The Man Between: An International Romance

“Good morning, mother. You have failed me for the first time in your life.”

“If the money had been for you, Edward, or yours–”

“It is—good-by.”

She called him back peremptorily, and he returned and stood at the open door.

“Why don’t you ask Ethel?”

“I did not think I had the right, mother.”

“More right to ask her than I. See what she says. She’s Rawdon, every inch of her.”

“Perhaps I may. Of course, I can sell securities, but it would be at a sacrifice a great sacrifice at present.”

“Ethel has the cash; and, as I said, she is Rawdon—I’m not.”

“I wish my father were alive.”

“He wouldn’t move me—you needn’t think that. What I have said to you I would have said to him. Speak to Ethel. I’ll be bound she’ll listen if Rawdon calls her.”

“I don’t like to speak to Ethel.”

“It isn’t what you like to do, it’s what you find you’ll have to do, that carries the day; and a good thing, too, considering.”

“Good morning, again. You are not quite yourself, I think.”

“Well, I didn’t sleep last night, so there’s no wonder if I’m a bit cross this morning. But if I lose my temper, I keep my understanding.”

She was really cross by this time. Her son had put her in a position she did not like to assume. No love for Rawdon Court was in her heart. She would rather have advanced the money to buy an American estate. She had been little pleased at Fred’s mortgage on the old place, but to the American Rawdons she felt it would prove a white elephant; and the appeal to Ethel was advised because she thought it would amount to nothing. In the first place, the Judge had the strictest idea of the sacredness of the charge committed to him as guardian of his daughter’s fortune. In the second, Ethel inherited from her Yorkshire ancestry an intense sense of the value and obligations of money. She was an ardent American, and not likely to spend it on an old English manor; and, furthermore, Madam’s penetration had discovered a growing dislike in her granddaughter for Fred Mostyn.

“She’d never abide him for a lifelong neighbor,” the old lady decided. “It is the Rawdon pride in her. The Rawdon men have condescended to go to Mostyn for wives many and many a time, but never once have the Mostyn men married a Rawdon girl—proud, set-up women, as far as I remember; and Ethel has a way with her just like them. Fred is good enough and nice enough for any girl, and I wonder what is the matter with him! It is a week and more since he was here, and then he wasn’t a bit like himself.”

At this moment the bell rang and she heard Fred’s voice inquiring “if Madam was at home.” Instantly she divined the motive of his call. The young man had come to the conclusion the Judge would try to influence his mother, and before meeting him in the afternoon he wished to have some idea of the trend matters were likely to take. His policy—cunning, Madam called it—did not please her. She immediately assured herself that “she wouldn’t go against her own flesh and blood for anyone,” and his wan face and general air of wretchedness further antagonized her. She asked him fretfully “what he had been doing to himself, for,” she added, “it’s mainly what we do to ourselves that makes us sick. Was it that everlasting wedding of the Denning girl?”

He flushed angrily, but answered with much of the same desire to annoy, “I suppose it was. I felt it very much. Dora was the loveliest girl in the city. There are none left like her.”

“It will be a good thing for New York if that is the case. I’m not one that wants the city to myself, but I can spare Dora STANHOPE, and feel the better for it.”

“The most beautiful of God’s creatures!”

“You’ve surely lost your sight or your judgment, Fred. She is just a dusky-skinned girl, with big, brown eyes. You can pick her sort up by the thousand in any large city. And a wandering-hearted, giddy creature, too, that will spread as she goes, no doubt. I’m sorry for Basil Stanhope, he didn’t deserve such a fate.”

“Indeed, he did not! It is beyond measure too good for him.”

“I’ve always heard that affliction is the surest way to heaven. Dora will lead him that road, and it will be more sure than pleasant. Poor fellow! He’ll soon be as ready to curse his wedding-day as Job was to curse his birthday. A costly wife she will be to keep, and misery in the keeping of her. But if you came to talk to me about Dora STANHOPE, I’ll cease talking, for I don’t find it any great entertainment.”

“I came to talk to you about Squire Rawdon.”

“What about the Squire? Keep it in your mind that he and I were sweethearts when we were children. I haven’t forgotten that fact.”

“You know Rawdon Court is mortgaged to me?”

“I’ve heard you say so—more than once.”

