Читать книгу Gloria Mundi - Frederic Harold - Страница 8

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Many builders in their day have put a hand to the making of Caermere Hall. Though there were wide differences of race and language among them and though the long chain of time which binds them together has generations and even centuries for its links, they seem to have had thus much in common: they were all at feud with the sunlight.

On the very pick of summer days, when the densest thickets of Clune Forest are alive to the core with moving green reflections of the outer radiance, and hints of the glory up above pierce their way to the bottom of the narrowest ravine through which the black Devon churns and frets, somehow Caermere remains wrapped in its ancient shadows.

The first men, in some forgotten time, laid its foundations with no thought save of the pass at the foot to be defended. Later artificers reared thick walls upon these foundations, pushed out towered curtains, sank wells, lifted the keep, cut slits of corner windows or crowned the fabric with new turrets for watchmen, each after the need or fashion of his age, but all with minds single to the idea of blocking the path that Caermere overhung. In due time came the breath of the king’s peace, blowing equably over the vexed marches, albeit loaded with the scent of gunpowder, and my lords slowly put aside their iron harness for silken jackets, and unslung the herses in their gateways. Men of skill set now about the task of expanding the turfed spaces within the inclosure, of spreading terraces and forming gardens, of turning stone chambers into dames’ apartments, and sullen guard-rooms into banquet-halls. Their grandsons, in turn, pulled down even more than they erected; where the mightiest walls had shouldered their huge bulk, these men of Elizabeth and James left thin façades of brickwork, and beams of oak set in a trivial plaster casing. The old barbican was not broad enough to span their new roadway, stretching to the valley below over the track of the former military path, and they blew it up; the pleasure-ground, which they extended by moving far backward the wall of the tilting yard, was bare of aspect to their eye, and they planted it with yews and, later, with cedars from the Lebanon.

Through all these changes, Caermere remained upon its three sides shadowed by great hills, and the thought of making wide windows in the walls on the open fourth side came to no one. When at last, in the earlier Georgian time, the venerable piles of bastioned masonry here were replaced by a feebly polite front of lath and stucco, windows were indeed cut to the very floor, in the French style, but meanwhile the trees had grown into a high screen against the sky, and it was not in the Torr blood to level timber.

When a house and family have lived together for a thousand years, it is but reasonable that they should have come to an understanding with each other. Was Caermere dark because the mood of the Torrs, its makers and masters, had from the dawn of things been saturnine? Or did the Torrs owe their historic gloom and dourness of temperament to the influence of this somber cradle of their race? There is record of the query having been put, in a spirit of banter, by a gentleman who rode over Clune bridge in the train of King John. Of convincing answer there is none to this latest day. The Torrs are a dark folk, and Caermere is a dark house. They belong to one another and that is all.

Thus, on the first morning of October, a gray and overcast morning even on the hilltops, and though it was past the half-hour towards nine, there was barely light enough to see one’s way about by in the big breakfast-room.

A tall young man in rough, light-brown clothes stood at one of the windows, drumming idly on the glass and staring at the black cedars beyond the lawn. At intervals he whistled under his breath, in a sulky fashion, some primitive snatches of an unknown tune. Once or twice he yawned, and then struck a vicious ring from the panes with his hard nails, in protesting comment upon his boredom.

About the large fireplace behind him were dishes huddled for heat, and their metallic gleam in the flicker of the flames was repeated farther away in the points of red on the plate and glass of the long breakfast table spread in the center of the room. From time to time a white-faced youngster in livery entered the room, performed some mysterious service at the hearth or the table in the dim twilight and went out again.

The man at the window paid no heed to the goings and comings of the servant, but when the door opened presently and another tweed-clad figure entered, his ear told him the difference on the instant, and he half turned his head.

“In God’s name, what are you all doing?” he growled angrily. “I said eight—you heard me!—sharp eight!”

“What does it matter?” protested the newcomer, stooping at the fire-place to lift the covers from the dishes in a languid inspection of their contents. He yawned as he spoke. “If you won’t let fellows go to bed till four, how the devil do you expect them to be down at eight?”

