A Sovereign Remedy Part 12

CHAPTER VI

The London footman was rolling out the dressing-gong as if he had been apprenticed to a bronze, when Ned Blackborough returned from his sick friend at the Seaview Hotel; but he took no heed to its warning, and turning down a side pa.s.sage sought a room in the older part of the house where, as a rule, his uncle was to be found.

And sure enough, there he was, seated at his so-called writing-table, and turning round a trifle startled, pen in hand, at the sound of the opening door. But Ned's quick eye detected neither paper nor ink. The pen, then, was a mere shelter against the unlooked-for visitor.

It was a quaint room, full from floor to ceiling of the man and his immediate forbears, that succession of Sir Richards and Sir Geoffreys who had inherited the ever-lessening estate of Pentreath for the last two hundred years. Fis.h.i.+ng-rods, guns, hunting-horns, and dueling-pistols testified to their amus.e.m.e.nts, a tin box labelled "Pentreath Estate Records," to their occupation, and a complete set of the _Annual Register_ and _Gentleman's Magazine_ to their literary tastes. There was a weighing-machine also, and in a gla.s.s case the sword presented to the then Sir Richard by Prince Charlie; for the Pentreaths were always on the losing side in everything. Yet they had always held their heads high in the past.

But now Sir Geoffrey's haggard face looked as if it had been seeking refuge in the hands, one of which he held out in kindly greeting.

"So it's you, Ned!--like old times. I'm glad to see you back again, my boy."

"And I'm glad to be back, sir," he replied, paused, and then feeling there was no good in beating about the bush, made a plunge.

"I've got something to say to you, sir. We are leaving to-morrow morning, and I may not have another opportunity----" he paused again.

"Not much time before dinner," said Sir Geoffrey, consulting his watch. "But fire away. Going to get married?--eh?"

"Perhaps," said Ned coolly, "but this is about the hotel."

"d.a.m.n the hotel! What's up now?" Never was curse more heartily or more hopelessly given. "Well--go on."

"I don't know who is responsible for installing the electric light, but it isn't safe. The wires are always fusing. They keep it very dark, but my friend--who is a bit of an electrical engineer himself--found out when he was awake last night----"

Sir Geoffrey's face was hidden by his hand again as he interrupted Ned with a short laugh.

"Oh! that's it--why, they always 'krab' each other's work--always!

And--and your money's safe enough now; the place is insured."

"I wasn't thinking of the money, sir," cried Ned outraged. "I was thinking of all those women and children."

Sir Geoffrey's face came up from his hand full of such pa.s.sionate resentment that Ned was fairly startled. "By Gad, sir!" he cried, "and what right have you to suppose I don't think of them? night and day, sir--day and night!" Then his eyes finding Ned's, he stretched out his hand towards him in almost childish helplessness. "Oh, Ned! Ned!" he said, "you can't think what a relief it is to talk of this with--with one of ourselves--with--with a gentleman instead of a cursed money grubber--though I will say this for Hirsch, he isn't a cad."

"Then you've known of this before, sir," said Ned slowly. "I see----"

"Known! My G.o.d! Ned, what haven't I known since the devil entered into me to start this thing! I wouldn't tell you, Ned, for I knew you'd be like Helen; but I told the heir, and he liked it. All he wants is money. And I--all I wanted was to make something--just something for Helen after poor old Jeff--went. He'd have looked after her, you see--the Pentreaths have always kept our women well--always cared for them. But he died! Ay!"--here his trembling lip stiffened itself, "died as a Pentreath should for his Queen and his country."

In the pause that ensued Ned thought bitterly that he had died in an attempt to hold the yeomanry of England from showing the road to the rear. That was the truth, and behind that truth what a record of ignorance, inept.i.tude, greed of gain. Nothing for nothing, not even patriotism, was the modern motto; a cheap loaf and a disintegrated empire--_caveat emptor_ even in the face of war.

"You can't believe it all, Ned," went on Sir Geoffrey, speaking now with less pa.s.sion but more eagerness, as if his memories brimmed over, "until you've been through with it. I meant it all to be above board, but it wasn't. The jobbery was awful. Every man just clamouring for money. A gentleman oughtn't to touch a thing like that--it's pitch, Ned. He has to keep in with builders and masons and plumbers--Oh, my G.o.d!--the plumbers!--all thinking of nothing but 'pay, pay, pay.' Ah!

Kipling knew the game when he wrote that refrain for England's heroism, her patriotism. It will go down to the ages, Ned, as one man's insight into what we English are becoming." He was walking up and down the room now, restlessly. "They were all bad, but Jenkin was the worst--and he ought to have known. It was his nephew who put in the electric plant. You'll say I ought to have struck, Ned, and so I ought, but your money was gone, Ned, and their's too, poor devils!--a lot of the farmers and people only put in a few pounds because it was my idea, you see. It had to go on. And what did I know about sea-sand and second-cla.s.s putty. It isn't gentleman's work and that's a fact.

But the jolly old Atlantic knew sharp enough and sent salt through the plaster and sea-spray through the concrete.... Then, when we were in a bad way, and Jenkin--pettifogging tradesman!--all for saving every penny, I met Hirsch. Between ourselves, Ned, he began by fancying Helen, and I--I--well! He isn't a cad, you know, and half those men one meets are; yet their wives don't--don't seem to mind."

He paused and looked at Ned Blackborough appealingly, but he was inexorable.

"Hardly the man I should have thought you'd have chosen, sir, as the father of your grandchildren."

