XXIX THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS AGAIN

It is possible that Ordham would have delayed paying his respects to his brother from week to week, had not a flattering paragraph in one of the newspapers brought upon him the immediate attentions of his creditors. He ground his teeth, flung their reminders into a drawer of the desk in his bedroom, ordered a telegram sent to Lord Bridgminster and his boxes packed, and started for the north next morning.

Of course he reserved a first-class carriage for the all-day journey. He would have patronized a train de luxe had there been one, or a motor, had the more brilliant extravagance come into being. To spend less to-day that he might have more to-morrow was a principle that only a long period of dire privation could have etched into his creed, and, no doubt, he would have managed to be a luxurious pauper.

During the journey his uneasy apprehensions were varied with remorseful memories of three old servants that had adored and spoilt him since he had come into the world, and to whom he had not given a thought during the past four years. These were the housekeeper, Mrs. Felt, Biscom, the butler, and Cobbs, the coachman. The sure instincts of childhood had driven him to take his little woes, not to his mother’s sterile bosom, but to the warm and pillowed surfaces of the personage who had inherited certain of the honours of Ordham, even as Lord Bridgminster had inherited his. Biscom, sovereign of the pantries, had permitted him to make himself ill as often as he desired, and Cobbs had taught him how to ride and had now his dogs in charge. Then there was Craven, the old gardener—he turned hot and cold at the thought that he had not brought a present to one of them!

Cobbs, in a rusty livery, awaited him at the little moorland station, and Ordham made up in the warmth of his greeting for the lack of a more substantial proof of his affections. There was no footman with the wagonette, and while Hines was attending to his boxes, he asked Cobbs if all the old servants were alive and at the castle. He was not surprised to learn that the immense staff kept during his father’s lifetime had been reduced to ten, including those within and without. But at least he should see the older faces, and the prospect cheered him somewhat as he drove through the purple dusk of the moors. For a wave of homesickness had swamped his spirits, then regret, anger, astonishment. For twenty years this beautiful moorland had practically been his, no doubt would come to him in time; but now, now, in the day of his youth, when he most wanted lands and riches and power (it is, until decay sets in, always the immediate time that seems the one desirable period for the great gifts of life), he came as a suppliant to the brother he detested, a man who was even too mean to live as became his position, and who, no doubt, would barely extend to him a welcome. It was a wonder he had sent the wagonette. Ordham had fully expected to go on to the next town and make the rest of the journey in a fly.

Cobbs volunteered the information that the shooting was uncommonly good this year, but Ordham felt no interest in the subject until it occurred to him that if he wished to accomplish the purpose of his journey he must take pains to propitiate Bridgminster in every way. At this detestable thought his haughty crest went up at least two inches. But he had wise moments, as we have seen, and it was seldom he was not capable of cool rational thought. He reflected presently that, after all, he was very young and that it was not only a close relative to whom he had come to ask a good bit of money, but the head of his house, to whom he stood next in succession. Bridgminster should have been a father to his brood of younger brothers, and it was incredible that he did not accept his obligations. It was time he did, and Ordham felt himself in a temper to bring him to his senses.

But as the carriage approached the high fell upon whose broad table-land the castle stood, he felt more keenly still the freak of fortune which had deprived him of his inheritance. That cold, splendid, formal mass of white and sculptured stone, a palace of the Italian Renaissance rather than an English castle, built by Inigo Jones in 1622-26, and raised above the lofty fell again by a triple terrace, surrounded by Italian gardens, and over-looking thousands of acres of moorland, woods and farms, and a hundred little stone villages, was one of the show places of the north, and it was wasted on a boor whose favourite literature was The Pink ‘Un, and who would not even permit others to enjoy what he could not appreciate. There had not been a house party at Ordham since his father’s death, and, no doubt, the lovely gardens were a wilderness, the superb rooms rat-eaten. To-night there was not a point of light in the vast fa?ade. Ordham lowered his eyelids until they covered the unpleasant glitter of his eyes, and drew his lips against his teeth. Hines, covertly watching him, wondered if he were in pain.

