Christian discovered that he was not sorry to be alone. Cora’s company had been amusing and vivifying, no doubt, but it was even better now to have his own thoughts. He observed with relief that others in the stalls were smoking; tobacco as a rule had not very much meaning for him, but now he lit a large cigar from the dinner-case in his pocket, and stretching himself in his chair, proceeded to enjoy it. He kept his glance, in an indolent fashion, upon the stage, but his mind roamed far and wide.
Cora, in returning to explain that it would not be possible for her to stay till the time for Covent Garden, had ingenuously sat on for nearly another hour, cheering him with her lively prattle. She asked him many questions about himself, his diversions, his tastes, his relations with Lord Julius and Emanuel. He wondered now if these queries had been quite as artless as they seemed at the time. There rose up before him, in retrospect, certain occasional phases of her manner which suggested something furtive. She had watched the stage, and the doorway leading from it, with a kind of detached uneasiness on which he now languidly speculated. It occurred to him again to wonder if her husband was really in the building. Christian found himself thinking of this cousin of his almost with compassion. Poor devil! Was his fate not even more tragic than that of the others who were merely dead? He regretted now that he had not asked Cora point-blank as to his presence. His mood was so tolerant to-night that even the unforgivable insult to his father lost its sharp outlines, and became only a hasty phrase, the creature of imperative provocation.
In her final leave-taking, Cora had genially proffered her services if he desired to know any or all of the young ladies—and he had begged to be excused. Dicky Westland came down to the stalls later on, and shamefacedly linked a similar offer to his apologies for his prolonged neglect of his guest. But Christian protested that he was enjoying himself thoroughly. He was never less sleepy in his life; he did not want a drink; he would not dream of wishing to go until his friend was entirely ready. “You cannot realize,” he concluded, with his persuasive smile, “how strange and interesting this all is to me.”
But when Dicky had returned again to the stage, Christian paid less attention than ever to the diverting spectacle. His thoughts reverted obstinately to Captain Edward—? and to that portion of the family of which he was the congenital type. Was not that really the sort of man who should have the title? There seemed a cloud of negative reasons, but were these not sentimental abstractions? Should the duke not be a rough, hard sportsman, a man with a passion for horses and dogs and gunpowder saturating his veins? One who loved the country for its rude, toilsome out-of-door sports, and who liked best in town the primitive amusements of the natural man? He figured Edward in his mind’s eye most readily as puffing and cursing over a rat-hole with his terriers—or as watching with a shine of steel in his blue eyes the blood-stained progress of a prize-fight. And truly, were these not the things that a duke of Glastonbury of right belonged to?
He could not think of Lord Julius and of Emanuel as being Torrs at all. The older man had the physical inheritance of the family, it was true, but he was almost as much estranged from its ideals as that extraordinary son of his. They both were grotesquely out of the picture of English aristocratie life, whether in country or town. And he himself—how absolutely he also was out of the picture!
The immensity of the position which his grandfather’s death would devolve upon him had been present in his mind, it seemed sleeping as well as waking, for half a year. At the outset he had thrilled at the prospect; sometimes still he was able to reassure himself about it, and to profess to himself confidence that when the emergency came, he would be equal to it. But more often, in these latter days, the outlook depressed him. Of course nothing grievous would happen to him, in any event. He would be assured of an excellent living to the end of his days, with an exceptional amount of social deference from those about him, and relative freedom to do what he liked. He could marry and rear a family of lords and ladies; he could have his speeches in the House of Lords or elsewhere printed in the “Times”; if he looked about in America, he could secure a bride with perhaps millions to her dower. There was, in any case, the reasonable likelihood that he would be, to some extent, the heir of Lord Julius and Emanuel, in the latter part of his life. Thus he could go on, when he set himself to the task, piling-up reasons why he ought to view the future with buoyant serenity—to count himself among the happiest of men.
But then—was his not all self-deception? Did he not know in his heart that he was not happy?—that this gilded and ornate career awaiting him really repelled all his finer senses? To-night as he followed his thoughts behind the transparent screen of whisking dresses and jolting figures upon which his outer vision rested, the impulse to escape the whole thing rose strong within him. Already he had sworn that he would no longer weary himself with the meaningless and distasteful routine of social obligations in London. Why should he not plunge boldly forward beyond that, and say that he would make no further sacrifices of any sort to the conventions of mediocrity?
He lit another cigar and, rising, walked about a little by himself at the side of the stalls, his hands deep in his pockets, his brows knitted in formative introspection.
First of all, it was clear that Emanuel’s hopes about his taking up the System were doomed. It was not in him to assume such a part. He had not the capacity for such work; even if he had, he lacked both the tremendous driving energy and the enthusiasm.
