"No, really, Harry, this is dreadful! Whatever will Lucian think?"
"Nothing he don't already! But—I wish you had come in time, Mitch. It was a grand wedding. All the girls were asking for you, and Mandy said—"
"If it was so grand," Mitchell interposed, returning to his chair, "why are you come home at this ungodly hour?"
His grey eyes were keen all at once, and for the briefest second Harry's green ones fell away before that searching look. "Grief," he said brightly. "Cannot bear to see a good friend become a benedick. And instead of your having the unmitigated gall to loll about in my new dressing gown and question the actions of the Head of your House, be so good as to tell me the meaning of the letter your tutor directed to me." Seeing that his evasion had increased the suspicion in his brother's eyes, he went on hurriedly, "He says you shall have to cram hard, old lad, if you're to cavort off to Italy this summer. What the deuce you do with your time up there I cannot imagine. Or I could, did I think you the type to hang about the fancy houses!"
"What makes you suppose I am not?"
There was a deep bond between them and Harry had long since discerned the shadows beneath Mitchell's eyes and the slight hollows in the cheeks. The smile left his eyes as he said, "I'm inclined to think if you've been in bed, it has been very much alone."
It was Mitchell's turn to look away, but he stood considerably in awe of his brother and he knew that grave stare too well to dissemble. He admitted that he'd had "a spot of bother" with his chest again. "Put me on my back for upwards of a month, and they wouldn't allow me to study. Curst nuisance."
"And why," demanded Harry, his long fingers tightening a little on the arm of his chair, "was I not told of this?"
"Don't tell you everything," replied Mitchell indistinctly, around a piece of the omelette. "No more'n you tell me…"
They locked glances for an instant. Harry got up, walked to the chest of drawers, and poured himself a glass of the sherry Anderson had left there. Sipping it appreciatively, he threw a thoughtful look at his brother. "And what am I to gather from that remark, my bantling?"
Instead of objecting to a form of address that never failed to irritate him, Mitchell shrugged, "I've heard a few things. Funny sort of rumours." He pushed the remaining piece of omelette around his plate with careful precision and murmured, "Not in the basket, are we?"
"Lord—no! Who the devil told you such a Canterbury tale? My father left the estate practically untouched—he never was a gamester, thank God! Moire Grange awaits you, child, whenever you will."
"It does?" Mitchell captured his much-travelled piece of omelette and conveying it to his mouth, mumbled, "I'd thought perhaps you intended to occupy the Grange yourself. With your lady…" He glanced up from under his lashes and, seeing Harry's smile bland and his eyes very empty, said, "You are—fond of the fair Dorothy, aren't you, old fellow?"
'Course I am! I've been pursuing the lady any time this last year and more. Whatever did you think I was about? She's a lady of quality."
"Pursuing… yes. But somehow I wasn't sure you—ah… wanted to catch up." Mitchell flushed under his brother's sardonic grin and said awkwardly, "All right, I don't know much about such things, but—it didn't seem to me you had the same look. Not like old Lucian, I mean. Or Damon, come to that."
Harry laughed. "Silly gudgeon!" he said.
"Here…"
Sergeant Anderson was startled to find Mrs. Thomas removing the empty cup from one hand and the spoon from the other.
"Good gracious, Sergeant," she smiled. "You are in a state. Whatever is the matter? Is it because Mr. Mitchell has come home?"
He had thought he was concealing his worries and apologizing for his inattention, confessed he'd known there would be trouble the minute Mr. Mitchell "showed his pretty face this evening! He's always trouble, that one is!"
Pouring him another cup, Mrs. Thomas said carefully that he seemed a tiny bit prejudiced. "If I may say so, Sergeant, I thought him a fine-looking boy. Very much the gentleman. And Sir Harry would, I have gathered, lay down his life for him without an instant's hesitation."
"And da— er, very nearly did!" growled the Sergeant. He accepted his tea with a mutter of thanks, and glared down at it in silence. So she thought he was prejudiced, did she? He scowled. "You'll mind I was the one what found him after the Battle of Ciudad Rodrigo, ma'am?"
"I was not at this situation then, Sergeant, and never have presumed to ask about it. But Mrs. Langridge once told me that poor Sir Harry's back was fairly riddled!" She shook her head, her eyes reflecting sincere distress.
