Gloria Mundi. Frederic Harold
Then he lounged to the window, stretching his arms as he moved. He also was tall, but with a scattering of gray in his hair.
“Beastly black morning,” he commented in drowsy tones, after a prolonged observation of the prospect. “Might as well stopped in bed.”
“Well, go back then!” snapped the other. “I didn’t make the rotten weather, did I?” This was wanton ill-temper. The elder man also began drumming with his nails on the window. “Turn it up, Eddy,” he remonstrated, smoothly enough, but with a latent snarl in his tone. “I don’t like it.”
The younger man moved his head, as if he would have looked his companion in the face. Then he stared away again, out of the window.
“Beaters been waitin’ half an hour already,” he grumbled, sulkily. “What’s the good of makin’ a time if you don’t keep it?”
“I didn’t make any time,” responded Major Pirie with curtness. Upon reflection, he added: “What does it matter about the beaters?”
There seemed no answer to this, and for several minutes nothing was said. Finally the younger man thought of something. “I say,” he began, and after an instant’s pause went on: “It’d suit me better not to be called ‘Eddy’ among the men, d’ye see? That fellow Burlington began it last night—he got it from you—and I don’t like it. When we’re alone, of course, that’s different.”
Major Pirie laughed—a dry, brief, harsh laugh—and swung around on his heels. “Your man didn’t get those sausages I asked for, after all,” he remarked, going back to the dishes at the fender.
“Probably couldn’t,” said Mr. Edward, “or else,” he added, “wouldn’t. I never saw such a houseful of brutes and duffers. I’m keen to shunt the lot of ‘em, and they know it, the beggars. You’d think they’d try to suck up to me, but they don’t, they haven’t got brains enough.”
The major had brought a plate from the table, and was filling it from under the covers on the hearth. “Shall I ring for the tea?” he asked.
Mr. Edward moved across to the chimney corner and pulled the cord himself. “Do you know what that old ass, Barlow—the butler, you know—had the face to say to me yesterday? ‘I’—God, you couldn’t believe it! ‘I ’ope, sir,’ he says, ‘you’ll think better of shootin’ on the First, for His Grace’ll hear the guns in the covers, and it won’t do His Grace no good.’ Fancy the beggar’s cheek!”
“Well, do you know, Torr,” said Major Pirie, slowly, speaking with his mouth full but contriving to give a significantly nice emphasis to the name, “I was thinkin’ much the same myself. For that matter, several of the fellows were mentionin’ it. It doesn’t look quite the thing, you know.”
The entrance of the servant created an interval of silence, during which Mr. Edward in his turn rummaged among the dishes before the fire.
“It’s Gus, is it?” he demanded, from where he knelt on one knee, plate in hand.
“He thought it would be funny to queer my game, eh?”
“Your brother hasn’t said a word, so far’s I know,” replied the major, pouring his tea. “It was merely some of the fellows, talkin’.”
“God Almighty!” cried Mr. Edward, springing to his feet. “Here’s a precious outfit of pals for you! You come down here, so help me—”
“Don’t say ‘you’; say ‘they,’ if you’ve got to say anything,” interposed the major, quietly.
“Well, they, then,” the other went on, in loud heat. “They come down here, and take my mounts, by God; they drink my wine, they win my money, they drain me dry—and then they go behind my back and whisper to one another that I’m an outsider. And you too, Pirie,” he continued, with defiance and deprecation mingled in his tone, “you admit yourself that you talked with them.”
“My dear Torr,” replied the major, “it’s a mistake for you to turn out so early. You’ve tried to quarrel before breakfast every day I’ve been here. It’s the worst morning temper I ever heard of in my life. You ought to have tea and eggs and things brought to you in your room, and not show yourself for at least two hours afterward—you really ought. It isn’t fair to your friends.”
The door opened and still another tall man came in. He nodded to Pirie as he passed him, with a tolerant “Well, major,” and went straight to the dishes by the fire.
“Pirie’s got it into his head we oughtn’t to shoot to-day, Gus,” said Mr. Edward.
The other rose with a dish in his hands.
“It is dark,” he assented, glancing toward the window. “Afraid of pottin’ a beater, major?”
“No—it’s about the duke,” explained Edward. “It seems some of the fellows funk the thing—they think he’ll hear the guns—they want to go to church instead, or something of that sort.”
Augustine Torr, M.P., looked at his brother inquiringly. The tie of blood between them was obvious enough. They were both slender as well as tall; their small round heads merging indistinguishably behind into flat, broad necks, seemed identical in contour; they had the same light coarse hair, the same florid skins, even the same little yellow mustaches. The differences were harder to seek. Edward, though he had borne Her Majesty’s commission for some years, was not so well set up about the shoulders as his younger and civilian brother. Augustine, on the other hand, despite his confident carriage of himself, produced the effect of being Edward’s inferior in simple force of character. It was at once to his credit and his disparagement that he had the more amiable nature of the two.
“How do you mean—the duke?” he asked. “Is there a change?”
Edward put out his closed lips a little, and shook his head. Major Pirie sprinkled salt on his muffin while he explained.
“All there is of it is this,” he said. “There was just an idea that with the—with your grandfather—dyin’ in the house—it might look a little better to give the first the go-by. Nobody’d have a word to say against shootin’ to-morrow.”
“Well, but what the hell”—Augustine groped his way with hesitancy—“I don’t understand—we’ve been shootin’ partridges for a month, and how are pheasants any different? And as for the duke—why, of course one’s sorry and all that—but he’s been dyin’ since June, and the birds have some rights—or rather, I should say—what I mean is—”
“That’s what I said,” put in Edward, to cover the collapse of his brother’s argument.
Major Pirie frowned a little. “Partridges are another matter,” he said testily.
“Damned if I know what you’re driving at,” avowed Augustine. He paused with fork in air at his own words. “Drivin’ at,” he repeated painstakingly. “Drivin’ at pheasants, eh? Not bad, you know. Pass the mustard, Pirie.”
“God!” said the major, with gloom. “You know well enough what I mean. To work through fields miles off—that’s one thing. To shoot the covers here under the duke’s nose, with the beaters messin’ about—that’s quite another. However that’s your affair, not mine.”
“But don’t you see,” urged Augustine, “what difference does a day make? There’ll be just as much racket to-morrow as to-day. It isn’t reasonable, you know.”
“It was merely what you might call a sentiment,” said the major, in the half apologetic tone of a man admitting defeat. He looked the least sentimental of warriors as he went on with his breakfast—a longfaced, weather-beaten, dull-eyed man of the late forties.
Four other men who came in now at brief intervals, with few or no words of salutation to the company, and who lounged about helping themselves to what caught their fancy in the