What Christian first perceived about the duke’s apartments was that they had an odor quite peculiar to themselves. The series of small and badly lighted anterooms through which he followed Lord Julius—rooms with pallet-beds, clothes hung against the walls, and other somewhat squalid signs of domestic occupation—were full of this curiously distinctive smell. It was not so obvious in the larger and better-lighted chamber beyond, which the doctor in residence had converted to his own uses, and where he sat now reading a book, merely rising momentarily to bow as they passed. But in the next room—the big sleeping apartment, with its faded pretensions of stateliness of appointment, and its huge, high-posted bed, canopied by old curtains embroidered with heraldic devices in tarnished gilt threads—the odor was more powerful than ever, despite the fact that a broad window-door was open upon the balcony beyond. The young man’s keen sense was baffled by this pervasive scent—compounded as it seemed to be of all the ancient castle’s mustiness, of sharp medicinal vapors and of something else at once familiar and unknown. He sniffed inquiringly at it, as they neared the window, and apparently Lord Julius heard him, for he remarked over his shoulder:
“It is the dogs that you smell. They’ve practically removed the kennel up here.”
On the stone floor of the balcony outside there were to be seen, indeed, some dozen old hounds, for the most part lying sleepily in the sunshine, with their heads pointed toward a large, half-covered reclining chair placed near the balustrade, and occasionally opening a drowsy eye to regard its occupant. There were a few dogs of other kinds as well, Christian noted upon a second glance, and one of these, a bulky black creature with a broad snout and hair curled tight like astrakhan fur, sat close to the chair and was thrusting its muzzle against a hand at its side.
This hand was what Christian saw first of his grandfather—an immense limp hand, with thick fingers twisted and misshapen, and skin of an almost greenish pallor. The dog’s nose, thrust under it, moved this inert hand about, and the young man felt himself thrill unpleasantly, for some reason, at the spectacle.
At the further end of the balcony two men in livery lounged against the wall, but upon a signal from Lord Julius they went in. The latter, threading his way among the hounds, led Christian round to the side of the chair.
“This is Ambrose’s boy,” he said, bending a little and raising his voice. “He is Christian, too.”
Upon the chair was stretched, in a halfsitting posture, the gigantic frame of a very old man. The grandson looked upon him in silence for a long time, his mind confused with many impressions. The vast shoulders and high, bullet-like head, propped up by pillows in the partial shadow of the hood, seemed vaguely to recall the vision his baby memory had preserved of his own father. But in detail there was no resemblance. Or yes, there were resemblances, but they were blurred almost beyond recognition by the rough touch of time. The face, with its big, harsh features and bushing brows, and its frame of stiff white whiskers under the jaws and chin, had something in it which for an instant the young man seemed to identify; then the unnatural effect of its uniform yellow-clay color drove all thoughts of its human relationships from his mind, and he saw nothing but a meaningless mask. It was as devoid of significance, indeed, as if it had been in a coffin. The eyes were open and they seemed to be fixed upon the distant rolling prospect of hills and forest, but whether they were seeing anything, Christian could not imagine. They certainly had not been turned to include him in their survey. The livid right hand, swaying as the black dog pushed it with its nose, was the only thing about the duke that moved.
“He does not know I am here,” said Christian, at last. He spoke instinctively, with the ceremonious affectation of awe which one puts on in the presence of death. His grandfather hardly impressed him as being alive and still less made any appeal to his sense of kinship. He had expected to be overwhelmed with emotion at the meeting, but he found himself barely interested. His wandering glance chanced to take note of some of the dogs’ faces about the chair. They were all alertly watching him, and the profoundly wise look in their eyes caught his attention. No doubt they were dreadful fools, if the truth could be known, but the suggestion of cultured sagacity in their gaze was extraordinary. He looked back again at his grandfather, and tried to say to himself that he was a great noble, the head of an ancient and proud line, and the actual father of his father—but the effort failed to spur his fancy. He turned to Lord Julius and lifted his brows in wearied interrogation.
“Move round in front of him,” counseled the other. “Get yourself in the range of his eyes.”
Christian obeyed, and, flushing a little with self-consciousness, strove to intercept the aged man’s gaze. There was no change upon the ashen face under the hood to tell him whether he had succeeded or not. The impulse to grimace, to wave his arms about, to compel attention by any wild and violent device, forced him to smile in the midst of his perplexed constraint. He stared for a few moments longer at the gaunt, immovable figure—then shrugged his shoulders, and, stepping over a dog or two, made bold to rejoin Lord Julius.
“I do not see that it is of any use,” he said, with annoyance. “If you wish to go, I am quite ready.”