"Not quite that bad," said the Sergeant. "But the Captain was proper mauled by two shell fragments. His horse was all cut up, which is why the beast bolted. Me and the Captain's men searched every inch of that bl— er, that miserable town for him. Everyone said he was killed. Blowed up with poor Colonel Mackinnon, they said, or been buried accidental-like. Some of the men took it awful hard." He stared blankly at the spoon in his powerful hand. "But—I found him…"
"In a farm, was it not?" prompted Mrs. Thomas gently. "And the dear man near death? How very fortunate that those people helped him."
"Been lying there for days," Anderson nodded, his eyes bleak. "And he'd had precious little in the way of help. You wouldn't believe that filthy hovel! And him in such pain he couldn't even talk to me. But—held out his hand, he did. And give me a grin."
Mrs. Thomas gasped a faint, "Oh… my . . ! Poor soul! So you were able to bring him back after all, Sergeant. How very grateful his papa must have been."
"Yus," said the Sergeant, himself rather overcome by that harrowing memory. "Sir Colin thought the sun riz and set in the Captain. It was months though 'fore we dared put him on a ship, and months of illness after he got home, but never a whimper out of him. We was at Moire Grange, a'course, and Mr. Mitchell come down for the Long Vacation. A fat lot he cared for his brother! Always had his head stuck in a book. Sir Harry was on the mend, and fidgety. Always asking me for news of the war. One morning he says to me, sad-like, "We should be back in Spain, Andy. With the old 43rd…" The Sergeant clenched his fist and growled, "I should've kept me eyes on him. He got to feeling so sprightly he asked Mr. Mitchell to go for a ride with him. Mr. Mitchell said later that he heard what he said, but "it didn't really sink in!" Anderson drew a deep breath, his disgust very evident. "I don't think you've never been to the Grange, Mrs. Thomas. From the time he was a little shaver, Sir Harry loved to gallop through the high meadow and up around a path that skirts the Home Wood. The path takes a sharp turn around the edge of the trees, right at the top of the hill, and there's a wooden footbridge over a place what got washed away in a storm once. Well, there'd been heavy rains again that past winter. A whole piece of the hill had give way and took the bridge with it." He said fiercely, "Mr. Mitchell knowed how dangerous it was. Only he didn't bother to warn his brother!"
"My heavens! Didn't Sir Harry see the bridge was gone?"
"Wasn't no way he could've, ma'am. If he'd been riding slow— perhaps. But Sir Harry don't ride slow. The mare broke her neck. The Captain was set back where he'd been months before. Had to go through all that misery—all over again . . !" He stared at his spoon, his eyes very angry.
Mrs. Thomas was well aware of the Sergeant's devotion to his 'Captain'. She hesitated and, choosing her words with care, ventured, "How awful! But—have you never been so lost in a book, Sergeant, that you did not hear what was said to you?"
"Can't say I has, ma'am. To my mind there ain't no excuse for what he done. No matter how interested he was in that there book, his brother shoulda come first! If he'd really cared, something in his head would've woke him up. Truth is, Mr. Mitchell don't care for nothing nor no one, 'cepting Mr. Mitchell!"
Chapter II
"Is the Reverend from home, Baines?" Shivering in the stark and chill hall of the Rectory, Harry allowed the elderly butler to assist him in the removal of his wet coat and hat, and appropriate his whip and gloves.
"The Reverend is composing his sermon," announced Baines, his tones so ponderously singsong they might have emanated from his mistress rather than himself. "If you will step into the withdrawing room, Sir Harry, I shall pour you a glass of wine and then advise him of your arrival."
Harry accompanied the faithful retainer with impatience rather than the boredom this large, dull house and its solemn occupants usually aroused in his irreverent breast. "My aunt is well, I trust? And the children?"
"Mrs. Langridge is in Harrogate, sir. Visiting of her sister, this being May. Master William and Miss Martha went with her and have since, so I understand, contracted measles."
"Dear, dear!" Sir Harry had a mental picture of his aunt Ada, who enjoyed her own imagined ills to the hilt, being suddenly visited by her sanctimonious sister and two sick children. He suppressed a grin and remarked that he trusted Lady Edgar was bearing up under the strain. Mr. Baines fixed the young baronet with a reproving glance and responded that since Mrs. Langridge had taken along some copies of her husband's more recent sermons, he rather suspected they would provide the needed inspiration. He shook his head at Harry's amused wink, and made his dignified way from the room having first placed a glass of sherry beside the sinner's cold hand.