“Oh, is that you, Pirie?” said the man at the window. “I thought it was my brother.” The other stood for a moment, with his back to the fire. Then he lounged to the window, stretching his arms as he moved. He also was tall, but with a scattering of gray in his hair.

“Beastly black morning,” he commented in drowsy tones, after a prolonged observation of the prospect. “Might as well stopped in bed.”

“Well, go back then!” snapped the other. “I didn’t make the rotten weather, did I?” This was wanton ill-temper. The elder man also began drumming with his nails on the window. “Turn it up, Eddy,” he remonstrated, smoothly enough, but with a latent snarl in his tone. “I don’t like it.”

The younger man moved his head, as if he would have looked his companion in the face. Then he stared away again, out of the window.

“Beaters been waitin’ half an hour already,” he grumbled, sulkily. “What’s the good of makin’ a time if you don’t keep it?”

“I didn’t make any time,” responded Major Pirie with curtness. Upon reflection, he added: “What does it matter about the beaters?”

There seemed no answer to this, and for several minutes nothing was said. Finally the younger man thought of something. “I say,” he began, and after an instant’s pause went on: “It’d suit me better not to be called ‘Eddy’ among the men, d’ye see? That fellow Burlington began it last night—he got it from you—and I don’t like it. When we’re alone, of course, that’s different.”

Major Pirie laughed—a dry, brief, harsh laugh—and swung around on his heels. “Your man didn’t get those sausages I asked for, after all,” he remarked, going back to the dishes at the fender.

“Probably couldn’t,” said Mr. Edward, “or else,” he added, “wouldn’t. I never saw such a houseful of brutes and duffers. I’m keen to shunt the lot of ‘em, and they know it, the beggars. You’d think they’d try to suck up to me, but they don’t, they haven’t got brains enough.”

The major had brought a plate from the table, and was filling it from under the covers on the hearth. “Shall I ring for the tea?” he asked.

Mr. Edward moved across to the chimney corner and pulled the cord himself. “Do you know what that old ass, Barlow—the butler, you know—had the face to say to me yesterday? ‘I’—God, you couldn’t believe it! ‘I ’ope, sir,’ he says, ‘you’ll think better of shootin’ on the First, for His Grace’ll hear the guns in the covers, and it won’t do His Grace no good.’ Fancy the beggar’s cheek!”

“Well, do you know, Torr,” said Major Pirie, slowly, speaking with his mouth full but contriving to give a significantly nice emphasis to the name, “I was thinkin’ much the same myself. For that matter, several of the fellows were mentionin’ it. It doesn’t look quite the thing, you know.”

The entrance of the servant created an interval of silence, during which Mr. Edward in his turn rummaged among the dishes before the fire.

“It’s Gus, is it?” he demanded, from where he knelt on one knee, plate in hand.

“He thought it would be funny to queer my game, eh?”

“Your brother hasn’t said a word, so far’s I know,” replied the major, pouring his tea. “It was merely some of the fellows, talkin’.”

“God Almighty!” cried Mr. Edward, springing to his feet. “Here’s a precious outfit of pals for you! You come down here, so help me—”

“Don’t say ‘you’; say ‘they,’ if you’ve got to say anything,” interposed the major, quietly.

“Well, they, then,” the other went on, in loud heat. “They come down here, and take my mounts, by God; they drink my wine, they win my money, they drain me dry—and then they go behind my back and whisper to one another that I’m an outsider. And you too, Pirie,” he continued, with defiance and deprecation mingled in his tone, “you admit yourself that you talked with them.”

“My dear Torr,” replied the major, “it’s a mistake for you to turn out so early. You’ve tried to quarrel before breakfast every day I’ve been here. It’s the worst morning temper I ever heard of in my life. You ought to have tea and eggs and things brought to you in your room, and not show yourself for at least two hours afterward—you really ought. It isn’t fair to your friends.”

The door opened and still another tall man came in. He nodded to Pirie as he passed him, with a tolerant “Well, major,” and went straight to the dishes by the fire.

“Pirie’s got it into his head we oughtn’t to shoot to-day, Gus,” said Mr. Edward.

The other rose with a dish in his hands.