Lord Julius lifted his brows in turn, and looked at his grand-nephew with curiosity. “I said nothing about going, that I recall,” he began, with an effect of reproof in his tone. But then he seemed to think better of it, and gave an abrupt little laugh. “It isn’t very invigorating, I’m bound to admit,” he confessed, cheerfully enough. “Wait a moment, and I’ll stir him up a bit.”
He bent forward again, with his head at the edge of the hood, and shouted into it: “If you want to see Ambrose’s boy, here he is! If you don’t want to see him, say so, and waste no more of our time!”
To Christian’s surprise, the duke took instant cognizance of this remark. His large face brightened, or at least altered its aspect, into something like animation; his eyes emerged from their cover of lethargy, and looked alive.
“My back is very bad to-day,” he remarked, in a voice which, though it bore the querulous note of the invalid, was unexpectedly robust in volume. “And I cannot make out whether the numbness is passing down below my knee or not.”
Lord Julius nodded, as if confirming to himself some previous suspicion. “I thought as much,” he commented in an aside to the young man. “It’s merely his endearing little way. Have patience, and we’ll draw the badger yet.”
He bawled once more into the hood, with an added peremptoriness of tone: “I explained it all to you, hours ago, and I’m sure you understand it perfectly. Christian naturally wished to pay his respects to you, but if your back is too bad, why, there’s no more to be said—and we’ll be off. Goodbye to you!”
“Did I know his mother? Who was his mother? I have no recollection of her.” The duke spoke peevishly, twitching his sunken lips in what was plainly an effort to pout them. Christian noted with curiosity that as he surrendered himself to such mental exertion as the talk demanded, the aged man’s face grew disagreeably senile in effect. An infinity of gossamer-like wrinkles showed themselves now, covering the entire countenance in a minute network.
“No, you didn’t know his mother!” replied Lord Julius, with significant curtness. “It is more to the point that you should know him, since he is to be your successor. Look at him—and say something to him!”
The duke managed to testify on his stiffened lineaments the reluctance with which he did what he was told, but he shifted his eyes in a sidelong fashion to take a brief survey of the young man. “Cressage could have given you five stone ten,” he said to him, brusquely, and turned his eyes away.
Christian cast a look of bewildered inquiry up at Lord Julius, but encountered only a smile of contemptuous amusement. He summoned the courage to declare, in a voice which he hoped was loud enough: “I am glad to hear, sir, that this is one of your good days. I hope you will have many more of them!”
Of this assurance His Grace seemingly took no note. After a short pause he began speaking again. “There’s a dog up here,” he said, with the gravity befitting a subject to which he had given much thought, “that I’m sure falls asleep, and yelps in her dreams, and disturbs me most damnably, and I believe it’s that old bitch Peggy, and when I mention it the fellows swear that she’s been taken away, but I suspect that she hasn’t.”
“We will look to it,” put in Lord Julius perfunctorily. He added, upon an afterthought, “Did the guns annoy you, this forenoon?”
The duke’s thoughts were upon something else. He turned his eyes again, and apparently spoke to Christian. “A good hearty cut across the face with a whip,” he said, with kindling energy, “is what’d teach-swine like Griffiths their place—and then let ’em summons you and be damned. A farmer who puts up barbed-wire—no gentleman would listen to his evidence for a minute. Treat them like the vermin they are—and they’ll understand that. Cressage had the proper trick with them—a kick in the stomach first and reasons afterward. That’s the only way this country can be hunted. When I got to riding over eighteen stone, and couldn’t take anything, that ruffian Griffiths screwed up his gates and sent me round the turnpike like a damned peddler, and Ambrose—it was Ambrose, wasn’t it?—or am I thinking of Cressage? But they weren’t together—here, Julius! It was you who were speaking of Ambrose! What about him? By God, I wish he had my back!”
Lord Julius, with the smile in his beard hardening toward scorn, took Christian by the arm. “I think you’ve had enough grandfather to go on with,” he said, quietly. “Never mind making your adieux. They would be quite wasted on him.”
Without further words, they turned and moved away through the dogs to the window, and so into the house. The doctor, still at his book, rose once more upon their approach, and this time Lord Julius halted to speak with him.
“His Grace seems to ramble in his mind a good deal more than he did before luncheon. Do you see a change in this respect—say week by week?”
