddenly entered his cool wise young brain that he had better stay away from the Continent altogether. It was quite possible that a multiplicity of causes, her own subtle manipulation among them, had delayed his loving this most complete of all women, and it was on the cards that they both would lose their heads the moment they met again. Well! They had got through a dangerous summer safely, and its memory was wholly delightful. He, at least, would not defy the gods, but steer clear of the siren’s rock. Aside from motives of prudence, he was by no means sure that he wanted to experience a tremendous passion; the indolence, the super-civilization in him shrank from elemental tumults. He had locked up the memory of the scene with his brother, but he heard the key rattle for a moment, and his distaste for the primitive increased.

He jerked up the thought of his career and forced his mind to dwell upon it, succeeding so thoroughly that he felt ambition incarnate as he headed for home. He would begin his duties in the Foreign Office on the morrow instead of demanding a leave of absence; that would keep him in England for six months to come. Then he would manage to be sent to St. Petersburg or Madrid, instead of to Berlin, as he had contemplated.

At luncheon he was forced to listen to eulogies of a woman he would not have married had she presented him with a million in the funds, and revenged himself by talking about Mabel Cutting. But deep down in his being went on that same mysterious protest, mutter, demand for the supreme rights of mortal on this imperfect plane called life.