“Thank you,” said I.
“A terrible catastrophe. No wonder it has upset you. Horrible! Six living human beings! Three generations of men!”
“That’s just it,” said I. “Three generations of my family swept away, leaving me now at the head of it.”
At this moment the chief’s wife came into the library with the morning paper in her hand. On seeing me she rushed forward.
“Have you had bad news?”
“Yes. Is it in the paper?”
“I was coming to show my husband. The name is an uncommon one. I wondered if they might be relatives of yours.”
I bowed acquiescence. The chief looked at the paragraph below his wife’s indicating thumb, then he looked at me as if I, too, had suffered a seachange.
“I had no idea—” he said. “Why, now—now you are Sir Marcus Ordeyne!”
“It sounds idiotic, doesn’t it?” said I, with a smile. “But I suppose I -am.”
And so came my release from captivity. I was profoundly affected by the awful disaster, but it would be sheer hypocrisy if I said that I felt personal grief. I knew none of the dead, of whom I verily believe the valet was the worthiest man. My grandfather and uncles had ignored my existence. Not a helping hand had they stretched out to my widowed mother in her poverty, when one kindly touch would have meant all.
They do not seem to have been a lovable race, the Ordeynes. What my father, the youngest son, was like, I have no idea, as he died when I was two years old, but my mother, who was somewhat stern and puritanical, spoke of him very much as she would have spoken of the prophet Joel, had he been a personal acquaintance.
Seven years to-day have I been a free man.
Feeling at peace with all the world I called this afternoon on my Aunt Jessica, Mrs. Ordeyne, who has borne me no malice for stepping into the place that should have been the inheritance of her husband and of her son. Rather has she devised to adopt me, to guide my ambitions and to point out my duties as the head of the house. If I refuse to be adopted, avoid ambitions and disclaim duties, the fault lies not with her good-will. She is a well-preserved worldly woman of fifty-five, and having begun to dye her hair in the peroxide of hydrogen era has not the curiosity to abandon the practice and see what colour will result. I wish I could like her. I can’t. She purrs. Some day I feel she will scratch. She received me graciously.
“My dear Marcus. At last! Didn’t you know I have been in town ever since Easter?”
“No,” said I. “I am afraid I didn’t.” Which was true. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I would have asked you to dinner, but you will never come. As for At Home cards I never dream of sending them to you. It is a waste of precious half-penny stamps.”
“You might have written me a nice little letter about nothing at all,” I suggested.
“For you to say ‘What is that woman worrying me with her silly letters for?’ I know what you men are.” She looked arch.
This is precisely what I should have said. As I am not an inventive liar, I could only smile feebly. I am never at my ease with Aunt Jessica. I am not the kind of person to afford her entertainment. I do not belong to her world of opulence, and if even I desired it, which the gods forbid, my means would not enable me to make the necessary display. My uncle, thinking to retrieve the fallen fortunes of the title, amassed enormous wealth as a company promoter, while I, on whom the title has descended, am perfectly contented with its fallen fortunes. I have scarcely a thought or taste in common with my aunt. In fact, I must bore her exceedingly. Yet she hides her boredom beneath a radiant countenance and leads me to understand that my society gives her inexpressible joy. I wonder why.
She is always be-guide-philosopher-and-friending me. I resent it. A man of forty does not need the counsels of an elderly woman destitute of intellect. I believe there are some women who are firmly convinced that their sheer sex has imbued them with all the qualities of genius. To-day my aunt tackled me on the subject of marriage. I ought to marry. I asked why. It appeared it was every man’s duty.
“From what point of view?” I asked. “The mere propagation of the human race, or the providing of a superfluous young woman with a means of livelihood? If it is the former, then, in my opinion, there are too many people in the world already; and if the latter, I’m afraid I’m not sufficiently altruistic.”
“You are so funny!” laughed my aunt.
I was not aware of being the least bit funny.
“But, seriously,” she continued, “you must marry.” She is a woman who has an irritating way of speaking in Italics. “Are you aware that if you have no son the title will become extinct?”
“And if it does,” I cried, “who on this earth will care a half-penny-bun?”
I am growing tired of the title. At first it was rather amusing. Now it appears it is registered in Heaven’s chancery and hedged about with divine ordinances. Only the other day an unknown parson requested me to open a church bazaar, and I gathered he had received his instructions direct from the Almighty.
“Why, every one would care,” exclaimed my aunt, genuinely shocked. “It would be monstrous. You owe it to your descendants as well as to your ancestors. Besides,” she added, with apparent irrelevance, “a man in your position ought to live up to it.”
“I do,” said I, “just up to it.”
“Now you are pretending you don’t understand me. You ought to marry money!”
I smiled and shook my head. I don’t think my aunt likes me to smile and shake my head, for I saw a flicker in her eyes. “No, my dear aunt; emphatically no. It would be comfortless. If I kissed it, it would be cold. If I put my arms round it, it would be full of sharp edges which would hurt. If I tried to get any emotion out of it, it would only jingle.”
“What do you want then?”
“Nothing. But if I must—let it be plain flesh and blood.”
“Cannibal!” said my aunt.
We both laughed.
“But you can have plenty of flesh and blood, with money as well, for the asking,” she insisted; and thereupon my two cousins, Dora and Gwendolen, entered the drawingroom and interrupted the conversation. They are both bouncing, fresh-faced girls, in the early twenties. They ride and shoot and bicycle and golf and dance, and the elder writes little stories for the magazines. As I do none of these things, I am convinced they regard me as a poor sort of creature. When they hand me a cup of tea I almost expect them to pat me on the head and say, “Good dog!” I am long, lean, stooping, hatchet-faced, hawknosed, near-sighted. I have not the breezy air of the jolly young stockbrokers they are in the habit of meeting. They rather alarm me. Moreover, they have managed to rear a colossal pile of wholly incorrect information on every subject under the sun, and are addicted to letting chunks of it fall about one’s ears. This stuns me, rendering conversation difficult.
As I had not seen Dora since her return from Rome, where she had spent the early spring, I asked, in some trepidation, for her impressions. Before I could collect myself, I was listening to a lecture on St. Peter’s. She told me it was built by Michael Angelo. I suggested that some credit might be given to Bramante, not to speak of Rosellino, Baldassare Peruzzi and the two San Gallo’s.
“Oh!” said my young lady, with a superb air of omniscience. “It was all Michael Angelo’s design. The others only tinkered away at it afterwards.”
After receiving this brickbat I took my leave.
To console myself I looked up, during the evening, Michael Angelo’s noble letter about Bramante.
“One