THE MORALS OF MARCUS ORDEYNE
by William J. Locke
PART I
CHAPTER I
For reasons which will be given later, I sit down here, in
Verona, to write the history of my extravagant adventure. I
shall formulate and expand the rough notes in my diary which lies
open before me, and I shall begin with a happy afternoon in May,
six months ago.
May 20th.
_London_:--To-day is the seventh anniversary of my release from
captivity. I will note it every year in my diary with a sigh of
unutterable thanksgiving. For seven long blessed years have I
been free from the degrading influences of Jones Minor and the
First Book of Euclid. Some men find the modern English boy
stimulating, and the old Egyptian humorous. Such are the born
schoolmasters, and schoolmasters, like poets, _nascuntur non
fiunt_. What I was born passes my ingenuity to fathom.
Certainly not a schoolmaster--and my many years of apprenticeship
did not make me one. They only turned me into an automaton,
feared by myself, bantered by my colleagues, and sometimes good-
humouredly tolerated by the boys.
Seven years ago the lawyer's letter came. The post used to
arrive just before first school. I opened the letter in the
class-room and sat down at my desk, sick with horror. The awful
wholesale destruction of my relatives paralysed me. My form must
have seen by my ghastly face that something had happened, for,
contrary to their usual practice, they sat, thirty of them, in
stony silence, waiting for me to begin the lesson. As far as I
remember anything, they waited the whole hour. The lesson over,
I passed along the cloister on my way to my rooms. I overheard
one of my urchins, clattering in front of me, shout to another:
"I'm sure he's got the sack!"
Turning round he perceived me, and grew as red as a turkey-cock.
I laughed aloud. The boy's yell was a clarion announcement from
the seventh heaven. I _had got the sack_! _I_ should never teach
him quadratic equations again. I should turn my back forever
upon those hateful walls and still more abominated playing-
fields. And I was not leaving my prison, as I had done once or
twice before, in order to continue my servitude elsewhere. I was
free. I could go out into the sunshine and look my fellow-man in
the face, free from the haunting, demoralising sense of
incapacity. I was free. Until that urchin's shriek I had not
realised it. My teeth chattered with the thrill.
I was fortunately out of school the second hour. I employed most
of it in balancing myself. A perfectly reasonable creature, I
visited the chief. He was a chubby, rotund man, with a circular
body and a circular visage, and he wore great circular gold
spectacles. He looked like a figure in the Third Book of Euclid.
But his eyes sparkled like bits of glass in the sun.
"Well, Ordeyne?" he inquired, looking up from letters to parents.
"I have come to ask you to accept my resignation," said I. "I
would like you to release me at once."
"Come, come, things are not as bad as all that," said he,
kindly.
I looked stupidly at him for a moment.
"Of course I know you've got one or two troublesome forms," he
continued.
Then I winced. His conjecture hurt me horribly.
"Oh, it's nothing to do with my incompetence," I interrupted.
"What is it, then?"
"My grandfather, two uncles, two nephews and a valet were drowned
a day or two ago in the Mediterranean," I answered, calmly.
I have since been struck by the crudity of this announcement. It
took my chief's breath away.
"I deeply sympathise with you," he said at last.
"Thank you," said I.
"A terrible catastrophe. No wonder it has upset you. Horrible!
Six living human beings! Three generations of men!"
"That's just it," said I. "Three generations of my family swept
away, leaving me now at the head of it."
At this moment the chief's wife came into the library with the
morning paper in her hand. On seeing me she rushed forward.
"Have you had bad news?"
"Yes. Is it in the paper?"
"I was coming to show my husband. The name is an uncommon one.
I wondered if they might be relatives of yours."
I bowed acquiescence. The chief looked at the paragraph below
his wife's indicating thumb, then he looked at me as if I, too,
had suffered a seachange.
"I had no idea--" he said. "Why, now--now you are Sir Marcus
Ordeyne!"
"It sounds idiotic, doesn't it? " said I, with a smile. "But I
suppose I -am."
