He had forgotten the money that had been tossed to him off that very table the day before the Grand Military; he had forgotten the debts that had been paid for him out of the winnings of that very race. There is a childish, wayward, wailing temper, which never counts benefits received save as title-deeds by which to demand others. Cecil looked at him with just a shadow of regret, not reproachful enough to be rebuke, in his glance, but did not defend himself in any way against the boyish, passionate accusation, nor recall his own past gifts into remembrance.
Brutal! What a word, little one. Nobodys brutal now; you never see that form nowadays. Come, what is the worst this time?
Berkeley looked sullenly down on the table where his elbows leaned; scattering the rose-notes, the French novels, the cigarettes, and the gold essence-bottles with which it was strewn; there was something dogged yet agitated, half-insolent yet half-timidly irresolute, upon him, that was new there.
The worst is soon told, he said huskily, and his teeth chattered together slightly, as though with cold, as he spoke. I lost two hundred to-night; I must pay it, or be disgraced forever; I have not a farthing; I cannot get the money for my life; no Jews will lend to me, I am under age; andandhis voice sank lower and grew more defiant, for he knew that the sole thing forbidden him peremptorily by both his father and his brothers was the thing he had now to tellandI borrowed three ponies of Granville Lee yesterday, as he came from the Corner with a lot of banknotes after settling-day. I told him I would pay them to-morrow; I made sure I should have won to-night.
The piteous unreason of the born gamester, who clings so madly to the belief that luck must come to him, and sets on that belief as though a bank were his to lose his gold from, was never more utterly spoken in all its folly, in all its pitiable optimism, than now in the boys confession.
Bertie started from his chair, his sleepy languor dissipated; on his face the look that had come there when Lord Royallieu had dishonored his mothers name. In his code there was one shameless piece of utter and unmentionable degradationit was to borrow of a friend.
You will bring some disgrace on us before you die, Berkeley, he said, with a keener inflection of pain and contempt than had ever been in his voice. Have you no common knowledge of honor?
The lad flushed under the lash of the words, but it was a flush of anger rather than of shame; he did not lift his eyes, but gazed sullenly down on the yellow paper of a Paris romance he was irritably dog-earing.
You are severe enough, he said gloomily, and yet insolently. Are you such a mirror of honor yourself? I suppose my debts, at the worst, are about one-fifth of yours.
For a moment even the sweetness of Cecils temper almost gave way. Be his debts what they would, there was not one among them to his friends, or one for which the law could not seize him. He was silent; he did not wish to have a scene of discussion with one who was but a child to him; moreover, it was his nature to abhor scenes of any sort, and to avert even a dispute, at any cost.
He came back and sat down without any change of expression, putting his cheroot in his mouth.
Tres cher, you are not courteous, he said wearily; but it may be that you are right. I am not a good one for you to copy from in anything except the fit of my coats; I dont think I ever told you I was. I am not altogether so satisfied with myself as to suggest myself as a model for anything, unless it were to stand in a tailors window in Bond Street to show the muffs how to dress. That isnt the point, though; you say you want near 300 pounds by to-morrowto-day rather. I can suggest nothing except to take the morning mail to the Shires, and ask Royal straight out; he never refuses you.
Berkeley looked at him with a bewildered terror that banished at a stroke his sullen defiance; he was irresolute as a girl, and keenly moved by fear.
I would rather cut my throat, he said, with a wild exaggeration that was but the literal reflection of the trepidation on him; as I live I would! I have had so much from him latelyyou dont know how muchand now of all times, when they threaten to foreclose the mortgage on Royallieu
What? Foreclose what?
The mortgage! answered Berkeley impatiently; to his childish egotism it seemed cruel and intolerable that any extremities should be considered save his own. You know the lands are mortgaged as deeply as Monti and the entail would allow them. They threatened to forecloseI think thats the wordand Royal has had God knows what work to stave them off. I no more dare face him, and ask him for a sovereign now than I dare ask him to give me the gold plate off the sideboard.
Cecil listened gravely; it cut him more keenly than he showed to learn the evils and the ruin that so closely menaced his house; and to find how entirely his fathers morbid mania against him severed him from all the interests and all the confidence of his family, and left him ignorant of matters even so nearly touching him as these.
