God's Playthings 6

God's Playthings 6

A POOR SPANISH LODGING

 

PHILIP WHARTON, DUKE OF WHARTON

 

“The scorn and wonder of his age.”–_Alexander Pope._

 

 

A young man sat at a wooden table in a small, mean room.

 

His hands were in his pockets and his head sunk on his breast, his legs

outstretched before him.

 

A miserable bed, covered with a dirty blanket, occupied one corner of

the room, above it being a gaunt and poorly carved crucifix.

 

The floor, walls and ceiling were lath, plaster and worn wood, all

soiled, smoked and crumbling.

 

The one small window was covered with a thick pane of discoloured glass

that could not open; some portmanteaux stood beneath and a broken chair.

 

On the table was a coarse glass stained with lees of wine, a loaf of

bread, an hour-glass and a knife.

 

The flies turned in and out of the glass, clustered round the loaf and

hung in clouds about the window.

 

Outside the sun, at its full height and strength, blazed at white heat,

and a bar of vivid light streamed through the smeared glass and fell in

a pool of gold on the dirty floor near to the young man, who appeared

to be dozing, so still did he sit and so level was his breathing.

 

He was humbly dressed in a travelling coat that was much worn, though

of a good cloth and fashionable cut, a frayed blue silk waistcoat,

black breeches, boots to his knees, and a coat of grey tabinet, all

much used and soiled.

 

At his side was a light sword, and round his throat a neckcloth of fine

Venetian lace, carelessly folded.

 

His hair hung untidily down his back and forward over his face; it

was a charming chestnut-brown colour and very thick. Presently he

stretched himself and raised his head without removing his hands from

his breeches pockets.

 

He glanced round the room, and it would have been impossible to

discover from his __EXPRESSION__ whether the squalor of his surroundings

moved him to disgust or no.

 

His face was unusually handsome, of a high-born and rakish type, but

ravaged in a ghastly fashion by want and illness. The contour and pose

of youth remained, but all bloom, freshness and colour had gone; his

person seemed to have seen as much hard service as his clothes and to

have suffered more.

 

From the lines on his brow and at the corners of his remarkably

beautiful mouth it might have been supposed that he was in pain, but

his __EXPRESSION__ was calm and his large hazel eyes serene. The flies

circled the room and beat at the window with a monotonous persistency;

the sun burnt up the already foul air and heated the room almost

unbearably. The young man rose, displaying a figure no more than the

middle height, but of a graceful, well-trained manliness, and walked

unsteadily to the window.

 

As he moved he felt his own weakness and caught his breath with a quick

exclamation.

 

For years he had been warned that he was killing himself as he had been

warned that he was ruining himself. The last had occurred; he had been

ruined in fame and fortune, and it seemed as if the first prophecy

would be justified also. Two nights ago he had ridden from one town

to another; six hours in the rain and the chill that had followed had

greatly increased the vague illness that had been for the last two

years threatening his life.

 

He had always been as reckless of his health as of all the other great

gifts he had once been blessed with, and he was paying toll now, a

penniless exile, bankrupt in everything.

 

He could see nothing from the window, the blaze of the sun was too

strong on the white Spanish street.

 

The flies droned in his ears, and they were the only sound.

 

He closed his eyes, for the dazzle of sunshine made him feel giddy.

 

“Gad,” he murmured, “one could do with a few drops of rain–a cloud at

least.”

 

He began to be conscious of a great thirst; there was no water in the

brown earthenware jug standing in the corner, he knew. Languidly, but

with the well-schooled and now unconscious grace of the man of fashion

who is used to move with a thousand eyes watching every detail of his

dress and deportment, the young Englishman crossed the room, unlatched

the door and went slowly down the dark, steep and dirty stairs.

 

He came directly into a large picturesque room that gave by a tall open

door on to the street.

 

It was a kind of general hall or kitchen, the smooth black beams of

the ceiling hung with rows of onions and herbs, all manner of pots and

pans about the huge open hearth, a window at the back looking on to the

garden, and in a dusky corner an empty cradle and a spinning wheel.

 

The young man went to the shelf where the thick green glasses stood,

took one down and dipped it into the red-glazed pitcher that stood

beneath. The bubble of the water sounded pleasantly; he raised the

dripping glass and drank with a grateful air.

 

He was glad of the cool shadows and of the intense quiet; every one

seemed abroad; it was autumn and he supposed they were at work in the

vineyards.