“It is dark,” he assented, glancing toward the window. “Afraid of pottin’ a beater, major?”

“No—it’s about the duke,” explained Edward. “It seems some of the fellows funk the thing—they think he’ll hear the guns—they want to go to church instead, or something of that sort.”

Augustine Torr, M.P., looked at his brother inquiringly. The tie of blood between them was obvious enough. They were both slender as well as tall; their small round heads merging indistinguishably behind into flat, broad necks, seemed identical in contour; they had the same light coarse hair, the same florid skins, even the same little yellow mustaches. The differences were harder to seek. Edward, though he had borne Her Majesty’s commission for some years, was not so well set up about the shoulders as his younger and civilian brother. Augustine, on the other hand, despite his confident carriage of himself, produced the effect of being Edward’s inferior in simple force of character. It was at once to his credit and his disparagement that he had the more amiable nature of the two.

“How do you mean—the duke?” he asked. “Is there a change?”

Edward put out his closed lips a little, and shook his head. Major Pirie sprinkled salt on his muffin while he explained.

“All there is of it is this,” he said. “There was just an idea that with the—with your grandfather—dyin’ in the house—it might look a little better to give the first the go-by. Nobody’d have a word to say against shootin’ to-morrow.”

“Well, but what the hell”—Augustine groped his way with hesitancy—“I don’t understand—we’ve been shootin’ partridges for a month, and how are pheasants any different? And as for the duke—why, of course one’s sorry and all that—but he’s been dyin’ since June, and the birds have some rights—or rather, I should say—what I mean is—”

“That’s what I said,” put in Edward, to cover the collapse of his brother’s argument.

Major Pirie frowned a little. “Partridges are another matter,” he said testily.

“Damned if I know what you’re driving at,” avowed Augustine. He paused with fork in air at his own words. “Drivin’ at,” he repeated painstakingly. “Drivin’ at pheasants, eh? Not bad, you know. Pass the mustard, Pirie.”

“God!” said the major, with gloom. “You know well enough what I mean. To work through fields miles off—that’s one thing. To shoot the covers here under the duke’s nose, with the beaters messin’ about—that’s quite another. However that’s your affair, not mine.”

“But don’t you see,” urged Augustine, “what difference does a day make? There’ll be just as much racket to-morrow as to-day. It isn’t reasonable, you know.”

“It was merely what you might call a sentiment,” said the major, in the half apologetic tone of a man admitting defeat. He looked the least sentimental of warriors as he went on with his breakfast—a longfaced, weather-beaten, dull-eyed man of the late forties.

Four other men who came in now at brief intervals, with few or no words of salutation to the company, and who lounged about helping themselves to what caught their fancy in the breakfast, were equally removed from the suspicion of adding a sentimental element to the atmosphere. They made little talk of any kind, and no mention whatever of that absurd qualm about the First which had been reported to have germinated among them.

Edward had reached the stage of filling his pipe. Walking to the mantel for a light, it occurred to him to ring the bell first. “Her ladyship breakfastin’ in her room?” he asked the youngster who answered the summons.

“Her ladyship’s woman has just gone up with it, sir,” he replied.

“That’s all right,” said Edward, and forthwith struck the match. “Send in Davis and Morton to me, and ask Barlow for those Brazilian cigars of mine—the small huntin’ ones. What wheels were those I heard on the gravel? If it’s the traps we shan’t want them to-day. We’re walkin’ across.”

“I will make inquiries, sir,” said the domestic, and went out.

The room had brightened perceptibly, and Captain Edward was in a better temper. He moved over to the sideboard and filled a pocket-flask from one of the decanters in the old-fashioned case. As an afterthought, he also filled a small glass, and gulped its contents neat. “We’re off in ten minutes now,” he called out to the men about the table, some of whom had already lit their pipes. “What do you fellows want to take with you? My tip is this rum.”

“Hardly cold enough for rum, is it?” asked one, drifting languidly toward the sideboard. Most of the others had risen to their feet.

A slender, sad-faced, gentlemanly-looking old man in evening clothes had entered the room, and stood now at Captain Edward’s elbow and touched it with his hand. “I—beg—your—pardon—sir,” he said, in the conventional phrase.

