The Royal End. Harland Henry

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СКАЧАТЬ “Yes? Yes?” he prompted.

      “She's an American,” said Mrs. Wilberton, speaking with an effect of forced calm. “Her name is Ruth Adgate. She's an American of worse than common extraction, but she's immensely rich. It's really difficult to see in what she's better than an ordinary adventuress, but she has a hundred thousand pounds a year. And she's bought the Pontycrofts—Henry Pontycroft and his sister—she's bought them body and soul.”

      Her voice indicated a full stop, and she allowed her face and attitude to relax, as one whose painful message was delivered.

      But Bertram looked perplexed. An adventuress? Of worse than common extraction? That fresh young girl, with her prettiness, her fineness? His impulse was to cry out, “Allons donc!” And then—the Pontycrofts? Frowning perplexity, he repeated his visitor's words: “Bought the Pontycrofts? I don't think I understand.”

      “Oh, it's a thing that's done,” Mrs. Wilberton assured him, on a note that was like a wail. “One knows that it is done. It's a part of the degeneracy of our times. But the Pontycrofts! One would have thought them above it. And the Adgate woman! One would have thought that even people who are willing to sell themselves must draw the line somewhere. But no. Money is omnipotent. So, for money, the Pontycrofts have taken her to their bosoms; presented her; introduced her to every one; and they'll end, of course, by capturing a title for her. Another 'international marriage.' Another instance of American gold buying the due of well-born English girls over their heads.”

      Bertram smiled—partly, it may be, at the passion his guest showed, but partly from relief. He had dreaded what was coming: what had come was agreeably inconclusive and unconvincing.

      “I see,” he said. “But surely this seems in the last degree improbable. What makes you think it?”

      “Oh, it isn't that I think it,” Mrs. Wilberton cried, with a movement that lifted the matter high above the plane of mere personal opinion; “it's known—it's known.”

      But Bertram knitted his brows again. “How can such a thing be known?” he objected.

      “At most, it can only be a suspicion or an inference. What makes you suspect it? What do you infer it from?”

      “Why, from the patent facts,” said Mrs. Wilberton, giving an upward motion to her pretty little white-gloved hands. “They take her everywhere. They've presented her. They've introduced her to the best people. She's regularly lancée in their set. I myself was loth, loth to believe it. But the facts—they'll bear no other construction.”

      Bertram smiled again. “Yes,” he said. “But why should you suppose that they do all this for money?”

      His question appeared to take the lady's breath away. She sat up straight, lips parted, and gazed at him with something like stupefaction. “For what other earthly reason should they do it?” she was able, at last, in honest bewilderment, to gasp out.

      “One has heard of such a motive-power as love,” Bertram, with deference, submitted. “Why shouldn't they do it because they like the girl—because she's their friend?”

      Mrs. Wilberton breathed freely, and in her turn smiled. “Ah, my dear Prince,” she said, with a touch of pity, “you don't know our English world. People in the Pontycroft's position don't take up nameless young Americans for love. Their lives are too full, too complicated. And it means an immense amount of work, of bother—you can't get a new-comer accepted without bestirring yourself, without watching, scheming, soliciting, contriving. And what's your reward? Your friends find you a nuisance, and no one thanks you. There's only one reward that can meet the case—payment in pounds sterling from your client's purse.”

      But Bertram's incredulity was great. “Harry Pontycroft is himself rich,” he said.

      “Yes,” Mrs. Wilberton at once assented, “he's rich now. But he wasn't always rich. There were those lean years when he was merely his cousin's heir—and that's a whole chapter of the story. Besides, is his sister rich? Is Freddie Dor rich?”

      “Ah, about that of course I know nothing,” Bertram had with humility to admit.

      “Freddie Dor is an Irish baronet, whose sole fortune consists of an Irish bog. Then where does Lucilla Dor get her money? She spends—there's no limit to the extravagance with which she spends, to the luxury in which she lives. She has a great house in town, a great house in the country—Lord Bylton's place, Knelworth Castle—she's taken it on a lease. She has a villa near Florence. She entertains like a duchess. She has a box at the opera. She has motor-cars and electric broughams—you know what they cost. And sables and diamonds, she has as many as an Indian begum. Where does she get her money?”

      Mrs. Wilberton eyed him with a kind of triumphant fierceness. Bertram had an uncomfortable laugh.

      “It's conceivable,” he suggested, “that her husband's bog produces peat. But I should imagine, in the absence of other evidence, that her brother subsidises her.”

      Mrs. Wilberton stared at him for a second doubtfully. “Of course you're not serious,” she said. “Brothers? Brothers don't do things on quite such a lavish scale.”

      “Oh, but Ponty's different,” Bertram argued. “Ponty's eccentric. I could imagine Ponty doing things on a scale all his own. Anyhow, I don't see what there is to connect Lady Dor's affluence with Miss Adgate.”

      “Ah,” said Mrs. Wilberton, with an air of being about to clench the matter, “the connection is unfortunately glaring. Lady Dor's affluence dates precisely from the moment of Miss Adgate's entrance upon the scene.” And with an air of having clenched the matter, she threw back her head.

      Bertram bent his brow, as one in troubled thought. Then, presently, reviewing his impressions, “I never saw a nicer-looking girl,” he said. “I never saw a face that expressed finer or higher qualities. She doesn't look in the least like a girl with low ambitions—like one who would try to buy her way into society, or pay people to find her a titled husband. And where, in all this, does Harry Pontycroft himself come in? I think you said that she had bought them both, brother and sister.”

      “Ah,” cried Mrs. Wilberton, triumphing again, “you touch the very point. Harry Pontycroft was head over ears in debt to Miss Adgate's father.”

      “Oh——?” said Bertram, his eyebrows going up.

      “It's wheels within wheels,” said the lady. “Miss Adgate's father was a mysterious American who, for reasons of his own, had left his country, and never went back. He never went to his embassy, either: you can make what you will of that. And even in Europe he had no settled abode; he lived in hotels; he was always flitting—London—Paris, Rome, Vienna. And wherever he went, though he knew no one else, he knew troops of young men—young men, mark, and young men with expectations. He wasn't received at his embassy; he wasn't received in a single decent house; he was an utter outcast and pariah; but he always managed to surround himself with troops of young men who had expectations. He was nothing more or less, in short, than a money-lender. Yes, your 'nice-looking' girl with the face full of high qualities, whom you think incapable of low ambitions, is just the daughter of a common money-lender—nothing better than that. And Henry Pontycroft was one of his victims. This, of course, was while Pontycroft was poor—while his rich cousin was alive and flourishing. And then, when the old usurer had him completely in his toils, he proposed a compact. If Pontycroft would exert his social influence on behalf of his daughter, and get her accepted in the right circles, Adgate would СКАЧАТЬ