 

There was an old rush-bottomed chair near the black-carved supports

of the door; he seated himself with his back to the sunlight in the

deserted street, and his eyes on the window the other side of the

room that gave an exquisite glimpse of a fig-tree drooping in the

shadowed garden, and beyond a glossy myrtle, glittering in distant

sunbeams. The young man knew that he had not long to live, both from

ordinary signs and fore-warnings and the sure inner instinct his keen

intelligence was quick to notice and regard.

 

He was absolutely without fear; he had never had any credence in any

religion or any belief, even vague, in a future state of existence, nor

had, like many, tried to invent these feelings for himself or supply

their place with superstitions and conventions.

 

He had never needed these lures to gild his life with promise, always

he had found the moment sufficient, and whatever the moment demanded,

in wealth, honour, talent, charm or health, he had given lavishly, not

unthinkingly, for he had always known that a price would be demanded,

as he had seen it demanded from others of his kind.

 

And he was prepared to pay.

 

A long life did not attract him; all the pleasures he valued were

pleasures that could not with dignity be enjoyed when youth was past;

his own sparkling wit had often made a butt of an old rake, or an

elderly prodigal; he had never intended to join the ranks of those

people who had outworn their enjoyments.

 

A poet whom he had patronised had called him “The scorn and wonder of

the age;” but from his own point of view his life had been the very

steady following of a very simple philosophy.

 

Caring for nothing but the world, that he regarded as the golden apple

hung above the head of every youth to ignore or gain, he had bought

the world, with money, with charm, with honour, with talent, with

beauty and strength and exulted in it and sated himself–and he did not

complain of the bargain. He never complained of anything; his sweet,

good humour was held by many to condone his villainies as the grace

with which he took his final fall almost justified the acts which had

led to that fall. When his political levity, his social extravagances,

his dissipations had finally left him without health or money, he had

taken the verdict of the doctors, the curses of his creditors and

the flight of his friends with the same gentle smile, and, urged by

his ardent love of the world to make life an adventure to the last,

had disappeared from London, where he was so dazzling and infamous

a figure, to die abroad, in the sun and among scenes that by their

freshness and simplicity disguised, at least to a stranger’s eyes, the

sharpness of their poverty. So he, by birth an English Marquis, by

patent of the Pretender a Duke, son of a famous man and himself the

most renowned rake in London, even among a set that included Viscount

Bolingbroke, stayed his obscure wanderings at a poor inn in an unknown

Spanish village and prepared himself for death among the peasants of a

strange land.

 

He regretted nothing, not the splendid chances he had thrown away, not

the fine name he had tarnished, not the great talents he had wasted,

not the life he had sapped and used up before its time. He admitted no

sins, he claimed no virtues and he believed in no judgment.

 

God he considered a polite myth, invented to frighten human weaknesses,

the devil a fable to excuse man’s breakage of his own laws; he had

never paid the least regard to either; never, in any moment of

disappointment or sickness, had he felt any touch of remorse, of regret

or fear.

 

If he had been given his life over again he would have again used it

for the same extravagances, the same follies, the same short brilliant

flare.

 

As he sat now, looking at the distant fig-tree and myrtle, he was

thinking of his past life without compunction, though every incident

that rose to his memory was connected with some broken promise, some

shameless deception, some ruined heart, some wanton, dishonourable

action.

 

The one thing he had been faithful to (beyond his own Epicurean creed)

was the code of a gentleman, as interpreted by the society in which he

moved. It was a curious code, inherited, not learnt, an instinct more

than a quality only remotely connected with the chivalry from which it

had sprung.

 

The Duke would have found this code difficult to define; he called it

honour, but it was only a kind of flourishing likeness of honour.

 

Its laws were simple, mainly these: never be afraid; never chaffer with

money nor earn it in any way, nor mingle in trade; never play false

in your games or your bets; always be courteous to your inferiors and

to women; never take insolence from any one, even the King; seek out

danger and the company of your equals; never take up money once you

have put it down; smile when you win and laugh when you lose; never

speak of your loves nor toast an actress at your club.

 

My lord had never broken these laws: he did not put this to his credit;

he took them as naturally as clean linen and neat table manners, but

perhaps in the casting up of his worthless life they might be set

against the black length of his wicked record, as some poor palliative.

There was something else my lord could claim, a personal quality this

and peculiar to himself: he was tender to animals and anything weak that came his way.