A Barren Title: A Novel

by T. W. Speight

The Dowager Lady Loughton was nearly eighty years old, but was still a wonderfully active and bright-eyed little woman. The tradition ran that she had been accounted a great beauty in her youth, but her nose and chin nearly touched each other now, and when she grew very earnest in conversation her head began to nod as if to add emphasis to her words, but that was simply because she could not keep it still at such times. All her life she had borne the reputation of being a good hater, and it was said that her tongue grew more venomous each year that she lived. The sudden death of her grandson had doubtless been a great blow to her, but she bore the loss with a stoicism which would not let any signs of grief be witnessed by those about her. Some of the countess's dearest friends averred that her grief at the fact of the title having to lapse into another branch of the family was quite as poignant as that which she felt for the loss of the young earl; but then we all know what strange things our dearest friends will say about us.

The countess examined Mr. Fildew through her double eyeglass--even at seventy-eight she would not take to spectacles--as he crossed the room after the servant had shut the door behind him. Mr. Flicker's description of the man had made her slightly curious respecting him. In that elegantly furnished room John Fildew's shabbiness looked shabbier by contrast. Had he been dressed as an ordinary working man he would not have looked nearly so much out of place as he did in the worn and rusty garments of a broken-down man about town. The only change in his attire that he had made in honor of the occasion consisted of a pair of very ancient black-kid gloves, which had been stitched and restitched so often that nothing more could be done for them, and a narrow mourning band round his hat.

"You are Mr. Fildew?" asked the countess, with a sort of sweet condescension in her tones.

"And you are the Dowager Lady Loughton."

Her ladyship looked at Mr. Flicker as much as to say, "You were quite right a strange being, truly." Then she said aloud, "Pray take a chair, Mr. Fildew."

This Mr. Fildew did, planting himself close to the little table near which the countess and the lawyer were seated. Then he stared mildly through his glass at one and the other of them, as waiting to hear more.

"Mr. Flicker has confided to me the purport of his interview with you a few evenings ago," began the countess.

"And the decision which her ladyship has arrived at," croaked Mr. Flicker, "is that the suggestion then put forward by you is totally inadmissible, and cannot be entertained for a moment."

"Then may I ask," said Mr. Fildew, with a sort of grave surprise, "why I have been summoned to Harley Street this morning? All this might surely have been told me under cover of a penny postage-stamp."

"Although I cannot at present see my way to entertain the proposition which Mr. Lorrimore has thought fit to make through you," said the countess, "it may still be conceded that I am not without a little natural curiosity to learn some particulars concerning the man himself, and what he has been doing these many years since he left England."