And so came my release from captivity. I was profoundly affected
by the awful disaster, but it would be sheer hypocrisy if I said
that I felt personal grief. I knew none of the dead, of whom I
verily believe the valet was the worthiest man. My grandfather
and uncles had ignored my existence. Not a helping hand had they
stretched out to my widowed mother in her poverty, when one
kindly touch would have meant all.
They do not seem to have been a lovable race, the Ordeynes. What
my father, the youngest son, was like, I have no idea, as he died
when I was two years old, but my mother, who was somewhat stern
and puritanical, spoke of him very much as she would have spoken
of the prophet Joel, had he been a personal acquaintance.
Seven years to-day have I been a free man.
Feeling at peace with all the world I called this afternoon on my
Aunt Jessica, Mrs. Ordeyne, who has borne me no malice for
stepping into the place that should have been the inheritance of
her husband and of her son. Rather has she devised to adopt me,
to guide my ambitions and to point out my duties as the head of
the house. If I refuse to be adopted, avoid ambitions and
disclaim duties, the fault lies not with her good-will. She is a
well-preserved worldly woman of fifty-five, and having begun to
dye her hair in the peroxide of hydrogen era has not the
curiosity to abandon the practice and see what colour will
result. I wish I could like her. I can't. She purrs. Some
day I feel she will scratch. She received me graciously.
"My dear Marcus. At last! Didn't you know I have been in town
ever since Easter?"
"No," said I. "I am afraid I didn't." Which was true. "Why
didn't you tell me?"
"I would have asked you to dinner, but you will never come. As
for At Home cards I never dream of sending them to you. It is a
waste of precious half-penny stamps."
"You might have written me a nice little letter about nothing at
all," I suggested.
"For you to say 'What is that woman worrying me with her silly
letters for?' I know what you men are." She looked arch.
This is precisely what I should have said. As I am not an
inventive liar, I could only smile feebly. I am never at my ease
with Aunt Jessica. I am not the kind of person to afford her
entertainment. I do not belong to her world of opulence, and if
even I desired it, which the gods forbid, my means would not
enable me to make the necessary display. My uncle, thinking to
retrieve the fallen fortunes of the title, amassed enormous
wealth as a company promoter, while I, on whom the title has
descended, am perfectly contented with its fallen fortunes. I
have scarcely a thought or taste in common with my aunt. In
fact, I must bore her exceedingly. Yet she hides her boredom
beneath a radiant countenance and leads me to understand that my
society gives her inexpressible joy. I wonder why.
She is always be-guide-philosopher-and-friending me. I resent
it. A man of forty does not need the counsels of an elderly woman
destitute of intellect. I believe there are some women who are
firmly convinced that their sheer sex has imbued them with all
the qualities of genius. To-day my aunt tackled me on the
subject of marriage. I ought to marry. I asked why. It
appeared it was every man's duty.
"From what point of view?" I asked. "The mere propagation of the
human race, or the providing of a superfluous young woman with a
means of livelihood? If it is the former, then, in my opinion,
there are too many people in the world already; and if the
latter, I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently altruistic."
"You are so _funny!_" laughed my aunt.
I was not aware of being the least bit funny.
"But, seriously," she continued, "you _must_ marry." She is a
woman who has an irritating way of speaking in Italics. "Are you
aware that if you have no son the title will become extinct?"
"And if it does," I cried, "who on this earth will care a
half-penny-bun?"
I am growing tired of the title. At first it was rather amusing.
Now it appears it is registered in Heaven's chancery and hedged
about with divine ordinances. Only the other day an unknown
parson requested me to open a church bazaar, and I gathered he
had received his instructions direct from the Almighty.
"Why, every one would care," exclaimed my aunt, genuinely
shocked. "It would be monstrous. You owe it to your descendants
as well as to your ancestors. Besides," she added, with apparent
irrelevance, "a man in your position ought to live up to it."
"I do," said I, "just up to it."
