A Barren Title: A Novel

by T. W. Speight

The earl felt that he had much to do before his departure from London. After again seeing his son in the evening, but without giving him many more details as to his future proceedings than he had given him in the morning, he set out for the Brown Bear. This would be his last evening at the old haunt for a long time to come, if not forever; and when he called to mind the many pleasant hours he had spent in the little coffee-room, he felt quite sentimental--far more sentimental than he had felt at the thought of parting from his wife and son.

There was an extraordinary muster at the Brown Bear this evening, it having got noised about that it was Mr. Fildew's farewell visit. As a consequence, Mr. Fildew had to enter into particulars, which he detested doing, as to the why and the wherefore of his going away. He told them the same story that he had told to his son, with certain variations, the gist of it being that a very old friend of his had come into a large fortune and needed his, Mr. Fildew's, services as guide, philosopher, and friend.

Mr. Nutt was unanimously voted into the chair, and a very pleasant and convivial evening followed. Mr. Fildew's health was drunk with musical honors, to which "His Grace" responded in a few well-chosen sentences, and wound up by ordering the landlord to bring in his biggest punch-bowl filled to the brim. On the heels of the first bowl came another; and when twelve o'clock struck several of the gentlemen present were hardly in a condition to find their way unaided to their homes, so that, as several of them afterwards averred, it was one of the pleasantest evenings they ever remembered to have spent.

At dusk, next afternoon, Lord Loughton bade farewell to his humble lodgings. His last words to his wife were to the effect that she might expect to see him again in three weeks or a month. Clem's offer to accompany him to the station was firmly negatived. However, Clem saw him into the cab, and heard him give instructions to be driven to King's Cross. Then there was a last wave of the hand and he was gone.

[CHAPTER IX.]

TRANSFORMATION.

When the Earl of Loughton left home in a four-wheeled cab it was by no means his intention to drive direct to the railway. His first stopping-place, as soon as he got clear of the neighborhood where he was known, was at a French hairdresser's. When he came out of the shop, half an hour later, the cabman did not recognize him till he spoke. He had gone into the shop with a wild tangle of hair, beard, and mustache about his face, neck, and throat. He came out with his hair cropped after the military style, and with his face close shaved except for an imperial, and a thick, drooping mustache with carefully waxed tips, both of which had been artistically dyed. From the hairdresser's he drove to a certain well-known outfitting emporium, and here the transformation previously begun was consummated. Again the cabman opened his eyes, this time very wide indeed. His exceedingly shabby fare, respecting whose ability to pay him his legal charge he might well have had some reasonable doubts, was transformed into a military-looking, middle-aged gentleman (most people would have taken him for an officer in mufti), in a suit of well-fitting dark tweed, and an ulster. The frayed black satin stock and the patched boots had disappeared with the rest, and when his fare with delicately gloved hand drew forth a snowy handkerchief, and a celestial odor of Frangipanni was wafted to his nostrils, the man could only touch his hat and say, in a sort of awed whisper, "Where to next, colonel?" Had he been bidden to drive to Hades he could hardly have wondered more.

The earl slept that night at the Great Northern Hotel, and went down to Brimley next morning after a late breakfast. He took up his quarters for the time being at the Duke's Head, the only really good hotel in the little town. Everybody was anxious to see the new Lord Loughton, concerning whose early life and long disappearance from the world many romantic tales were afloat, and he was just as willing to let himself be seen. For the first week or two he derived an almost childlike pleasure from hearing himself addressed as "my lord" and "your lordship," and from being the recipient of that adulation, mingled with a mild sort of awe, with which a nobleman is almost always regarded in small provincial towns. Twenty times a day he would gaze admiringly at the reflection of himself in the cheval-glass in his bedroom. He could hardly believe it was John Fildew of Hayfield Street, that shabby, bepatched individual, who smiled back at him from the glass. "And yet I am just the same that I was before," he said to himself with a sneer. "The only change in me is that which the barber and the tailor have effected."

He had several suits of clothes sent down after him, and he took a boyish pleasure in frequently changing them. He always dressed for dinner, although there was no one to dine with him. When a young man he had been noted for his white hands, and he was determined that they should be white again, to which end he smeared them every night with some sort of unguent and slept in kid gloves. Every morning he measured himself carefully round the waist, and when at the end of a fortnight he found that his convexity in that region was less by three quarters of an inch, he felt as if he could go out into the street and play leap-frog with the boys. He had made up his mind from the first to go in for popularity. With the change in his fortunes he had in a great measure dropped that curt, sneering, cynical manner which had not contributed to render him popular in days gone by. There was now an easy condescension, a sort of genial affability, about him which charmed every one with whom he came in contact; but then, how little is needed to make us feel charmed with a lord! Everybody knew that he was poor--how poor they did not know--but everybody knew also that he was an earl, and as earls, even when their antecedents are somewhat shady, are no more plentiful than green pease in December, we are bound to make much of such as we have.

The news of Lord Loughton's sojourn at Brimley spread far and wide through the county, and he need never have lacked company had he been so minded. Nearly all the best families in the neighborhood left their cards, and he might have had a dozen visitors a day had he not given it out that he did not intend to see any one till he was safely housed in his new home.