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Mad Barbara

<div><h1>VI</h1></div> My Lord Gore could not conceal an instinct of fastidious disapproval as he walked homeward with his son along Pall Mall. Sumptuousness came before godliness in his scheme of values, and though poverty and slovenliness were inevitable to the world, my lord found them useful as a respectable background to heighten the effect of an exquisite refinement in dress. But to have a soiled and weather-beaten scamp familiarly at one’s elbow offered too crude a contrast, and suggested a sinister interest in Whitefriars. “What a devil of a mess you are in, Jack, my man!” And there was a slight lifting of my lord’s nostrils. “You might have sent one of the men to me instead of making a martyr of yourself.” The reference to martyrdom carried a perfect sincerity, for it would have pained Stephen Gore inexpressibly to have been caught in a seedy coat. John Gore met his father’s critical sidelong glance. “It is only in plays and poems, sir, that you find your adventurer clean and splendid. We were muzzle to muzzle with those heathen for half a day; the prison they put us in was monstrously dirty; and the vegetation they plant in their gardens and about their fields seems to have been created with a grudge against people who have to run. We ran, sir, like heroes, despite aloes, cacti, and thorns like a regiment of foot with sloped pikes. After such incidents one has a tendency toward torn clothes.” My lord nodded. “Still, Jack,” said he, “when you fall in a ditch and get muddied to the chin, you do not stroll home through the park at three in the afternoon. You should read Don Quixote, sir—a great book that.” “I am more of a philosopher than the Spaniard.” His father did not trouble to suppress a sarcastic smile. “Oh, if you are a philosopher I have nothing more to say, save that you have chosen the wrong school. There is the philosophy of clothes to be considered at this happy period of ours. If you wish to try your Diogenes’ humor, go to court in some such scraffle. You would be clapped in the Tower for insulting the King.” John Gore laughed. “Who himself knows what ragged stockings and flea-ridden beds mean.” “Exactly so, sir, and therefore any tactless allusion to the past would be uncourtierlike in the extreme.” My lord betrayed some impatience in his last retort, very possibly because he beheld a group of acquaintances approaching with all the niceness of fashionable distinction. The young gallants of the court had all the merciless cynicism of premature middle-age. Genius, to prove itself, scintillated with satire. Even when the youngsters laughed, their laughter symbolized an epigram, a caricature, or a lampoon. Lord Gore advanced very valiantly under the enemy’s fire. The party numbered among its members Tom Chiffinch, the redoubtable royal pimp. There was an ironical lifting of hats. John Gore’s costume had interested the party for the last twenty yards of its approach. My lord would have marched past with flags flying. But from some instinct of devilry the gentlemen appeared overjoyed at the rencontre. “We must take you with us to the Mall, my lord.” “His Majesty has a match there.” “Bring your friend with you, sir. By-the-way, who is he?” And Chiffinch took Stephen Gore familiarly by the button and dropped his voice to a forced whisper. My lord’s dignity did not falter. He had caught a peculiar look in his son’s eyes that pricked the pride in him. “Gentlemen, Captain John Gore, my son.” They bowed, all of them, with sarcastic deference. “Delighted, sir.” “You have seen hard service, sir.” “No doubt you are a great traveller. May I ask your honor whether it is true that the Spaniards in Peru grow their beards down to their belts?” The man in the red coat showed no trace of temper. “I lost my laces and my ribbons on the coast of Africa, gentlemen,” he said. “They are a slovenly crew—those Barbary corsairs. It is a pleasure to find myself once more among—men.” My lord stood regarding the upper windows of a house with stately unconcern. He glanced sharply at his son, and then bowed to Chiffinch and his party. “Come, Jack. Simpson of the Exchange must have been waiting an hour for you. My son is like King John, gentlemen—he has lost bag and baggage to the sea.” They parted with ironical smiles, my lord spreading himself like an Indian in full sail. “Who the devil may Simpson be?” asked the son, bluntly. His father frowned. “My recommendation, sir.” And in a lower voice: “The first tailor in the kingdom, you booby; the one reputation that might carry shot into those gentlemen’s hulls. Such is the world, sir, that you can be put in countenance by uttering the name of your tailor.” Concerning his adventures, John Gore spoke with the grim reserve of a man who had learned that the least impressive thing in this world is to boast. He had lost his ship and seen the walls of an African prison, an ironical climax to a seventeenth-century Odyssey. More from incidental allusions than from any coherent confession, his father learned that he had touched even Japan and far Cathay, his knight-errantry of the sea carrying him into more than one valiant skirmish. An unhappy whim had lured him, when homeward-bound, into the blue sea of the Phœnicians and the Greeks, there to be pounced upon by a squadron of African rovers. They had carried his decks by boarding after a five hours’ fight. My lord listened with an air of fatherly condescension before reverting to the eternal topic of clothes. “I must turn you loose in my wardrobe, Jack, my man. You can contrive a makeshift for a week or two. We must have Simpson in for you to-morrow.” His manner was semijocular and genial, as though this man of many oceans were still a boy poling a punt on an ancestral fish-pond. My lord had never travelled, save into France and Holland, and the wild by-ways of the world had no significance for him. As a courtier and an aristocrat he was a complete and perfect figure, and the life of a gentleman about court had given him the grandiose attitude of one who had turned the last page of worldly philosophy. He had said what he pleased for many years to the great majority of people with whom he had come in contact. His “air” itself suggested the majestic finality of experience. They supped together in the house of St. James’s Street, my lord asking questions in a perfunctory fashion, often interrupting the replies by irrelevant digressions and displaying the careless contempt of the egotist for those superfluous