The Old Adam Part 29

"I beg pardon, sir. A gla.s.s of water and--"

"A peerage. P double e-r-a-g-e."

"I beg your pardon, sir. I didn't catch. Which peerage, sir? We have several."

"All of them."

In a hundred seconds, the last menial having thanked him for kindly taking the gla.s.s and the pile of books, Edward Henry was sipping water and studying peerages. In two hundred seconds he was off again. A menial opened the swing-doors of the smoking-room for him, and bowed.

The menial of the lift bowed, wafted him downwards, and bowed. The infant menial produced his hat and stick and bowed. The old and medalled menial summoned his brougham with a frown at the chauffeur and a smile at Edward Henry, bowed, opened the door of the brougham, helped Edward Henry in, bowed, and shut the door.

"Where to, sir?"

"262 Eaton Square," said Edward Henry.

"Thank you, sir," said the aged menial, and repeated in a curt and peremptory voice to the chauffeur, "262 Eaton Square!" Lastly he touched his cap.

And Edward Henry swiftly left the precincts of the headquarters of political democracy in London.

V.

As he came within striking distance of 262 Eaton Square he had the advantage of an unusual and brilliant spectacle.

Lord Woldo was one of the richest human beings in England--and incidentally he was very human. If he had been in a position to realise all his a.s.sets and go to America with the ready money, his wealth was such that even amid the luxurious society of Pittsburg he could have cut quite a figure for some time. He owned a great deal of the land between Oxford Street and Regent Street, and again a number of the valuable squares north of Oxford Street were his, and as for Edgware Road--just as auctioneers advertise a couple of miles of trout-stream or salmon-river as a pleasing adjunct to a country estate, so, had Lord Woldo's estate come under the hammer, a couple of miles of Edgware Road might have been advertised as among its charms. Lord Woldo owned four theatres, and to each theatre he had his private entrance, and in each theatre his private box, over which the management had no sway. The Woldos in their leases had always insisted on this.

He never built in London; his business was to let land for others to build upon, the condition being that what others built should ultimately belong to him. Thousands of people in London were only too delighted to build on these terms: he could pick and choose his builders. (The astute Edward Henry himself, for example, wanted furiously to build for him, and was angry because obstacles stood in the path of his desire.) It was constantly happening that under legal agreements some fine erection put up by another hand came into the absolute possession of Lord Woldo without one halfpenny of expense to Lord Woldo. Now and then a whole street would thus tumble all complete into his hands. The system, most agreeable for Lord Woldo and about a dozen other landlords in London, was called the leasehold system; and when Lord Woldo became the proprietor of some bricks and mortar that had cost him nothing, it was said that one of Lord Woldo's leases had "fallen in," and everybody was quite satisfied by this phrase.

In the provinces, besides castles, forests, and moors, Lord Woldo owned many acres of land under which was coal, and he allowed enterprising persons to dig deep for this coal, and often explode themselves to death in the adventure, on the understanding that they paid him sixpence for every ton of coal brought to the surface, whether they made any profit on it or not. This arrangement was called "mining rights"--another phrase that apparently satisfied everybody.

It might be thought that Lord Woldo was, as they say, on velvet. But the velvet, if it could be so described, was not of so rich and comfortable a pile after all; for Lord Woldo's situation involved many and heavy responsibilities, and was surrounded by grave dangers. He was the representative of an old order going down in the unforeseeable welter of twentieth-century politics. Numbers of thoughtful students of English conditions spent much of their time in wondering what would happen one day to the Lord Woldos of England. And when a really great strike came, and a dozen ex-artisans met in a private room of a West End hotel and decided, without consulting Lord Woldo, or the Prime Minister, or anybody, that the commerce of the country should be brought to a standstill, these thoughtful students perceived that even Lord Woldo's situation was no more secure than other people's; in fact, that it was rather less so.

There could be no doubt that the circ.u.mstances of Lord Woldo furnished him with food for thought, and very indigestible food too.... Why, at least one hundred sprightly female creatures were being brought up in the hope of marrying him. And they would all besiege him, and he could only marry one of them--at once!

Now, as Edward Henry stopped as near to No. 262 as the presence of a waiting two-horse carriage permitted, he saw a gray-haired and blue-cloaked woman solemnly descending the steps of the portico of No.