"Now you are pretending you don't understand me. You ought to
marry money!"
I smiled and shook my head. I don't think my aunt likes me to
smile and shake my head, for I saw a flicker in her eyes. "No,
my dear aunt; emphatically no. It would be comfortless. If I
kissed it, it would be cold. If I put my arms round it, it would
be full of sharp edges which would hurt. If I tried to get any
emotion out of it, it would only jingle."
"What do you want then?"
"Nothing. But if I must--let it be plain flesh and blood."
"Cannibal!" said my aunt.
We both laughed.
"But you can have plenty of flesh and blood, with money as well,
for the asking," she insisted; and thereupon my two cousins, Dora
and Gwendolen, entered the drawingroom and interrupted the
conversation. They are both bouncing, fresh-faced girls, in the
early twenties. They ride and shoot and bicycle and golf and
dance, and the elder writes little stories for the magazines. As
I do none of these things, I am convinced they regard me as a
poor sort of creature. When they hand me a cup of tea I almost
expect them to pat me on the head and say, "Good dog!" I am
long, lean, stooping, hatchet-faced, hawknosed, near-sighted. I
have not the breezy air of the jolly young stockbrokers they are
in the habit of meeting. They rather alarm me. Moreover, they
have managed to rear a colossal pile of wholly incorrect
information on every subject under the sun, and are addicted to
letting chunks of it fall about one's ears. This stuns me,
rendering conversation difficult.
As I had not seen Dora since her return from Rome, where she had
spent the early spring, I asked, in some trepidation, for her
impressions. Before I could collect myself, I was listening to a
lecture on St. Peter's. She told me it was built by Michael
Angelo. I suggested that some credit might be given to Bramante,
not to speak of Rosellino, Baldassare Peruzzi and the two San
Gallo's.
"Oh!" said my young lady, with a superb air of omniscience. "It
was all Michael Angelo's design. _The others only tinkered away
at it afterwards_."
After receiving this brickbat I took my leave.
To console myself I looked up, during the evening, Michael
Angelo's noble letter about Bramante.
"One cannot deny," says he, "that Bramante was as excellent in
architecture as any one has been from the ancients to now. He
placed the first stone of St. Peter's, not full of confusion, but
clear, neat, and luminous, and isolated all round in such a way
that it injured no part of the palace, and was held to be a
beautiful thing, as is still apparent, in such a way that any
one who has departed from the said order of Bramante, as San
Gallo has done, has departed from the truth."
Michael Angelo did not like San Gallo; neither did he like
Bramante-who was his senior by thirty years-but this makes his
appreciation of the elder's work all the more generous.
Tinkered away at it, indeed!
May 21st.
I spent all the morning at work by the open window.
I have a small house in Lingfield Terrace, on the north side of
the Regent's Park, so that my drawing-room, on the first floor,
has a southern aspect. It has been warm and sunny for the past
few days, and the elms and plane-trees across the road are
beginning to riot in their green bravery, as if intoxicated with
the golden wine of spring. My French window is flung wide open,
and on the balcony a triangular bit of sunlight creeps round as
the morning advances. My work-table is drawn up to the window.
I am busy over the first section of my "History of Renaissance
Morals," for which I think my notes are completed. I have a
delicious sense of isolation from the world. Away over those
tree-tops is a faint purpurine pall, and below it lies London,
with its strife and its misery, its wickedness and its vanity.
Twenty minutes would take me into the heart of it. And if I
chose I could be as struggling, as wretched, as much imbued with
wickedness and vanity as anybody. I could gamble on the stock
exchange, or play the muddy game of politics, or hawk my precious
title for sale among the young women of London society. My Aunt
Jessica once told me that London was at my feet. I am quite
content that it should stay there. I have much the same nervous
dread of it as I have of an angry sea breaking in surf on the
shingle. If I ventured out in it I should be tossed hither and
thither and broken on the rocks, and I should perish. I prefer
to stand aloof and watch. If I had a little more of daring in my
nature I might achieve something. I am afraid I am but a waster
in the world's factory; but kind Fate, instead of pitching me on
the rubbish-heap, has preserved me, perhaps has set me under a
glass case, in her own museum, as a curiosity. Well, I am happy
in my shelter.
