Simon was engaged to join a party of friends at Brighton, and might well have gone there in advance of the rest of the party if he had not recollected that rooms at the Ship had been booked from the Saturday of that week. Only a greenhead would suppose that there was the smallest chance of obtaining any but the shabbiest of lodgings in Brighton, at the height of the season, if he had not booked accommodation there; so he was obliged to resign himself to several days spent in kicking his heels in London, which, in July, more nearly resembled a desert, to any member of the ton, than a fashionable metropolis. Not that London had nothing to offer for the entertainment of out of season visitors: it had several things, and Simon was considering, two days after his call in Arlington Street, whether the evening would be more amusingly spent at the Surrey Theatre, or at the Cockpit Royal, when the retired gentleman's gentleman who owned the house in Bury Street, and ministered to the three gentlemen at present lodging there, entered the room and presented him with a visitingcard, saying succinctly: 'Gentle-man to see you, sir.'
The card bore, in florid script, an imposing legend: Baron Monte Toscana. Simon took one look at it, and handed it back. 'Never heard of the fellow!' he said. 'Tell him I'm not at home!'
A mellifluous voice spoke from the doorway. 'I must beg a thousand pardons!' it said. 'Too late did I realize that I had inadvertently presented this good man with the wrong card! Have I the honour of addressing Mr Simon Carrington? But I need not ask! You bear a marked resemblance to your father – who, I do trust, still enjoys good health?'
Considerably taken aback, Simon said: 'Yes, I'm Simon Carrington, sir, but – but I fear you have the advantage of me!'
'Naturally!' said his visitor, smiling benignly at him. 'I daresay you never saw me before in your life – in fact, I am quite sure of it, for until this moment you have been but a name to me.' He paused to wave a dismissive hand at the retired gentleman's gentleman, saying graciously: 'Thank you, my good man! That will be all!'
'The name, sir, is Diddlebury – if you have no objection!' said his good man, in a voice which clearly showed his contempt for Mr Carrington's visitor.
'None at all, my man! A very good name, in its way!' said the visitor graciously.
Diddlebury, having looked in vain for a sign from Mr Carrington, reluctantly withdrew from the room.
'And now,' said the visitor, 'it behoves me to repair the foolish mistake I made, when I gave the wrong card to that fellow!' He drew out a fat card-case as he spoke, and searched in it, while Simon stared at him in amazement.
He was a middle-aged man, dressed in clothes as florid as his countenance. When the highest kick of fashion was a severity of style which banished from every Tulip's wardrobe all the frilled evening shirts which had been the rage only six months before, not to mention such enormities as flowered waistcoats, brightly coloured coats, or any other jewelry than a ring and a tie-pin, he was wearing a tightly fitting coat of rich purple; a shirt whose starched frill made him look like a pouter pigeon; and a richly embroidered waistcoat. A somewhat ornate quizzing-glass hung round his neck; a number of seals and fobs dangled from his waist; a flashing tie-pin was stuck into the folds of his cravat; and several rings embellished his fingers. He had probably been a handsome man in his youth, for his features were good, but the unmistakable signs of dissipation had impaired his complexion, set pouches beneath his eyes, and rendered the eyes themselves a trifle bloodshot.
'Ah, here we have it!' he said, selecting a card from his case. However, having taken the precaution of inspecting it through his quizzing-glass, he said: 'No, that's not it! Can it be that I forgot – No! Here it is at last!'
Fascinated, Simon said: 'Do you – do you carry different cards, sir?'
'Certainly! I find it convenient to use one card here, and another there, for you must know that I am domiciled abroad, and spend much of my time in travel. But this card,' he said, handing it to Simon with a flourish, 'bears my true name, and will doubtless explain to you why I have sought you out!'
Simon took the card, and glanced at it with scant interest. But the name inscribed on it made him gasp: 'Wilfred Steane? Then you aren't dead!'
'No, Mr Carrington, I am not dead,' said Mr Steane, disposing himself in a chair, 'I am very much alive. I may say that I am wholly at a loss to understand why anyone should have supposed me to have shuffled off this mortal coil. In the words of the poet. Shakespeare, I fancy.'
