Mr. Scarborough's Family Part 54

"And yet you do not scruple to come and live here at my cost."

"Not in the least. At whose cost can I live with less scruple than at yours? You, at any rate, have not robbed our mother of her good name, as my father has done. The only one of the family with whom I could not stay is the governor. I could not sit at the table with a man who has so disgraced himself."

"Upon my word I am very much obliged to you for the honor you do me."

"That's my feeling. The chance of the game and his villany have given you for the moment the possession of all the good things. They are all mine by rights."

"Cards have had nothing to do with it."

"Yes; they have. But they have had nothing to do with my being the eldest legitimate son of my father. The cards have been against me, but they have not affected my mother. Then there came the blow from the governor, and where was I to look for my bread but to you? I suppose, if the truth be known, you get the money from the governor."

"Of course I do. But not for your maintenance."

"On what does he suppose that I have been living since last June? It mayn't be in the bond, but I suppose he has made allowance for my maintenance. Do you mean to say that I am not to have bread-and-cheese out of Tretton?"

"If I were to turn you out of these rooms you'd find it very difficult to get it."

"I don't think you'll do that."

"I'm not so sure."

"You're meditating it,--are you? I shouldn't go just at present, because I have not got a sovereign in the world. I was going to speak to you about money. You must let me have some."

"Upon my word, I like your impudence!"

"What the devil am I to do? The governor has asked me to go down to Tretton, and I can't go without a five-pound note in my pocket."

"The governor has asked you to Tretton?"

"Why not? I got a letter from him this morning." Then Augustus asked to see the letter, but Mountjoy refused to show it. From this there arose angry words, and Augustus told his brother that he did not believe him.

"Not believe me? You do believe me! You know that what I say is the truth, He has asked me with all his usual soft soap. But I have refused to go. I told him that I could not go to the house of one who had injured my mother so seriously."

All that Mountjoy said as to the proposed visit to Tretton was true. The squire had written to him without mentioning the name of Augustus, and had told him that, for the present, Tretton would be the best home for him. "I will do what I can to make you happy, but you will not see a card," the squire had said. It was not the want of cards which prevented Mountjoy, but a feeling on his part that for the future there could be nothing but war between him and his father. It was out of the question that he should accept his father's hospitality without telling him of his intention, and he did not know his father well enough to feel that such a declaration would not affect him at all. He had, therefore, declined.

Then Harry Annesley's name was mentioned. "I think I've done for that fellow," said Augustus.

"What have you done?"

"I've cooked his goose. In the first place, his uncle has stopped his allowance, and in the second place the old fellow is going to marry a wife. At any rate, he has quarrelled with Master Harry _a outrance_.

Master Harry has gone back to the parental parsonage, and is there eating the bread of affliction and drinking the waters of poverty.

Flossy Mountjoy may marry him if she pleases. A girl may marry a man now without leave from anybody. But if she does my dear cousin will have nothing to eat."

"And you have done this?"

"'Alone I did it, boy.'"

"Then it's an infernal shame. What harm had he ever done you? For me I had some ground of quarrel with him, but for you there was none."

"I have my own quarrel with him also."

"I quarrelled with him--with a cause. I do not care if I quarrel with him again. He shall never marry Florence Mountjoy if I can help it. But to rob a fellow of his property I think a very shabby thing." Then Augustus got up and walked out of the chambers into the street, and Mountjoy soon followed him.

"I must make him understand that he must leave this at once," said Augustus to himself, "and if necessary I must order the supplies to be cut off."

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

THE SCARBOROUGH CORRESPONDENCE.

It was as Mountjoy had said. The squire had written to him a letter inviting him to Tretton, and telling him that it would be the best home for him till death should have put Tretton into other hands. Mountjoy had thought the matter over, sitting in the easy-chair in his brother's room, and had at last declined the invitation. As his letter was emblematic of the man, it may be as well to give it to the reader:

"My dear father,--I don't think it will suit me to go down to Tretton at present. I don't mind the cards, and I don't doubt that you would make it better than this place. But, to tell the truth, I don't believe a word of what you have told to the world about my mother, and some of these days I mean to have it out with Augustus. I shall not sit quietly by and see Tretton taken out of my mouth. Therefore I think I had better not go to Tretton.

