A Barren Title: A Novel

by T. W. Speight

Mr. Larkins did not fail to put in an appearance next morning at the earl's breakfast-table. On the following day his lordship dined en famille at Bourbon House, on which occasion Orlando's sisters were introduced to him. They were two really pretty and well-mannered girls of seventeen and nineteen. There was a vein of simplicity and effusive good-nature running through the young Man's character that the earl was not slow to note, and appraise at its proper value. From that time forward the pill-maker's son and Lord Loughton were very frequently to be seen in each other's company. They drove out together, they rode together (in Orlando's carriages and on Orlando's horses), they played billiards together, they dined together, and they smoked together. Hardly a week passed without a hamper of wine or a box of cigars finding its way to Laurel Cottage. Fruit was sent nearly every day. A saddle-horse and a brougham were specially retained for the earl's own use. The quidnuncs of Brimley found much food for gossip anent these proceedings; but as the earl was notoriously poor and Mr. Larkins as notoriously rich, they rather admired the arrangement than otherwise. It was, of course, patent to everybody why the earl so persistently patronized the pill-maker's son, but none the less on that account were several doors now thrown open to Orlando which had heretofore been inexorably shut in his face. People began to discover virtues and good qualities in the young man the existence of which they had never suspected before. The Honorable Mrs. Templemore and Lady Wildman, neither of whom were rich and both of whom had several unmarried daughters, began to angle for him openly. When, a little later on, and at the earl's suggestion, he ventured to send out invitations for a garden-party, to be followed by a carpet-dance, nearly everybody who was asked came, and it was universally admitted to have been one of the most successful things of the season. From that time forward Mr. Larkins was accepted without question as "one of us."

All this suited well with the earl's grim and mordant humor. He laughed at Larkins and he laughed at those who, having at first tabooed him, were now willing to welcome him with open arms. He generally spent a solitary hour in his little smoking-room before going to bed, musing over the events of the day, and planning the morrow's campaign. At such times--his servants being all in bed, he indulged himself in a long clay pipe and a couple of glasses of hot brandy-and-water. The brandy and the pipe, together with a supply of the strong tobacco which he used to smoke during his evenings at the Brown Bear, were all kept under lock and key, in company with the worn and shabby pouch which had done him such good service in days gone by. It amused him at such times to think how people must talk about him, and he acknowledged to himself that he liked being talked about. His coming had caused quite a commotion among the stagnant circles of Brimley and its neighborhood. His sayings and doings, his habits and mode of life, supplied an unfailing topic of conversation at a hundred dinner-tables and twice as many tea-tables. He was already acquiring a reputation for eccentricity. It was a reputation that suited him, and he determined to cultivate it.

It was not till the lapse of two months after his arrival at Brimley that he went up to London to see his wife and son. He dressed himself for the occasion in a suit of sober tweed, and left behind him the gold watch and chain which a Brimley tradesman had only been too happy to press upon him, and the diamond ring that Larkins had made him a present of. From the moment he got out of the train at King's-Cross till the moment he got into it on his return he was to be plain John Fildew again. He quite enjoyed the masquerade, and chuckled to himself several times in the cab before he was set down at the corner of Oxford Street. Clem had apprised him of the change in Mrs. Fildew's lodgings. When he walked into his wife's sitting-room without knocking, that lady stared at him for a moment in utter surprise, and then said, "Have you not mistaken the room, sir?"

"Why, Kitty, dear, don't you know me?" he asked, and then he crossed the room and kissed his astonished wife.

"How was it likely I should know you, John? You are not a bit like your dear old self," and with that she began to cry.

Clement, when he came in, was almost as much surprised, but he showed it in a different way. The change in his father was so thorough and so striking that he could hardly believe him to be the same man who had left them only a few weeks previously and that evening he felt a degree of respect for him such as he had never experienced before. He had heard his mother insist a thousand times on the fact of his father being a gentleman bred and born, but for the first time in Clem's experience he looked the character. The earl dilated in a hazy but grandiloquent sort of way about his new prospects and his new mode of life. It was not to be expected that he should condescend to particulars; and as both his wife and son knew that he had a horror of being questioned, they listened to all he had to say, and troubled him with no inconvenient queries. Clement was well content that matters should remain as they were, but Mrs. Fildew, in addition to the grief she felt at her husband's absence, was somewhat fearful in her mind lest her "dear John" should have compromised his dignity by engaging in work that was derogatory to his status as a gentleman.

Mr. Fildew's stay in London was only from the dusk of one afternoon till the evening of the next. His avocations were of such a pressing and important nature, he said, that it was impossible for him to make a longer stay just then. In the state of his wife's health--a subject respecting which he was anxious for more reasons than one--there was little apparent change since he left London. She was certainly no better, but neither did there seem any perceptible alteration for the worse. He longed to go and spend an evening with his old cronies at the Brown Bear, but after mature consideration he deemed it better not to do so. He looked and felt so changed that his old friends would hardly welcome him as being any longer one of themselves. Besides, for anything he knew to the contrary, some of them might some day find themselves at Brimley and encounter him there but if they were not made acquainted with the alteration in his appearance, he flattered himself that, even so, they would hardly recognize him. It was decidedly to his interest to give the Brown Bear as wide a berth as possible.

Great, therefore, was the earl's surprise and chagrin when, as he was walking down the platform in search of a smoking-carriage on his return journey, he nearly stumbled over Mr. Cutts, the landlord of the Brown Bear. "I really beg your pardon," exclaimed the earl, before he had time to recognize the man. At the sound of the familiar voice Cutts stared, and then the earl saw that it was too late to retreat. Grasping the landlord by the hand, and making believe that he was delighted to see him, he hurried him off to the refreshment bar. In order to keep Cutts from questioning him, which might have been inconvenient, he kept on questioning Cutts. Everybody, it appeared, with one exception, was quite well, and going on much as usual. "Of course you remember Pilcher?" said Cutts. "Ah, well, he's come to grief, poor devil, and quite suddenly too. It seems that a scamp of a brother persuaded him to accept a bill for a big amount. The brother bolted, Pilcher couldn't meet the bill, some other creditors came down on him, and his stock was seized. Meanwhile his wife died, and the result of the blooming business was that poor Pilcher was turned adrift on the world without a penny to bless himself with, and with three young 'uns, all under eight, to call him father."

"Poor Pilcher, indeed! But, of course, you did something for him at the Brown Bear?"

"Yes--what we could. Couldn't do much, you know. Sent the hat round and got about six pounds--enough to bury his wife, I dare say. He shouldn't have been such a fool. I'd sooner trust a stranger than a relation any day."