Bath Tangle (21 page)

‘Is Miss Laleham well enough to receive a visit from me?’ asked Rotherham.

‘Nothing she’d like better, I daresay, but the deuce is in it that her grandmother’s not well. Not receiving visitors at present. Well, she can’t: she’s in bed,’ said Sir Walter, surprising himself by his own inventiveness.

He found to his discomfort that his host was looking at him in a disagreeably piercing way. ‘Tell me, Laleham!’ said Rotherham. ‘Is Miss Laleham regretting her engagement to me? The truth, if you please!’

This, thought Sir Walter bitterly, was just the sort of thing that made one dislike Rotherham. Flinging damned abrupt questions at one’s head, no matter whether one happened to be swallowing sherry at the moment, or not! No manners, not a particle of proper feeling! ‘God bless my soul!’ he ejaculated, still choking a little. ‘Of course she isn’t! Nothing of the sort, Marquis, nothing of the sort! Lord, what a notion to take into your head! Regretting it, indeed!’

He laughed heartily, but saw that there was not so much as the flicker of a smile on Rotherham’s somewhat grim mouth. His curiously brilliant eyes had narrowed, in a measuring look, and he kept them fixed on his visitor’s face for much longer than Sir Walter thought necessary or mannerly.

‘Talks of nothing but her bride clothes!’ produced Sir Walter, feeling impelled to say something.

‘Gratifying!’

Sir Walter decided that his visit had lasted long enough.

Returning from attending his guest to where his horse was being held for him, Rotherham walked into the house, a heavy frown on his face. His butler, waiting by the front-door, observed this with a sinking heart. He had cherished hopes that a visit from his prospective father-in-law might alleviate his lordship’s distemper, but it was evident that it had not done so. More up in the boughs than ever! thought Mr Peaslake, his countenance wholly impassive.

Rotherham stopped. Peaslake, enduring that disconcerting stare, rapidly searched his conscience, found it clean, and registered a silent vow to send the new footman packing if he had dared yet again to alter the position of so much as a pen on my lord’s desk.

‘Peaslake!’

‘My lord?’

‘If anyone else should come to visit me while I remain under this roof, I have ridden out, and you don’t know when I mean to return!’

‘Very good, my lord!’ said Peaslake, not betraying by the faintest quiver of a muscle his heartfelt relief.

There was never anything at all equivocal about his lordship’s orders, and no one in his employment would have dreamt of deviating from them by a hairsbreadth, but this particular order cast the household, two days later, into a quandary. After a good deal of argument, some maintaining that it was not meant to apply to the unexpected visitor left by the head footman to cool his heels in one of the saloons, and others asserting that it most certainly was, Peaslake fixed the head footman with a commanding eye, and recommended him to go and discover what his lordship’s pleasure might be.

‘Not me, Mr Peaslake!’ said Charles emphatically.

‘You heard me!’ said Peaslake awfully.

‘I won’t do it! I don’t mind hearing you, and I’m sorry to be disobliging, but what I don’t want to hear is
him
asking me if I’m deaf, or can’t understand plain English, thanking you all the same! And it ain’t right for you to tell Robert to go,’ he added, as the butler’s eye fell on his colleague, ‘not after what happened this morning!’

‘I will ask Mr Wilton’s advice,’ said Peaslake.

This announcement met with unanimous approval. If any member of the establishment could expect to come off scatheless when his lordship was in raging ill-humour, that one was his steward, who had come to Claycross before his lordship had been born.

He listened to the problem, and said, after a moment’s thought: ‘I fear he will not be pleased, but I am of the opinion that he should be told of it.’

‘Yes, Mr Wilton. Such is my own view,’ agreed Peaslake. He added dispassionately: ‘Except that he said he did not wish to be disturbed.’

‘I see,’ said Mr Wilton, carefully laying his pen down in the tray provided for it. ‘In that case, I will myself carry the message to him, if you would prefer it?’

‘Thank you, Mr Wilton, I would!’ said Peaslake gratefully, following him out of his office, and watching with respect his intrepid advance upon the library.