Your intelligence is not cheerful, little one, he said, with a languid stretch of his limbs; it was his nature to glide off painful subjects. AndI really am sleepy! You think there is no hope Royal would help you?
I tell you I will shoot myself through the brain rather than ask him.
Bertie moved restlessly in the soft depths of his lounging-chair; he shunned worry, loathed it, escaped it at every portal, and here it came to him just when he wanted to go to sleep. He could not divest himself of the feeling that, had his own career been different,less extravagant, less dissipated, less indolently spendthrift,he might have exercised a better influence, and his brothers young life might have been more prudently launched upon the world. He felt, too, with a sharper pang than he had ever felt it for himself, the brilliant beggary in which he lived, the utter inability he had to raise even the sum that the boy now needed; a sum so trifling, in his set, and with his habits, that he had betted it over and over again in a clubroom, on a single game of whist. It cut him with a bitter, impatient pain; he was as generous as the winds, and there is no trial keener to such a temper than the poverty that paralyzes its power to give.
It is no use to give you false hopes, young one, he said gently. I can do nothing! You ought to know me by this time; and if you do, you know too that if the money was mine it would be yours at a wordif you dont, no matter! Frankly, Berk, I am all down-hill; my bills may be called in any moment; when they are I must send in my papers to sell, and cut the country, if my duns dont catch me before, which they probably will; in which event I shall be to all intents and purposesdead. This is not lively conversation, but you will do me the justice to say that it was not I who introduced it. Onlyone word for all, my boy; understand this: if I could help you I would, cost what it might, but as matters standI cannot.
And with that Cecil puffed a great cloud of smoke to envelope him; the subject was painful, the denial wounded him by whom it had to be given full as much as it could wound him whom it refused. Berkeley heard it in silence; his head still hung down, his color changing, his hands nervously playing with the bouquet-bottles, shutting and opening their gold tops.
NoyesI know, he said hurriedly; I have no right to expect it, and have been behaving like a cur, andandall that, I know. Butthere is one way you could save me, Bertie, if it isnt too much for a fellow to ask.
I cant say I see the way, little one, said Cecil, with a sigh. What is it?
Whylook here. You see Im not of age; my signature is of no use; they wont take it; else I could get money in no time on what must come to me when Royal dies; though tisnt enough to make the Jews melt at a risk. Nownowlook here. I cant see that there could be any harm in it. You are such chums with Lord Rockingham, and hes as rich as all the Jews put together. What could there be in it if you just asked him to lend you a monkey for me? Hed do it in a minute, because hed give his head away to youthey all say soand hell never miss it. Now, Bertiewill you?
In his boyish incoherence and its disjointed inelegance the appeal was panted out rather than spoken; and while his head drooped and the hot color burned in his face, he darted a swift look at his brother, so full of dread and misery that it pierced Cecil to the quick as he rose from his chair and paced the room, flinging his cheroot aside; the look disarmed the reply that was on his lips, but his face grew dark.
What you ask is impossible, he said briefly. If I did such a thing as that, I should deserve to be hounded out of the Guards to-morrow.
The boys face grew more sullen, more haggard, more evil, as he still bent his eyes on the table, his glance not meeting his brothers.
You speak as if it would be a crime, he muttered savagely, with a plaintive moan of pain in the tone; he thought himself cruelly dealt with and unjustly punished.
It would be the trick of a swindler, and it would be the shame of a gentleman, said Cecil, as briefly still. That is answer enough.
Then you will not do it?
I have replied already.
There was that in the tone, and in the look with which he paused before the table, that Berkeley had never heard or seen in him before; something that made the supple, childish, petulant, cowardly nature of the boy shrink and be silenced; something for a single instant of the haughty and untamable temper of the Royallieu blood that awoke in the too feminine softness and sweetness of Cecils disposition.
You said that you would aid me at any cost, and now that I ask you so wretched a trifle, you treat me as if I were a scoundrel, he moaned passionately. The Seraph would give you the money at a word. It is your pridenothing but pride. Much pride is worth to us who are penniless beggars!
If we are penniless beggars, by what right should we borrow of other men?
You are wonderfully scrupulous, all of a sudden!
Cecil shrugged his shoulders slightly and began to smoke again. He did not attempt to push the argument. His character was too indolent to defend itself against aspersion, and horror of a quarrelsome scene far greater than his heed of misconstruction.
