Читать книгу The Golden Beast - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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Joseph, second Baron Honerton, was, unlike his long defunct father, in no sense of the word a dreamer or an idealist. He had finished a very excellent dinner, a meal which would have evoked the strongest remonstrances from his physician had he been present, before he even thought of disengaging himself for a moment from the conversation of the honoured guest on his right and taking a self-congratulatory glance down his sumptuous dining table. The room itself was unchanged since Israel, the founder of the family, had sat in his son's place thirty years ago; the tapestries perhaps had grown a shade softer, the walls in their dark perfection a trifle more mysterious, the faces which gleamed from the half-seen canvasses a thought paler. Three decades of years, however, had made little change in a room whose atmosphere was the growth of centuries. It was the guests, the men and women seated around the table, who marked the progress of time. This was no family party such as would have been dear to the heart of Israel. In thirty years the new Lords of the Manor had grafted themselves upon the soil they had purchased. It was a tolerant age where social qualifications were concerned, and, after all, a son of Joseph had been in the Eton Eleven and was doing well to-day in the Embassy at Paris, apart from which, Judith, the younger daughter, was without any rival the beauty of the season. Great painters approached her humbly for sittings. Very desirable young men had sought her and her millions. She had only one drawback, as many of those in her immediate circle had already discovered. She was amazingly and unpleasantly clever. Her father's eyes rested for a moment upon her beautiful face, with just the same contented, self-approving pleasure with which he would have contemplated some objet d'art which he had bought that afternoon at Christie's. They passed from her to his only surviving brother, Samuel—an irritable dyspeptic, out of health and temper with the world—whose presence was some faint concession to the spirit of the departed Israel. They passed over a little row of well-dressed, well-bred people with complacent indifference, rested for a moment kindly upon his wife at the other end of the table with her elaborately coiffured white hair, parchment skin, and brilliant eyes, and finally lingered, with something nearer real affection upon the handsome yet rather obtrusively Semitic form of Ernest, his younger son, who had just entered the business. It was a company with which any host might be satisfied, a son and daughter of whom any father might be proud. No wonder that Joseph, second Baron Honerton, pulled down his waistcoat over his rotund stomach and felt nothing of that wild unhappy impulse which thirty years before had spelled the grim writing on the wall to Israel's haggard gaze.

"I can't tell you how much Frederick is looking forward to his shooting to-morrow," the Marchioness, who was seated on his right, observed. "Our own pheasants this year have been so disappointing. The fact is we don't rear nearly enough birds, and haven't been able to for years."

Her host nodded sympathetically. It was not a pleasing gesture, as it drove his second chin on to his collar. He had learned many lessons during the passing of the years, and with a conscious effort he omitted all mention of his standing order for ten thousand of the best eggs.

"We'll try and give the Marquis some sport," he promised genially. "I'm shooting myself to-morrow. I've been looking after things the last two or three times, but my boy's taking that on now—good sportsman, Ernest."

"How very unselfish of you," his neighbour purred. "I hear great accounts of your elder son, Lord Honerton. They tell me that he will be First Secretary at Paris, if he stays there, before many years have passed."

"Henry's a good lad," his father admitted, "and his head's screwed on all right. I sometimes wish we'd had him in the business. Still, one can't have it all ways."

"I should think not, indeed," the Marchioness assented. "You ought to be very proud of your children, Lord Honerton. There wasn't a person at the last Court who didn't declare that Judith is the most beautiful girl who has been seen at Buckingham Palace for years. My boy Frederick was in the Throne Room on duty. He could talk of nobody else—couldn't remember what he had to do in the least."

Lord Honerton glanced down the table.

"He seems to have recovered himself now," he remarked.

"Frederick is always at his best when he is with some one he really likes," his mother confided. "He's a dear fellow though elder sons are rather an expense," she sighed. "Polo and all those things cost so much money nowadays. I am afraid there'll be nothing of the sort for the younger boys. We thought of trying to get Dick into a good business where he could make some money. What do you think, Lord Honerton?"

Her host became a little less expansive. There were plenty of millions to be made in the great Fernham business, but they were most distinctly to be made by members of the Fernham family. Clerks and managers and travellers were all very well, but he had a shrewd idea as to the outlook of a woman like the Marchioness who was seeking a commercial career for her son. There was no room for anything in the least ornamental at the Fernham Works.

"It depends whether he's got it in him or not," he remarked in a noncommittal sort of way. "As a rule the man who makes money in commerce is the man who has inherited the instinct for it. I can't imagine Lord Frederick, for instance, or any son of yours, holding his own nowadays in the commercial world."

