Chapter I

Amy Bracknel, the morning sunlight picking out threads of gold from the loose mass of her dark-red hair, and accentuating the delightful purity and freshness of her complexion, watched her father for a moment of meditative silence. A faint smile passed across her face, a smile which became more pronounced as her glance encountered her sister’s rather small brown eyes expectantly fixed upon her from the other side of the table. “What is he like, papa?” she asked. “Is he good-looking?”

Her voice was firm, and its extreme clearness seemed to lend a certain boldness to her question, a suggestion almost of cynicism. The other persons present at the breakfast-table were probably accustomed to it. May, sitting opposite, waited a moment for her father’s reply, but as none was forthcoming offered her own opinion: “I’m sure he isn’t. I can’t imagine anyone who teaches being good-looking.”

The profound wisdom of this remark passed unchallenged, an apparent acceptance of its truth being conveyed by Amy’s next question. “But he’s only a beginner, papa, isn’t he?”

Mr. Bracknel looked up from his newspaper. He drank a mouthful of tea and sucked the ends of his moustache. His dark eyes rested discontentedly on Amy, and he paused deliberately. “He told me he had coached his young brother for some examination, and that he had passed it,” he said dryly.

“How old is he, papa?”

“Twenty-three.” This time Mr. Bracknel did not look up.

“A year older than May! How romantic! Is he dark or fair?”

“He’s fair,” her father snapped. “And if you’ve asked all your questions, be so good as not to mention his name again.”

Amy made a face but otherwise did not appear to be particularly impressed. She exchanged a second glance across the table with her sister.

“Don’t worry your father, Amy dear,” Mrs. Bracknel murmured timidly from behind her tea things. She watched every movement of her husband with dark, lustrous, melancholy eyes that seemed very large in the thin, sallow face with its hollow cheeks and bloodless, colourless lips. She was forty-six, and her eldest child, Alfred, was twenty-five. Her thin, smooth hair was already white about her temples, so often racked by abominable headaches. The eyes, in fact, were all that appeared to live in a discoloured, dried, emaciated countenance. When she met her husband’s glance her expression was of a mingled nervousness and fascination. She was painfully fragile. Her body seemed like a slender husk hardly capable of retaining the life that appeared to be burning quickly away within it, as if without any intervals of rest or sleep. Her pale yellow hands were as delicate as the petals of a flower, and her voice was sweet, soft and expressive, exquisitely pure, with a curious lingering charm, something winning and delightful, that made one wonder if she had not, as a young girl, been beautiful.

The boys, the two sons, the eldest and youngest members of the family, were neither of them present at the breakfast-table, a fact which Mr. Bracknel presently commented upon.

“Where is Alfred? Where is Denis?” he asked, peevishly, and looking at his wife as if he suspected her of having persuaded them to stay away for his particular annoyance. A servant who had just entered the room ventured to reply to his question:

“Master Denis went out this morning early. He’ll be to have forgotten the time.”

Mr. Bracknel glared again at his wife who had made some little murmuring ejaculation. “It seems to me that that boy is allowed to grow up exactly as he likes, and to do exactly as he likes. I hope when his new tutor comes there will be no more of this.”

“Dear Hubert will hardly be able to prevent him from getting up early,” said Amy carelessly.

“Be silent, miss.... And Alfred!--where is Alfred? I suppose he will come down about twelve! I insist on his breakfast not being kept hot for him. Remember--I insist on it.” His voice took a higher pitch and his brown eyes opened wider in his fat, dark face, as they always did in moments of excitement. “This is the result of their training in childhood--or I should say of their want of training. It is just what might have been expected.”

“Why weren’t we trained, papa?” asked Amy pertly.

“Amy dear!” her mother reproved.

Mr. Bracknel wiped his mouth, leaving a greasy stain on his napkin. He rose from the table. His right hand, large and white, with thick fingers, two of which were adorned with rings, rested a moment on the back of his chair. The throbbing of the motor drawn up before the hall-door beat into the room.

“I shall drive Rusk home with me to-night,” he said, ignoring his daughter’s impertinence. “He will be here for dinner.”

He left the room. They could hear him for a minute or two moving about in the hall. Then the front door closed, and he was gone for the day. A kind of unconscious sigh of relief seemed to be breathed into the air. Almost at the same moment Alfred appeared in his dressing-gown.

“Governor away?” he asked softly, as he crossed the room and peered out of the window from behind the curtain. “There he goes. Looks rather pegged about something.” He turned to the others with a little laugh.

“Alfred dear,” Mrs. Bracknel remonstrated, “couldn’t you manage to come down a little earlier in the mornings? You know how it annoys your father when you are late.”

“I never saw him when he wasn’t annoyed,” said Alfred calmly. “At any rate he likes having something to jaw about. Chuck over the paper, Amy, and ring the bell.”

He began to scan the sporting news with his dull little eyes while his mother poured out his tea. She had almost finished doing so when he happened to glance up. “Oh, I say, I’m not going to drink that, you know. How long has it been in?”

“It came in with the rest of the breakfast.”

“Ah, well, you’d better keep it for Denis, then. I’ll have some fresh.” He turned again to his newspaper, over which he bent a heavy, unintelligent face that somehow did not inspire confidence.

“I suppose you will be home for dinner to-night?” his mother said, as she was leaving the room to give her orders to the servants.

“I don’t think so,” he mumbled. He always mumbled when he was asked questions that he did not wish to answer. It was his way of intimating that he did not want to be interfered with, and that if other people would only mind their own business he could be counted on to mind his.