The carriage drove through the unlighted tunnel into the courtyard. The old butler, the gardener, and a footman stood at the foot of the grand staircase, and as Ordham, banishing his gloomy thoughts, descended and shook hands with them, asking intimate personal questions of each, the mask of dignified servitude fell from their faces, and they gazed, smiling and tearful, upon the young man who had lorded it over and bewitched them for twenty years. Ordham almost laughed outright as he realized how they yearned to say, “My lord.” He wished to God they could. There was no affected philosophy about Ordham. He longed as ardently to be a peer of the realm as he did for the income of the estates. But after he had convinced them that they had barely left his thoughts during the years of his exile, he added wistfully that he was glad to see the old place again and wished that death might have spared his father. Ordham was always adored by servants. With neither familiarity nor condescension, always kind (save to Hines, who sometimes got the benefit of his tempers), with a smile of peculiar sweetness and an impenetrable reserve, a careless acceptance of devotion, yet with a tacit admission of a minion’s claim to call himself a man, generous, yet never so lavish as to suggest that perhaps his was not the divine right to be waited on hand and foot,—he fulfilled the ideal of the great lord to the most exacting class of mortals in the world. And these old men had all the retainer’s pride in his uncommonly fine manners, in which there was still nothing old-fashioned, in his aristocratic if not strictly handsome face, in the languid but dignified carriage of his well-knit figure.

He followed the footman up the wide marble staircase to his old suite, immense rooms, with lofty frescoed ceilings, and still sparsely furnished with the mahogany pieces he had carved when a boy. He felt a thousand years old and sick at heart. When he saw Felt standing there to greet him, he nearly fell into her great bosom, but contented himself with taking her hand in both his own and shaking it for a full minute. She told him (tearfully) that he had grown and improved, and he bade her invite him for tea in her sitting room on the following day, adding bitterly that he should feel at home nowhere else.

“I suppose there is no company in the house?” he asked, with intention.

“Oh, no, sir. His lordship never entertains. Come four years now we have never had a visitor save her ladyship, and she found it so dull she could never stay long. The first year there was a hunt breakfast, but it was stiff and sad, Mr. Biscom said, and now the county gentlemen don’t even call at the castle. It’s not like the old days, Mr. John.”

“What on earth does he do with himself?” He could surrender something of his reserve to this old woman who had given him many a shaking, and he was anxious to know more of the brother of whom he had seen so little.

Mrs. Felt shook her head. “He mopes terrible, sir. You wouldn’t think it of a man who loves a gun and a horse as he does—but those long evenings all alone! He don’t seem one to read—not like you, Mr. John. He’s changed a good bit, even since he come—and the last six months or so, before the shooting began—” She paused significantly.

“Does he drink?” No one can be as blunt as a diplomatist.

“There’d be no hiding it from you, sir. You’d see it in a minute for yourself. We’ve known he was getting more comfort out of drink these two years past, and, as I said, these last few months—well, you can’t burn bottles, and his man, for all his solemn pretending that his lordship is perfection, don’t take the trouble to bury them, neither. We all have our suspicions that Mr. Flint drinks with his lordship.”

“What?”

“No wonder it turns your stomach, sir. It do ours. The Ordhams, begging your pardon, have never been like that. There’s been wild ones, and most of them could drink themselves under the table, I’ve heard from my father and grandfather; but never one that lived familiar with his man and had naught to do with gentlemen. If his mother hadn’t been such a young thing when she died, and straight from the schoolroom, we’d have our suspicions.”

Ordham laughed shortly. “The King of Bavaria, whose royal blood is a thousand years old, consorts wholly with his lackeys. He has a rotten spot in his brain, and so, no doubt, has my brother. What else can be expected of a recluse that never opens a book? He can’t shoot and hunt the year round.”

Hines entered and Mrs. Felt departed. When Ordham had finished dressing, half an hour later, the footman knocked, and informing him that all the rooms on this floor, with the exception of his own and his lordship’s suites, the dining room, and a small room adjoining, were closed, escorted him down the long familiar corridors to the sanctum of his brother. It was a square room, whose old frescoes had been whitewashed, and furnished with several leather chairs, a couch, a desk, and a table, the last littered with racing calendars and sporting magazines. It was empty and Ordham sniffed in disgust; it was the sort of room he hated—utterly, baldly, savagely masculine. He had supposed that at least he could console himself in the beautiful rooms devoted to entertaining, and now felt that even the old boudoir of his paternal grandmother, done up in “tapestries” worked with her own hands, and replete with Victorian horrors, would have made him gratefully sentimental. Again his spirits took a downward plunge. He felt nauseated. And through what avenue could he approach the man? He was even more demoralized than he had counted upon.

There was a shuffling step on the hard floor of the passage that led in from the corridor, and Lord Bridgminster entered. He was a big man who, once strong and athletic, was now merely heavy. His face was large and red, his eyes small and dull. He wore a full beard and mustache, which made him look older than he was and hid but little of the scar that disfigured the right side of his face. Nor did it lend him any of the dignity of his younger brother, and he carried his shoulders loosely and moved his hands incessantly. In his youth he had been handsome, with well-cut features and the fresh colouring of his race, but not a vestige of either youth or beauty remained.