'Yes, I know that,' said Simon. 'But I'm dashed if I know why you shouldn't understand why you was thought to have stuck your spoon in the wall! What else could anyone think when nothing was heard of you for years?'
'Was it to be supposed, young man, that if I had done any such thing I should have neglected to inform my only child of the circumstance? Not to mention the Creature in whose charge I left her!' demanded Mr Steane, in throbbing accents of re proach.
'You couldn't have,' said Simon prosaically.
'I should have made arrangements,' said Mr Steane vaguely. 'In fact, I had made arrangements. But let that pass! I am not here to bandy idle words with you. I am here to discover where your brother is lying concealed, Mr Carrington!'
Simon's hackles began to rise. 'I have two brothers, sir, and neither of them is lying concealed!'
'I refer to your brother Desford. My concern is not with your other brother, of whose existence I was unaware. I must own that until this morning I was unaware of your existence too.' He heaved a deep sigh, and sadly shook his head. 'One grows out of touch! Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume – ! No doubt you can supply the rest of that moving passage.'
'Well, of course I can! Anyone could!'
'Labuntur anni,' murmured Mr Steane. 'How true! Alas, how true! Although you, standing as you do on the threshold of life, cannot be expected to appreciate it. How well I remember the heedless, carefree days of my own youth, when – '
'Forgive me, sir!' said Simon, ruthlessly interrupting this rhetorical digression, 'but you're wandering from the point! I collect that you wish me to tell you where my brother Desford is to be found. If I knew, I'd be happy to tell you, because he'd be devilish glad to see you, but I don't know! What I do know is that he is not lying concealed anywhere! And also,' he added, with rising colour, and stammering a little, 'Th-that there's no reason why he should be! And, what's more, I'll thank you not to make such – such false accusations against him!'
'All alike, you Carringtons!' said Mr Steane mournfully 'How vividly the past is recalled to my remembrance by your words! Your esteemed father, now – '
'We'll leave my father out of this discussion!' snapped Simon, by this time thoroughly incensed.
'Willingly, willingly, my dear boy! It is no pleasure to me to recollect how grievously he misjudged me. How little allowance he made for youth's indiscretions, how little he understood the straits to which a young man could be reduced by the harsh conduct of a parent who was – to put the matter in vulgar terms – a hog-grubber! I will go further: a flea-mint!'
'Well, you're out there!' retorted Simon. 'I don't know much about what you did in your youth, sir, but I do know that my father gave yours the cut direct when he heard he'd disowned you!'
'Did he so?' said Mr Steane, much interested. 'Then I have wronged him! I would I might have been present on the occasion! It would have supplied balm to my sorely wounded heart. But how, I ask myself, could I have guessed it? When I disclose to you that to me also he gave the cut direct you will realize that it was impossible for me to have done so.'
'I daresay, but I shall be obliged to you, sir, if you will cut line, and tell me what your purpose is in coming to visit me! I've already told you that I don't know where Desford is, and I can only advise you to await his return to London! He has a house in Arlington Street, and his servants are – are in hourly expectation of his return to it!'
'That he resides in Arlington Street I know,' said Mr Steane. 'Upon my arrival from Bath, I instantly made it my business to discover his direction – an easy task, his lordship
being such a distinguished member of Society.'
'Of course it was an easy task!' said Simon scornfully. 'All you had to do was to consult a Street Directory!'
Mr Steane dismissed this with a lofty wave of his hand. 'Be that as it may,' he said, obscurely but with great dignity, 'I did discover it, and instantly repaired to the inhospitable portals of his residence. These were opened to me by an individual whom I assumed to be his lordship's butler. He, like you, Mr Carrington, disclaimed all knowledge of his master's where abouts. He was – not to put too fine a point upon it – strangely reticent. Very strangely reticent! I am neither a noddicock nor a souse-crown, young man – in fact, I am one who is up to every move on the board, ill though it becomes me to puff myself off ! And I per ceived, in the twinkling of a bedpost, that he was under orders to fob me off !'