But when Emanuel learned this, then he would be angry, and he would cover over no more money to that account at the bank. Eh bien! It couldn’t be helped. Christian recalled that he had still at that blessed bank more than sixty thousand francs!—truly a prodigious sum, when one thought of it soberly. The question whether this sum ought not to be given back to Emanuel, under certain circumstances, seemed to have settled itself. When it had first occurred to him that afternoon, it had suggested a good many moral difficulties. But it was really simplicity itself, as he considered it now. There were all those lean and poverty-stricken years of his youth and childhood to be remembered—and, stretching back beyond that, those other years of his father’s exile before he was born—nearly forty in all. The intelligent thing was to regard the three thousand pounds as a sort of restitution fund, to be spread out over the whole of that long period. Viewed in this light, the annual fraction of it was a paltry matter. Besides, Emanuel had expressly declared that no conditions whatever were attached to the money. Christian saw that he could make his mind quite easy on that score.
So then, there were sixty thousand francs! With that he might live admirably, even luxuriously, on the Continent, until his grandfather’s death. That event would of course alter everything. There would then come automatically to him—no matter where he was or what he did—a certain fixed income, which he understood to be probably over rather than under seventy-five thousand francs a year. This—still on the Continent—would be almost incredible wealth! There was really no limit to the soul-satisfying possibilities it opened before him. He would have a yacht on the Mediterranean; he would have a little chateau in the marvelous green depths of the Styrian Mountains—of which a boyhood friend had told him with such tender reverence of memory. He would see Innsbruck and Moscow, and, if he liked, even Samarkand and China. Why, he could go round the world in his yacht, if he chose—to remote spice islands and tropical seas! He could be a duke when, and as much, as it pleased him to be one. Instead of being the slave to his position and title, he would make them minister to him. He would do original things—realize his own inner fancies and predilections. If the whim seized him to climb Mount Ararat, or to cross the Sahara with a caravan of his own servants—that he would do. But above all things—now and henceforth forever, he would be a free man! He laughed grimly as he thought how slight was the actual difference between the life of pauper bondage he had led up to last October, and the existence which polite England and London had imposed upon him ever since. The second set of chains were of precious metal—that was all. Well, hereafter there would be no fetters of any description!
“I’m quite ready to go now, old man, if you are,” Dicky Westland said at some belated stage of this reverie. He had approached without being seen by his friend, and he had to pull at Christian’s sleeve to attract his attention. “I fancy you’ve been walking in your sleep,” he laughed, in comment upon this.
Christian shook himself, and, blinking at Dicky, protested that he had never been more wide awake in his life. “I go only if you’re entirely ready,” he said. “Don’t dream of leaving on my account I have been extremely interested, I assure you.”
“Every fellow has his own notions of enjoyment,” reflected Westland, with drowsy philosophy, as they went up the stairs toward the stage. “I tried to explain your point of view to some of the girls up here, but I’m not sure they quite grasped it. They were dying to have me bring you up and make you dance, you know. By George, I had a job to keep Dolly Montressor from coming down and fetching you, off her own bat.”
“How should they know or care about me?” asked Christian. “I didn’t expect to be pointed out.”
“My dear man,” retorted Dicky, sleepily, “no one pointed you out. They all know you by sight as well as they do George Edwards. It isn’t too late, still, you know—if you really would like to be introduced.”
Christian shook his head with resolution, as they halted at the wings. “Truly, no!” he repeated. “But I should like a glass of wine and a sandwich, if we can get past the stage. I’m not an atom sleepy, but I’m hungry and thirsty.”
On their way through a narrow, shadowed defile of huge canvas-stretched frames of deal, they passed two young men, one much taller than the other, who had their heads bent together in some low-voiced, private conversation. Christian glanced at them casually, and was struck with the notion that they observed him in turn, and exchanged comment upon his approach. He looked at them with a keener scrutiny as he went by—and it seemed to him that there was something familiar in the face of the larger man—who indeed looked away upon the instant their eyes met.
“Did you see those men?” he asked Westland, in an undertone, a moment later. “Do you know them?”
“Those we just passed?” Dicky looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know the thin chap, but the other fellow is Gus Torr—why, of course—your cousin. Somehow, I never think of you as belonging to that lot—I mean, being related to them. Of course—that was his sister-in-law you were sitting with. Why did you ask if I knew him?”
“Nothing—I was not sure if it was he—I’ve seen him only once,” Christian replied, with an assumption of indifference. “I remember having noticed then how much he looked like his brother.”
“Yes—poor devils!” commented Dicky, as they entered the manager’s room. Apparently it was in his mind to say more, but the place was crowded, and the problem of getting through the throng to the food and drink monopolized his attention.
Some minutes later, while Christian stood in another corridor, waiting for his friend to bring their hats and coats from the mysteriously elusive spot where he had left them, he overheard the mention of his name. Two women’s voices, wholly unknown to him, came from behind an improvised partition of screens near at hand, with great distinctness.
One of them said: “He spells his name ‘Tower,’ you know. I understand the idea is to make people forget who his father was.”
“Good job, too!” replied the other voice.
Christian turned abruptly, and strode off in the direction whither Dicky had disappeared. “After forty years!” he murmured hotly to himself. “After forty years!” and clenched his fists till the nails hurt his palms.
The two young men walked homeward, arm in arm,............