“How d’y do?” he said politely enough, extending a limp hand. “I’m a bit off my feed, but you look fit—why shouldn’t you? Wish I were twenty-four.”

They walked into the dining room together, and Ordham, whose languid eyes missed little, noted a flicker pass between Biscom and Thomas. It said as plainly as speech, “O lud, what a contrast!” Involuntarily he drew himself up, and at the same time resented that any brother of his should be scorned by the very servants as unworthy of the great position to which he had been born. It was almost as if a changeling had been slipped into the family cradle, and yet he knew that there were many like him, for the race is always reverting to its primitive types.

The dinner, served at a small table by an open window, consisted of the heavy joints and vegetables that Ordham detested; but it surprised him that his brother, whom he remembered as a man of mighty appetite, barely picked at it. Nor would he talk. The amenities—as he understood them—over, he responded with but an occasional grunt to the guest’s attempts at conversation, and finally the silence became so oppressive that Ordham lost what little appetite the sight and odours of the repast had left him. When the pudding appeared, hopeful of starting a congenial topic, he asked Bridgminster why he did not go up to London and consult a doctor.

“There are doctors in every town in Yorkshire,” growled his lordship. “Why should I go to London? Haven’t seen it for eighteen years. Should lose my way.”

“There are cabs,” suggested his brother, delicately. “Or I should be happy to guide you. If you have lost your appetite, there must be something serious the matter.”

“Not at all!” Bridgminster raised his voice shrilly. “There’s nothing the matter worth mentioning. Can’t a man be a bit off his feed without taking a day’s journey to pay two guineas to some damned swindler?”

“One can be seriously upset without being threatened with extinction; and when doctors were invented to keep one fit, why be uncomfortable?”

“I thought you wanted a week’s shooting. Wasn’t that what you said in that letter you honoured me with after you passed those examinations?”

Ordham blushed at this sarcastic reference to the only excuse he had been able to think of when inviting himself to the castle of his fathers. But it must be made to serve. He answered suavely: “One gets so little of that sort of thing on the Continent. Do you go out every day?”

“Certainly. Am I really to have the pleasure of your company on the moors from morning till night?”

“Well—a good part of the day. Remember that I am a bit out of practice, and not as hard as you are.”

“I’m no longer hard, but I go out and potter about. It is a damned sight better than sitting in the house. And I loved it once! God! how I loved it.”

Ordham glanced at him with a fleeting pity. The creature was mournfully without resources. No wonder he drank during the long dark winters of the north. This might be the auspicious moment for the opening of his campaign; he asked abruptly: “Why don’t you have some of the boys to stop with you if you don’t like outsiders—”

“They are outsiders so far as I am concerned. I want no one. That’s all I have to say on the subject.”

Ordham relapsed into silence. After dinner he smoked on the upper terrace, Lord Bridgminster in his study. They did not meet again even to part for the night.

But they met at breakfast and went together to the covers. It was a long, hot, silent, fatiguing, hideous day. And on the morrow followed its duplicate, and again on the morrow. The bags were small. Bridgminster’s hand was unsteady, and Ordham more and more indifferent as to whether he hit a bird or a bush. (The beater kept out of the way.) Each dinner was a repetition of the first, a cold and tasteless luncheon was served on the moor, and he had to appear at the early breakfast. On the third night he went to bed feeling like a weary soldier on the battle-field, a cow-boy, a day labourer. They were the three most detestable days of his life; even that period of apprehension induced by the vagaries of Frau von Wass was as nothing to this unremitting physical discomfort in the society of a boor that never opened his mouth.

On the morning of the fourth day he deliberately remained in bed until noon, sending his brother word that his wrist was lame. The afternoon he idled about the park, almost happy in visiting every nook associated with his boyhood, and lay for an hour on the edge of the pool in the sunken garden surrounded by its silent rigid pointed trees, reflected like the spires of a submerged city. He had made a bare dash through Italy, and determined to visit it during the autumn with Margarethe Styr. Later he descended into the village at the base of the fell and renewed many old friendships, and promised to take a hand at cricket on the green on the following Saturday. But the cordial welcome he received from these simple folk, who had always regarded themselves as his future tenants, and their ill-concealed dislike of the man who never gave them a nod in passing, revived his despondency and futile annoyance with fate.

He learned upon his return to the castle that his brother had not gone out that day, and when he appeared in the dining room it was apparent that he had been drinking. He made no response to Ordham’s greeting and sat through the dinner speechless, his face purple, his breath hot and fevered, barely touching his food. But when the servants had left for the last time, he opened his mouth and spoke:

“Should you be willing to break the entail of this property?”

