THE FIFTEENTH EARL OF MOUNT DUNSTAN
James Hubert John Fergus Saltyre--fifteenth Earl of Mount Dunstan, "Jem Salter," as his neighbours on the Western ranches had called him, the red-haired, second-class passenger of the Meridiana, sat in the great library of his desolate great house, and stared fixedly through the open window at the lovely land spread out before him.From this particular window was to be seen one of the greatest views in England.
From the upper nurseries he had lived in as a child he had seen it every day from morning until night, and it had seemed to his young fancy to cover all the plains of the earth.Surely the rest of the world, he had thought, could be but small--though somewhere he knew there was London where the Queen lived, and in London were Buckingham Palace and St.James Palace and Kensington and the Tower, where heads had been chopped off; and the Horse Guards, where splendid, plumed soldiers rode forth glittering, with thrilling trumpets sounding as they moved.These last he always remembered, because he had seen them, and once when he had walked in the park with his nurse there had been an excited stir in the Row, and people had crowded about a certain gate, through which an escorted carriage had been driven, and he had been made at once to take off his hat and stand bareheaded until it passed, because it was the Queen.Somehow from that afternoon he dated the first presentation of certain vaguely miserable ideas.Inquiries made of his attendant, when the cortege had swept by, had elicited the fact that the Royal Lady herself had children--little boys who were princes and little girls who were princesses.What curious and persistent child cross-examination on his part had drawn forth the fact that almost all the people who drove about and looked so happy and brilliant, were the fathers or mothers of little boys like, yet--in some mysterious way--unlike himself? And in what manner had he gathered that he was different from them? His nurse, it is true, was not a pleasant person, and had an injured and resentful bearing.In later years he realised that it had been the bearing of an irregularly paid menial, who rebelled against the fact that her place was not among people who were of distinction and high repute, and whose households bestowed a certain social status upon their servitors.She was a tall woman with a sour face and a bearing which conveyed a glum endurance of a position beneath her.Yes, it had been from her--Brough her name was --that he had mysteriously gathered that he was not a desirable charge, as regarded from the point of the servants' hall --or, in fact, from any other point.His people were not the people whose patronage was sought with anxious eagerness.
For some reason their town house was objectionable, and Mount Dunstan was without attractions.Other big houses were, in some marked way, different.The town house he objected to himself as being gloomy and ugly, and possessing only a bare and battered nursery, from whose windows one could not even obtain a satisfactory view of the Mews, where at least, there were horses and grooms who hissed cheerfully while they curried and brushed them.He hated the town house and was, in fact, very glad that he was scarcely ever taken to it.People, it seemed, did not care to come either to the town house or to Mount Dunstan.That was why he did not know other little boys.Again--for the mysterious reason --people did not care that their children should associate with him.How did he discover this? He never knew exactly.
He realised, however, that without distinct statements, he seemed to have gathered it through various disconnected talks with Brough.She had not remained with him long, having "bettered herself" greatly and gone away in glum satisfaction, but she had stayed long enough to convey to him things which became part of his existence, and smouldered in his little soul until they became part of himself.The ancestors who had hewn their way through their enemies with battle-axes, who had been fierce and cruel and unconquerable in their savage pride, had handed down to him a burning and unsubmissive soul.At six years old, walking with Brough in Kensington Gardens, and seeing other children playing under the care of nurses, who, he learned, were not inclined to make advances to his attendant, he dragged Brough away with a fierce little hand and stood apart with her, scowling haughtily, his head in the air, pretending that he disdained all childish gambols, and would have declined to join in them, even if he had been besought to so far unbend.
Bitterness had been planted in him then, though he had not understood, and the sourness of Brough had been connected with no intelligence which might have caused her to suspect his feelings, and no one had noticed, and if anyone had noticed, no one would have cared in the very least.