THE COLONEL’S PLANS.
THE Marchese, as Hubert had justly anticipated, asked for his part no awkward questions. He was a man of the world, of the Italian pattern; his tolerance was broad. So long as Hubert announced his intention of marrying Fede, and salved the slight to the honor of the Tornabuoni, he felt little inclined to stir up unpleasant bygones. He made no comment upon Hubert’s volte-face. To let sleeping dogs lie was the wisdom of his philosophy. So he merely shrugged his shoulders in his lazy, easy-going, Florentine way, and remarked that, provided only the Property was safe, it was no part of a prudent father’s business to inquire by what curious process of logic Hubert had come to accept a situation which one hour before he had declared untenable. “Droll people these English, Fede,” he said, between the puffs of a cigarette. “My mother was English; my wife was English; my daughter is English; yet hang me if after fifty years of knowing them, I understand their point of view any better than I did when I was a lad of twenty.” Nevertheless, though he said it not, he had his suspicions of the grounds of action.
So everybody was satisfied — except the Colonel.
Nay, the Colonel himself strolled away from that singular interview with a pleasing sense that things were turning out for him better than he anticipated. “Even you must feel,” Hubert said to him, as he disappeared through the window, “that no good purpose can now be served by prolonging any further this painful situation. It is unhappy for us, and humiliating for you — if anything can humiliate you.”
The Colonel slunk off, ruminating on those words. He held his head high, however, as was the wont of his mania. “Oh, pray don’t mention it,” he muttered to himself, in his man-of-the-world way, as he strolled along the balcony. “Happy to go, I’m sure. Never desire to intrude where the pleasure of my company is not appreciated. Sorry I disturbed the tranquillity of this charming wedding party. They’re at it already among themselves, by all that I can see — quarreling like cats and dogs with one another over the plunder — my plunder! Very unprincipled lot. Not displeased to be rid of them. Best intentions in the world, I’m sure; only wanted to give them my paternal blessing — cheap at two hundred, and a moderate allowance. But if people refuse to receive the visits of their own husbands and fathers in an amicable spirit, why, hang it all, they can’t be astonished at a little unpleasantness. Not my son after all. There’s a stroke of luck for you! If he were, Julia could do what she liked about the money. But now I’ve got a hold over her. I can disinherit her boy. If only I outlive her.” He paused on the stairs and reflected. His feet were unsteady. “It’s this beastly creeping paralysis,” he thought, “that spoils all. I’ve got to outlive Julia. Tough, tough, unhappily! It takes such a lot to kill a woman. Curious what a difference it makes to one, too, when you’ve a fortune in prospect. Till this minute it never mattered to me whether I died tomorrow or not, so long as I had brandy enough in bottle for to-night to make me decently comfortable. But now, I must live to oust that boy of hers.”
He hobbled down-stairs in his uncertain way to a seat in the garden. There, poising himself as best he might, he began to think it out as clearly as he could — without the aid of a brandy and soda. It was very hard work, for he was unused to thinking; and on the rare occasions when he did think at all, he assisted nature with aids to thought in the shape of alcohol. To-day, however, he could get no brandy, for he had reached his last sou, and the hotel would not trust him. So he sat and ruminated in a puzzle-headed way, which only resulted at first in a vague phantasmagoria of wild possibilities. As his head cleared, however, and the world came back to him, he began to form plans. “I shall go to London,” he said to himself, “if I can get the money. I’ve not been in London for more than twenty years. Absurd that an officer and a gentleman in my position should be debarred from visiting his own club in Pall Mall, for fear of being cut short of money by his wife, who doles him out a pittance as if he were a schoolboy. I’ve stood it too long. I’ll stand it no longer.”