Edward, listening to what a companion was saying, turned absent-mindedly to the butler. Then he happened to remember something. “Damn you, Barlow, you get duller every day!” he snapped. “You know perfectly well what cigars I take out of doors!”

“I—beg—your—pardon—sir,” repeated the elderly person. He spoke in a confidential murmur. “I thought you would like to know, sir—Lord Julius has come.”

The young man looked at him, silently revolving the intelligence, a puzzled frown between his pale brows. A furtive something in the butler’s composed expression struck him. “What of it?” he demanded, angrily. “What are you whispering for? He’s old enough to take care of himself, isn’t he?”

The butler thrust out his dry underlip a trifle. “I thought you would like to know, sir,” he reiterated.

“Well, you’re wrong. I don’t like to know!” The man’s tone—an indefinable, lurking suggestiveness in his face and eyes and voice—vexed Mr. Edward exceedingly. It annoyed him still more to note that his companions had tacitly turned their backs, and were affecting great preoccupation in something else.

He kept a wrathful eye on Barlow, as the latter bowed, turned, moved to the door and opened it. Of course, a man musn’t slang servants, his irritated thought ran, but the covert impertinence in this old menial’s manner was something no longer to be borne. The impulse to call the elderly fool back and send him packing on the instant, tingled hotly in the young man’s blood. He even opened his lips to speak, but reflection checked his tongue. It would be bad form, for one thing; for another, perhaps he was not quite in the position to dismiss his grandfather’s servants. He would speak to Welldon, the estate steward, instead—a sensible and civil man, by the way, who seemed to know which side his bread was buttered on. At the merest hint from the heir, Welldon would give Barlow the sack, and that would teach the rest a lesson. But all this would keep until Lord Julius had gone. Being an aged duffer himself, he would probably side with Barlow—and there was no point in offending Lord Julius. Very much to the contrary, indeed.

Mr. Edward’s meditations, unwontedly facile in their movements for him, had reached this point, when his mind reverted to the fact that he was still regarding the back of Barlow, who, instead of going out, stood holding the door open, his lean figure poised in ceremonious expectancy. Even as the surprised Edward continued looking, the butler made a staid obeisance.

A stalwart, erect, burly old gentleman came in, and halted just over the threshold to look about him. He had the carriage, dress and general aspect of a prosperous and opinionated farmer. The suggestion of acres and crops was peculiarly marked in the broad, low soft hat on his head, and in the great white beard which spread fan-wise over his ample breast. He had the face of one who had spent a life in commanding others, and had learned meanwhile to master himself—a frank, high-featured, ruddy face, with a conspicuously prominent and well-curved nose, and steady, confident eyes. He folded his hands over his stick and, holding his head well back, glanced about the room at his ease. It was a glance from which the various eyes that it encountered somehow turned away.

“How-do, Eddy? How-do, Gus?” the newcomer said impassively to the two young men who, with palpable constraint, came up to greet him. He shook hands with each, but seemed more interested in viewing the company at large. His appearance had produced a visible effect of numbness upon the group of guests, but he seemed not to mind this.

“Quite a party!” he observed. His voice was full and robust, and not unamiable. “All military?”

Edward nodded. “All but Gus, here. Glad to introduce ’em, if you like,” he murmured, with a kind of sullen deference.

“Presently, presently,” said Lord Julius, with an effect of heartiness at which Edward lifted his head.

“Drive over from Clune this morning?” the young man asked. “Then you’ll want breakfast. Ring the bell, Gus. We’re just starting for the Mere copse. Glad to have you make an eighth gun, if you’ll come to us after you’ve eaten. You still shoot, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, I still shoot,” said the other.

Edward had a sense of embarrassment at his great-uncle’s immobility in the doorway. “Well, we’ll get along to the gun-room now,” he said to the others. Then to Lord Julius he remarked with an air of making conversation, “I always say to the fellows that I ask nothing better in this world than to be as fit as you are when I’m your age. Let’s see, seventy-six, isn’t it?”

