Part 2 (1/2)
”He is really a splendid character though,” Denzil hastened to a.s.sure him. ”Do you know the family history? But no, of course not, we were too busy in the old days enjoying life to trouble to talk of such things!
Well, it is rather strange in the last generation--things very nearly came to an end and John has built it all up again. You are interested in heredity?”
”Naturally--what is the story?”
”Our mutual great-grandfather was a tremendous personage in North Somerset--the place Ardayre is there. My father was the son of the younger son, who had just enough to do him decently at Eton, and enable him to sc.r.a.pe along in the old regiment with a pony or two to play with.
My mother was a Willowbrook, as you know, and a considerable heiress, that is how I come out all right, but until John's father, Sir James, squandered things, the head of the family was always very rich and full of land--and awfully set on the dignity of his race. They had turned the cult of it into regular religion.”
”The father of this man made a _gaspillage_, then--well?”
”Yes, he was a rotter--a hark-back to his mother's relations; she was a Cranmote--they ruin any blood they mix with. I am glad that I come from the generation before.”
Denzil helped himself to a Russian salad, and went on leisurely. ”He fortunately married Lady Mary de la Paule--who was a saint, and so John seems to have righted, and takes after her. She died quite early, she had had enough of Sir James, I expect, he had gambled away everything he could lay hands upon. Poor John was brought up with a tutor at home, for some reason--hard luck on a man. He was only about thirteen when she died and at seventeen went straight into the city. He was determined to make a fortune, it has always been said, and redeem the mortgages on Ardayre--very splendid of him, wasn't it?”
”Yes--well all this is not out of the ordinary line--what comes next?”
Denzil laughed--he was not a good raconteur.
”The poor lady was no sooner dead than the old boy married a Bulgarian snake charmer, whom he had picked up in Constantinople! You may well smile”--for Verisschenzko had raised his eyebrows in a whimsical way--this did sound such a highly coloured incident!
”It was an unusual sort of thing to do, I admit, but the tale grows more lurid still, when I tell you that five months after the wedding she produced a son by the Lord knows who, one of her own tribe probably, and old Sir James was so infatuated with her that he never protested, and presently when he and John quarrelled like h.e.l.l he pretended the little brute was his own child--just to spite John.”
Verisschenzko's Calmuck eyes narrowed.
”And does this result of the fusion of snake charmers figure in the family history? I believe I have met him--his name is Ferdinand, is it not, and he is, or was, in some business in Constantinople?”
”That is the creature--he was brought up at Ardayre as though he were the heir, and poor John turned out of things. He came to Eton three years before I left, but even there they could not turn him into the outside semblance of a gentleman. I loathed the little toad, and he loathed me--and the sickening part of the thing is that if John does not have a son, by the English law of entail Ferdinand comes into Ardayre, and will be the head of the family. Old Sir James died about five years ago, always protesting this b.a.s.t.a.r.d was his own child, though every one knew it was a lie. However, by that time John had made enough in the city to redeem Ardayre twice over. He had tremendous luck after the South African War, so he came into possession and lives there now in great state--I do really hope that he will have a son.”
”You, too, have the instinct of the family, then--this pride in it--since it cannot benefit you either way.”
”I believe it is born in us, and though I have never seen Ardayre, I should hate this mongrel to have it. I was brought up with a tremendous reverence for it, even as a second cousin.”
”Well, the new Lady Ardayre looks young enough and of a health to have ten sons!”
”Y-es,” Denzil acquiesced in a tentative tone.
”Not so?” Verisschenzko glanced up surprised, and then gave his attention to the waiter who had brought some Burgundy and was pouring it out into his gla.s.s.
”Not so you would say?”
”I don't know, I have never seen her--but in the family it is whispered that John--poor devil--he had an accident hunting two or three years ago. However, it may not any of it be true--here, let us drink to the Ardayre son!”
”To the Ardayre son!” and Verisschenzko filled his friend's gla.s.s with the decanted wine and they both drank together.
”Your cousin is like you,” he said presently. ”A fatiguing likeness, but the same height and make--and voice--strange things these family reproductions of an exact type. I have no family, as you know--we are of the people, arisen by trade to riches. Could I go beyond my immediate parents, could I know cousins and uncles and brothers, should I find this same peculiar stamp of family among us all? Who knows? I think not.”
”I suppose there is something in it. My father has told me that in the picture gallery at Ardayre they are as like as two pins the whole way down.”
”The concentration upon the idea causes it. In people risen like my father and myself, we only resemble a group--a nation; if I have children they will resemble me. It is strength in the beginning when an individual rises beyond the group, which produces a type. One says 'English' to look at you, and then, if one knows, one says 'Ardayre' at once; one gets as far as 'Calmuck' with me, that is all, but in years to come it will have developed into 'Verisschenzko.'”
”How you study things, Stepan; you are always putting new ideas into my head whenever I see you. Life would be just a routine, for all the joy of sport, if one did not think. I am going to finish my soldiering this autumn and stand for Parliament. It seems waste of time now, with no wars in prospect, sticking to it; I want a vaster field.”