He paused and mused, drawing figures in the gravel with his cane as he thought. “I shall try her by three roads,” he said to himself once more. “I’ll instruct my solicitor — have I got a solicitor? Never mind, I’ll instruct a solicitor — some solicitor — any solicitor — all rogues alike, solicitors — to enter three separate actions against her. One shall be for Restitution of Conjugal Rights.” He rolled it on his tongue. “That’ll frighten her. One shall be for divorce. That’ll touch her reputation. One shall be for declaring this boy of hers illegitimate. “That’ll threaten the money. I have her there on the horns of a trilemma. Good word, trilemma! Never heard of it before — suppose I invented it. What an inventive genius I have, to be sure! But anyhow, I’ve got her on one. If I fail in the divorce, I score off restitution; if I draw restitution blank, I win on illegitimacy. A very pretty trilemma — heads, I win; tails, Julia loses; and edgeways, the boy has to go from Milworth. I wonder whether a trilemma has three horns? and, if so, whether they go all three abreast; or, like the arms of Sicily and the Isle of Man, which are not arms at all, but really legs, turning round and round as if they were a bicycle wheel, with perpetual motion, and always kicking. I fancy the Isle of Man must be a most unpleasant antagonist. It kicks you circularly. Well, I’m just like that. Whichever way I fall, I shall have two good legs firmly fixed on the ground, and one up to kick with!” And he hugged himself at the prospect.
A single petty obstacle alone blocked his way — the temporary tightness of the money market. He was reduced by this time to one or two nickel sous of the Swiss Republic — which is an insufficient provision for a journey to London and three expensive lawsuits. On this question of ways and means, therefore, the Colonel ruminated long. “One should always be a gentleman,” he said to himself, reflectively, “and I’ve always been a gentleman. How does a gentleman behave when he finds himself, accidentally, hard up at an inn, through the remissness of his family? — what somebody calls their unremitting kindness? Why, he explains to the landlord, and borrows a trifling sum for current expenses. I’ll explain to the landlord. And I’ll borrow a trifling sum — that is to say, if he’ll lend it me.”
He rose from the garden seat and moved towards the steps. “Concierge!” he called out with ridiculous dignity.
“Monsieur?” the concierge said, raising his head without quitting his box for the shabby visitor. —
“I desire to speak with the proprietor,” Colonel Egremont went on, with aristocratic hauteur.
“Certainly, sir,” the concierge answered, and went in search of him.
The proprietor came out with that singular mixture of deference and rudeness which proprietors of hotels keep specially laid on for undesirable guests. “Monsieur?” he said blandly.
The Colonel drew himself up, and played his best card first. “I’m a disreputable old party for a hotel like this,” he observed insinuatingly. “A vaurien. A bummeln. Is it not so, Herr Proprietor?”
The proprietor bowed. “Monsieur plaisante,” he murmured, rubbing his hands dubiously.
“Not at all,” the Colonel replied, glancing down at his shabby coat. “Honor bright, I mean it. I’m no recommendation, no recommendation at all to the place, and ‘the other guests hate me.”
The proprietor nodded, unwilling to acquiesce in this too true statement, and, in his own pet phrase awaited developments.
“It would pay you to get rid of me,” the Colonel continued, with an insinuating smile. “I have been here two days; I have paid à la carte beforehand; and I owe no man anything. But my cash in hand is reduced to that — I assure you, to that.” He opened his closed palm and displayed the two paltry little shining nickels. “A ridiculous sum for a man who has held her Britannic Majesty’s commission,” he said; “but true nevertheless. Inadequate, isn’t it?”
The Colonel gazed at them comically. The proprietor bowed again. “And you suggest?” he said with ironical politeness.
The Colonel resumed his grandiloquent manner. “I desire,” he went on, “to return at once to Lugano and Florence. I have friends in each town — friends, important friends — and money. I came here expecting to receive some little remittance from my family, who are in Number Twenty. But my family are recalcitrant. You have a wife yourself, Monsieur le propriétaire; you know that sex; you can doubtless sympathize with me.” He drew out a card and handed it with mysterious solemnity to the landlord. “Colonel Walter Egremont, late Royal Engineers,” he said, reading it aloud; “husband of the lady who is now in Number Twenty.”
