The White Rajah Read online

  It was clear that he was going to milk the occasion of every jot of self-gratification; and Richard, fuming, felt his patience about to break.

  ‘Miles,’ he said, between clenched teeth, ‘I swear to God, if you continue in this fashion I will pick you up and shake you until your skull rattles!’

  Miles, from his vantage point, surveyed his brother as though he were some distant landscape, indistinctly seen, indifferently appreciated. Then he looked down at the paper, the copy of their father’s will.

  ‘Much of this,’ he said, coldly, ‘can be of little interest to you. It repeats the terms of the entail – that is, that the house and the land devolves upon the eldest son, myself. Then there are various bequests – to old friends, and servants, and the like. There is a sum of one thousand pounds left to the Cottage Hospital at St Briavels …’ He looked across at Richard. ‘Generous, I think you will agree? Of course, he had been the principal patron for many years. Then–’ he ran his finger down the page, affecting to search for some particular passage, ‘–ah yes, this is the paragraph which concerns yourself.’ He settled his neck snugly into his collar, enormously content with what was about to come. ‘It is by no means a long one. You would like to hear it verbatim?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Richard.

  ‘You shall do so … “I give and bequeath absolutely to my younger son Richard”,’ he read, sonorously, pompously, ‘“my pair of matched pistols, with the chased silver stocks and the cannon barrels, by Griffin, Gunsmiths of London, together with the great terrestrial globe customarily kept in my library.”’

  He fell silent, though he continued to look at the copy of the will, a slight smile on his face. Richard waited; he knew that Miles had planned that he should wait, but hefelt none the less impotent to vary his role. This was the way he had long been doomed to listen to his father’s last testament … But presently, when the silence had stretched intolerably, he made a huge effort of will, and broke it. He broke it with a question to which, already, he knew the fatal answer.

  ‘That is all?’

  Miles nodded, abstractedly. ‘Yes. That is all.’

  ‘But why? Why should he do such a thing?’

  Miles raised his eyebrows. ‘They are handsome pistols.’

  It was as much as Richard could do, to hold himself from starting forward, and doing swift violence to that smug face. ‘Do not play the fool with me!’ he said passionately. ‘I am not in the humour for it …’ He stared at Miles. ‘You must have known of this already.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he talk of it?’

  ‘He did me the honour,’ answered Miles smoothly, ‘of discussing the terms of his will before it was drawn up.’

  ‘Then this was your plan?’

  Miles shook his head. ‘Not so. He had it in mind for a long time that the whole estate should devolve upon myself. I could only agree, when it was put to me, that it was a more – suitable arrangement.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Miles tapped the parchment with a precise forefinger. ‘Whether you believe me or not, is no great matter. The outcome is here, in black and white.’

  It was his moment of triumph, and Richard, sick with the knowledge of his defeat, could do nothing to rob him of it. Though Miles’s interest was patent enough – and Richard could imagine the adroit argument which had gone to further it – yet he could not fathom what had been in his father’s mind. Of course, Miles had been the elder son, the natural heir; yet he himself, and his father, had always been close enough, and friendly enough – there hadbeen no hint of such a breach – no serious cloud had ever marred the tie between them. It was this which he could not interpret. It was this which he must probe.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said again, his voice harder, his anger returning. ‘You must have worked on him, you must have dropped some poison. I know how you can twist the truth itself, when you wish … What did you mean when you said it was more suitable that you should be the sole heir?’

  Miles was affecting to be busy, folding the copy of the will, placing it on the mantelpiece behind him. Over his shoulder he said: ‘Come, Richard, we need not fence with each other. There are some people fitted for the inheritance of great estates, and others who are best off without them.’

  Richard bit his lip, controlling his fury. ‘And why am I thus unfitted for any share of his fortune?’

  Miles turned, his eyebrows raised in mortifying disdain. ‘Shall we say,’ he answered, ‘that there is a certain unbecoming wildness in you, which impressed our father more than any claim you might have had on his generosity.’

  ‘Wildness? What wildness?’

