Читать книгу In a Yün-nan Courtyard - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 15

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The weeks that followed were scarifying to them both.

Neither would yield. Neither could yield.

Brent kept his temper to the end. He always was glad to remember that he had.

Sir Raymond kept his temper for a long time. Desperation kept him suave. He was playing for great stakes—heart-stakes. What his fiercely enforced self-control cost him not even his own soul knew. But Brent and old Topham knew that the cost and the strain were terrible.

Sir Raymond argued courteously. Then he pleaded. And twice Brent broke down, wavered, almost promised. There had been long years of unbroken fealty between them—all of his lifetime—and he knew that he was his grandfather’s all: he and family and the long, unbroken, untarnished military record of their race.

Twice the boy almost promised.

But music called him.

Sir Raymond’s patience cracked, then broke into angry fragments. And he said terrible things, threatened outrageous ones. But his grandson did not love him the less for that, because he knew that it was the old General’s pain and dismay that insulted and cursed and threatened.

Humiliated almost beyond endurance at having to own even to himself, still more at having to own it to others, that a situation had arisen between him and his grandson that he could not handle unaided, Sir Raymond sent for his solicitor, a proved friend and adviser to whom Brent was strongly attached; and when that failed, the troubled old soldier called a family conclave, even sent for Lady Sarah—his enemy, he knew, as he was hers. There was no devil in all Satan’s wide kingdom whom Raymond Gayford would not have called and supplicated now.

Mr. Williams sympathised strongly with General Gayford; it seemed most regrettable to him that young Gayford should discard the honourable ancestral profession of arms (and certain preferment of several sorts) for the precarious and much less creditable—at least in England—life of a professional musician. But he had lived too long, and had known human creatures too well, not to know how determined youth can be. And he always had known that under this boy’s bright velvet smile there was hard granite of character, that came straight enough both from the Gayfords and from the Brents. Nor did he consider musicians—those of them that succeeded—quite as the pariahs that the angered and narrow General did. Two of Williams, Vibart and Orme’s long-standing clients were musicians. Both were personæ gratæ and more than that in very high circles. One was exceedingly rich.

But Williams undertook to do his best. He did it loyally and deftly. He failed. And after a long friendly talk with Brent as they wandered about the country lanes he told Sir Raymond that he was convinced that Brent would follow his bent, and even went so far as to advise his client to yield.

General Gayford would be damned if he did.

“You can coerce him until he is of age. When he is, there is nothing you can do. We are helpless then. And in the meantime you cannot make him apply for a commission, you cannot force him to accept one. Another thing; being over fourteen, he can, if he choose, ask the court to accord him another guardian.”

“Rubbish!”

“But the law. A remote contingency, I admit. But a possible contingency.”

“He wouldn’t do that. And if he did try it, he’d fail.”

“Not for a moment do I think he would make the attempt. Probably he does not know that he could. If he does know it, I cannot believe that there is even a remote probability that it would occur to him to use such a weapon against you. But the possibility exists. And we lawyers know how often—especially in such cases as this—the remotest possibility becomes the established fact. As to his not succeeding; I think he might. No court, I believe, would compel him to be a soldier against his will. And, if the court did, what would his position be among his fellow cadets at Sandhurst, among his brother officers later?”

The General groaned. Williams had drawn blood.

“Unless we can persuade him, I think, Sir Raymond, that we must yield.”

The General spluttered an ugly oath.

“Every possible line of persuasion must be exhausted first,” the solicitor said conciliatingly.

It was then that the family was summoned—both families—and a round dozen of them came.

Much as he disliked her, Lady Sarah was Sir Raymond’s best hope. If she stood with him fair and square, went with him all the way, he believed that they together could persuade Brent yet, or—failing that—starve him out. It would be gallingly bitter to own success to partnership with Sarah Brent. But it had to be swallowed. Any port in such a desperate storm.

Lady Sarah would stand with him, of course. She would see it as he did. The woman was a cat—a sour one—but she had sense, race, and family pride. She was a Brent.

They came from four different counties at General Sir Raymond Gayford’s call. Lady Sarah saw it as he did—its undesirability, its damage to family prestige. They all did.

But, too, it tickled her sense of humour. Her sharp eyes twinkled as she talked it over with the would-be violinist, and once she laughed outright.

They were fond of each other, the sunny boy and the acidulated old woman. Next to his grandfather Brent Gayford had grown almost fonder of his great-aunt Sarah than he was of anyone else in the world except Dick. She said nothing about it, it was highly improbable that she ever would, but Lady Sarah loved Brent almost as fiercely as his grandfather did; loved him as she had loved his mother; two of the only three loves of her sixty odd years. When in so much more than half a century a woman loves but three, she can, and usually she does, concentrate a great deal of feeling in those three affections. Many people deemed Lady Sarah Brent cold, because she was hard and tart. “White-hot” would have been a shrewder estimate. She wore no heart on her sleeve. She disliked most people—Raymond Gayford more than all others. But the love she gave was great love. And with every fibre of her being she was loyal.

The General knew that his boy was the one living creature that “got on” measurably with Lady Sarah. Well, who didn’t the rascal get on with, bless him! Everyone fell for Brent. More than that, the old General would not own even to himself. He did not suspect half how much the two cared for each other, and he would not own to a quarter of what he did suspect.

It was not from her affection for Brent, still less from any affection of Brent’s for her, that Sir Raymond hoped much; it was from the woman’s purse-strings; the big heavy purse that she and only she could open wide or shut tight.

Brent’s mother had been an heiress. His maternal grandfather’s fortune would be Brent’s when Brent was twenty-one. Until he was Lady Sarah Brent was its sole trustee, as she had been of his mother’s income. She never had advanced the boy a farthing, though she had given him more than once a pound of her own. Sir Raymond had been selfish about their boy, rarely would let Brent visit her, or be alone with her for an hour when, lured there by love of the boy and longing to see him, she had invited herself to visit the Priory or Sloane Street, and had arrived without giving the General time to put her off; let the General support him then. Sir Raymond had asked nothing better. His means were more than ample. He would have liked it better if Brent had had no other inheritance than the generous fortune he himself should leave him, and share with him while he lived.

Not a penny of his should any Gayford have who disgraced his birth and breeding by turning organ-grinder or fiddler. That was fixed. Unfortunately Brent could claim his mother’s fortune, capital and all, the day he was twenty-one. There’d be no way of getting around that, Williams had assured him. But that was nearly three years off yet. A lot could be done in three years. If only Sarah Brent played the game. But, of course, she would. Between them they’d starve the boy out. The General tried to believe that he believed that. He did not know his boy’s grit. It never had been greatly tested. But deep in his stubborn old heart he suspected its quality. Brent was a Gayford.

He wondered how much money the boy had by him, if any, and cursed himself that he had allowanced him so lavishly. He knew that often Brent was well in funds on quarter-day. Lord—he hoped it wasn’t that way now. Pshaw! a hundred or so would not last the beggar long.

But couldn’t he borrow? The boy had hosts of friends.

The Jews! Damn! He hadn’t thought of them. They could not lend to minors, of course; but they did. Would Brent go to them? He thought not. It wouldn’t be like the boy. And yet——

He watched them with a wry face when through the smoking-room window he saw Lady Sarah and Brent stroll off together between the lime-trees. It galled him that he must owe victory—if victory he got—to Sarah Brent. However!

Two hour’s later he saw them come back. The man’s heart leapt. The woman’s face was softer than ever before he’d seen it. Brent’s arm lay about her thin shoulder. She had won!