Читать книгу The Way Beyond - John Jeffery Farnol - Страница 18

My lord Iford was, as usual at this hour, slightly drunk and showed it; my lord the Earl, his sire, was exceeding drunk yet showed it never a whit, except in his eyes, of course; and they sat alone, facing each other across the wine.

"No?" enquired son, eyeing sire with expression anything but filial. "No, is it, sir?"

"Emphatically!" nodded the Earl, ogling the wine in his glass. "Not a shilling, my dear boy, not a penny! No! For money, alas, like all other delightful things, is but very transient, ephemeral, like the glory of a rainbow—seen but to vanish!"

"And you ... you ha' seen a great deal vanish, eh, sir?"

"True, Iford ... I had the kingly art of spending with a magnificence, or—shall we say, was cursed with the virtue of a noble prodigality, a stupendous generosity, a quite boundless hospitality. B'gad, I rained benefits like a Jove, wherever I went, on friend and foe alike I showered my fortune."

"And, sir—my mother's also!"

"Ah, ya sainted mother!" sighed the Earl, though his heavy mouth curled and in his narrow eyes leered an imp of such malignancy that his son, watching expectant for this, grew pale while the hand, hidden beneath the table, became a quivering fist. "Ya poor, dear mother——"

"By your leave we ... we'll not discuss her."

"Then, my boy, why remind me of her loss? She died so long ago."

"And in a damnable loneliness, sir!"

"The poor soul! To be sure, I was abroad——"

"Yes, sir, you generally were. But I was with her ... a little lad ... she looked very small in her great bed, but smaller in her coffin. You were not home to see her buried."

"Alas, no."

"No!" said Lord Iford, and reaching the decanter from beside his sire's elbow, refilled his glass. "She was not beautiful——"

"Oh, my boy! My dear boy do remember she was ya mother."

"I do, sir. I remember also that, although such a great heiress, she was very meek and gentle."

"My dear Iford she was ... well, herself,—a truly admirable creature in very many respects, but——"

"Too humble, sir."

"Humility in a woman, or at least in a wife, is altogether excellent, my boy ... lauded in Holy Writ, I believe ... it says there, I think, that such wife is more precious than rubies. Ya mother, I'm happy to affirm was, in this respect, more precious than diamonds or even pearls. A saintly soul, Iford!"

"And, while alive, very much out of place, sir,—quite, quite lost, poor saint!" murmured Lord Iford fiddling with his wine glass yet very conscious of the eyes that watched him. "'Oh death, where is thy sting?' This is also in Holy Writ, I believe, sir."

"Ah, yes, dear boy," sighed the Earl at last. "Death may have its compensation for had your mother been spared to this year o' Grace would she ha' seen in you, her petted offspring, the realization of her ideals, would she ha' been proud of ya? Perhaps. And yet I almost doubt it, my poor boy, I do indeed. And why? Because she, being small and meek, admired men that were men, tall men, strong and masterful, and you are neither one nor the other, my dear Iford, b'gad you don't resemble me in the slightest, now do ya?"

"No," answered my lord, smiling down at his half-empty wine glass. "No, not in the faintest, very remotest degree, sir."

"Which becomes more painfully obvious every day, my boy."

"Indeed, sir?"

"You have never succeeded in anything as yet and——"

"Probably because I have never troubled to, well—to try, sir."

"Oh, but yes, my boy, yes. You have been trying this month and more ay, and trying devilish hard."

"Really, sir?"

"Ay, really, Iford! To win your two arms full o' this warm, tender loveliness, this shy-sweet Innocency shaped like a passionate Venus, and ... failed, ha?"

"If by such fulsome description you mean Miss Ford——"

"Who else, lad? Here's you been ogling, sighing and dying for her all these weeks and won of her not so much as a kiss, I'll wager." Here Lord Iford raised his golden head to survey the speaker with his mild-seeming, blue eyes; but once again that hidden hand clenched itself.

"And yet, sir," said my lord gently, "despite your somewhat torrid adjectives I find her somewhat cold."

The Earl chuckled and laughed until his eyes vanished.

"Cold?" he exclaimed. "With that voluptuous shape, those deep, tell-tale eyes,—cold? Ya poor simpleton, she's Joy incarnate! Had she lived in my day, we'd ha' made her renowned ... famous."