Harry sipped the wine and grimaced; it was of a poor vintage, and sour, and the oppressively over-furnished room like ice. He paced to the fireplace and stirred up the wretched remains with his booted foot, then bent to add another log and poke hopefully at it.
"Waste not…" came the mournful intonation from behind him, "want not!"
"Afternoon, Uncle." Harry straightened and put out his hand. "You're likely right, but it's freezing in here. With Aunt Wilhelmina sporting about in Harrogate, I'd think you could live a little more comfortable."
The Reverend Mordecai Langridge was what Harry had once, in a moment of total frustration, described to Mitchell as a 'neither man'. Neither fat nor thin, tall nor short, dark nor fair, young nor old, clever nor stupid. "In short," he'd grumbled, "a compromise in every possible direction!"
"Until," his brother had smiled, "you come to 'strong nor weak'," and they had both laughed, if perhaps with a twinge of conscience at such harsh criticism. In his youth, Mordecai Langridge had taken a tall lady of unexceptional birth and moderate fortune for his bride, deeming her lofty moral values an asset to his calling. As the years had passed, however, his Wilhelmina's preoccupation with morality had become an obsession to which had been added a frugality bordering on the nipcheese and a self-righteousness that had deepened into pompous sanctimoniousness. Despite these questionable attributes, she was not one to stint herself at table, with the result that girth had combined with height to render her a formidable figure. She was possessed of a sharp tongue, a booming voice, and a growing scorn for her gentle and ineffectual husband. Sir Colin Redmond had been wont to remark that there was good stuff in 'poor old Mordecai,' did he only exert it. And that if he should ever do so it would be better for both of them. Harry and Mitchell, fondly tolerant of their parent's unfailing ability to find the good in everyone, had exchanged amused smiles at such kindly observations, and privately chuckled to think of 'Maude,' as they irreverently dubbed him, daring to stand up to his terrifying spouse.
Now, Langridge drew closer to the fire, holding out his pudgy hands to the warmth and, for an instant forgetting himself, murmured, "Baines watches me like a hawk, y'see, and—" He stopped abruptly, pulled his heavy woollen jacket closer about him, adjusted the knitted shawl he wore over it, tugged at the nightcap on his head, and said a hurried, "I do not find it in the least bit chill. But how generous in you to visit me. You knew perhaps that I am lone and lorn?"
"Are you going to shake my hand or not, sir?" asked Harry briskly.
"What? Oh." The Reverend obliged, his grasp neither strong nor limp, and, shaking his head, mourned, "How swift you are to take umbrage. Pride, Harry, goeth before—"
"Goeth before mystification in this case, sir. Your pardon if I am unmannerly, but—might we sit down?"
"Oh dear! We are upset. We are rude and angry. And anger, my dear boy, is such a wasted emotion. I used to tell your poor father…"
Since his uncle was now seated on one of the straight-backed red velvet chairs beside the fire, Harry eased his own long length onto a similar monstrosity and, having waited dutifully but unavailingjy for the sentence to end, said, "Uncle Mordecai, my father—"
"My own dear sister's husband! God rest his poor sinful soul!" groaned Langridge, clasping his hands and casting an anguished look at the ceiling.
"I have little doubt, sir," Harry bridled, "but that my father's soul was well-received!"
His uncle's gaze drifted sorrowfully downward, and he was so moved by what he saw in that stern young countenance that he clasped a hand over his eyes. "Poor boy! The innocent victim! Truly—the sins of the fathers…"
"For heaven's sake, Uncle!" Harry sprang to hs feet. "My greatest regret, and my brother's also, is that our father is not alive today! As for sins—I've no doubt he had some, being human, but he was a great-souled, warm hearted gentleman, with not an ounce of prim and prosy hypocrisy about him!"
"You seek to come to points with me," sighed Langridge. "And I had so hoped we might talk together. That I might, at last… "
Again Harry waited, nerves taut. Exasperated, he at last burst out, "Sir, what in the deuce is my bank about? I particularly wish Mitchell to take that Italian tour this summer. He had the bronchitis twice last year, and again only recently. A few months in a milder climate might do him good. I sent funds up to Oxford to cover the costs, and the draft was returned from the bank together with a note explaining that my account is closed!"