“I intend to foreclose the mortgage in September. I find that I can get twice yes, three times—the interest for my money in American securities.”

“How do you know they are securities?”

“Bryce Denning has put me up to several good things.”

“Well, if you think good things can come that road, you are a bigger fool than I ever thought you.”

“Fool! Madam, I allow no one to call me a fool, especially without reason.”

“Reason, indeed! What reason was there in your dillydallying after Dora Denning when she was engaged, and then making yourself like a ghost for her after she is married? As for the good things Bryce Denning offers you in exchange for a grand English manor, take them, and then if I called you not fool before, I will call you fool in your teeth twice over, and much too good for you! Aye, I could call you a worse name when I think of the old Squire—he’s two years older than I am—being turned out of his lifelong home. Where is he to go to?”

“If I buy the place, for of course it will have to be sold, he is welcome to remain at Rawdon Court.”

“And he would deserve to do it if he were that low-minded; but if I know Squire Percival, he will go to the poor-house first. Fred, you would surely scorn such a dirty thing as selling the old man out of house and home?”

“I want my money, or else I want Rawdon Manor.”

“And I have no objections either to your wanting it or having it, but, for goodness’ sake, wait until death gives you a decent warrant for buying it.”

“I am afraid to delay. The Squire has been very cool with me lately, and my agent tells me the Tyrrel-Rawdons have been visiting him, also that he has asked a great many questions about the Judge and Ethel. He is evidently trying to prevent me getting possession, and I know that old Nicholas Rawdon would give his eyelids to own Rawdon Court. As to the Judge–”

“My son wants none of it. You can make your mind easy on that score.”

“I think I behaved very decently, though, of course, no one gives me credit for it; for as soon as I saw I must foreclose in order to get my own I thought at once of Ethel. It seemed to me that if we could love each other the money claims of Mostyn and the inherited claims of Rawdon would both be satisfied. Unfortunately, I found that I could not love Ethel as a wife should be loved.”

“And I can tell you, Fred, that Ethel never could have loved you as a husband should be loved. She was a good deal disappointed in you from the very first.”

“I thought I made a favorable impression on her.”

“In a way. She said you played the piano nicely; but Ethel is all for handsome men, tall, erect six-footers, with a little swing and swagger to them. She thought you small and finicky. But Ethel’s rich enough to have her fancy, I hope.”

“It is little matter now what she thought. I can’t please every one.”

“No, it’s rather harder to do that than most people think it is. I would please my conscience first of all, Fred. That’s the point worth mentioning. And I shall just remind you of one thing more: your money all in a lump on Rawdon Manor is safe. It is in one place, and in such shape as it can’t run away nor be smuggled away by any man’s trickery. Now, then, turn your eighty thousand pounds into dollars, and divide them among a score of securities, and you’ll soon find out that a fortune may be easily squandered when it is in a great many hands, and that what looks satisfactory enough when reckoned up on paper doesn’t often realize in hard money to the same tune. I’ve said all now I am going to say.”

“Thank you for the advice given me. I will take it as far as I can. This afternoon the Judge has promised to talk over the business with me.”

“The Judge never saw Rawdon Court, and he cares nothing about it, but he can give you counsel about the ‘good things’ Bryce Denning offers you. And you may safely listen to it, for, right or wrong, I see plainly it is your own advice you will take in the long run.”

Mostyn laughed pleasantly and went back to his hotel to think over the facts gleaned from his conversation with Madam. In the first place, he understood that any overt act against Squire Rawdon would be deeply resented by his American relatives. But then he reminded himself that his own relationship with them was merely sentiment. He had now nothing to hope for in the way of money. Madam’s apparently spontaneous and truthful assertion, that the Judge cared nothing for Rawdon Court, was, however, very satisfactory to him. He had been foolish enough to think that the thing he desired so passionately was of equal value in the estimation of others. He saw now that he was wrong, and he then remembered that he had never found Judge Rawdon to evince either interest or curiosity about the family home.

If he had been a keen observer, the Judge’s face when he called might have given his comfortable feelings some pause. It was contracted, subtle, intricate, but he came forward with a congratulation on Mostyn’s improved appearance. “A few weeks at the seaside would do you good,” he added, and Mostyn answered, “I think of going to Newport for a month.”