The Pride of Jennico 3

The Pride of Jennico 3

Those words came upon his last sigh. His eye flashed once, and then the

light was extinguished.

 

Thus he passed. His dying thought was for the worthy continuance of

his race. I found myself the possessor, so the tabellions informed me

some days later, of many millions (reckoned by the florins of this

land) besides the great property of Tollendhal—fertile plains as

well as wild forests, and of this same isolated frowning castle with

its fathom-thick walls, its odd pictures of half-savage dead and gone

Woschutzskis, its antique clumsy furniture, tapestries, trophies of

chase and war; master, moreover, of endless tribes of dependants:

heiducks and foresters; females of all ages, whose bare feet in summer

patter oddly on the floors like the tread of animals, whose high-boots

in winter clatter perpetually on the stone flags of stairs and

corridors; serf-peasants, factors, overseers; the strangest mixture of

races that can be imagined: Slovacks, Bohemians, Poles, to labour on

the glebe; Saxons or Austrians to rule over them and cypher out rosters

and returns; Magyars, who condescend to manage my horseflesh and watch

over my safety if nothing else; the travelling bands of gipsies, ever

changing but never failing with the dance, the song and the music,

which is as indispensable as salt to the life of that motley population.

 

And I, who in a more rational order of things might have been leading

the life of a young squire at home, became sovereign lord of all,

wielding feudal power over strings of vassals who deemed it great

honour to bend the knee before me and kiss my hand.

 

No doubt, in the beginning, it was vastly fine; especially as so

much wealth meant freedom. For my first act, on my return after the

expiration of my furlough, was to give up the duties of regimental

life, irksome and monotonous in these piping days of peace. Then I

must hie me to Vienna, and there, for the first time of my life of

six-and-twenty years, taste the joy of independence. In Vienna are

enough of dashing sparks and beautiful women, of princes and courtiers,

gamblers and rakes, to teach me how to spend some of my new-found

wealth in a manner suitable to so fashionable a person as myself.

 

But how astonishingly soon one accustoms oneself to luxury and

authority! It is but three months ago that, having drained the brimming

cup of pleasure to the dregs, I found its first sweetness cloying,

its first alluring sparkle almost insufferable; that, having basked

in perpetual smiles, I came to weary of so much favour. Winning at

play had no fascination for a man with some thirty thousand pounds a

year at his back; and losing large slices of that patrimony which

had, I felt, been left me under an implied trust, was dully galling

to my conscience. I was so uniformly fortunate also in the many duels

in which I was involved among the less favoured—through the kindness

which the fair ladies of Vienna and Bude began to show to _le beau

Jennico_ (the old dictum had been revived in my favour)—that after

disabling four of my newly-found “best friends,” even so piquant an

entertainment lost all pretence of excitement.

 

And with the progress of disillusion concerning the pleasure of

idleness in wealth, grew more pressing the still small voice which

murmured at my ear that it was not for such an end, not for the

gratification of a mere libertine, gambler, and duellist, that my

great-uncle Jennico had selected me as the depositary of his wealth and

position.

 

“Sell and settle, sell and settle.” The old man’s words had long enough

been forgotten. It was high time to begin mastering the intricacies

of that vast estate, if ever I was to turn it to the profit of that

stream of noble Jennicos to come. And in my state of satiety the very

remoteness of my new property, its savageness, its proud isolation,

invested it with an odd fascination. From one day to the other I

determined on departure, and left the emptiness of the crowd to seek

the fulness of this wild and beautiful country.

 

Here for a time I tasted interest in life again; knew a sort

of well-filled peace; felt my soul expand with renewed vigour,

keenness for work and deeds, hope and healthy desire, self-pride

and satisfaction. Then came the foolish adventure which has left me

naked and weak in the very midst of my wealth and power; which has

left rudderless an existence that had set sail so gaily for glorious

happiness.

 

* * * * *

 

The bell of the horologe, from its snow-capped turret overlooking the

gate of honour in the stronghold of Tollendhal, slowly tolled the tenth

hour of that tempestuous night; and the notes resounded in the room,

now strongly vibrating, now faint and distant, as the wind paused for

a second, or bore them away upon its dishevelled wing. Upon the last

stroke, as Basil Jennico was running over the last page of his fair

paper, the door behind him, creaking on its hinges, was thrown open by

János, the heiduck, displaying in the next chamber a wide table, lit by

two six-branched chandeliers and laid for the evening meal. The twelve

yellow tongues of flame glinted on the silver, the cut glass, and the

snow-white napery, but only to emphasise the sombre depth of the

mediæval room, the desolate eloquence of that solitary seat at the huge

board. János waited till his master, with weary gesture, had cast his

pen aside, and then ceremoniously announced that his lordship’s supper

was ready.

