Bath Tangle

17

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 high-pitched 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 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 MrMonksleigh 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 oversensitive 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 a 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 enroll 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! I 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 under-lip 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! Asit 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.

“So that is all you have to say! I might have known how it would be! Recover from it!”

“Yes, recover from it,” said Rotherham. His lips curled. “I should be more impressed by these tragedy-airs if it had not taken you so long to make up your mind to enact me an affecting scene! I know not how many weeks it is since the engagement was announced, but—”

“I came into Gloucestershire the instant I knew of it!” Gerard said, half starting from his chair. “I never saw the announcement! When I’m up at Cambridge, very often I don’t look at a newspaper for days on end! No one told me until only the other day, when Mrs Maldon asked me—asked me!—if I was acquainted with the future Lady Rotherham! I was astonished, as may be supposed, to learn that you were engaged, but that was as nothing to the—the horror and stupefaction which held me s-speechless, when Em—Miss Laleham’s name was disclosed!”

“I wish to God you were still suffering from horror and stupefaction, if that is the effect such feelings have upon you!” broke in Rotherham. “Be damned to these periods of yours! If you would play-act less, I might believe more! As it is—!” He shrugged. “You came down at the beginning of June, it is now August, your mother is well aware of my engagement, and you say you heard no mention of it until a few days ago? Coming it too strong, Gerard! The truth is that you’ve talked yourself into this fine frenzy—putting on airs to be interesting!”

Gerard was on his feet, colour flaming in his cheeks. “You shall unsay that! How dare you give me the lie? I have not seen my mother—that is, I had not done so until yesterday! I went with the Maldons to Scarborough! When I learned of the engagement, I posted south immediately!”

“What the devil for?”

“To put a stop to it!” Gerard said fiercely.

“To do what?”

“Yes! It did not occur to you that I might thrust a spoke into your wheel, did it?”

“No, and it still does not.”

“We shall see! I know, as surely as I stand here—”

“Which won’t be very surely, if I have to listen to much more of this rodomontade!”

“You cannot silence me by threats, my lord!”

“It seems improbable that you could be silenced by anything short of a gag. And don’t call me my lord! It makes you appear even more absurd than you do already.”

“I care nothing for what you may think of me, or for your jibes! Emily does not love you—cannot love you! You have forced her into this horrible engagement! You and her mother between you! And I say it shall not be!”

Rotherham was once more lying back in his chair, the derisive smile on his lips. “Indeed? And how do you propose to stop it?”

“I am going to see Emily!”

“Oh, no, you are not!”

“Nothing—nothing will prevent me! I know well how the business was accomplished! I was out of the way, she,so gentle, so timid, so friendless, a—a dove, fluttering unavailing in—in the clutches of a vulture (for so I think of Lady Laleham, curse her!) and of a—a wolf! She, I say—” He broke off, for Rotherham had given a shout of laughter.

“Oh, I don’t think the dove would do much fluttering in such a situation as that!” he said.

Gerard, white with fury, hammered his fist on the desk between them. “Ay, a splendid jest, isn’t it? Almost as droll as to lead to the altar a girl whose heart you know to be given to another! But you will not do it!”

“I probably shouldn’t. Are you asking me to believe that her heart has been given to you?”

“It is true, for all your sneers! From the moment I first saw her, at the Assembly, last Christmas, we became attached!”

“Very likely. She is a beautiful girl, and you were the first young man to come in her way. You both enjoyed an agreeable flirtation. I’ve no objection.”

“It was not a flirtation! It endured! When she came to London, before you had cast your—your predatory eye in her direction, the attachment between us had been confirmed! Had it not been for the odious pretensions of her mother, who would not listen to my offer, it would not have been your engagement that was announced, but mine!”

“Rid your mind of that illusion at least! I should not have permitted you to become engaged to Miss Laleham, or to anyone else.”

“I can believe it! But I do not admit your right to interfere in what concerns me so nearly!”

“What you admit doesn’t signify. Until you come of age, I have rights over you of which you don’t appear to have the smallest conception. I have not chosen to exercise very many of these, but I will tell you now that I shall allow you neither to entangle yourself in an engagement, nor to embarrass my affianced wife by obtruding yourself upon her.”

“Obtruding—! Ha! So you fancy she would be embarrassed, do you, cousin?”

“If you subjected her to such—a scene as this, I imagine she would be thrown into a fever. She is recovering from a severe attack of influenza.”

“Is she?” said Gerard, with awful sarcasm. “Or was it a severe attack of the Marquis of Rotherham? I know that she has been hidden from me: that I learned at Cherrifield Place, this very day! From Lady Laleham I expected to hear nothing of Emily’s present whereabouts! She would take good care not to let me come near Emily! Now it appears that you too are afraid to disclose her direction! That tells its own tale, Cousin Rotherham!”

“I have not the smallest objection to disclosing her direction,” replied Rotherham. “She is visiting her grandmother, in Bath.”

“In Bath!” cried Gerard, his face lighting up.

“Yes, in Bath. But you, my dear Gerard, will not go to Bath. When you leave this house, you will return to London, or to Scarborough, if you like: that’s all one to me!”

“Oh, no, I shall not!” countered Gerard. “It is not in your power to compel me! You have told me where I may find Emily, and find her I will! She must tell me with her own lips that her feelings have undergone a change, that she is happy in her engagement, before I will believe it! I tell you this because I scorn to deceive you! You shall never say that I went without informing you of my intention!”