262. She was followed by another similar woman, and watched by a butler and a footman at the summit of the steps, and by a footman on the pavement, and by the coachman on the box of the carriage. She carried a thick and lovely white shawl, and in this shawl was Lord Woldo and all his many and heavy responsibilities. It was his fancy to take the air thus, in the arms of a woman. He allowed himself to be lifted into the open carriage, and the door of the carriage was shut; and off went the two ancient horses, slowly, and the two adult fat men and the two mature spinsters, and the vehicle weighing about a ton; and Lord Woldo's morning promenade had begun.

"Follow that!" said Edward Henry to the chauffeur, and nipped into his brougham again. n.o.body had told him that the being in the shawl was Lord Woldo, but he was sure that it must be so.

In twenty minutes he saw Lord Woldo being carried to and fro amid the groves of Hyde Park (one of the few bits of London earth that did not belong to him nor to his more or less distant connections) while the carriage waited. Once Lord Woldo sat on a chair, but the chief nurse's lap was between him and the chair-seat. Both nurses chattered to him in Kensingtonian accents, but he offered no replies.

"Go back to 262," said Edward Henry to his chauffeur.

Arrived again in Eaton Square, he did not give himself time to be imposed upon by the grandiosity of the square in general nor of No. 262 in particular. He just ran up the steps and rang the visitors' bell.

"After all," he said to himself as he waited, "these houses aren't even semi detached! They're just houses in a row, and I bet every one of 'em can hear the piano next door!"

The butler whom he had previously caught sight of opened the great portal.

"I want to see Lady Woldo."

"Her ladyship--" began the formidable official.

"Now look here my man," said Edward Henry rather in desperation, "I must see Lady Woldo instantly. It's about the baby--"

"About his lordship?"

"Yes. And look lively, please."

He stepped into the sombre and sumptuous hall.

"Well," he reflected, "I am going it--no mistake!"

VI.

He was in a large back drawing-room, of which the window, looking north, was in rich stained gla.s.s. "No doubt because they're ashamed of the view," he said to himself. The size of the chimneypiece impressed him, and also its rich carving. "But what an old-fashioned grate!" he said to himself. "They need gilt radiators here." The doorway was a marvel of ornate sculpture, and he liked it. He liked too the effect of the oil-paintings--mainly portraits--on the walls, and the immensity of the bra.s.s fender, and the rugs, and the leatherwork of the chairs. But there could be no question that the room was too dark for the taste of any householder clever enough to know the difference between a house and a church.

There was a plunging noise at the door behind him.

"What's amiss?" he heard a woman's voice. And as he heard it he thrilled with sympathetic vibrations. It was not a North Staffordshire voice, but it was a South Yorkshire voice, which is almost the same thing. It seemed to him to be the first un-Kensingtonian voice to soothe his ears since he had left the Five Towns. Moreover, n.o.body born south of the Trent would have said, "What's amiss?" A Southerner would have said, "What's the matter?" Or, more probably, "What's the mattah?"

He turned and saw a breathless and very beautiful woman of about twenty-nine or thirty, clothed in black, and she was in the act of removing from her lovely head what looked like a length of red flannel.

He noticed too, simultaneously, that she was suffering from a heavy cold. A majestic footman behind her closed the door and disappeared.

"Are you Lady Woldo?" Edward Henry asked.

"Yes," she said. "What's this about my baby?"

"I've just seen him in Hyde Park," said Edward Henry. "And I observed that a rash had broken out all over his face."

"I know that," she replied. "It began this morning, all of a sudden like. But what of it? I was rather alarmed myself, as it's the first rash he's had, and he's the first baby I've had--and he'll be the last too. But everybody said it was nothing. He's never been out without me before, but I had such a cold. Now, you don't mean to tell me that you've come down specially from Hyde Park to inform me about that rash.

I'm not such a simpleton as all that." She spoke in one long breath.

"I'm sure you're not," said he. "But we've had a good deal of rash in our family, and it just happens that I've got a remedy--a good, sound, north-country remedy, and it struck me you might like to know of it.

So, if you like, I'll telegraph to my missis for the recipe. Here's my card."

She read his name, t.i.tle, and address.

"Well," she said, "it's very kind of you, I'm sure, Mr. Machin. I knew you must come from up there the moment ye spoke. It does one good above a bit to hear a plain north-country voice after all this fal-lalling."

She blew her lovely nose.

"Doesn't it!" Edward Henry agreed. "That was just what I thought when I heard you say 'Bless us!' Do you know, I've been in London only a two-three days, and I a.s.sure you I was beginning to feel lonely for a bit of the Midland accent!"