'Well, if that's what you perceived it's time you bought a pair of spectacles!' replied Simon rudely. 'How could Desford have given him any such orders when he thought you were dead? And, damn it, why the devil should he have done so? I daresay there's no one he would liefer meet than yourself ! Yes, and if you care to leave me your direction I promise you I'll give it to my brother the instant I know where he is to be found! All I know at this present is that he went off to Harrowgate, early last week!'
Mr Steane appeared to subject this information to profound consideration. After an appreciable pause, he shook his head, and said with an indulgent smile: 'It pains me to cast a doubt upon your veracity – and I would not wish you to think that I am insensible to the virtue of Loyalty! I assure you, young man, that I honour your noble determination to protect your brother, however much I may deplore his unworthiness. I will go further! If the interests of my beloved child were not so tragically in volved, I should applaud it. But what, I ask myself, should take Lord Desford to Harrowgate? No doubt a salubrious resort, and one, as I recall, much patronized by persons afflicted with gout, scurvy, and paralytic debilities. But if you wish to persuade me that Desford, who cannot, by my reckoning, be above thirty years of age, suffers from any of these distressing diseases, you are – in vulgar parlance – doing it rather too brown.'
'No, he don't suffer from those diseases! He don't suffer from any diseases, and he didn't go to Harrowgate for his health. Unless I'm much mistaken, he went there on what ought to be your business, Mr Steane! When I last saw him he was on the point of setting out to search for your father!'
'Tut, tut, my boy!' said Mr Steane reprovingly. 'Too rare and thick altogether! I have never had any business in Harrowgate. Or, in point of fact, in any of the watering-places of its kind: they offer no scope at all to a man of my genius. As for my father, I have cut my connection with him. He has been as one dead to me for many years.'
'Desford is searching for him to claim his protection for his granddaughter – your daughter, sir, whom you left destitute!' said Simon furiously. 'Or is she too as one dead to you?'
'That I should have lived to hear such words addressed to me!' ejaculated Mr Steane, pressing a hand to his heart, and casting up his eyes. 'My only child – my beloved child – the only relative I have in the world! And do not, I beg of you, speak to me of my erstwhile brother! I have not sunk so low as to claim relationship to that snivel-nose!' he added, descending abruptly from his histrionic heights. However, he rapidly recovered himself, and said: 'I demand of you, young man, is not my presence in London proof of my devotion to the sole pledge left to me by my adored partner in the marital state?' Overcome by these reflections, he buried his face in his handkerchief, and became to all appearances bowed with grief.
'No, it ain't!' said Simon bluntly. 'Anyone would think you'd plunged into a burning house, or some such thing!'
Affronted, Mr Steane raised his head, and said, with a good deal of feeling: 'If you imagine that plunging into a burning house is a riskier thing to do than to come boldly into this city, you are much mistaken! Why did I shake its dust from my feet do you suppose? Why did I choose to go into exile, leaving my be-loved child – temporarily, of course – in the care of a female who had cozened me into believing her to be worthy of my trust?'
'I hardly like to say, sir!' promptly replied Simon. 'But since you ask me I should think it was because the tipstaffs were after you!'
'Worse!' said Mr Steane tragically. 'I do not propose to recount the circumstances which led to my ruin. Suffice it to say that from the hour of my birth misfortune has dogged my every step. My youth was blighted by a gripe-fisted parent, and a scaly scrub of a brother, who had not the common decency to cock up his toes when his life was despaired of ! Not only did he rise up from what I confidently expected to be his death-bed, but less than a year later he fathered a son! That, young man, was the final straw!'
'Did – did you raise the recruits on a post obit bond?' asked Simon, awed.