Rotherham was seated at his desk, a litter of papers round him. When the door opened, he spoke without raising his eyes from the document he was perusing. ‘When I say I don’t wish to be disturbed, I mean exactly that! Out!’ he snapped.

‘I beg your lordship’s pardon,’ said the steward, with unshaken calm. Rotherham looked up, his scowl lifting a little. ‘Oh, it’s you, Wilton! What is it?’

‘I came to inform you, my lord, that Mr Monksleigh wishes to see you.’

‘Write and tell him I’m ruralizing, and will see no one.’

‘Mr Monksleigh is already here, my lord.’

Rotherham flung down the paper he was holding. ‘Oh, hell and the devil confound it!’ he exclaimed. ‘
Now
what?’

Mr Wilton did not reply, but waited placidly.

‘I shall have to see him, I suppose,’ Rotherham said irritably. ‘Tell him to come in! – and warn him he isn’t staying here more than one night!’

Mr Wilton bowed, and turned to leave the room.

‘One moment!’ said Rotherham, struck by a sudden thought. ‘Why the devil are you being employed to announce visitors, Wilton? I keep a butler and four footmen in this house, and I fail to see why it should be necessary for you to perform their duties! Where’s Peaslake?’

‘He is here, my lord,’ responded Mr Wilton calmly.

‘Then why didn’t he come to inform me of Mr Monksleigh’s arrival?’

Mr Wilton neither blenched at the dangerous note in that harsh voice, nor answered the question. He merely looked at his master very steadily.

Suddenly a twisted grin dawned. ‘Pigeon-hearted imbecile! No, I don’t mean you, and you know I don’t! Wilton, I’m blue-devilled!’

‘Yes, my lord. It has been noticed that you are a trifle out of sorts.’

Rotherham burst out laughing. ‘Why don’t you say as sulky as a bear, and be done with it? I give you leave!
You
don’t exasperate me by shaking like a blancmanger merely because I look at you!’

‘Oh, no, my lord! But, then, I have known you for a very long time, and have become quite accustomed to your fits of the sullens,’ said Mr Wilton reassuringly.

Rotherham’s eyes gleamed appreciation. ‘Wilton, are you
never
out of temper?’

‘In my position, my lord, one is obliged to master one’s ill-humour,’ said Mr Wilton.

Rotherham flung up a hand. ‘
Touché!
Damn you
, how dare you?’

Mr Wilton smiled at him. ‘Shall I bring Mr Monksleigh to you here, my lord?’

‘No, certainly not! Send Peaslake to do so! You can tell him I won’t snap his nose off, if you like!’

‘Very well, my lord,’ said Mr Wilton, and withdrew.

A few minutes later, the butler opened the door, and announced Mr Monksleigh, and Rotherham’s eldest ward strode resolutely into the room.

A slender young gentleman, dressed in the extreme of fashion, with skin-tight pantaloons of bright yellow, and starched shirt-points so high that they obscured his cheek-bones, he was plainly struggling with conflicting emotions. Wrath sparkled in his eyes, but trepidation had caused his cheeks to assume a somewhat pallid hue. He came to a halt in the middle of the room, gulped, drew an audible breath, and uttered explosively: ‘Cousin Rotherham! I must and will speak to you!’

‘Where the
devil
did you get that abominable waistcoat?’ demanded Rotherham.

Since Mr Monksleigh had occupied himself, while left to wait in the Green Saloon, in composing and silently rehearsing his opening speech, this entirely unexpected question threw him off his balance. He blinked, and stammered: ‘It isn’t ab-bominable! It’s all the c-crack!’

‘Don’t let me see it again! What do you want?’

Mr Monksleigh, touched on the raw, hesitated. On the one hand, he was strongly tempted to defend his taste in waistcoats; on the other, he had been given the cue for his opening speech. He decided to respond to it, drew another deep breath, and said, in rather too highpitched a voice, and much more rapidly than he had intended: ‘Cousin Rotherham! Little though you may relish my visit, little though you may like what I have to say, reluctant though you may be to reply to me, I will not submit to being turned away from your door! It is imperative –’

‘You haven’t been turned away from my door.’

