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Egerton Castle, Agnes Castle
Published by Good Press, 2021
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I did not think that my brother had bettered himself by the change, and still less could I concur in the turn-coat policy he had thought fit to adopt in order to buy from a Hanoverian King and a bigoted House of Lords this accession of honour. For my uncle was not far wrong in his suspicions, and in truth it did not require any strong perspicacity to realise that it was not for nothing my brother was thus distinguished. I mean not for his merits—which amounts to the same thing. I made strong efforts to keep the tidings of his cowardly defection from my uncle. But family matters were not, as I have said, to be hidden from Feldmarschall Edmund von Jennico. I believe the news hastened his dissolution. Repeated fits of anger are pernicious to gouty veterans of explosive temper. It was barely three weeks after the arrival of the tidings of my brother having taken the oaths and his seat in the House of Lords that I was summoned by a messenger, hot foot, from the little frontier town where I was quartered with my squadron, to attend my great-uncle’s death-bed. It was a sixteen-hours’ ride through the snow. I reached this frowning old stronghouse late at night, hastened by a reminder at each relay ready prepared for me; hastened by the servants stationed at the gate; hastened on the stairs, at his very door, the door of this room. I found him sitting in his armchair, almost a corpse already, fully conscious, grimly triumphant.
“Thou shalt have it all,” was the first thing he whispered to me as I knelt by his side. His voice was so low that I had to bend my ear to his mouth. But the pride of race had never seemed to burn with brighter flame. “Alles ist dein, alles ... aber,” and he caught at me with his clawlike hand, cold already with the very chill of earth, “remember that thou the last Jennico bist. Royal blood, Kerlchen, Knut, Plantagenet, Stuart ... noblesse oblige, remember. Bring no roturière into the family.”
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