 

Impatiently enough did the young man dip his fingers in the aiguière of

perfumed water that a damsel on his right offered to him as he passed

through the great doors, drying them on the cloth handed by another

on his left. Frowning he sat him down in his high-backed chair behind

which the heiduck stood ready to present each dish as it was brought up

by other menials, to keep the beaker constantly filled, to answer with

a bow any observation that he might make, should the lord feel disposed

to break silence.

 

But to-night the Lord of Tollendhal was less disposed than ever in such

a direction. He chafed at the long ceremony; resented the presence of

these creatures who had seen her sit as their mistress at that table,

where now lay nought but vacancy beyond the white cloth; resented even

the silent solicitude that lurked in János’s eyes, though the latter

never broke unauthorised his rule of silence.

 

The generous wine, in the stillness and the black solitude, bred

presently a yet deeper melancholy. After a perfunctory meal the young

man waved aside a last glass of the amber Tokay that was placed at his

hand, rose, and moodily walked to and fro for some time. Feeling that

the coming hours had no sleep in reserve for a mind in such turmoil as

his, he returned to his writing-table, and, whilst János directed the

servants to bring in and trim fresh candles, and pile more logs upon

the hearth, Basil Jennico resumed his task.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

 

BASIL JENNICO’S MEMOIR CONTINUED

 

 

MY great-uncle’s will, forcible, concise, indisputable as it was,

had been (so the man of law informed me) drawn out in a great hurry,

dictated, indeed, between spasms of agony and rage. (The poor old man

died of gout in his stomach.) Doubtless, had he felt sure of more

time, he would have burdened the inheritance with many directions and

conditions.

 

From his broken utterances, however, and from what I had known of him

in life, I gathered a fair idea of what his wishes were. His fifty

years of foreign service had filled him, old pandour that he seemed to

have become, with but increased contempt for the people that surrounded

him, their ways and customs, while his pride as an Englishman was only

equalled by his pride as a Jennico.

 

“Sell and settle....”

 

The meaning of the words was clear in the light of the man as I knew

him. I was to sell the great property, carry to England the vast hoard

of foreign wealth, marry as befitted one of the race, and raise a

new and splendid line of Jennicos, to the utter mortification, and

everlasting confusion, of the degenerate head of the house.

 

Now, though I knew it to be in me, and felt it, indeed, not otherwise

possible, to live my life as true a Jennico as even my uncle could

desire, I by no means deemed it incumbent upon me to set to work and

carry out his plans without first employing my liberty and wealth as

the humour prompted me. Nor was the old country an overpoweringly

attractive place for a young man of my creed and kidney. In Vienna I

was, perhaps, for the moment, the most noted figure—the guest most

sought after that year. In England, at daggers drawn with my brother, I

could only play an everyday part in an unpopular social minority.

 

It was in full summer weather that, as I have written, already tried by

the first stage of my career of wealth, I came to take possession of my

landed estates. The beauty and wildness of the scenery, the strangeness

of the life in the well-nigh princely position to which this sudden

turn of fortune’s wheel had elevated me, the intoxicating sensation of

holding sway, as feudal lord of these wide tracts of hill and plain,

over so many hundreds of lives—above all, the wholesome reaction

brought about by solitude and communion with nature after the turmoil

of the last months—in short, everything around me and in me made me

less inclined than ever to begin ridding myself of so fair a possession.

 

And do I wish I had not thus delayed in obeying the injunction that

accompanied the bequest? Odds my life! I am a miserable dog this day

through my disobedience; and yet, would I now undo the past if I could?

A thousand times no! I hate my folly, but hug it, ever closer, ever

dearer. The bitter savour of that incomprehensible yearning clings to

the place: I would not exchange it for the tameness of peace. Weakling

that I am, I would not obliterate, if I could, the memory of those

brief, brief days of which I failed to know the price, until the

perversity of fate cut their thread for ever—ay, perhaps for ever,

after all! And yet, if so, it were wiser to quit these haunted walls

for ever also. But, God! how meagre and livid looks wisdom, the ghost,

by the side of love’s warm and living line!

 

And now, on! Since I have put my hand to the task, undertaken to set