‘It is imperative that I should have speech with you!’ said Mr Monksleigh.

‘You are having speech with me – a vast deal of speech! How much?’

Choking with indignation, Mr Monksleigh said: ‘I didn’t come to ask you for money! I don’t want any money!’

‘Good God! Aren’t you in debt?’

‘No, I am not! Well, nothing to signify!’ he amended. ‘And if I hadn’t had to come all the way to Claycross to find you I should be quite plump in the pocket, what’s more! Naturally, I didn’t bargain for that! There’s no way of living economically if one is obliged to dash all over the country, but that wasn’t my fault! First there was the hack, to carry me to Aldersgate; then there was my ticket on the mail coach; and the tip to the guard; and another to the coachman, of course; and then I had to hire a chaise-and-pair to bring me here from Gloucester; and as a matter of fact I
shall
have to ask you to for an advance on next quarter’s allowance, unless you prefer to
lend
me some blunt. I daresay you think I ought to have travelled on the stage, but –’

‘Have I said so?’

‘No, but –’

‘Then wait until I do! What have you come to say to me?’

‘Cousin Rotherham!’ began Mr Monksleigh again.

‘I’m not a public meeting!’ said Rotherham irascibly. ‘Don’t say
Cousin Rotherham!
every time you open your mouth! Say what you have to say like a reasonable being! And sit down!’

Mr Monksleigh flushed scarlet, and obeyed, biting his over-sensitive lip. He stared resentfully at his guardian, lounging behind his desk, and watching him with faint scorn in his eyes. He had arrived at Claycross so burning with the sense of his wrongs that had Rotherham met him on the doorstep he felt sure that he could have discharged his errand with fluency, dignity, and forcefulness. But first he had been kept waiting for twenty minutes; next he had been obliged to suspend his oratory to admit that a monetary advance would be welcome, indeed necessary, if the post-boys were to be paid; and now he had been sharply called to order as though he had been a schoolboy. All these things had a damping effect upon him, but, as he stared at Rotherham, every ill he had suffered at his hands, every malicious spoke that had been thrust into his ambitions, and every cruel set-down he had received, came into his mind, and a sense of injury gave him courage to speak. ‘It is of a piece with all the rest!’ he said suddenly, kneading his hands together between his knees.

‘What is?’

‘You know very well! Perhaps you thought I shouldn’t dare speak to you! But –’

‘If I thought that, I’ve learnt my mistake!’ interpolated Rotherham. ‘What the devil are you accusing me of?’ He perceived that his ward was labouring under strong emotion, and said, with a good deal of authority in his voice, but much less asperity: ‘Come, Gerard, don’t be a gudgeon! What am I supposed to have done?’

‘Everything you could, to blight every ambition I ever had!’ Gerard replied, with suppressed violence.

Rotherham looked considerably taken aback. ‘Comprehensive!’ he said dryly.

‘It’s true! You never liked me! Just because I didn’t wish to hunt, or box, or play cricket, or shoot, or – or any of the things you like, except fishing, and it’s no thanks to you I
do
like fishing, because you forbade me to borrow your rods, as though I had
intended
to break it – I mean –’

‘What you mean,’ said Rotherham ruthlessly, ‘is that I taught you in one sharp lesson not to take my rods without leave! If this is a sample of the various ways in which I have blighted your ambition –’

‘Well, it isn’t! I only – Well, anyway, I shouldn’t care for that if it weren’t for all the rest! It has been one thing after another! When I was at Eton, and had the chance to spend the summer holidays sailing with friends, could I prevail upon you to give your consent? No! You sent me to that miserable grinder, just because my tutor told you I shouldn’t pass Little-Go. Much he knew about it! But of course you chose to believe him, and not me, because you have always taken a – a malicious delight in thwarting me! Ay! and when you
knew
that I wanted to go up to Oxford, with my particular friends, you sent me to Cambridge! If that was not malice,
what
was it?’