“Mr. Hubert Rusk is to be here,” said Amy irrepressibly. “Don’t you want to see him? We are all dying to.”

“Who’s Mr. Hubert Rusk ...? What a name!”

“What’s the matter with his name? He’s a charming young man, at any rate--just a year older than May! He is Denis’s new tutor.”

Alfred grunted. “He’ll have a fat time of it then. I thought Denis’s education was supposed to be complete!”

“It’s a good deal more complete than yours is ever likely to be, dearest boy,” said Amy politely, patting him on the head.

He pushed away her hand. His thick, carefully parted, black hair was slightly ruffled by the contact and he growled out something unintelligible. In an adjoining room May could be heard trying over a new waltz on the piano.

Amy stood watching her brother, and smiling half-derisively, half-affectionately. For some obscure reason she preferred him to the other members of her family. She felt there was a bond of sympathy uniting them, though what constituted it she could not have told. But his very brutality appealed to her and she could understand him, understand the kind of life he led, his deliberate pursuit of the particular pleasures he cared for, in perfect disregard of what other people said or thought. She threw him over a cigarette from a box on the chimney-piece and he accepted it with another grunt. Alfred’s communications with his fellow-creatures very often took this simple form. He was a young man of few words, and conversation for its own sake had never appealed to him. “What’s the matter with him, anyway?” he asked brusquely, flinging away his newspaper.

“The matter with whom? With Mr. Rusk?”

“Oh, hang Mr. Rusk. What’s the matter with Denis? What’s wrong with him?”

“There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“I’ll swear there is,” said Alfred simply.

Amy watched him a moment in silence. “I don’t know what you mean. What’s wrong with you, I suppose, is that you’re jealous.”

The remark provoked a loud laugh from her brother.

“Jealous of Denis? Do say it again.” He leaned back in his chair, his hands in his pockets. “Denis ’ll never be a man. And at any rate he’s mad.”

“He’s only clever,” answered Amy, carelessly.

She was leaning against the chimney-piece, and she seemed, as she stood there, with her large limbs and superb red hair, to be filled with a tremendous fund of reckless, tumultuous life.

“What does Birch say? Does _he_ think Denis is all right?”

Amy continued to look at him with clear, untroubled eyes. “All right?” she repeated, emphasising the words. “What horrible ideas you get hold of!”

“Well, Birch must have said something: and he never talks to me of course. He doesn’t like me. He’s too superior.”

“He never talks to anybody ... Denis is a genius.”

Alfred looked sceptical.

“May thinks so: she thinks he’s going to be something wonderful.”

“Oh, May!”

“She’s a genius too, you know. Just look at that lovely picture on the wall.”

“Ah well, May’s not so bad,” Alfred replied. “She’s all right: she’s all right in lots of ways.”

“Whatever are you talking about now? It’s only you who are ’so bad.’ Papa is perfectly furious.” This last remark was thrown out half seriously and it had the effect of making her brother look at the clock.

“By Jove!... I suppose I’d better be getting away. What’s this chap Rusk like? Is he all right? I hope he won’t be a nuisance in the house.... I hate those sort of fellows that are supposed to be clever and all that: simply a lot of rotters, every one of them.”

“Nobody but papa has seen him yet,” said Amy, good-humouredly. “We all hope for the best. He’s English and he comes from Cambridge.”

“I’ll bet my life he’s _not_ the best then, or the second best, and I’m not going to tow him about with me. Full of side! If he’d been a Trinity man he might have been all right--but those other blighters.... Always stuck up--a lot of rotters. I hate a chap like that in the house: you never know what to do with him or how to treat him.... What sort of a screw is he knocking out of the governor? If it’s anything decent he’s a genius too.”

“I don’t know what it is,” said Amy. “It was Dr. Birch who brought him.” She paused a moment, her eyes fixed on him. “You’d better come home to-night,” she added suddenly.

Alfred frowned impatiently. “I can’t possibly. I have an engagement.”

“Don’t keep it then. What is the use of irritating papa more than is necessary?”

Alfred stared, but he looked more doubtful. “He’s got it badly, you think?”

Amy made a little face. “We didn’t see you all last week, you know. Papa is worried about something. He wasn’t in the sweetest of tempers at breakfast.”

Her brother pondered this: then he looked at her once more. “I suppose he’s backed the wrong horse somewhere?” he murmured interrogatively.

Amy shrugged her shoulders. “Like me,” she answered.

This reply had the effect of amusing Alfred. His countenance gradually expanded in a broad grin. “Well, you know, confound it all, it wasn’t _my_ fault,” he said. “You’d think I’d made the beastly thing lose. I told you it was practically a certainty and so it was. The brute only lost by half a head. At any rate you might give it a rest now. I dropped a good deal more over it than you did.”

Amy did not seem impressed by this. “You can make it up in other ways,” she answered. “I can’t. And I had to borrow the money from May to begin with. However, I forgive you.”

“And I’d better come home to-night?”

“_I_ think so.” Then she turned away impatiently. “You can please yourself, of course, but it seems to me rather stupid to be perpetually having rows with papa.”

Alfred threw the end of his cigarette into the grate as he yawned and slowly rose to his feet. For a minute or two he regarded himself with much complacency in the mirror over the chimney-piece. “Well, I’ll see,” he murmured as if he were conferring some special favour. “I’ll see what can be done.”