Ordham, by this time in a state of boiling wrath, disgust, and gloom, which made him wholly reckless, shot a look of contempt at the noble lord at the head of the table and replied curtly, “Of course not.”

“Then you are a fool. A new millionnaire would pay a cool half million for it.”

“What do you want of more money? You do not spend nine-tenths of what you have.”

“The mills are on their last legs. Money is money. What is the use of a silly ark like this? I have done with it in any case. I’m going back to my box in Scotland—lived too long in a house. This Italian thing should be turned into a barrack or a sanatorium. What rot, what insensate pride, to build a palace too big for the biggest family ever born! I believe it is haunted anyhow. I hate it—and my own shootings are better.”

“You might lend it to my mother and the boys, with the necessary income to keep it up.”

Bridgminster merely laughed at this practical suggestion. His laugh was still well-bred, almost silent, but his loose cheeks shook, his eyes watered. “As if she did not spend enough as it is. I have no desire to die a pauper.”

“You seem to forget that you could not. Do you mind telling me who or what you are saving for? You have no boys to educate, as my father had—unless you contemplate marrying.”

“Marrying!” He hurled out the word with a coarse violence, which, however, failed to disgust his next of kin. “I read somewhere that in America they use Chinamen as house servants. I have a mind to turn out Felt and the rest of them and put in the pig-tails. I’d never see a woman if I could help it.” And then he indulged in observations not to be repeated.

“You are fortunate in being able to indulge your antipathies. There is nothing for me but to marry some woman with money, and this I must do in short order whether I like her or not.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you like her or not; you’d hate her before long.” Hopefully: “She might buy this place.”

“You forget that I have gone in for diplomacy. I shall be little in England.”

“Well, then, help me to dispose of it to this vulgarian for half a million of money.”

Ordham made no reply, but helped himself to a glass of chartreuse.

“Why don’t you drink port? I didn’t know those silly liqueurs were in the house.”

“I dislike heavy wines.”

“You aren’t half an Englishman, anyhow. You haven’t eaten a breakfast since you came. Tea and toast—by God! You might be a woman. No wonder you can’t shoot. You haven’t answered my question.”

“I answered it at the beginning of this edifying conversation.”

Bridgminster hesitated perceptibly; then, with evident reluctance, but very clearly, he put another question: “Would you help me to break this entail if I gave you five thousand pounds?”

Ordham turned upon him his heavy glittering eyes. “Not for the entire half million.”

“You look upon it as your own, I suppose?”

“I have tried to make you understand that I should not be able to live here; but if I can help it, it shall never go out of the family. Good God! Have you no family pride?”

“Family pride! Who cares for it nowadays? Half the peerage is made up of tradesmen. I want to know that the half million this museum represents is invested in consols.”

“I don’t fancy that it would all be invested in your name. Did I, as heir presumptive, give my consent—But I shall not give my consent. If you will excuse me, I will go out and smoke. And it is likely that I shall leave in the morning.”

“What did you come here for?”

Ordham had risen; looking down into the disagreeable eyes of his brother, he answered deliberately: “To ask you for a thousand pounds. I am in debt for that amount. Also, to ask you to increase my income. I have not one quarter enough to keep me properly.”

Bridgminster laughed again, and for fully a minute the two men looked deep into each other’s eyes, unaware, perhaps, of all they revealed.

The older brother, his thick upper lip almost flattened in a leer, spoke first: “Do you wish I were dead?”

“How can you say such a thing?”

The formula, with which he so long had been wont lightly to extricate himself from corners, sprang from his lips. He turned on his heel and walked the length of the room. It was a very long room, and when he stood before his brother once more, the flutter in his nerves had subsided. Again the eyes met and held each other, until Ordham said distinctly:

“I do.”

He had expected that Bridgminster would laugh again, and it had crossed his mind that if he did the port bottle might fly at his face. But to his astonishment his brother cowered in his chair, his purple face paling, and put out his hands with feebly warding motions.

“Don’t say that!” He stammered and his tongue was thick. “I—I fancy I am superstitious. I’m a bit off my feed—worse than ever to-day. It’s this damned haunted barrack. I’ll go back to Scotland to-morrow.”

Ordham moved a step closer. Transfixing the wretched man with his cold contracted eyes, he made no reply. Bridgminster stirred uncontrollably. “It is a big sum,” he muttered.

Still Ordham made no reply, but his eyes were little more than glittering lines. Bridgminster’s chest heaved, a flash leaped into his injected eyes.