"Yours truly,

"MOUNTJOY SCARBOROUGH."

This had not at all surprised the father, and had not in the least angered him. He rather liked his son for standing up for his mother, and was by no means offended at the expression of his son's incredulity. But what was there in the prospect of a future lawsuit to prevent his son coming to Tretton? There need be no word spoken as to the property.

Tretton would be infinitely more comfortable than those rooms in Victoria Street, and he was aware that the hospitality of Victoria Street would not be given in an ungrudging spirit. "I shouldn't like it," said the old squire to himself as he lay quiet on his sofa. "I shouldn't like at all to be the humble guest of Augustus. Augustus would certainly say a nasty word or two."

The old man knew his younger son well, and he had known, too, the character of his elder son; but he had not calculated enough on the change which must have been made by such a revelation as he, his father, had made to him. Mountjoy had felt that all the world was against him, and that, as best he might, he would make use of all the world, excepting only his father, who of all the world was the falsest and the most cruel. As for his brother, he would bleed his brother to the very last drop without any compunction. Every bottle of champagne that came into the house was, to Mountjoy's thinking, his own, bought with his money, and therefore fit to be enjoyed by him. But as for his father, he doubted whether he could remain with his father without flying at his throat.

The old man decidedly preferred his elder son of the two. He had found that Augustus could not bear success, and had first come to dislike him, and then to hate him. What had he not done for Augustus? And with what a return! No doubt Augustus had, till the spring of this present year, been kept in the background; but no injury had come to him from that.

His father, of his own good will, with infinite labor and successful ingenuity, had struggled to put him back in the place which had been taken from him. Augustus might, not unnaturally, have expressed himself as angry. He had not done so but had made himself persistently disagreeable, and had continued to show that he was waiting impatiently for his father's death. It had come to pa.s.s that at their last meeting he had hardly scrupled to tell his father that the world would be no world for him till his father had left it. This was the reward which the old man received for having struggled to provide handsomely and luxuriously for his son! He still made his son a sufficient allowance befitting the heir of a man of large property, but he had resolved never to see him again. It was true that he almost hated him, and thoroughly despised him.

But since the departure and mysterious disappearance of his eldest son his regard for the sinner had returned. He had become apparently a hopeless gambler. His debts had been paid and repaid. At last the squire had learned that Mountjoy owed so much on post-obits that the farther payment of them was an impossibility. There was no way of saving him. To save the property he must undo the doings of his early youth, and prove that the elder son was illegitimate. He had still kept the proofs, and he did it.

To the great disgust of Mr. Grey, to the dismay of creditors, to the incredulous wonder of Augustus, and almost to the annihilation of Mountjoy himself, he had done it. But there had been nothing in Mountjoy's conduct which had in truth wounded him. Mountjoy's vices had been dangerous, destructive, absurdly foolish, but not, to his father, a shame. He ridiculed gambling as a source of excitement. No man could win much without dishonest practices, and fraud at cards would certainly be detected. But he did not on that account hate cards. There was no reason why Mountjoy should not become to him as pleasant a companion as ever for the few days that might be left to him, if only he would come. But, when asked, he refused to come. When the squire received the letter above given he was not in the least angry with his son, but simply determined, if possible, that he should be brought to Tretton.

Mountjoy's debts would now be paid, and something, if possible, should be done for him. He was so angry with Augustus that he would, if possible, revoke his last decision;--but that, alas! would be impossible.

Sir William Brodrick had, when he last saw him, expressed some hope,--not of his recovery, which was by all admitted to be impossible,--but of his continuance in the land of the living for another three months, or perhaps six, as Sir William had finally suggested, opening out, as he himself seemed to think, indefinite hope. "The most wonderful const.i.tution, Mr. Scarborough, I ever saw in my life. I've never known a dog even so cut about, and yet bear it." Mr. Scarborough bowed and smiled, and accepted the compliment. He would have taken the hat off his head, had it been his practice to wear a hat in his sitting-room. Mr.

