“Non sine sole volo!”
“Just so!” he said. “A short life and a merry one!”
A few paces farther along the walk they stopped to examine the basin of the great fountain. Cracked from edge to centre, and become a shallow bed of clay and weeds, it was now as unsightly as it had been beautiful in the days when fair women leaning over it had fed the gold fish, or viewed their mirrored faces in its waters.
“The fortunes of the Audleys in a nutshell!” muttered the unlucky owner. And turning on his heel, “Confound it, Stubbs,” he cried, “I have had as much of this as I can stand! A little more and I shall go back and cut my throat! It is beginning to rain, too. D—n the Belvedere! Let us go into the house. That cannot be as bad as this.”
Without waiting for an answer, or looking behind him, he strode back the way they had come. Stubbs followed in silence, and they regained the lawn.
“I tell you what it is,” Audley continued, letting the agent come abreast of him. “You must find some vulgarian to take the place—iron man or cotton man, I don’t care who he is, if he has got the cash I You must let it, Stubbs. You must let it! It’s a white elephant, it’s the d—ndest White Elephant man ever had!”
The lawyer shook his head. “You may be sure, my lord,” he said mildly, “I should have advised that long ago, if it were possible. But we couldn’t let it in its present state—for a short term; and we have no more power to lease it for a long one than, as your lordship knows, we have power to sell it.”
The other swore. At the outset he had scarcely felt his poverty. But he was beginning to feel it. There were moments such as this when his withers were wrung; when the consequence which the title had brought failed to soften the hardships of his lot—a poor peer with a vast house. Had he tried to keep the Great House in repair it would have swallowed the whole income of the peerage—a sum which, as it was, barely sufficed for his needs as a bachelor.
Already Stubbs had hinted that there was one way out—a rich marriage. And Audley had received the hint with the easiness of a man who was in no haste to marry and might, likely enough, marry where money was. But once or twice during the last few days, which they had been spending in a review of the property, my lord had shown irritation. When an old farmer had said to his face, that he must bring home a bride with a good fat chest, “and his lordship would be what his forbears had been,” the great man, in place of a laughing answer, had turned glumly away.
Presently the two halted at the door of the north wing. Stubbs unlocked it and pushed it open. They entered an ante-room of moderate size.