Sir Geoffrey took it full in the face without flinching. "No," he said simply, "I suppose not. But I've gone down, Ned, gone down terribly. I sometimes wonder if she--if your aunt, I mean, would know me again if--if I saw her."

He took a turn or two without speaking, then gave an afterthought excuse which made Ned smile, and yet feel inclined to curse.

"But there mightn't be any children, you know. What good would they be--the old place has gone from the Pentreaths--gone utterly. Let me see--where was I? Oh yes! Hirsch came and saw it, and said it was the finest site in Britain. And so it is. There's not a better for health or beauty than Cam's point. So he put us on our feet again, and spent an awful lot on what he called 'colour wash.' At least it seems an awful lot to me, and Jenkin was wild. But we had to run it, or the new company wouldn't have caught on--we have to make it fizz, you see--but I wish to G.o.d I'd never begun,--I wish to G.o.d I'd never begun----"

He was still walking up and down muttering to himself.

"And meanwhile," asked Ned, in spite of his supreme pity, "what is to be done? The wires may fuse any moment--so Charteris thinks----"

Sir Geoffrey caught at the doubt--"It's not so bad as that--I don't think it's so bad. When the season's over and the new company secure, we shall put a new plant in and insure the place properly. And meanwhile we are awfully careful. I was two hours there to-day myself, seeing what the workmen had done; and it was quite a little thing--put out in a moment."

"But you don't know anything about electricity, do you, sir?" asked Ned quietly, "and I thought you said it was insured."

Sir Geoffrey's face reddened. "Yes, in a way. Hirsch insured when he came in. He wouldn't put his money in without it."

"Would he put his wife and children in, I wonder?" asked Ned bitterly.

"But I still don't quite understand about the insurance----"

Sir Geoffrey fidgeted. "I'll get Hirsch to explain. It's all right, I believe, though. But they'll insure anything nowadays, if you pay a decent premium--any mortal thing." He paused and stood the image of hopeless perplexity; and then--rather to his relief--the dinner gong sounded. "Good Lord! And I'm not dressed," he muttered, "we'd better go."

But as he reached the stairs where they divided, he held out that friendly, welcoming, family hand again, saying:--"Thanks, Ned, it's been such an awful relief not to be thinking of money. I suppose when one comes into so much as you have, that--that you don't think of it any more?"

Was it so, Ned Blackborough wondered. Hardly; for Mr. Hirsch had millions and still thought of more. No! he personally had been tired of money for some time. _Caveat emptor_ was an excellent legal if not absolutely moral axiom; but when men allowed your millions to confuse the issue in their treatment of you, then--then one could wish the millions were not in the equation!

And of late--ever, in fact, since he had left the floating deposit and had seen Aura--he smiled at the remembrance of her standing framed in scarlet and white, handing back the sovereign with that peremptory "Take it please!"

Why should not he and she go forth in the wilderness in their sandalled feet to forget--and to remember? That was life. To forget so much, and to remember so much that one had forgotten.

He pulled himself up after a time from the unaccustomed line of thought or reverie, telling himself it was all nonsense--sheer nonsense. Yet it was attractive.

Suddenly the words "Go! sell all that thou hast," recurred to him, making him wonder if it were a hard saying or no. For the moment he felt inclined to obey it literally.

They were halfway through dinner ere Lord Blackborough appeared at the table. To begin with he had wired to his valet for dress clothes, and, accustomed to the routine of good service, had expected to find them in his room. They were not, however, and only by the help of a tearful little Cornish maiden at whom all the racketty job servants from London were swearing profusely as she fled about trying to do everything at once, did he discover his suit-case in the servants'

hall, where two lordly _chauffeurs_ accosted him scornfully as some one's belated valet. He escaped from them--and from the cook who, solemnly drunk, was using inconceivable language to the _entree_ she was dis.h.i.+ng up--only to find that his man had forgotten to put the studs in his s.h.i.+rt. Whereupon he also cursed as he broke his finger-nails over the job. And yet all the time at the back of his brain, the thought of Aura lingered, and in the front of it his uncle's face, so foolishly, childishly, helplessly wanting money.

What else had the old man expected but chicanery when he dabbled in the Pool. It was nothing but a clutching whirlpool of hands trying to grasp at a golden sovereign in the centre! Every one clutched, he as much as any one. Then with a jar, his mind reverted to the shade of many a tree he had seen in India, where men lived, and apparently lived happily, possessed of nothing but their souls, devoid of all things save the inevitable garment of flesh.

The shade of a Bo-tree!

This certainly was not it, he thought, as with a smiling apology he slipped into the empty place and found himself in the battle-ground of a heated discussion.

A trifle dazzling surely, these lights and flowers and fair women.

Helen looked well in white at the head of the table between Mr. Hirsch and Dr. Ramsay; and, thank Heaven! she had left off weepers in the evening. What a difference there was between lace and stiff crimped muslin; and how young she looked.

The rapidity of thought is immeasurable, the velocity of its vibration untranslatable in terms of mere human flesh and blood. These thoughts and millions of others suggested by the whole _entourage_ which in a second became part of Ned Blackborough's life-experience, pa.s.sed into his mind and left him free at once to listen to his cousin's gay--

"Here's Ned! I'll appeal to him! Do you think it fair that we women shouldn't have votes?"

"We shall have to settle our terminology first, Helen," he replied in the same tone. "What is fair? I presume what Mrs. Tressilian considers to be right."