"Unless he were helped," the Marchioness murmured.

"There are only two sorts of help," Lord Honerton declared. "One is the giving of an opportunity. That's all right, but it isn't worth a damn unless the recipient's got the right stuff in him to make use of it. The second kind simply means providing an income which the recipient doesn't earn. I call that charity."

The Marchioness was a little ruffled. The worst of these princes of commerce, she decided, was that they had no sensibility. She was preparing to change the conversation when an event happened which to just three people in the room—to Lord Honerton, his wife, and Samuel, his brother—was possessed of a peculiar, almost a sinister significance. It was the lifting once more of a forgotten curtain of tragedy. A servant had entered the room and whispered to Martin, the impeccable butler. The latter, with a brief nod, had moved to behind Ernest Honerton's chair, and with a little bow leaned forward.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said. "Middleton, the head keeper, is outside. He has just brought the plan of the beats up to the house. He wondered, sir, whether you had any further orders to give before he left."

The young man rose to his feet. There was perhaps a spice of vanity in the situation, but he was indeed keenly interested in the morrow's sport. He glanced towards his mother.

"Might I be excused for a moment or two?" he asked. "Middleton has brought up the plan of the beats for to-morrow, and I should like to have just a word or two with him. We lost a lot of birds at the park coverts last month, and as we finished there we didn't get them again."

The men of the party smiled approvingly, well-pleased at this reminder of the morrow's sport. The women were pleasantly indifferent, although Ernest's neighbour, who was a little minx, made a grimace at him and whispered something about not being long. But there were three people there who sat as though turned to stone. Lady Honerton's dark eyes, so much more brilliant in these later days, it had seemed, owing to the wasting of her skin, held for a moment a gleam of almost inhuman terror. From her husband's face, the patch of colour, heritage of his recent indulgences, faded into a streaky slur. His fat, pudgy fingers gripped the table on either side of him, his beady eyes seemed to have crept from underneath his eyelids till they were in danger of dropping out altogether. Further down the table, Samuel had leaned forward, his hands clasped on the top of his stout stick, his gaze wandering alternately from his brother to his sister-in-law. Ernest had walked several paces towards the door before he realised that anything was the matter. He stopped short at once as he caught sight of his father's face.

"Hullo, Dad!" he exclaimed. "Nothing wrong, is there? You wanted me to look after the shooting? It's all right for me to have a word with Middleton, isn't it? I'll be back directly."

"Quite all right," his father muttered.

"Don't be long," his mother begged.

"I feel like a naughty boy who has got down without permission," the young man laughed, as he continued his progress towards the door. "If Middleton keeps me more than a few minutes I'll join you all in the bridge room."

He passed out and the door was closed behind him. Very few people had realised the depths of the shock which for their host and hostess had brought, for a moment, an atmosphere of horrified reminiscence into the room. Conversation was resumed again almost directly. It was not until the Marchioness noticed the little beads of perspiration all over her host's forehead, that a sudden wave of memory assailed her.

"My dear Lord Honerton!" she exclaimed. "Do forgive us for not having recognised at once this most distressing coincidence. I was very young at the time—it must be thirty years ago, isn't it?—but I remember distinctly the shock we all felt, every one in the county felt, when they heard the terrible news. It was your brother, of course, who was murdered by that madman, wasn't it? And if I remember rightly he was fetched out of the room in precisely the same manner."

"The message was almost identical," Lord Honerton groaned, mopping his forehead.

"Most distressing," the Marchioness declared. "However, in this instance there need be no anxiety. Middleton is a most respectable man—Frederick thinks highly of him—and he has—er—no family. It was the association, of course, which was so painful."

Lady Honerton rose a little abruptly, and the men, after the departure of the women, drew closer together, loud in their praises of their host's port, eager in their discussion of the possible bag to-morrow. The Marquis would have moved up to his host's left hand, but Samuel Fernham had just anticipated him—Samuel, leaning heavily upon his ivory-knobbed stick, had hobbled up and sunk into the chair adjoining his brother's. He leaned over and laid his shrivelled, yellow hand upon the other's thick one.

"That was a shock, brother," he said quietly. "It was like looking back into the past—that horrible night! Never mind. That all lies thirty years behind. That is finished."

Joseph looked at him gratefully, but with some of the old terror still smouldering in his face.

"That is finished, Samuel," he acquiesced. "It is the memory that never dies!"