“It is not observable in gradations, Lord Julius,” answered the physician, a stout, sandy young man, who assumed his air of deference with considerable awkwardness; “sometimes he recovers a very decided lucidity after what had seemed to be a prolonged lapse in the other direction. But on the whole I should say there was a perceptible—well, loss of faculty. He knows the dogs, however, quite as well as ever—distinguishes them apparently by touch, remembers all their names, and recalls anecdotes about them, and, very often, about their mothers too. Fletcher tells me His Grace hasn’t once miscalled a hound.”
“They make an abominable atmosphere up here,” commented the other.
The doctor smiled lugubriously. “I can’t deny that, Lord Julius,” he replied, “but all the same they are the most important part of the treatment. If we took them away, His Grace would die within the week.”
“Unhappy dogs!” mused Lord Julius, partly to himself, and walked on. It was not until they were half-way down the big staircase that Christian felt impelled to speak.
“I should much like to know,” he began, with diffident eagerness—“you have already spoken so plainly about my grandfather—the question will not seem rude to him, I hope—but when he was well, before the paralysis, was he in any respect like what he is now?”
“I should say,” answered Lord Julius, in a reflective way, “that he is at present rather less objectionable than formerly. One can make the excuse of illness for him now—and that covers a multitude of sins. But when he was in health—and he had the superb—what shall I say?—riotous health of a whale—he was very hard to bear. You have seen him and you have observed his mental and moral elevation. He remembers his dogs more distinctly than he does his children. In the Almanach de Gotha he is classed among princes, but what he dwells upon most fondly among his public duties is the kicking of tenant-farmers in the stomach when they try to save their crops from being ruined by the hunt. I may tell you, I was in two minds about taking you to him at all, and now I think I regret having done so.”
“No-o,” said Christian, thoughtfully. “It is better as it is. I am glad to have seen him, and to have you tell me about him, frankly, as you have done. It all helps me to understand the position—and it seems that there is a great deal that needs to be understood. I can see already that there is strange blood in the Torrs.” He paused on the bottom step as he spoke, and turned to his companion with a wistful smile. “There is an even bolder question I should like to ask—how does it happen that you are so different? How do you account for yourself?”
Lord Julius laughed. “Oh, that is a long story,” he said, “but I can put it into a word for you. I was made by my wife. I married a woman so noble and clever and wise and strong that I couldn’t help becoming a decent sort of fellow in spite of myself. But I am going to talk to you about all that, later on. It is better worth talking about than anything else under the sun. Oh—Barlow, please!”
The old butler had passed from one door to another in the hall, and turned now as he was called, with a hand behind him upon the knob. Lord Julius, approaching, exchanged some words with him upon the subject of his afternoon’s plans.
Christian, watching this venerable servant with curiosity, as a type novel to his experience, discovered suddenly that his scrutiny was being returned. Barlow, while listening attentively and with decorously slow nods of comprehension to what was being said to him, had his eyes fixed aslant, beyond his interlocutor’s shoulder, upon the young stranger. Christian encountered this gaze, and saw it waver and flutter aside, as from force of polite habit, and then creep back again. This happened more than once, and Christian began to feel that it had some meaning. He observed that the butler inclined his head at last and whispered something—his pale, wan old face showed it to be an inquiry—into the other’s ear. The action explained itself so perfectly that Christian was in no way surprised to see Lord Julius turn smilingly, and nod toward himself.
“Yes, he is Ambrose’s son,” he said. “He has come to take his place. I know you for one won’t be sorry—eh, Barlow?”
It was clear to the young man’s perceptions that Lord Julius spoke as to one who was a friend as well as a servant. The note of patriarchal kindness in the tone appealed gratefully to him, and the affectionate mention of his father’s name was sweet in his ears. A strange thrill of emotion, a kind of aimless yet profound yearning, possessed him as he moved forward. On the instant he realized that this was how he had expected to feel in the presence of his grandfather. The fact that the tenderness within him was appealed to instead by this gentle, sad-eyed old family dependant seemed to him to have something beautiful and very touching in it. Tears came into his eyes.
“You remember my father, then,” he said, and the breaking of his voice carried him into the heart of this sudden new mood of self-abandonment. “You would have known him as a little child—yes?—and you—you—” he paused, to dash away the tears with his hand, and strive to regain some control over his facial muscles—“you will have in your memory the good things about him—the boyish, pleasant things—and you loved him for them, did you not?”
Old Barlow, trembling greatly, and with a faint flush upon his white cheeks, stared confusedly at the young man as he advanced. “I held him on his first pony, sir,” he stammered forth, and then shook his head in token that he could utter no more. His glistening eyes said the rest.
Christian flung his arms round the surprised old man’s neck, and kissed him on both cheeks, and then, with head bowed upon his shoulder, sobbed aloud.