You are a brute to me! went on the lad, with his querulous and bitter passion rising almost to tears like a womans. You pretend you can refuse me nothing; and the moment I ask you the smallest thing you turn on me, and speak as if I were the greatest blackguard on earth. Youll let me go to the bad to-morrow rather than bend your pride to save me; you live like a Duke, and dont care if I should die in a debtors prison! You only brag about honor when you want to get out of helping a fellow; and if I were to cut my throat to-night you would only shrug your shoulders, and sneer at my death in the clubroom, with a jest picked out of your cursed French novels!
Melodramatic, and scarcely correct, murmured Bertie.
The ingratitude to himself touched him indeed but little; he was not given to making much of anything that was due to himselfpartly through carelessness, partly through generosity; but the absence in his brother of that delicate, intangible, indescribable sensitive-nerve which men call Honor, an absence that had never struck on him so vividly as it did to-night, troubled him, surprised him, oppressed him.
There is no science that can supply this defect to the temperament created without it; it may be taught a counterfeit, but it will never own a reality.
Little one, you are heated, and dont know what you say, he began very gently, a few moments later, as he leaned forward and looked straight in the boys eyes. Dont be down about this; you will pull through, never fear. Listen to me; go down to Royal, and tell him all frankly. I know him better than you; he will be savage for a second, but he would sell every stick and stone on the land for your sake; he will see you safe through this. Only bear one thing in mindtell him all. No half measures, no half confidences; tell him the worst, and ask his help. You will not come back without it.
Berkeley listened; his eyes shunning his brothers, the red color darker on his face.
Do as I say, said Cecil, very gently still. Tell him, if you like, that it is through following my follies that you have come to grief; he will be sure to pity you then.
There was a smile, a little sad, on his lips, as he said the last words, but it passed at once as he added:
Do your hear me? will you go?
If you want meyes.
On your word, now?
On my word.
There was an impatience in the answer, a feverish eagerness in the way he assented that might have made the consent rather a means to evade the pressure than a genuine pledge to follow the advice; that darker, more evil, more defiant look was still upon his face, sweeping its youth away and leaving in its stead a wavering shadow. He rose with a sudden movement; his tumbled hair, his disordered attire, his bloodshot eyes, his haggard look of sleeplessness and excitement in strange contrast with the easy perfection of Cecils dress and the calm languor of his attitude. The boy was very young, and was not seasoned to his life and acclimatized to his ruin, like his elder brother. He looked at him with a certain petulant envy; the envy of every young fellow for a man of the world. I beg your pardon for keeping you up, Bertie, he said huskily. Good-night.
Cecil gave a little yawn.
Dear boy, it would have been better if you could have come in with the coffee. Never be impulsive; dont do a bit of good, and is such bad form!
He spoke lightly, serenely; both because such was as much his nature as it was to breathe, and because his heart was heavy that he had to send away the young one without help, though he knew that the course he had made him adopt would serve him more permanently in the end. But he leaned his hand a second on Berks shoulder, while for one single moment in his life he grew serious.
You must know I could not do what you asked; I could not meet any man in the Guards face to face if I sunk myself and sunk them so low. Cant you see that, little one?
There was a wistfulness in the last words; he would gladly have believed that his brother had at length some perception of his meaning.
You say so, and that is enough, said the boy pettishly; I cannot understand that I asked anything so dreadful; but I suppose you have too many needs of your own to have any resources left for mine.
Cecil shrugged his shoulders slightly again, and let him go. But he could not altogether banish a pang of pain at his heart, less even for his brothers ingratitude than at his callousness to all those finer, better instincts of which honor is the concrete name.
For the moment, thoughtgrave, weary, and darkenedfell on him; he had passed through what he would have suffered any amount of misconstruction to escapea disagreeable scene; he had been as unable as though he were a Commissionaire in the streets to advance a step to succor the necessities for which his help had been asked; and he was forced, despite all his will, to look for the first time blankly in the face the ruin that awaited him. There was no other name for it: it would be ruin complete and wholly inevitable. His signature would have been accepted no more by any bill-discounter in London; he had forestalled all, to the uttermost farthing; his debts pressed heavier every day; he could have no power to avert the crash that must in a few weeks, or at most a few months, fall upon him. And to him an utter blankness and darkness lay beyond.