Only a clod
we’ve done with all that nowadays. We are peacefully disposed, and sell
out on the earliest opportunity; and we steal a march on our beloved
brother, and come home on the quiet to cultivate our maiden aunt.”
“That’s a lie,” replied Harcourt, very coolly. “I haven’t been near her
since I came home.”
“What did you come home for then?” asked the other. _“You came for
something.”_
The two men looked at each other. They were very much alike. There was
the same steelly light in the blue eyes, the same tight contraction of
the thin lips. The elder looked at the younger with a glance of shrewd
inquiry; the younger looked back sulky defiance.
“Come,” said the traveller, after a second leisurely stretch and a
second prolonged yawn, “what is it, then, the little game? Say, my
friend. You didn’t sell out of her Majesty’s service without a motive,
and you didn’t come home without a motive. By Jove! you never did
anything in your life without a motive. You are a schemer, my dear
Harcourt. The schemer is born, and not made, and he must obey his
instincts. Dear boy, I know your organization, and in these days of
physiological science no man can keep himself quite dark. Iago would
have been a failure if Othello had studied his Lavater. Be candid,
Harcourt, and tell me what noble vessel, laden with the spoils of a new
Peru, flaunts her white sails upon the wind, and invites the attention
of the pirate.”
“You are so deuced confiding yourself, that you’ve a right to demand
another fellow’s confidence,” Harcourt responded, moodily. “When I want
your help, I’ll tell you my secrets. That has been _your_ way of
managing matters, I believe.”
“My Harcourt bears malice!” exclaimed Roderick. “Antipholus of Ephesus
reproaches Antipholus of Syracuse. Dear boy, I suppose it’s our
misfortune to be too much alike. Perhaps, if you won’t give me your
confidence, you will at least oblige me with a chop. There was an
atmosphere of smoky chimneys and warm train-oil on board the _Baron_
which incapacitated me for breakfast.”
Mr. Lowther the elder possessed himself of the teapot, and appropriated
his brother’s breakfast-cup, while Harcourt rang the bell and gave an
order for additional rolls and chops.
“I didn’t know you were coming to England,” Mr. Lowther the younger
said, after a pause, in which he had stared moodily at his brother.
“I suppose not,” answered the other; “and I can’t say that the
heartiness of your welcome is very encouraging to the returning
prodigal. However, as I have not been in these dominions for the last
three years or more, and as my father and I are not the best
friends,--there’s nothing so economical for a parent as a long-standing
quarrel with all his children, by the way,--I shall look to you, my dear
Harcourt, for any friendly offices I may require. I have three months’
leave of absence, and I have not--_le sou_. I come to England to
recuperate, as brother Jonathan has it. I want to get on the blind side
of my beloved aunt to the tune of a few hundreds; and I want to marry an
heiress.”
“Oh,” said Harcourt, thoughtfully, “you want to marry an heiress?”
“Yes; can you help me to do it?”
“I think not.”
“Humph! perhaps if I could make it worth your while to assist me you’d
tell another story. However, you can introduce me to some nice people, I
suppose?”
Harcourt nodded moodily.
“And I must look up my own old set. Not that I know many people, for I
lived such a hide-and-seek sort of life when I was in England. Can you
get me rooms in this house? We can commonize, you know. I left my
portmanteaus on board the _Baron_. I suppose there’s a boots, or a
somebody of the scout species appertaining to this establishment, who
can take a cab, and fetch them for me?”
Thus unceremoniously did Antipholus of Syracuse establish himself in the
abode of his ungracious brother. Frankenstein, pursued by the monster of
his creation, could scarcely have seemed more ill at ease than Harcourt
Lowther under the infliction of his brother’s society. Was it that these
men were too much alike? Did Harcourt think that the keen eyes of his
brother would follow every thread in the intricate network of his
scheme, and the subtle brain of his brother would apply itself to
plotting against him?
But the coolness so apparent in Harcourt’s reception of the returning
wanderer made no impression whatever on that gentleman. Roderick Lowther
stretched his long legs upon his brother’s hearth-rug, and smoked his
brother’s cigars, with a serene indifference as to his brother’s
feelings.
“If you dine anywhere to-day you can take me with you,” he said,
blandly; “and to-morrow I’ll introduce you to a splendid set of fellows
at the ‘Travellers’.’ You haven’t thought of an heiress yet, I suppose?”
“No.”
“Ah, you’ll hit upon something in that way presently, I dare say, if you
run your mind’s eye over your visiting list. I’m in no hurry. Three
months is a small eternity in these days of railroads and photography.”
“And you really would marry?” said Harcourt again, very thoughtfully.
“Really would? Of course I would, if I could get the chance of making an
advantageous match, and propitiate my aunt Dorothea by the sacrifice.
You know how bent the prudent old lady has always been on my making a
great marriage, and restoring the forgotten glories of the Lowthers.
Yes, Harcourt, I come prepared for victory, and I trust to your
brotherly friendship to help me to see and conquer.”