"Sir, I think you must mean infamous. Also you appear to quite misapprehend the matter, for I am wooing this lady——"

"Wooing, d'ya say? Good God! D'ya call it wooing to sit as ya did at table to-night, dumb as a confounded oyster,—hey? D'ya call it wooing to permit her to remain so hoity-toitly aloof—hey? D'ya call——" The Earl paused in no little surprise to perceive that his son was laughing at him, laughter very gentle but so bitterly contemptuous that the Earl shot forward his large chin and squared his great shoulders in that threatening manner that had carried such dire terrors, once upon a time, into two frightened hearts; once upon a time, for now Lord Iford merely laughed, and so eloquently that the Earl, sitting back in his large chair, blinked, chuckled and laughed also.

"What then," he enquired; "do I guess wrong then—hey? D'ya mean the sweet, sly minx plays mock-modest in public to be kind in private,—hey, lad, hey? Has she found ya bold enough at last?"

"Not exactly, sir. You see,—to-night, just before we sat to table I'd been imploring her to marry me."

"Eh—marriage?" The Earl actually gasped, slopping wine in his stark amazement. "Marriage!" he repeated, and now to amazement scorn was added.

"'Imploring' says you! And a governess! Are ya mad? Ha, confound and curse me but we managed our women better in my day."

"Probably!" smiled his son. "But then, of course, sir, your women would be, well—different."

"Hold ya drunken tongue, sir!" cried the Earl, stung to show of fury at last. "Ha, you're a damnable reminder of ya mother!"

"My lord, noble sire, you honour me!"

"Bait ya hook wi' marriage, hey? You would! But I tell ya woman is always woman and always to be won—by a proper man! And we managed 'em better in my day because we were men, sir—men, d'ya hear?"

"I know, sir," sneered his son, "hard-riding, hard-drinking, hard fighting—and all the rest of it. Thank my stars I live to-day!"

"Live?" cried the Earl, and laughed. "Live, hey? Why damme, ya hardly exist."

"However, sir, my existence will soon be shared by—a wife."

"Ha, she accepted ya then, the sly jade jumped at ya title, of course."

"You err again, sir. She refused me."

"Did she so? Then begad, it is young Vibart, aha! Oh, I happen to know she'll marry Vibart's son."

"No, sir, she merely—thinks she will."

"Iford, what the devil do ya mean?"

"Simply that I have determined, and arranged, to make her Lady Iford." The Earl took up the heavy, cut-glass decanter much as if he would have launched it at his son's curly, golden head, but he proceeded to fill his glass, though the eyes in the large comeliness of his face seemed more malevolent than ever.

"And what then," he demanded, "what o' ya engagement to Cynthia Bellenden? Need I remind ya that a wealthy marriage becomes more imperative?"

"Then, sir, I fear you must think out some other scheme. Yourself, for instance, being so tall and very male, might woo another——"

"Iford, are ya mad, a fool, or merely drunk?"

"Either or all, sir, for I shall certainly marry for love and to please only myself." At this, the Earl being viciously enraged, chuckled throatily and fell back upon that retort which, as he well knew, could stir this coldly contemptuous son of his as nothing else might.

"My poor Iford," sighed he, "you become more and ever more like your puling, futile, peak-faced mother!"

But this time it seemed the taunt would prove ineffectual, for Lord Iford sat mute, staring down at the wine glass he was turning and turning in slender fingers; at last, slowly, and with eyes still abased, he arose and lolling against the table, spoke in voice almost whispering:

"My mother! My poor, small, ill-used mother who died so much before her time! Sir, you have mentioned her to-night with a strange frequency,—but not one look of kindness, not one word of remorse for the misery you caused her. Well now, as this dead mother's son sat here listening to your coarse, brutish sneers he could very joyfully have struck you dead. And, before God, he may yet! Who knows? For, sir, remembering that little, heartbroken mother of mine, I should be quite charmed to see your noble lordship very completely a corpse."

And now, leaning across the table, he stared down at his sire and though his voice had been quite pleasantly modulated, though his pale lips smiled, his wide, blue eyes, mild no longer, glared such look that the Earl shrank appalled, his wine glass fell and shattered on the floor all unheeded, and when at last he found voice it was neither full-throated nor hearty:

"Iford ... you ... you ... by God ... you're—drunk!"

"Right, sir, I am.... And yet sober enough to hope that great carcass of yours may soon grow ... corrupt as your soul. In which fervent hope, right noble lord and father,—I will to bed." And turning upon his heels, Lord Iford, very deliberately though with an occasional stagger, crossed the wide floor to the door and was gone.