The landlord examined it. “I see,” he observed cautiously. “One must not interfere between guests and their families. That induces complications.”
“And what I want,” the Colonel continued, “is to raise a small loan — a merely nominal loan, say a couple of louis — which would enable me to get back from Goeschenen by the Gotthard.”
The landlord was a man who did nothing precipitately. “I will consider it,” he answered, with true Swiss prudence.
And he considered. As the result of his consideration, it occurred to him to take the card to Sir Emilius, who by this time had learned, very much to his surprise, that Hubert had thought better of his intention of dropping Fede, and was prepared to carry out his original program of marrying her. Sir Emilius scanned the card close. “I’ll go and see him,” he said slowly, with his hand on his chin. “I can do more with him, I think, than either my sister or my nephew.”
It was perfectly true. Sir Emilius’s quiet professional manner always frightened the Colonel. The great doctor boarded his brother-in-law at once as he would have boarded any other incipient lunatic. “Now, Egremont,” he said firmly, laying one hand on his shoulder, and holding up a monitory forefinger of the other, “the landlord tells me you’ve tried to borrow money. You know very well if you borrow it from him, you can never repay him. I’ve told him as much and warned him against lending it to you. As for Hubert and Julia, they have made their minds up never to let you have another penny. You’ve brought that on yourself, by coming here against orders and your own written agreement. And you’ve caused no end of bother, and trouble as well, in an innocent family, whose only crime is the fact that it happens to have you for a husband and father. I approve of their decision. But for myself, as I desire to get rid of you at once, I’m prepared to lend you a small sum — five pounds — to clear out with immediately, provided you engage to go straight back to Lugano to-day, and show your face here no longer. Do you understand, and do you promise?”
He held an English five-pound note between finger and thumb, and extended it tentatively. The sight of so much money was tempting indeed to a thirsty man. It represented some dozens of brandy, and meant, among other things, a drink immediately. Colonel Egremont did not hesitate. Visions of cognac and a syphon of soda floated before his eyes. His finance and his diplomacy were both from hand to mouth. He would accept anything, and promise Anything, for a momentary advance. One can always lie and break one’s word afterwards. His fingers closed over the crisp paper eagerly. “I’ll clear out at once, Rawson,” he answered, “as soon as I’ve had a drink.” But he had no more intention of returning to Lugano than of returning the money.
He fortified himself for the way with a strong glass or two of brandy. Then, certain that nothing more was to be obtained from his wife or Hubert for the present, he set off on foot in the direction of Meyringen, carrying, as usual, his whole wardrobe with him. But he only walked as far as the very next village. There he ordered a post-cart to Lucerne with the air of a duke, and lolled back in it luxuriously, like a born Bashaw. For nobody could accuse Colonel Egremont of not spending his money royally when he got it. He wasted it while it lasted, and then begged or borrowed with a mind at ease till the arrival of his next remittance.
He slept well at the Schweitzerhof: why try a worse house? It was his intention to proceed next day to England.
But he would do nothing rash. He would keep his own counsel. As Hubert anticipated, he had reached the secretive stage of insanity. Arrived in London, he would consult a solicitor; till then, not one word would he say to any one. Better lock up the great secret in his own safe breast, till he could trumpet it forth in court— “This woman was unfaithful.” He hugged himself at the prospect of that humiliating disclosure. If Julia got wind of his intention too soon, she might manage to evade him. But he would make his case sure, and then burst upon her like a thunderbolt. Ha, ha, ha, what a triumph! That bastard should never be the heir of Milworth!
He whistled it to himself as he drove and lolled. Bastard! bastard! bastard! bastard!
He lingered on the word. But nature’s bastards, as Hubert knew well, are the children of loveless and ill-assorted unions.