Rotherham, who had stretched both legs out, was lying back in his chair, with his ankles crossed, and his hands in the pockets of his buckskin breeches, regarding his incensed ward with a look of sardonic amusement. He said: ‘A desire to separate you from your particular friends. Go on!’

This answer not unnaturally fanned the flames of Mr Monksleigh’s fury. ‘You
admit
it! I guessed as much! All of a piece! Yes, and you refused to lend me the money to get my poems published, and not content with that, you insulted me!’

‘Did I?’ said Rotherham, faintly surprised.

‘You know you did! You said you liked better security for your investments!’

‘That was certainly unkind. You must blame my unfortunate manner! I’ve never had the least finesse, I fear. However, I can’t feel that I blighted
that
ambition. You’ll be of age in little more than a year, and then you can pay to have the poems published yourself.’

‘And I shall do so! And also,’ said Gerard belligerently, ‘I shall choose what friends I like, and go where I like, and do what I like!’

‘Rake’s Progress. Have I chosen any friends for you, by the way?’

‘No, you haven’t! All you do is to
object
to my friends! Would you permit me to visit Brighton, that time, when Lord Grosmont asked me to go along with him? No, you would not! But that wasn’t the worst! Last year! When I came down in the middle of term, after Boney escaped from Elba, and
begged
you to give me permission to enrol as a volunteer! Did you listen to a word I said? Did you
consider
the matter? Did you give me permission? Did –’

‘No,’ interrupted Rotherham unexpectedly. ‘I did not.’

Disconcerted by this sudden answer to his rhetorical questions Gerard glared at him. ‘And very poor-spirited I thought you, to submit so tamely to my decree,’ Rotherham added.

A vivid flush rose to Gerard’s face. He said hotly: ‘I was forced to submit! You have always had the whip hand! I have been obliged to do as you ordered me, because
you
paid for my education, and for my brothers’, and Cambridge too, and if ever I had dared to –’

‘Stop!’ Such molten rage sounded in the one rapped-out word that Gerard quailed. Rotherham was no longer lounging in his chair, and there was no vestige of amusement in his face. It wore instead so unpleasant an expression that Gerard’s heart began to thud violently, and he felt rather sick. Rotherham was leaning forward, one hand on his desk, and clenched hard. ‘Have I ever held that threat over your head?’ he demanded. ‘Answer me!’

‘No!’ Gerard said, his voice jumping nervously. ‘No, but – but I knew it was you who sent me to Eton, and now Ch-Charlie as well, and –’

‘Did I tell you so?’

‘No,’ Gerard muttered, quite unable to meet those brilliant, angry eyes. ‘My mother…’

‘Then how
dare
you speak to me like that, you insufferable cub?’ Rotherham said sternly.

Scarlet-faced, Gerard faltered: ‘I – I beg your pardon! didn’t mean – Of course, I am excessively grateful to you, C-Cousin Rotherham!’

‘If I had wanted your damned gratitude I should have told you that I had taken upon myself the charge of your education! I don’t want it!’

Gerard cast a fleeting look up at him. ‘I’m glad you don’t! To know that I’m beholden to you –
now
!’

‘Make yourself easy! You owe me nothing – any of you! I have done nothing for you!’ Gerard looked up again, startled. ‘That surprises you, does it? Do you imagine that I cared the snap of my fingers how or where you were educated? You were wonderfully wrong! All I cared for was that your father’s sons should be educated as he was, and as he would have wished them to be! Anything I’ve chosen to do has been for him, not for you!’

Crestfallen, and considerably shaken, Gerard stammered: ‘I – I didn’t know! I beg your pardon! I didn’t mean to say – to say what I
did
say, precisely!’

‘Very well,’ Rotherham said curtly.

‘I didn’t really think you would –’

‘Oh, that will do, that will do!’

‘Yes, but I lost my temper! I shouldn’t have –’

Rotherham gave a short laugh. ‘Well, I must be the last man alive not to pardon you for that! Have you come to the end of your catalogue of my past crimes? What is my present offence?’