“I believe you’d kill me if you got a chance—if you thought you wouldn’t be found out.”

“I would.”

“And every damned servant in the castle would swear you free,” whimpered his lordship. “Do you think I can’t see what silly asses they are about you? They hate me. I haven’t a friend in the world but my man, and he could be bought by anybody. You’d be a murderer all the same, though.”

“That would not disturb me for a moment.”

Bridgminster felt of his flabby muscles. His jaw fell, his eye rolled. “Do you mean to murder me?” he gasped.

Ordham hesitated deliberately, never removing his eyes. “No,” he said finally. “It would be a nasty business. But I want that money.”

Bridgminster rose heavily. “Come into the office,” he said.

Ordham followed the lord of the manor into his shabby sanctuary. The air was stale, the windows unopened. There was a bottle of Scotch whiskey on the table. Bridgminster sat down at the desk, and after some fumbling found his check book and wrote an order for a thousand pounds. The act seemed to restore his equilibrium for the moment. He tore out the check and flung it at his brother, who stood negligently beside the desk, but with nothing of indifference in the eyes into which he seemed to have thrown the whole weight of his brain.

“There!” he shouted. “Take it and be damned. And not another penny as long as I live—as long as I live—Oh! I’m off my feed! I’m off my feed!” He broke down, and flinging his head into his arms, wept aloud.

Ordham, who had had as much as he could endure, left the room and went up to his own. His forehead was damp and cold, he trembled slightly. He doubted if ever again he should be equal to a similar concentration of his faculties, even over a demoralized drunkard; certainly he had no desire to repeat the hideous experience. Better marry and have done with it.

He did not go down to the terrace, but sat at his window until long after midnight. He felt sick and disgusted, little elated at the successful termination of his visit and the prospect of a year or two’s peace of mind. A thousand pounds seemed to him a poor compensation for his descent into those foul depths of human nature where the civilized brute slays with his mind even if he withhold his hand. It was his disposition to dwell on the fair and splendid surfaces, harming no man and ignoring the primal passions that crawled over their sands below. Had he, upon his majority, realized the expectations of his careless boyhood, it is doubtful if he ever would have experienced a mean, much less a criminal, impulse, for, although this may be said of many men, Ordham had true refinement of mind and a surpassing indolence. He was a fair sample of all that civilization has yet accomplished for its aristocracies, and had no desire even to be reminded of elemental instincts, much less to be their victim. And the wretched want of money, of a petty thousand pounds, had transformed himself and his brother into two aboriginals. He might in time banish the sensations and impulses he had experienced to-night, but he doubted if he could ever forget the bestial degradation of the head of his house.

And what excuse for such deterioration? His mind flew to Margarethe Styr, who had lifted herself from untold horrors to the very heights of character, intellect, fame. Where had she found that strength? What mysterious arrangement of particles had enabled her to rise from that abyss in which thousands of her sort burned out their brief lives? Was it genius alone? Genius availed little those that began life in the dark back-waters of society unless propelled by force of character, an indomitable will. She too, in her determined seclusion, lived a selfish life of a sort, but at least she gave delight to thousands, she spent freely on promising young singers, and she was an example for all women, dreaming ambitiously, to follow. More, she was an inspiration. And she had come out of what? The picture was not to be invoked, but the bare fact made the man downstairs, who had been born one of the inheritors of the earth, the more unfit to live.

He realized suddenly that he felt closer to Styr than he had ever felt before. And she was the one person on earth to whom he could confess the horrid experience of this night. He made up his mind to return to her at once, no matter where she was. They could meet in the various cities where she sang, as freely as in her home, although not, of course, as delightfully.

Then his mind swung to the future, the future he must face upon his second return from Munich. He should never willingly exchange a syllable with his brother again. There was not the faintest hope that Bridgminster would increase his income. Nor was the man’s health, as far as he could judge, seriously impaired. He might go mad and be chucked into an asylum, but lunatics lived forever. True, he might fall on his gun, or break his neck on the hunting field, but these were mere contingencies. Meanwhile, save for this passing relief, his own problem was as serious as ever. He should spend five times his present income in any capital to which he was accredited, and he could think of nothing he would not rather do than force his mother into heavy sacrifices. Turn over the detestable question as often as he might, he could find but one solution. He had disliked the prospect of matrimony before he knew Margarethe Styr, and it was doubly hateful now. He did not want to marry her, nor could he spend his life dawdling at her skirts; but—well—once more he was forced to admit that he could not have everything in life he wanted at once. There should be that last long visit to Munich, however, and then he would return and swallow his medicine.