"One cannot expect a great banking house to deceive, my boy," the Reverend sighed. "I have protected you for as long as I could. Now you must—"
"You… have… what… ?"
Langridge jumped. "How like him you are." He shook his head chidingly. "Poor Colin… Poor Harry… How may I tell you? What can I say?"
"You can start by telling me what the devil all this Friday-faced ranting is about! And why my bank claims my account closed when my father left me very well to pass!"
The Reverend stared up into that green blaze and, thinking to read accusation there, his mouth fell open a little, a tide of crimson suffusing his features. He stood also, and cried dramatically, "Do I detect base suspicion, sir? Do you dare to accuse a gentleman of the cloth of—thievery?"
Despite his seething frustration, Harry was struck by this pose. Poor old Maude looked so totally ridiculous striking an affronted attitude while swathed in all his wools and with that awful nightcap sagging about his flabby face… "Of course I do not, sir," he said with considerably less force. "But something very odd is afoot, and I want to know what it is. Wherever I go I am the recipient of what I'd swear are sympathetic looks; Mitchell also has heard what he termed 'funny rumours'. I've been courting a charming lady for over a year, with her brother's full knowledge and sanction, yet he has suddenly decided I am not worthy of her hand." He scowled and muttered half to himself, "Though Reggie Haines-Curtis was ever a starchy court card, I'll own."
"And—the Lady Dorothy?"' enquired Mordecai timidly. "Has she promised to remain—constant?"
Harry flushed. The Lady Dorothy Haines-Curtis had, in point of fact, wept distractedly but announced that although she was "excessively fond of him and ever would be" she intended to wed Roger de Tornay—a man twice her age, with a perfectly vile reputation, but also possessed of an earldom and a vast fortune. And because that rejection still smarted more than he cared to admit, he evaded, "I put it to you, Uncle, that here's too much smoke for there to be no fire. I demand to be told the truth."
"The truth! Dear Lord!" Outrage faded into anguish and, wringing his hands, Langridge paced to the fire, stood surveying the squandered log apprehensively for an instant, then swung about. "My dear boy, your— But—no! I must not rush my fences! The truth is…" And rushing to his fence
s with a vengeance, he blurted, "Far from leaving you very well to pass, your father gambled away everything he owned! You and poor Mitchell are— absolutely destitute!"
For a second it seemed to Harry that the walls dissolved, that the two of them stood in a limbo wherein colour ceased to exist save for a jet black and blinding white. He put out a hand and groped for the mantle, thinking with a terrible wrench of fear, "Moire!"
"Don't be so… so damn ridiculous!" he stammered. "My—my father never gambled… in all his days!"
"Ah—but that was the trouble, you see, lad. Come now—sit down. I'll send for some brandy. Poor fellow—you are pale as death."
"Devil take the brandy!" Harry stood very straight and, man-aging somehow to control his voice, demanded, "Tell me what happened. And with no fancy frills, if you please."
The Reverend sat down. Surely the boy would not strike him if he was sitting down… "I want you to know," he began earnestly, "that I investigated with the greatest of care, for it seemed so foreign to my brother-in-law's character. Colin was not seen in Church as frequently as I would have wished. But I do not believe he was a gamester, and a more devoted husband and—"
"Dammit!" Harry exploded. "Will you come to the point? What happened? When? And Where? And why in God's name was I not told?"
"There is no call to bring the name of our Heavenly Father into so sordid a mat—" Langridge here perceived from Redmond's murderous expression that discretion was the better part of valour, and said a hurried, "Your papa sat down to cards with some other gentlemen, and—"
"Name them!"
"Wh-What? Oh—well, there was Sir Barnaby Schofield, Sprague Cobb, Lord Howard Cootesby, and…" Langridge hesitated, slanting an anxious glance at his nephew's white-faced rigidity. "And—M. Parnell Sanguinet." Harry's scowl, which had deepened with the first name, did not waver and, stifling a sigh of relief, the Reverend ventured, "Fine gentlemen, all."
Patricia Veryan - [Sanguinet Saga 05] - Nanette Page 2