'Naturally! Do not be misled into thinking that because I am not, I thank God, a muckworm, I am a lobcock! It was not in my father's power to cut me out of the Succession. If Jonas died, leaving a pack of daughters, I must, in due course, have inherited title, fortune, and all. Pardon me! The thought unmans me!' He disappeared once more into his handkerchief, emerging, after a few moments to say: 'I shall not say that I was shattered. It was a blow that would indeed have crushed me had I been a pudding-heart, but I am not a pudding-heart: I have ever borne my reverses with becoming fortitude, and have seldom failed to make a recover. In this crisis, did I flinch? did I despair? No, Mr Carrington! I girded up my loins, as did – well, I forget who it was, but it's no matter! – and I did make a recover! You see in me, today, one who by his own exertions has raised himself from low tide to high water.'
'Then why the deuce don't you settle your debts?' asked Simon sceptically.
Shocked by this suggestion, Mr Steane exclaimed: 'Waste the ready on my creditors? I am not such a spill-good as that, I hope! Nor, let me tell you, as unmindful of my duty to my child! I had no other purpose in returning to the land of my birth than to succour her. Conceive what were my feelings when I arrived in Bath, yearning to clasp her in my arms, only to discover that the Creature to whom I had entrusted her had cast her off ! Delivered her, in fact, into the hands of one of my bitterest enemies! And why? Because, if you please, in the midst of my struggles to bring myself about I had been obliged to defer the payment of her bills! Could she not have reposed as much confidence in my integrity as I had reposed in hers? Did she doubt that as soon as it became possible for me to do so I should have discharged my debt to her in full? Her only reply to these home-questions was a flood of tears.' He paused, directing a challenging stare at Simon; but as Desford had divulged only the bare outlines of the circumstances which had led him to befriend Cherry, Simon had no comment to offer. So Mr Steane continued his narrative. 'I repaired instantly to Amelia Bugle's country residence. It cost me a severe struggle to do so, but I mastered my repugnance: my parental feelings overcame all other considerations. And what was my reward? To be informed, Mr Carrington, that my innocent child had been ravished from the safety of her maternal relative's home by none other than my Lord Desford!'
'If that's what Lady Bugle told you, she was lying in her teeth!' Simon said. 'He did no such thing! Lady Bugle treated Miss Steane so abominably that she ran away – meaning to seek refuge with her grandfather! All Desford did was to take her up in his curricle, when he overtook her trudging up to London!'
Mr Steane smiled pitifully at him. 'Is that his story? My poor boy, it grieves me to be obliged to destroy your faith in your brother, but – '
'It needn't, for you won't do it!' interjected Simon, at white heat. 'And I'll thank you not to call me your boy!'
'Young man,' said Mr Steane sternly, 'remember that you are speaking to one who is old enough to be your father!'
'And do you remember, sir, that you are speaking of one who is my brother!' Simon countered.
'Believe me,' said Mr Steane earnestly, 'I enter most sincerely into your feelings! I was never, I regret to say, blessed with a
brother for whom I cherished the smallest partiality, but I can appreciate – '
'Partiality be damned!' interrupted Simon. 'Ask anyone who knows him whether Desford is the sort of loose screw to ravish a chit of a girl away from her home! You'll get the same answer you've had from me!'
Mr Steane heaved another of his gusty sighs. 'Alas, you force me to divulge to you, Mr Carrington, that I fear my unhappy child fell willingly into his arms! It rends me to the heart to be obliged to tell you this – and I need hardly describe to you how grievous a blow to me it was to learn that she had, in her inno cence, succumbed to the lure of a libertine possessed of a handsome face, and engaging address. Not to mention the advantages of birth and fortune. I am led to believe that Lord Desford is possessed of these attributes?'
Revolted by this description of his eldest brother, Simon repudiated it, saying shortly: 'No, he ain't! He's well-enough, I daresay – never thought about it, myself ! – but as for an engaging address – ! Lord, it makes him sound like a simpering, inching macaroni merchant! I'll have you know, sir, that Desford is a gentleman! What's more, your daughter didn't fall into his arms, because he never held them out to her! Not that I mean to say she would have done so if he had, for I am not one to cast aspersions on another man's close relations! And also, Mr Steane, if you weren't old enough to be my father I'd dashed well plant you a facer for having the infernal brass to call Desford a libertine!'