  ‘My dear Richard, let us spare each other a catalogue of your transgressions. You know very well what stories and scandals have been put about. The whole county knows them.’ He sniffed, delicately. ‘Of course, you are a grown man. If you choose to drink immoderately, and involve yourself in questionable contacts with women, that is your affair. But such things do not qualify you for consideration, when the time comes to decide who is to inherit an estate and who is to be passed over. I have no doubt that this was what was in Father’s mind.’

  ‘But he never spoke a word of it.’

  Miles settled back comfortably on his heels. ‘Perhaps he thought that it did not greatly matter. Perhaps he thought that this small legacy was the best he could do for you – with propriety.’

  Richard stared at him, genuinely puzzled. ‘What do you mean, propriety? You seem to have a sudden liking for the word. What riddle is this?’

  Miles shrugged. ‘If you do not know, and cannot guess, it is not my task to enlighten you.’

  He made as if to leave his place in front of the fire, ending the conversation at his own will, and this was more than Richard could endure. He stepped forward, and put both his hands firmly on Miles’s shoulders. The heavy gold epaulettes mocked him with their richness and splendour.

  ‘Not so fast,’ he said threateningly, ‘and not so high and mightily. I am not one of your wretched sailors, to be dismissed when you have finished talking.’

  ‘By God, you are not!’ exclaimed Miles. He shook off the detaining hands. ‘If you were aboard any ship of mine, you would soon learn your place!’

  ‘What place is that?’ Furious, Richard was ready to goad his brother to anything – to quarrel, to a blow. ‘Tell me my place, brother Miles,’ he said contemptuously. ‘So that I do not transgress any further.’

  Miles looked up at him, his eyes snapping. He was conscious, as never before, of being a small man confronted with someone so much taller and stronger that he could not be challenged. But a moment earlier he had been in full command of the situation, and he was determined to keep it so. Brushing past Richard, almost stooping under his arm, he walked to the door with what dignity he could muster. There, with a safe distance between them, he turned and spoke: ‘Your place is elsewhere. Have I made that clear? I’ll have no beggars in my house, and no libertines either. You can take your toys, and go, as soon as may be.’

  Then, with no undue delay, he was gone himself, and Richard was left alone.

  2

  Richard moved heavily upwards through the great house, room by room, staircase by staircase, landing by landing; it was as if he were already saying his farewells. When Miles had left him, he had crossed to the sideboard, and drunk deep, and drunk again; anger and sorrow combined to give him a great need for comfort, and, at that low moment, wine had seemed the only comfort to hand. But now, when astonishment had given way to a dull acceptance of the facts, he knew that he must have comfort of another kind – he must talk of his troubles to a friend. Thus, as on so many other occasions, from boyhood onwards, when he had stood in this same sort of need, he climbed up to the topmost storey of the house, and the modest room under the eaves where lived and worked his old tutor, Sebastian Wickham.

  But the journey upwards had its own aspects of unhappiness and disquiet; shrouded by curtains and heavy hangings, t
he house seemed shrouded also by fate. He passed the many portraits of his ancestors, who now appeared to have disowned him; he passed the upper landing, with its suits of armour and its creaking linen presses, whence, peeping through the balustrade and down the wide staircase, he had long ago watched the adult world of his parents assembling for some hospitality, or setting out on some great and elegant occasion. He passed his old nursery, where he and Miles had played and fought and sulked, where the terrors of childhood had melted before the warm and tender presence which was all he remembered of his mother.

  Rich carpeting gave way to half-worn, coarse drugget, and then to the bare deal boards of the upper quarters. Was this to be the future pattern of his life, this progress from easy of sixty-five, they were still astonishingly compatible; latterly, indeed, Wickham had become something of a father-confessor. But his position at Marriott had now grown tenuous: though he had done some secretarial work for the head of the household, and had enjoyed the run of the library, yet his continued employment was no more than an old servant’s pension; and at this moment of change, perhaps, his time was running out.

  His former master was dead, and his new one, Miles Marriott, saw all men, young or old, through a spyglass of appraisal made small by a small spirit.