The elder man nodded. “I’m sure that’s a modest enough ambition,” he observed. His steady gray eyes dallied with the young man’s countenance for a moment. “I’m relieved to learn that you want nothing more than that.”

Edward looked up swiftly, and braved an instant’s piercing scrutiny of the other’s face. Then he laughed, uneasily. “Oh, I want a few other things, too.”

Lord Julius lowered his voice. “I would put among your wants a trifling matter of good taste, Eddy,” he said, not unkindly.

Captain Edward flushed. “If I could see that it really made any difference between the First and the Second,” he answered with dogged civility, “I wouldn’t shoot until tomorrow. If you’re keen about it now, I’ll—”

“Oh, damn your First and Second,” broke in the old man, keeping his voice down below the hearing of the others, but letting impatience glow in his eyes; “you had no business bringing these men here at all. No—I see that you don’t understand me. You needn’t explain. It’s entirely a question of feeling.”

“I’m sorry you take that view of it, sir,” said Edward, gloomily. “You know that I’m willing enough to meet your views—if only—if only because I’m going to need your help.” Lord Julius gave a snort of contemptuous laughter, and nodded to himself with lifted brows. “Really something in the way of consideration is due to such frankness as that,” he said, with a pretense of reverie. “Send your friends out of the room, Eddy,” he went on, more gently—“make what excuse you like—or take them out and come back to me—that’s better. I did intend to have no secrets from them, but I’ve relented. And yes—by the way—instead of coming here—you’ll find me in the small morning room I will breakfast there. You’ve filled this room with smoke.”

“Would you—would you mind my bringing Gus?” Edward asked, doubtfully.

The other thought for an instant. “Oh, yes, Gus may come,” he said, and with that left the room.

“Rum old beggar, isn’t he?” said Augustine to the company, with the sense that something had to be said.

“Gad! he seemed to think he was in a synagogue!” laughed Captain Burlington. “Kept his hat on, you know,” he explained in the next breath to the surprised and attentive faces about him.

“But he isn’t a Jew,” said one of the others with gravity. “He married one, but that doesn’t make him one, you know.”

“It was a joke! Can’t you see a joke?” protested Burlington.

“Well, I don’t think much of it,” growled Edward, sourly. “Come along to the gunroom.”

“What’s up?” asked Mr. Augustine, in an anxious murmur, a few minutes later, as the two brothers walked along the wide central hallway toward the appointed place.

“Can’t think for the life of me,” replied Edward. “Unless Craven babbled about the baccarat when he got up to town. He’s rather that sort, you know. He kicked about the stakes at the time.”

“Yes—after he’d been hit,” said Augustine. “But if it’s only that, you’ll be an ass to let the old man rot you about it. Just stand up to him, and let him see you feel your position.”

“That’s all right,” rejoined Edward, dubiously, “but what’s the position without money? If anybody could have foreseen what was going to happen—damn it all, I could have married as much as I needed. But as it is, I’ve got Cora on my back, and the kid, and—my God! fancy doing the duke on four thou, a year net! Welldon tells me it can’t be screwed a bit above that. Well, then, how can I afford to cheek Julius? When you come to that he isn’t half a bad sort, you know. He stood my marriage awfully well. Gad, you know, we couldn’t have lived if he hadn’t drawn a check.”

“Let us hope he’ll draw another,” said Augustine. “It’s bad enough to be a pauper duke, but it’s a bailey sight worse to be his brother.”

“What rot!” said Edward. “My kid’s a girl, and you’re free to marry.”

They had come to the door of the morning room. It stood ajar, and Edward pushed it open. Before the fireplace was visible the expected bulk and vast beard of Lord Julius, but the eyes of the brothers intuitively wandered to the window beyond, against which was outlined the figure of a much smaller man.

“Secretary,” whispered the quicker-minded Augustine out of the corner of his mouth as they advanced. The thought brought them a tempered kind of comfort. The same instinct which had prompted Edward to crave his brother’s support led them both to welcome the presence of a fourth party.

They looked again toward the stranger, and Lord Julius, as he caught their returning glance, smiled and nodded significantly. “Come here, Christian!” he said, and the brothers saw now that it was a slender young man with a dark, fine face and foreign-looking eyes who moved toward them.