Mr Monksleigh, having been obliged to offer his guardian an apology, now found it extremely difficult to hurl his culminating accusation at him with anything approaching the passion requisite to convince him of the magnitude of the charge, and of his own desperate sincerity. He had been forced into a position of disadvantage, and the knowledge of this filled him with annoyance rather than with noble rage. He said sulkily: ‘You have ruined my life!’

It had sounded better, when he had uttered it in the Green Saloon. If Rotherham had been privileged to have heard it then, it would have shocked him out of his scornful indifference, and might even have penetrated his marble heart, and touched him with remorse. It certainly would not have amused him, which was the only effect it appeared now to have upon him. Venturing to steal a glance at him, Gerard saw that he was faintly smiling. The relaxing of his face from its appalling grimness, the quenching of the menacing glitter in his eyes, enabled Gerard to breathe much more easily, but did nothing to endear his guardian to him. Flushing angrily, he said: ‘You think that ridiculous, I daresay!’

‘Damned ridiculous!’

‘Yes! Because you have no more sensibility yourself than – than a stone, you think others have none!’

‘On the contrary! I am continually being sickened by the excessive sensibility displayed by so many persons of my acquaintance. But that is beside the point! Don’t keep me in suspense! How have I so unexpectedly achieved what you are persuaded has been my object for years?’

‘I never said that! I daresay you may not have intended to destroy all my hopes! I can readily believe you never so much as thought of what must be
my
sensations when I heard when I discovered –’

‘Do try to cultivate a more orderly mind!’ interposed Rotherham. ‘The very fact that I take a malicious pleasure in thwarting you shows intention. I ought to have sent you to Oxford, after all. Clearly, they don’t make you study Logic at Cambridge.’

‘Oh,
damn
you, be quiet!’ exclaimed Gerard. ‘You think me a child, to be roasted and sneered at, but I am not!’ His underlip quivered; angry tears sprang to his eyes. He brushed them away, saying in a breaking voice: ‘You did not even
tell
me – ! You left me to discover it,
weeks
afterwards, when you must have known – you
must
have known the shock – the c-crushing blow – it would be to me!’ His pent-up emotions choked him. He gave a gasp, and buried his face in his hands.

Rotherham’s brows snapped together. He stared at Gerard for a moment, and then rose, and walked across the room to where a side-table stood, bearing upon it several decanters and glasses. He filled two of the glasses, and returned with them, setting one down upon his desk. He dropped a hand on Gerard’s shoulder, gripping it not unkindly. ‘Enough! Come, now! I’ve told you I don’t like an excess of sensibility! No, I am not roasting you: I see that things are more serious than I had supposed. Here’s some wine for you! Drink it, and then tell me without any more nonsense what it is that I have done to upset you so much!’

The words were scarcely sympathetic, but the voice, although unemotional, was no longer derisive. Gerard said thickly: ‘I don’t want it! I –’

‘Do as I bid you!’

The voice had sharpened. Gerard responded to it involuntarily, starting a little. He took the glass in his unsteady hand, and gulped down some of its contents. Rotherham retired again to his chair behind the large desk, and picked up his own glass. ‘Now, in as few words as possible, what is it?’

‘You know what it is,’ Gerard said bitterly. ‘You used your rank – and your wealth – to steal from me the only girl I could
ever
care for!’ He perceived that Rotherham was staring at him with sudden intentness, and added: ‘Miss Laleham!’

‘Good God!’

The ejaculation held blank astonishment, but Gerard said: ‘You knew very well – must have known! – that I – that she –’

‘No doubt! – had I half the interest in your affairs with which you credit me! As it is, I did not know.’ He paused, and sipped his wine, looking at Gerard over the rim of the glass, his brows frowning again, the eyes beneath them narrowed, very hard and bright. ‘It would have made no difference, except that I should have informed you of the event. I am sorry, if the news came as a blow to you, but at your age you will very speedily recover from it.’

This speech, uttered, as it was, in a cold voice, was anything but soothing to a young gentleman suffering the pangs of his first love-affair. It was evident that Rotherham thought his passion a thing of very little account; and his suggestion that it would soon be forgotten, instead of consoling Gerard, made his bosom swell with indignation.