  It was this thought, above all others, which prompted Richard Marriott, in spite of his preoccupations, to greet the old man with especial gentleness. There was something about the frail Sebastian Wickham, reading so painstakingly in his shabby attic, oblivious of the cruel world, content with the rags of learning, which moved him strongly. But Richard was young, and he had his own troubles which pressed in on him harder still, more than could those of any other man. Thus, he had scarcely added to his greeting a cautionary word: ‘You must take care of those eyes, Sebastian – they are precious,’ before he fell silent, frowning. As he leant against the window frame, looking out across the parklands of Marriott, he was the very picture of a young man with all the cares of the world sitting on his shoulders.

  Sebastian Wickham, glancing up at him, slipped a tasselled leather bookmark into his book, and closed it. There would be no more reading for a space … Then he himself stood up, and put his hand on Richard’s shoulder, looking out where he was looking, at the broad Marriott acres fading into the evening mists.

  ‘What’s the trouble, Richard?’ he asked. ‘Something displeases you. It cannot be the view.’

  ‘It is the view,’ answered Richard, morosely. ‘The view of what I shall never enjoy.’

  ‘How so?’

  Richard turned, and looked at the old man’s lined face – the old man who had nothing also, whose prospects had been meagre from his very birth. But his own wound was too hurtful for such delicate comparisons.

  ‘I have seen my father’s will,’ he said abruptly. ‘Miles has all the estate.’

  Sebastian Wickham nodded, not yet surprised. ‘But it was entailed to him.’

  ‘Only the house and the lands. But he has been given everything! Every penny! I have two pistols. And a map-maker’s globe.’

  Wickham, taken aback, reached out a hand towards the desk, and lowered himself into his chair again. From there, he looked at Richard with swift concern.

  ‘Is that really so?’ he asked. ‘Miles has all the money? You will see none of it?’

  ‘I will see the door tomorrow,’ said Richard bitterly. ‘Brother Miles has made that much clear.’

  ‘I cannot believe that,’ said Wickham, shaking his head. ‘Miles would not be so hard.’

  ‘He would be so hard, and you do believe it!’ Richard looked at the old man, so generous, so far from the world, so innocent of its deceits and betrayals. ‘Come, Sebastian – you need not practise the art of tact with me. There was never any love lost between Miles and myself. He is delighted at this turn. More than money, it gives him a chance to put me in my place at last. He must have worked on my father to bring it about. I know he did! By God, I hate him!’

  ‘He is your brother, Richard.’

  ‘He is a dog … He said’ – Richard mimicked Miles’s precise tones – ‘“There is a certain unbecoming wildness in you, Richard, which must have impressed our father more than we knew.” … I’ll wager he was the one who first pointed it out. He was always a tale-bearer!’

  Sebastian Wickham smoothed the lapels of his rusty black frock coat, a slight smile on his lips. ‘He had some tales to bear, did he not?’

  Richard frowned. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Wickham sat back in his chair. He wished to soften the moment, to make it less dramatic, less harsh, and he could only do it in his own gentle fashion.

  ‘You have told me I need not practise the art of tact with you, Richard. I will take you at your word … You are wild. I have often told you so. There is no vice in you, but there is plenty of boldness and – and appetite.’ His voice robbed the words of any sting; this was a mood of reminiscence, not of chiding. ‘I have been your close escort for many hundreds of miles, over much of Europe. Do you wish me to forget that? Do you wish to forget it yourself? Do you not remember the beer cellars at Heidelberg? – the inn-keeper’s wife at Zurich? – the contessa and her sleeping gondolier in Venice? – the Chief of Police at Dijon? And later, when you came home to Marriott–’ he sighed, not sadly, but as if in contemplation of something which he could not share, ‘–the tales which Miles told were very likely true, were they not? There have been drinking bouts, and gambling. There was the coach, overturned and smashed in the race on the Cheltenham road. There have been girls … If you are seeking a reason–’

  ‘But why should it cost me my whole patrimony?’ interrupted Richard. He felt that he must fight back; the old man was right in what he said and what he hinted, but they were not strong enough arguments, they were childish. ‘Of course I have done all these things! I am a man, not an old woman, not a post-Captain who plans to be an Admiral.’ Agitated, he was striding up and down the narrow room, while Sebastian Wickham watched him gravely. ‘But is that reason enough to cut me off without a penny? To leave me two pistols and a damned globe!’

