The Spider and the Fly. Garvice Charles

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СКАЧАТЬ mansion in Grosvenor Square, the castle in Scotland, the villa on the banks of the Arno, and the fishing boxes in Ireland and Wales.

      The present earl and countess was blessed, in addition to the places of residence above enumerated, with a son and daughter.

      The former, Lord Fitz Plantagenet Boisdale, was a young man just passed his majority. Fair – insipid he would have been called had he not been heir to Lackland – somewhat simple-minded, certainly not clever, and extremely fond of dress, billiards, his betting-book, and his cigar.

      Lady Ethel Boisdale, his sister, presented a marked contrast to him.

      She was tall, dark, by no means insipid, and if not positively clever, certainly possessed of the average quantity of brains.

      To say in what direction her taste inclined would be perhaps at present rather premature.

      It is difficult to analyze the lady's disposition, and probably the reader at some future time might be dissatisfied and inclined to pooh, pooh our opinion of Lady Ethel if we pronounced it thus early. Suffice it to say she was fond of reading, was deeply attached to her brother, and would have been equally so to her parents had they encouraged or even permitted her to be so.

      Perhaps such great personages as the Earl and Countess of Lackland were too exalted to possess those emotions of affection and tenderness which fall to the lot of commoner people.

      If they did not possess them they managed to conceal them with infinite art, and no one could accuse them of the common folly of wearing their hearts upon their sleeves.

      Assuredly Lady Ethel must have had a warm heart and a generous nature or the coldness of her exalted parents would have chilled her and rendered her cold likewise.

      That she was not the reader will soon perceive.

      Thousands of persons envied my Lord and Lady Lackland. Never did their carriage roll through the streets, or their names appear in the paper among the fashionable intelligence, but hundreds exclaimed:

      "I wish I were a Lackland."

      But not one of the envious many knew what they were really envying.

      There is a skeleton in every house; there was one ever present in all the great and small houses of Lackland. Sometimes he kept discreetly to his cupboard; at others he stepped boldly out and rattled his bones, and grinned in a manner horrible to see.

      Oh, yes, reader, other people besides yourself have a skeleton, and there are some persons unfortunate enough to have two.

      If we entered the Grosvenor Square mansion, say on the morning after that memorable little dinner party at Mildmay Park far away in Penruddie, we might perhaps have caught a glimpse of that skeleton starting out of the cupboard.

      Lord Lackland was seated at the morocco-lined writing table in his own room, with a few newspapers, a decanter of light wine, and a box of biscuits before him.

      The door opened, and a young man, no other than Lord Fitz Plantagenet Boisdale, entered.

      There was a flush on his fair face, and a look of doubt and distrustful nervousness in his rather simple blue eyes.

      "Good-morning, sir," he said, holding out his hand.

      "Good-morning, Fitz," said the earl, extending two fingers and glancing coldly at a chair which stood near the table ready for any visitor on business. "You are ten minutes behind your time."

      "I am very sorry, sir," said the boy, for he was little more in years or appearance, "but I'd promised to ride with Ethel this morning, and I forgot it until after I left you, so I went down to the stable to tell Markham to saddle the two bays, and he kept me to talk about that chestnut – "

      The earl interrupted what promised to be a lengthy explanatory excuse with his cold, little bow, and glanced at the ormolu timepiece on the table.

      "It is of little consequence to me; I am obliged to leave at the half hour to meet an appointment, therefore I shall only be able to give you the time I promised to give you. You wished to speak to me."

      "Yes, sir," said Lord Fitz, looking down at his boots nervously, and then up at the ceiling. "I wanted to ask you if you could let me have a couple of hundred pounds beyond my allowance to – to – pay a few debts, which – which, of course, I could not help running into while I was in Paris."

      Lord Lackland walked to the bureau, and took out a bundle – a very small bundle – of banknotes; from this he counted out a hundred pounds' worth, and, holding them in his hand, said:

      "Here are a hundred pounds; I cannot give you any more, for a very good reason, I cannot afford to do so."

      Lord Fitz looked up with a simple stare which extended his mouth as well as his eyes.

      "I cannot afford to do so," said the metallic voice. "It is quite time that you should be placed in possession of the truth as regards my – I may say our – pecuniary position. I ought, perhaps, to have informed you of the condition of my affairs long earlier, but consideration for your feelings deterred me. Fitz, the estates in London, in Italy, in England, are mortgaged to their fullest extent. The revenue is nearly swallowed up by the interest, and there is so little ready money in the house that if the servants were to demand their wages I should not be in a position to pay them."

      Lord Fitz stared, pale and aghast.

      The skeleton was out grimly walking before him. For the first time Lord Boisdale learned that he was heir to a rich crop of embarrassments, and that the great Earl of Lackland, his father, was a poor man.

      "Great Heaven!" he exclaimed. "You don't mean to say that, sir!" unlike his father, showing his emotion unmistakably.

      "I have said it," replied the earl, "and now you know my – our – real position. Credit, Fitz, has kept our heads above water for a great many years – credit alone. How much longer it may do so I cannot say, but I can estimate if your bills for necessaries amount to the sums which they here represent."

      "What – what's to be done?" asked Lord Fitz, staring at his calm parent with bewildered horror. "We must sell some of the places, the horses, the diamonds, by jingo! – the – the – everything!"

      "We cannot sell what is sold or out of our hands already. You do not understand business matters, unfortunately, or you would at once comprehend that the houses, the land, being mortgaged, and the diamonds at the – ahem – pawnbroker's, it is simply impossible to make further money of them."

      The young man jumped up and took three paces up and down.

      "But," said he, suddenly, and with incredulity upon his face, "I saw my mother wear the diamonds at the last drawing-room."

      "Not exactly," said the earl, "paste imitations only; the real are in the possession of a pawnbroker. But if you have any taste or inclination for an investigation or examination of our finances, you have my permission to examine the documents which you will find in this case – "

      "Great Heaven, no!" said young Fitz. "I don't doubt your word, my lord; I'm only stunned, knocked all of a heap as one may say. It seems so incredible! Why, by jingo, the fellows are always asking me to lend them money – and – and saying how rich we are; and you say that – "

      "That I cannot afford to let you have the other hundred pounds," said the earl, replacing the bundle in the bureau. "While we are upon the subject, which is too СКАЧАТЬ