“Humph! By the bye, I suppose you have heard nothing of----”
“Not a word,” answered Roderick, rather hastily; “I know what you’re
going to talk about, and as that’s rather an unpleasant subject to me,
we may as well agree to avoid it. I wrote a letter, candid, explanatory,
and so forth; promising to do what I considered my duty. I don’t profess
to be a generous man, and I freely acknowledge that I’m a very poor one;
so the modest annual sum, which I considered my duty, was----well, _very
modest_! However, the letter was unanswered. People drop through, you
see,” concluded Mr. Lowther the elder, blowing away a slender puff of
blue vapour, as if he had been blowing away a troublesome subject; “and
when people do, of their own election, drop through, I can’t see that
it’s any fellow’s duty to dig them up again. _You_ haven’t heard
anything, I suppose?”
“Not a word.”
“Fortunate for you! Sometimes that sort of person fastens on to one’s
relations. However, as I observed before, we’ll agree to avoid the
subject. Suppose we discuss your affairs?”
“I had much rather we did not.”
“Of course, dear boy; but as I am candidly disposed myself, I don’t mean
to be kept in the dark by the most saturnine of brothers who ever sulked
in the face of an amiable relative. _You_ used to be engaged to an
heiress--something in the Moorgate-Street line--Australian merchandise,
wasn’t it? a Miss Hillersdon, or Hillary, eh, dear boy? There used to be
something of that sort on the cards, I believe?”
“There used to be, but there has ceased to be for the last twelve
months. Will that do for you?”
“Ah, Miss Hillersdon--or Hillary--has jilted you, I suppose?”
“She has.”
“And the man she has married----”
“Is my very good friend, the happy possessor of a charming wife and a
large fortune, and the man at whose house I dine to-day.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Roderick Lowther, lengthening the ejaculation to its
extremest capacity of extension--“Oh, I think I begin to understand your
policy. Miss Hillary has married a rich man, and you are intimate with
the husband and _au mieux_ with the wife. The husband is a sickly
fellow--consumptive--apoplectic, eh, dear boy?”
“The husband is something over six feet high, and has the shoulders of a
lifeguardsman; and, if it were not for his dissipated habits, might live
to be ninety.”
“Ah, if it were not for his dissipated habits. And you are his intimate
friend? My dear Harcourt, what a very transparent game you are playing!
and what a consummate fool you must be if you supposed that I shouldn’t
see through it! Why not a bond of union between us--all for one, and one
for all, like Dumas’s musketeers? Help me to find an heiress, and I’ll
help you _auprès de_ Mrs. ----, what’s the lady’s name, by the bye?”
Harcourt Lowther allowed this last piece of information to be screwed
out of him, and parted with it as grudgingly as he had parted with the
rest. It is not a pleasant thing when you are playing a very difficult
game with the odds against you, to have an inconvenient brother swooping
down upon you and insisting on looking over your hand.
There was no affection between these two brothers; the likeness which
they bore to each other, morally as well as physically, seemed to have a
blighting influence upon their relations. They knew each other, and they
distrusted each other. Perhaps it would have been scarcely too much to
say they hated each other.
But they went out to dinner together nevertheless, and Harcourt
smilingly introduced his brother to Mrs. Tredethlyn and Miss Desmond.
They had plenty of time to grow quite intimate in the drawing-room while
they were waiting for Francis, who came in, flushed with a hurried
toilet, at ten minutes to eight. He had been absent upon one of his
mysterious excursions a little way out of town.
Roderick Lowther was received very graciously by the two ladies, and
cordially welcomed by Mr. Tredethlyn. Harcourt, watching his brother
ensconced in a nook of Maude’s favourite ottoman, and discoursing at his
ease upon Belgian notabilities, was troubled by dark misgivings of
danger.
“I must find the fellow a quarry for himself,” he thought, “or he’ll be
trying to stalk my game. He asks me to introduce him to an eligible
_parti_ as coolly as if life were a five-act comedy, with the
traditional heiress always waiting to fall a prey to the traditional
adventurer. An heiress! in these days of marvellous commercial successes
there must be such things as heiresses. But the question is where to
look for them.”
One of Mr. Tredethlyn’s pompous retainers opened the drawing-room door
at this moment and announced--
“Mr. and Miss Grunderson.”
“Egad!” thought Harcourt Lowther, “there’s the solution of my
difficulty. Why not Miss Grunderson? Miss Grunderson is an heiress, or
ought to be, if there is stability in any part of the commercial
universe.”
A young lady with a very rosy face, a young lady decidedly inclined to
that quality which in the fair sex is elegantly entitled _embonpoint_, a
young lady who was surrounded by surging flounces of pink areophane,
dotted about with more pink rosebuds and larger full-blown roses than
were ever worn by any young lady with a judicious recollection of the
sweeps on Mayday, bounced into the room, and bounced up to Mrs.
Tredethlyn; while an elderly gentleman, who was evidently the young
lady’s papa, beamed mildly at the company across an enormous expanse of
embroidered shirt-front and black waistcoat.
But in the network that Harcourt Lowther has woven Miss Grunderson is
destined to be considerably entangled, and deserves to be introduced
more ceremoniously in a fresh chapter.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE DIPLOMATIST’S POLICY.
That ponderous Mr. Grunderson, who plunged heavily down upon Maude’s
central ottoman, a miraculous combination of upholstery and
floriculture--that shining bald-headed Mr. Grunderson, who sat placidly
grinning at the company, and addressed his hostess as “Mum”--had begun
life as a market-gardener; and, had Mrs. Tredethlyn been born some
twenty years earlier, would have been proud to supply her with azaleas
and camellias for the decoration of the ottoman upon which he was now