Merton had gone farther. Of course he did not mean, he said, to set up his opinion against Sir William's; but if Mr. Scarborough would live strictly by rule, Mr. Merton did not see why either three months or six should be the end of it. Mr. Scarborough had replied that he could not undertake to live precisely by rule, and Mr. Merton had shaken his head.

But from that time forth Mr. Scarborough did endeavor to obey the injunctions given to him. He had something worth doing in the six months now offered to him.

He had heard lately very much of the story of Harry Annesley, and had expressed great anger at the ill-usage to which that young man had been subjected. It had come to his ears that it was intended that Harry should lose the property he had expected, and that he had already lost his immediate income. This had come to him through Mr. Merton, between whom and Augustus Scarborough there was no close friendship. And the squire understood that Florence Mountjoy had been the cause of Harry's misfortune. He himself recognized it as a fact that his son Mountjoy was unfit to marry any young lady. Starvation would a.s.suredly stare such young lady in the face. But not the less was he acerbated and disgusted at the idea that Augustus should endeavor to take the young lady to himself. "What!" he had exclaimed to Mr. Merton; "he wants both the property and the girl. There is nothing on earth that he does not want.

The greater the impropriety in his craving, the stronger the craving."

Then he picked up by degrees all the details of the midnight feud between Harry and Mountjoy, and set himself to work to undermine Augustus. But he had steadily carried out the plan for settling with the creditors, and, with the aid of Mr. Grey, had, as he thought, already concluded that business. Conjunction with Augustus had been necessary, but that had been obtained.

It is not too much to say that, at the present moment of his life, the idea of doing some injury to Augustus was the one object which exercised Mr. Scarborough's mind. Since he had fallen into business relations with his younger son he had become convinced that a more detestable young man did not exist. The reader will, perhaps, agree with Mr. Scarborough, but it can hardly be hoped that he should entertain the opinion as strongly.

Augustus was now the recognized eldest legitimate son of the squire; and as the property was entailed it must no doubt belong to him. But the squire was turning in his mind all means of depriving that condition as far as was possible of its glory. When he had first heard of the injury that had been done to Harry Annesley, he thought that he would leave to our hero all the furniture, all the gems, all the books, all the wine, all the cattle which were acc.u.mulated at Tretton. Augustus should have the bare acres, and still barer house, but nothing else. In thinking of this he had been actuated by a conviction that it would be useless for him to leave them to Mountjoy. Whatever might be left to Mountjoy would in fact be left to the creditors; and therefore Harry Annesley with his injuries had been felt to be a proper recipient, not of the squire's bounty, but of the results of his hatred for his son.

To run counter to the law! That had ever been the chief object of the squire's ambition. To arrange everything so that it should be seen that he had set all laws at defiance! That had been his great pride. He had done so notably, and with astonishing astuteness, in reference to his wife and two sons. But now there had come up a condition of things in which he could again show his cleverness. Augustus had been most anxious to get up all the post-obit bonds which the creditors held, feeling, as his father well understood, that he would thus prevent them from making any farther inquiry when the squire should have died. Why should they stir in the matter by going to law when there would be nothing to be gained? Those bonds had now been redeemed, and were in the possession of Mr. Grey. They had been bought up nominally by himself, and must be given to him. Mr. Grey, at any rate, would have the proof that they had been satisfied. They could not be used again to gratify any spite that Augustus might entertain. The captain, therefore, could now enjoy any property which might be left to him. Of course, it would all go to the gaming-table. It might even yet be better to leave it to Harry Annesley.

But blood was thicker than water,--though it were but the blood of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He would do a good turn for Harry in another way. All the furniture, and all the gems, and all the money, should again be the future property of Mountjoy.

But in order that this might be effected before he died he must not let the gra.s.s grow under his feet. He thought of the promised three months, with a possible extension to six, as suggested by Sir William. "Sir William says three months," he said to Mr. Merton, speaking in the easiest way of the possibility of his living.