subjects of which he condescended to be ignorant. It appeared to the son that the father was preoccupied by other matters. It was only when they came to the discussion of certain questions concerning property that my lord showed some of the acumen of the master of the many tenants. “How much have you lost by this voyage of yours? As for throwing money into the sea—” John Gore pretended to no grievance. “It is only what other men would have spent on petticoats and horses. Call it an eccentric extravagance. I have had a glimpse of the earth to balance the loss. About my Yorkshire property?” “I have had my hand on it, Jack. Swindale has been a success as steward. More money—for the sea’s maw. Is that the cry?” John Gore maintained a meditative reserve. “Possibly.” “I have the rent-roll—and a copy of the accounts in my desk. Go down and see Swindale for yourself. There is no need to think of such a means as a mortgage. Money has been accumulating. Besides, my boy, though your mother left her property to you, my own purse is always open.” The son thanked him, and changed to another subject—a subject that had been lurking for an hour or more in the conscious background of my lord’s mind. “How is Lionel Purcell?” Stephen Gore turned his wineglass round and round by the stem, eying his own white fingers and the exquisite lace of his ruffles. “Dead,” he said, shortly. The man in the red coat drew his heels up under his chair and leaned his elbows on the table. “Dead! Why, of all the quiet, careful livers—” “He had no say in the matter. Some one killed him.” There was a short pause. The elder man’s face remained a stately, meditative mask. He raised the wineglass and sipped the wine, pressing his lace cravat back with his left hand. “It was a sad affair, Jack, and came as a blow to me.” “Who killed him?” “Ah, that is the question! No one knows. I suspect that no one will ever know.” “Was there a reason?” My lord looked at his son shrewdly, meaningly. “A man of the world could infer. These scholars—well—they have blood in them like other mortals. We breathe nothing of it—because of the girl.” “Barbara?” My lord nodded. “The whole tragedy broke something in the child. She was bright and sparkling enough, you remember, though always a little fierce. There is the fear—” He paused expressively, with his eyes on his son’s face. “There is the fear of madness. The thing seems to have worn on her, chafed her mind. Anne Purcell and I have done what we can, for God knows—I was Lionel Purcell’s friend. But there is always the chance. She is not like other women.” My lord spoke as a man who feels an old burden chafe his shoulder. As for the son, he was looking beyond his father at the opposite wall. He recalled the girl as he had seen her in the garden. She had baffled him. Here was the explanation. “It is well that she should never know,” he said, gravely; “she has enough to haunt her—without that.” My lord had finished his wine and fruit. He rose from the table, and, catching sight of himself in a Venetian mirror on the wall, turned away with a slight frown. “You had better amuse yourself choosing some of my clothes,” he said. “I have business to-night with Pembroke, and I may be late. Richards will give you the keys. We are much of a size, Jack, though you are shorter in the shanks. Thank the Lord for one mercy, I have not put on too much fat.” By the light of a couple of candles in silver sconces John Gore amused himself in my lord’s bedroom, with the boy Sparkin to act as a self-constituted judge of fashions. Mr. Richards, who had accompanied them, indulged in a few polite and irrelevant directions, and then departed, as though he found the boy’s company incompatible with his own. Every corner of the bedroom soon had its selection of satins, camlets, and cloths, for Sparkin appeared possessed by an exuberant desire to see and handle everything. My lord’s wardrobe was the wardrobe of a gentleman who had a fancy for every color and for every combination of shades. His stockings were to be numbered by the dozen, and Sparkin, half hidden in a chest, baled the stuffs out as though he were baling water out of a boat. “Easy, there, you young hound. What manner of tangle do you think you are making?” The boy turned a hot and happy face to him. “Take your choice, captain. What would some of the Greenwich girls give for a picking! How does crushed strawberry please you?” John Gore was standing in front of a mirror trying on a coat. “That’s a sweet thing, captain. Just look at the lace. Here’s a chest we haven’t opened yet.” “Leave it alone, then. You have tumbled enough shirts to give Tom Richards work for a week.” Sparkin had been fumbling with the keys. He found the right one as John Gore spoke, and lifted the chest’s lid as though there was no disobedience in looking. “What have you got there?” Supremely tempted, Sparkin had fished out a periwig and clapped it on his head. He pulled it off again just as briskly, merely remarking that “the thing tickled.” A second dive of the arm brought up a black cloak edged with gold cord and lined with purple silk. “Bring that here, boy.” Sparkin obeyed, and John Gore swung it over his shoulders. “Just your color, captain,” said the boy, seriously. “Thanks for a valuable opinion. Well, put it aside with the shirts and stockings I have chosen. The devil take you, but what a fearsome mess you have made!” “That’s soon mended, captain.” And, after depositing the black cloak on the bed, he proceeded to fill his arms with my lord’s luxuries, and tumble them casually into chest and cupboard. “Here, leave the clothes alone.” “But—” “You had better, out of regard for those new breeches of yours. Richards must come up and restore order.” A spasm of vivacious devilry lit up the boy’s face. “So he had, captain. He is such a particular man! Shall I call down the stairs?” “Yes, call away.” Sparkin disappeared, and John Gore heard his voice piping through the house. “Richards—Tom Richards there! I say Richards—Mr. Thomas Richards, the captain’s orders are that you are to come aloft and clear up the clothes.” Sparkin’s voice reached to the nether regions, for slow and unwilling footsteps were heard below. The boy slipped down the stairs and met the man with a loud whisper. “The captain has made a most fearsome muddle, Tom. He’s turned out every chest and cupboard in the room. Just you come and look. It’s like a rag booth at a fair.” <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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