  Wickham smiled, as though at some private joke. ‘Tennis balls, my liege!’ he quoted, almost to himself.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘A stray thought …’ Wickham gathered his wits. ‘I don’t know what was in your father’s mind, Richard, nor why he did it. It may be true, as Miles said, that he was shocked or displeased by your behaviour.’

  ‘He was no saint himself!’

  A wary look came into Sebastian Wickham’s eye. ‘That is not a proper observation, Richard,’ he said, almost coldly. ‘On this day of all days.’

  ‘But it is true!’ answered Richard stoutly. ‘He was fond of a glass, he liked pretty women … Who does not, for God’s sake, in this day and age – except for a cold fish like Miles, with his career where his manhood ought to be! … Nay, I am sorry, Sebastian,’ he said instantly, noting the old man’s deep embarrassment. ‘I would not shock you for all the world. You are too close to me.’ He checked his pacing, and put his hand on Wickham’s shoulder. ‘Forgive me. I am in a vile mood … It has been a day of sadness, and surprises, and then to be shown the door tomorrow … And Miles talking in riddles about “propriety”.’ He came to the alert suddenly. ‘Now I had forgotten that. What did he mean by it?’

  ‘By what?’

  ‘He said’ – Richard knitted his dark brows in the effort of remembrance – ‘that a small legacy was all that my father could leave me, with propriety.’

  He remained looking down at the floor for some moments, in deep thought; when he glanced up, he was astonished to see that the old man had risen, in obvious agitation, and was staring at him almost with consternation in his eyes. At first he thought that Wickham was still taken aback by his coarseness, or had only just fully comprehended it; but this was dispelled when Wickham said, on a note of great distress: ‘Miles had no business to say anything of the sort!’

  ‘Why, what’s this?’
asked Richard, astonished. ‘What do I care what he says? I hear too much of his babbling to give it any attention. It puzzled me, that was all. But something in Wickham’s continued discomfort caught and held his interest. ‘I see that it does not puzzle you. What did he mean, Sebastian?’

  ‘It is no great matter,’ answered Wickham. Clearly, however, it was a great matter – to his thinking, at least; he was pale, and close to trembling with the effort to preserve his calm. ‘Let us forget about it.’

  ‘I’ll not forget about it,’ said Richard, suddenly stern. He was aware that he had stumbled upon something, and that Sebastian Wickham knew what it was. It was some matter important enough to have cut the ground from under him, distorting his whole future, and he must get to the bottom of it. He caught the old man’s arm, in a grip not too gentle. ‘I’ll not leave you,’ he warned, ‘until you have answered the riddle. What did Miles mean? What does he know? What do you know?’

  ‘I know nothing,’ answered Wickham. ‘I beseech you to let it rest.’

  ‘Sebastian …’

  ‘You are hurting my arm, Richard. Leave me be.’

  Richard released his hold on the meagre, stick-like forearm. ‘I would never hurt you, but I will not leave you either.’ He changed his tone, softening, wheedling as he had often done in the past. ‘Tell me, Sebastian. You are my friend. Tell me. I must know, now.’

  The old man shook his head, waveringly. ‘It is far better that you do not know.’

  ‘You have said too much, or too little. Tell me.’

  Wickham looked at him, searching his face, which was set and determined. He could not resist the appeal in it, the vulnerable hunger to know the best and the worst; and they had been too close to each other, during too many blossoming years, for lies or evasions. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I will tell you … When Miles said–’ he hesitated, and fell silent for some moments. ‘I do not want to wound you, Richard. I would not do so for the world.’

  ‘I have had wounds already today,’ answered Richard hardly. ‘One more will not be the death of me.’