Lord Julius put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Christian,” he said, and gave his full voice a new note of gravity, “these are your two cousins, Mr. Edward Torr, a captain in the Hussars until recently, and Mr. Augustine Torr, a member of Parliament. Your coming will make some difference in their affairs, but I know that you will be good to them.”

The brothers had shaken hands with the new-comer automatically, while their minds were in the first stage of wonderment as to what the words being spoken about him meant. Now that silence fell, they stared slowly at him, at their great-uncle, at each other.

“How—cousin?” Edward managed to ask. He spoke as if his tongue filled his mouth.

“The son of your uncle, Lord Ambrose Torr,” the old man made quiet, carefully distinct answer.

Another period of silence ensued, until Christian turned abruptly. “It is very painful to me,” he said hurriedly to the old man, and walked to the window.

“It is painful to everybody,” said Lord Julius.

“Not so damned particularly painful to you, sir, I should say,” put in Edward, looking his great-uncle in the face. The young man had slowly pulled himself together, and one could see the muscles of his neck being stiffened to keep his chin well in the air. His blue eyes had the effect of summoning all their resources of pride to gaze with dignity into the muzzle of a machine-gun.

Augustine was less secure in the control of his nerves. He stood a little behind his brother, and the elbow which he braced against him for support trembled. His eyes wandered about the room, and he moistened his lips with his tongue several times before he contrived to whisper something into Edward’s ear. The latter received the suggestion, whatever it was, with an impatient shake of the head.

“You scarcely do me justice,” said Lord Julius, quietly, “but that’s not worth mentioning at the moment. I must say you are taking it very well—much better than I expected.”

Edward squared his shoulders still more. “I wouldn’t say that we’re takin’ it at all,” he replied, with studied deliberation. “You offer it, d’ye see—but it doesn’t follow that we take it. You come and bring this young fellow—this young gentleman, and you tell me that he is Ambrose’s son. What good is that to me? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Ambrose may have had twenty sons, for all I know. I should be sorry to be one of them—but they’re not to blame for that. I don’t mind being civil to them—if they come to me in the right spirit—” He stopped abruptly, and listened with a frown to more whispering from Augustine.

“You don’t seem to understand, Eddy—” began Lord Julius.

“Oh, perfectly!” broke in the young man. “I had an uncle who had to leave England before I was born. His name couldn’t even be mentioned in the family—but I know all about him. God knows I’ve had him flung in my face often enough.”

“Don’t let us go into that,” urged Lord Julius, softly, and with a sidelong nod toward the window. “It’s needless cruelty to other people—and surely we can discuss this like gentlemen. You are really behaving splendidly, Eddy.”

“God! he thought we were cads!” cried Edward, in husky indignation.

“No—no—no—no,” murmured the older man, soothingly. “I only want you to grasp the thing as it is. You know me. You do not regard me as a foolish person who goes off half-cock. Well, I tell you that Christian here is the son of my nephew Ambrose, born in lawful wedlock, and that there is not a shadow of doubt about it. The proofs are all open to your inspection; there is not a flaw in them. And so I say to you, in all kindness—take it calmly and sensibly and like a gentleman. It is to your own interest to do so, as well. If you think, you will see that.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” said Augustine, strenuously, from behind his brother’s shoulder.

A faint smile fluttered about the old man’s eyelids. “It was the advice of a born statesman,” he said, dryly. “You are the political hope of the family.”

The stiffening had melted from Edward’s neck and shoulders. He turned irresolutely now, and looked at the floor. “Of course I admit nothing; I reserve all my rights, till my lawyers have satisfied themselves,” he said in a worn, depressed mutter.

“Why, naturally,” responded Lord Julius, with relieved cordiality. “And now please me—do it all handsomely to the end—come and shake hands again with Christian, both of you.”

The brothers stood for a hesitating instant, then turned toward the window and began a movement of reluctant assent.

To the surprise of all three, Christian forestalled their approach by wrenching open one half of the tall window, and putting a foot over the sill to the lawn outside.

“If you will excuse me,” he said, in his nervous, high voice, “I am taking a little walk.”