I was interrupted in my writing by the entrance of my cook and
housekeeper, Antoinette. She was sorry to disturb me, but did
Monsieur like sorrel? She was preparing some _veau a l'oseille_
for lunch, and Stenson (my man) had informed her that it was
disgusting stuff and that Monsieur would not eat it.
"Antoinette," said I, "go and inform Stenson that as he looks
after my outside so do you look after my inside, and that I have
implicit confidence in both of you in your respective spheres of
action."
"But does Monsieur like sorrel?" Antoinette inquired, anxiously.
"I adore it even," said I, and Antoinette made her exit in
triumph.
What a reverential care French women have for the insides of
their masters! At times it is pathetic. Before now, I have
thrown dainty morsels which I could not eat into the fire, so as
to avoid hurting Antoinette's feelings.
I came across her three years ago in a tiny hostelry in a tiny
town in the Loire district. She cooked the dinner and conversed
about it afterwards so touchingly that we soon became united in
bonds of the closest affection. Suddenly some money was stolen;
Antoinette, accused, was dismissed without notice. I had a
shrewd suspicion of the thief--a suspicion which was afterwards
completely justified--and indignantly championed Antoinette's
cause.
But Antoinette, coming from a village some eighty miles away, was
a stranger and an alien. I was her only friend. It ended in my
inviting her to come to England, the land of the free and the
refuge of the downtrodden and oppressed, and become my
housekeeper. She accepted, with smiles and tears. And they were
great big smiles, that went into creases all over her fat red
face, forming runnels for the great big tears which dropped off
at unexpected angles. She was alone in the world. Her only son
had died during his military service in Madagascar. Although her
man was dead, the law would not regard her as a widow because she
had never been married, and therefore refused to exempt her only
son. "_On ne peut-etre Jeune qu'une fois, n'est-ce pas,
Monsieur?_" she said, in extenuation of her early fault.
"And Jean-Marie," she added, "was as brave a fellow and as
devoted a son as if I had been married by the Saint-Pere
himself."
I waved my hand in deprecation and told her it did not matter in
the least. The della Scalas, supreme lords of Verona for many
generations, were every man jack of them so parented. Even
William the Conqueror--
"_Tiens_ cried Antoinette, consoled, "and he became Emperor of
Germany--he and Bismarck!"
Antoinette's historical sense is rudimentary. I have not tried
since to develop it.
When I brought my victim of foreign tyranny to Lingfield Terrace,
Stenson, I believe, nearly fainted. He is the correctest of
English valets, and his only vice, I believe, is the accordion,
on which he plays jaunty hymn-tunes when I am out of the house.
When he had recovered he asked me, respectfully, how they were to
understand each other. I explained that he would either have to
learn French or teach Antoinette English. What they have done, I
gather, is to invent a nightmare of a _lingua franca_ in which
they appear to hold amicable converse. Now and again they have
differences of opinion, as to-day, over my taste for _veau a
l'oseille_; but, on the whole, their relations are harmonious,
and she keeps him in a good-humour: Naturally, she feeds the
brute.
The duty-impulse, stimulated by my call yesterday on one aunt by
marriage, led my footsteps this afternoon to the house of the
other, Mrs. Ralph Ordeyne. She is of a different type from her
sister-in-law, being a devout Roman Catholic, and since the
terrible affliction of two years ago has concerned herself more
deeply than ever in the affairs of her religion. She lives in a
gloomy little house in a sunless Kensington by-street. Only my
Cousin Rosalie was at home. She gave me tea made with tepid
water and talked about the Earl's Court Exhibition, which she had
not visited, and a new novel, of which she had vaguely heard. I
tried in vain to infuse some life into the conversation. I don't
believe she is interested in anything. She even spoke lukewarmly
of Farm Street.
