The Inheritors

at the entertainments, the charitable bazaars, the dismal dances, the impossibly bad concerts, I have no idea. She must have had some purpose, for she did nothing without. I myself descended into fulfilling the functions of a rudimentarily developed chaperon⁠—functions similar in importance to those performed by the eyes of a mole. I had the maddest of accesses of jealousy if she talked to a man⁠—and such men⁠—or danced with one. And then I was forever screwing my courage up and feeling it die away. We used to drive about in a coupé, a thing that shut us inexorably together, but which quite as inexorably destroyed all opportunities for what one calls making love. In smooth streets its motion was too glib, on the pavé it rattled too abominably. I wanted to make love to her⁠—oh, immensely, but I was never in the mood, or the opportunity was never forthcoming. I used to have the wildest fits of irritation; not of madness or of depression, but of simple wildness at the continual recurrence of small obstacles. I couldn’t read, couldn’t bring myself to it. I used to sit and look dazedly at the English newspapers⁠—at any newspaper but the Hour. De Mersch had, for the moment, disappeared. There were troubles in his elective grand duchy⁠—he had, indeed, contrived to make himself unpopular with the electors, excessively unpopular. I used to read piquant articles about his embroglio in an American paper that devoted itself to matters of the sort. All sorts of international difficulties were to arise if de Mersch were ejected. There was some other obscure prince of a rival house, Prussian or Russian, who had desires for the degree of royalty that sat so heavily on de Mersch. Indeed, I think there were two rival princes, each waiting with portmanteaux packed and manifestos in their breast pockets, ready to pass de Mersch’s frontiers.

The grievances of his subjects⁠—so the Paris-American Gazette said⁠—were intimately connected with matters of finance, and de Mersch’s personal finances and his grand ducal were inextricably mixed up with the wildcat schemes with which he was seeking to make a fortune large enough to enable him to laugh at half a dozen elective grand duchies. Indeed, de Mersch’s own portmanteau was reported to be packed against the day when British support of his Greenland schemes would let him afford to laugh at his cantankerous Diet.

The thing interested me so little that I never quite mastered the details of it. I wished the man no good, but so long as he kept out of my way I was not going to hate him actively. Finally the affairs of Holstein-Launewitz ceased to occupy the papers⁠—the thing was arranged and the Russian and Prussian princes unpacked their portmanteaux, and, I suppose, consigned their manifestos to the flames, or adapted them to the needs of other principalities. De Mersch’s affairs ceded their space in the public prints to the topic of the dearness of money. Somebody, somewhere, was said to be up to something. I used to try to read the articles, to master the details, because I disliked finding a whole field of thought of which I knew absolutely nothing. I used to read about the great discount houses and other things that conveyed absolutely nothing to my mind. I only gathered that the said great houses were having a very bad time, and that everybody else was having a very much worse.

One day, indeed, the matter was brought home to me by the receipt from Polehampton of bills instead of my usual cheques. I had a good deal of trouble in cashing the things; indeed, people seemed to look askance at them. I consulted my aunt on the subject, at breakfast. It was the sort of thing that interested the woman of business in her, and we were always short of topics of conversation.

We breakfasted in rather a small room, as rooms went there; my aunt sitting at the head of the table, with an early morning air of being en famille that she wore at no other time of day. It was not a matter of garments, for she was not the woman to wear a peignoir; but lay, I supposed, in her manner, which did not begin to assume frigidity until several watches of the day had passed.

I handed her Polehampton’s bills and explained that I was at a loss to turn them to account; that I even had only the very haziest of ideas as to their meaning. Holding the forlorn papers in her hand, she began to lecture me on the duty of acquiring the rudiments of what she called “business habits.”

“Of course you do not require to master details to any considerable extent,” she said, “but I always have held that it is one of the duties of a.⁠ ⁠…”

She interrupted herself as my sister came into the room; looked at her, and then held out the papers in her hand. The things quivered a little; the hand must have quivered too.

“You are going to Halderschrodt’s?” she said, interrogatively. “You could get him to negotiate these for Etchingham?”

Miss Granger looked at the papers negligently.

“I am going this afternoon,” she answered. “Etchingham can come.⁠ ⁠…” She suddenly turned to me: “So your friend is getting shaky,” she said.

“It means that?” I asked. “But I’ve heard that he has done the same sort of thing before.”

“He must have been shaky before,” she said, “but I daresay Halderschrodt.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, it’s hardly worth while bothering that personage about such a sum,” I interrupted. Halderschrodt, in those days, was a name that suggested no dealings in any sum less than a million.

“My dear Etchingham,” my aunt interrupted in a shocked tone, “it is quite worth his while to oblige us.⁠ ⁠…”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

That afternoon we drove to Halderschrodt’s private office, a sumptuous⁠—that is the mot juste⁠—suite of rooms on the first floor of the house next to the Duc de Mersch’s Sans Souci. I sat on a