“I shall never say that you went at all,” said Rotherham, thrusting back his chair, and rising suddenly to his feet. “And I will tell you why, cockerel! You dare not! For just so long as I will bear with you, you crow a puny defiance! But when my patience cracks, you have done with crowing! Beneath all this bombast, you are so much afraid of me that one look is enough to make you cringe!” He gave a bark of laughter. “You disobey my commands! I wish I may see it! You haven’t enough spirit to do so much as keep your knees from knocking together when I comb you down! I know exactly what you will do in this case. You will boast of what you have a very good mind to do, play the broken-hearted lover to gain the sympathy of the credulous, whine to your mother about my tyranny, and give as an excuse for your chickenheartedness the fear that if you failed to respond to my hand on your bridle I should wreak my vengeance on your brothers! What you will not say is that you fear my spurs! But that is the truth!”

He paused, scanning his ward. Gerard was as white as his preposterous shirt-points, trembling a little, and breathing jerkily, but his burning eyes were fixed on Rotherham’s face, and did not flinch from the piercing challenge of those contemptuous grey ones. His hands were clenched at his sides; he whispered: “I would like to kill you!”

“I don’t doubt it. You would probably like to hit me too, but you won’t do it. Nor will you treat me to any more of your heroics. You may remain here tonight, but tomorrow you will return whence you came.”

“I wouldn’t remain another instant under your roof for anything you might offer me!” Gerard gasped.

“Gerard, I said I would have no more heroics!”

“I am leaving Claycross—now!” Gerard spat at him, and plunged towards the door.

“Not so fast! You are forgetting something!” Gerard paused, and looked over his shoulder. “You told me that your pockets were to let, which is not surprising, after all this posting about the country. How much do you want?”

Gerard stood irresolute. To spurn this offer would be a splendid gesture, and one which he longed to make; on the other hand, there were the post-charges to be paid, and more than a month to be lived through before he received the next quarter’s allowance. His sense of dramatic value was outraged by what he perceived to be an anticlimax of a particularly galling nature, and it was in anything but a grateful tone that he said: “I shall be obliged to you if you will advance me fifty pounds, cousin!”

“Oh, you will, will you? And what shall I be expected to advance midway through the next quarter?”

“Rest assured that I shall not ask you to advance me a penny!” said Gerard grandly.

“You wouldn’t dare to, would you?” said Rotherham, opening a court-cupboard at the end of the room, and taking from it a strong-box. “You would apply to your mother. Well, since it appears to be entirely my fault that you are at a standstill, I’ll let you have your fifty pounds. Next time you wish to upbraid me, do it by letter!”

“If you refuse to advance me my own money, I will only accept yours as a loan!” declared Gerard. “I shall repay you the instant I come of age!”

“As you please,” shrugged Rotherham, unlocking the strongbox.

“And I will give you my note-of-hand!”

“By all means. You’ll find a pen on my desk.”

Gerard cast him a look of acute loathing, snatched up a quill, dragged a sheet of paper at random from a sheaf, and in trembling haste wrote a promise to pay. He then flung the quill down, and said: “I shall meet that on the day I gain possession of my principal at latest! And, if I can contrive it, much sooner! I’m obliged to you! Goodbye!”

He then crammed the bills held out to him into his pocket, and hurried out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Rotherham put his strong-box away, and walked slowly back to his desk. He picked up the note-of-hand, and began, abstractedly, to tear it into small shreds, his brows lowering, and his lips compressed. The door opened again, and he glanced up quickly.

It was his steward who had entered, and who said in a quiet but resolute voice: “My lord, you will please allow me to have speech with you!”

“Well?”

“I saw Mr Gerard as he left the house, my lord. It is not for me to remonstrate with you, but since there is no one else to do it, I must! You must not let him go like that!”

“I’m damned glad he has gone. My temper will stand no more of him!”

“My lord, this will not do! He is your ward, remember! I have never seen such a look on his face before. What did you do to him, to make him as white as his shirt?”

“What the devil do you suppose I did to a whey-faced weakling I could control with my right hand tied behind me?” demanded Rotherham wrathfully.

“Not that you used your strength, my lord, but your tongue!”

“Yes, I used that to some purpose,” said Rotherham, with a grim smile.

“My lord, whatever he may have done—”

“He has done nothing. I doubt if he has the spirit to do anything but nauseate me with his gasconades and his fustian theatrics!”

“Let me fetch him back!” Wilton begged. “You should not frighten him so!”

“I should not be able to frighten him so!”

“You frighten many people, my lord. It has sometimes seemed to me that when your black mood is on you it is your wish to frighten people. But I am sure I don’t know why, for you can never tolerate anyone who fears you.”

Rotherham looked up quickly, a reluctant laugh escaping him. “True!”

“It is not too late: let me fetch Mr Gerard back!”

“No. I should not have flayed him, I acknowledge, but the temptation to do so was irresistible. It will do him no harm, and may do him a great deal of good.”

“My lord—”

“Wilton, I have a considerable regard for you, but you have not the power to make me change my mind!”

“I know that, my lord,” Wilton said. “There was only one person who ever had that power.”

Danger flickered in Rotherham’s eyes, but he did not speak. The steward looked steadily at him for a moment, and then turned, and walked out of the room.