I pity her intensely. She is thin, thirty, colourless,
bosomless. I should say she was passionless--a predestined
spinster. She has never drunk hot tea or lived in the sun or
laughed a hearty laugh. I remember once, at my wit's end for
talk, telling her the old story of Theodore Hook accosting a
pompous stranger on the street with the polite request that he
might know whether he was anybody in particular. She said,
without a smile, "Yes, it was astonishing how rude some people
could be."
And her godfathers and godmothers gave her the name of Rosalie.
Mine might just as well have called me Hercules or Puck.
She told me that her mother intended to ask me to dine with them
one evening next week. When was I free? I chose Thursday.
Oddly enough I enjoy dining there, although we are on the most
formal terms, not having got beyond the "Sir Marcus" and "Mrs.
Ordeyne." But both mother and daughter are finely bred
gentlewomen, and one meets few, oh, very, very few among the
ladies of to-day.
I reached home about six and found a telegram awaiting me.
"_Sorry can't give you dinner. Cook in an impossible condition.
Come later._ Judith."
I must confess to a sigh of relief. I am fond of Judith and
sorry for her domestic infelicities, though why she should
maintain that alcoholized wretch in her kitchen passes my
comprehension. If there is one thing women do not understand it
is the selection, the ordering, and the treatment of domestic
servants. The mere man manages much better. But, that aside,
Antoinette has spoiled me for Judith's cook's cookery. I
breathed a little sigh of content and summoned Stenson to inform
him that I would dine at home.
A great package of books from a second-hand bookseller arrived
during dinner. Among them were the nine volumes of Pietro
Gianone's _Istoria Civile del Regno di Napoli_, a copy of which I
ought to have possessed long ago. It is dedicated to the "Most
Puissant and Felicitous Prince Charles VI, the Great, by God
crowned Emperor of the Romans, King of Germany, Spain, Naples,
Hungary, Bohemia, Sicily, _etcetera_." Is there a living soul in
God's universe who has a spark of admiration for this most
puissant and most felicitous monarch crowned by God Emperor and
King of the greater part of Europe (and docked of most of his
pretensions by the Treaty of Utrecht)? We only remember the
forcible-feeble person by his Pragmatic Sanction, and otherwise
his personality has left in history not the remotest trace. And
yet, on the 12th February, 1723, a profoundly erudite, subtle,
and picturesque historian grovels before the man and subscribes
himself "Of your Holy Caesarean and Catholic Majesty the most
humble and most devoted and most obsequious vassal and slave
Pietro Gianone." What ruthless judgments posterity passes on
once enormous reputations! In Gianone's admirable introduction
we hear of "_il celebre Arthur Duck, il quale oltro a' con
confini della sua Inghilterra volle in altri a piu lontani Paesi
andav rintracciando l'uso a l'autorita delle romane leggi ne'
nuovi domini de' Principi cristiani; e di quelle di ciascheduna
Nazione volle ancora aver conto: le ricerco nella vicina Scozia,
e nell' Ibernia; trapasso nella Francia, e nella Spagna; in
Germania, in Italia, a nel nostro Regno ancora: si stese in oltre
in Polonia, Boemia, in Ungheria, Danimarca, nella Svezia, ed in
piu remote parti_." A devil of a fellow this celebrated English
Arthur Duck, who besides writing a learned treatise _De Usu et
Auth. Jur. Civ. Rom. in Dominiis Principum Christianorum_, was a
knight, a member of Parliament, chancellor of the diocese of
London, and a master in chancery. Gianone flattens himself out
for a couple of pages before this prodigy whom he lovingly calls
_Ariuro_, as who should say Raffaelo or Giordano; and now, where
in the hearts of men lingers Sir Arthur Duck? For one thing he
had a bad name. Our English sense of humour revolts from making
a popular hero of a man called Duck. Yet we made one of Drake.
But there was something masculine about the latter: in fact,
everything.
I am afraid it was rather late when I got to Judith.
