The Ha-Ha Case Read online

  He glanced anxiously at his brother, but Johnnie shook his head mulishly. When he answered, it was plain that the second appeal to sentiment had failed completely.

  “I’m not going to do it, Jim. Not, at present, anyhow. Mr. Laxford advised me not to let myself be rushed into anything. He thinks I ought to have proper legal advice about it all, from someone who’s got no axe to grind. Besides, I’ve got plans of my own, and I don’t think your ideas and the Governor’s would fit in with them. I’m sorry, you know, but still that’s how it is.”

  Jim Brandon recognised that he had made no impression. There was an obstinate set in Johnnie’s mouth which he knew well from childhood onwards. In one of his stubborn moods, Johnnie was unshakable by argument. Further persuasion was useless, and Jim vented his disappointment savagely under his breath:

  “Damn this custom of borough English! If it had been the other way round Oswald would have shown more sense.”

  Oswald was the eldest of the three brothers. As a child he had a craving for the sea, and his ambition had been to enter the Navy. When the financial collapse of his father dashed this hope, he turned to the mercantile marine for the satisfaction of his desire for a sea career. He had started as an apprentice, worked his way up, passed his examinations, and was now third officer on a converted liner which cruised in leisurely fashion down the Mediterranean, carrying tourists to stare at the Sphinx, the minarets of Istanbul, and the pillars of the Erechtheion.

  His self-made career had cut him off from the rest of the family. Johnnie got a letter now and again. His father had to be content with what Oswald himself sardonically termed his “Annual Bulletin.” Jim hardly ever saw his own name in Oswald’s handwriting. Oswald was no letter-writer. And nowadays, even when his ship put into Southampton, he never came to London. He seemed to have other fish to fry. They had seen so little of him that they hardly missed him, now that he had drifted away.

  Oswald might have made a better job of this persuasion business, Jim reflected rather bitterly. Johnnie had a certain admiration for his eldest brother, and Oswald had kept in touch with the youngster to some extent through his letters. But where Oswald was at that moment Jim had no idea, since he had long ago ceased to follow the movements of the Ithaca. For all he knew, Oswald might be sauntering with some girl under the tree arcades of the Paseo de la Alameda at that moment, or helping her to chaffer for embroideries with the boat pedlars in some port or other. That kind of thing was in Oswald’s line, to judge by stray snapshots which he sent home from time to time. They could get no help from him in overcoming Johnnie’s pigheadedness.

  But if Johnnie was obstinate, Jim Brandon was tenacious; and even at this stage he had not given up hope of achieving something. Persuasion had failed; he might as well try a different line, so in a rather sharper tone than he had used before, he demanded:

  “You won’t come back to the Governor? Why not? It seems the decent thing to do. He needs someone to keep him company. I can’t be with him except in the evenings, and I’ve got to get fresh air sometimes. I can’t spend my whole time between an office and a sick-room. You ought to do your share, if you’ve any decency.”

  The prospect seemed to shake Johnnie out of his indifference.

  “Me go back to the Governor? I won’t do it, Jim, that’s flat. I know what it’d be like if I went back. Stuffy digs and rows with frowsy landladies, because the Governor can’t pay his way. Getting shoved out into the street when they lose patience, and having to hunt for fresh digs worse than the last ones. And keeping an ear cocked for every ring at the front-door bell because a tradesman may be squalling for his bill of the month before last. No, I’m sorry for the Governor, and all that, Jim, but it’s his own muddling that landed him in Queer Street, after all. He never thought of us, or he wouldn’t have made such a mess of things.”

  Jim Brandon’s lips curved in a scornful expression.

  “Whereas, of course,” he suggested acidly, “you can live here with all sorts of luxuries and take no share in family bothers, eh? Who pays for all this?”

  “Mr. Laxford,” Johnnie retorted triumphantly. “Or Mrs. Laxford. Anyhow, the Governor doesn’t. He hasn’t even paid the fees he promised when the arrangement was made.”

  Jim evaded this issue by a counter-attack which he hoped might get home on Johnnie’s vanity.

  “H’m! Laxford seems to bulk very big on your horizon. Shoved the poor old Governor off the stage and got you completely under his thumb, apparently.

  “He hasn’t,” Johnnie denied heatedly.

  “Indeed?” The elder brother’s tone was contemptuous, now that diplomacy had definitely failed.

  “What’s the use of lying, Johnnie? You remember that letter I read to you? He dictated it to you, didn’t he? Of course he did. I know the kind of letter you write off your own bat. ‘Dear Father, I am quite well. Are you quite well? I hope you are quite well. . . .’ That’s how you write. You couldn’t have put that last letter together yourself if you’d tried for a week. It’s outside your limits, especially the nasty bits—I’ll say that for you. It’s plain that Laxford has you under his thumb, even to the extent of dictating your letters to the Governor. Pretty doings! Now, Johnnie, give yourself a fair chance. Get away from that man. Come up to London by yourself and let’s all talk things over with no outsiders poking their fingers into our family affairs. You’ve nothing to lose by agreeing to the entail being barred. Why not come in with us?”

  Johnnie evidently felt that he might be worsted if he allowed himself to be entrapped into detailed argument. He contented himself with a clumsy gesture of his hand which abruptly dismissed his brother’s proposal. The furrows between Jim’s brows deepened, and his lips tightened at this cavalier rejection of his final effort.

  “You seem to think that Laxford’s a whole-hog idealist, or altruist, or whatever they call it,” he said scornfully. ‘That he’s simply out to do good in this wicked world? You young fool! Shows how much you know about life. He’s got his own axe to grind. When all’s squared up, you’ll have lashings of money. He knows that well enough. And it’ll be damned convenient for him, then, to have a rich young mug ready to put his paw in his pocket for his dear old tutor. That’s his game, and anyone but you could see it.”

  The sneers and the charge together stung Johnnie into active protest. He sat up in his chair and faced his brother more boldly than he had done hitherto.

  “That just shows you don’t understand him in the least,” he said, not without dignity. “He isn’t that sort at all, and I can prove it, too, Jim.”

  His brother’s brows tilted upward slightly with a hint of weary increduality.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really,” Johnnie retorted. “Look here, Jim. I’ve been thinking a lot, lately. I’m not clever, I know that well enough. Still, some things stare one in the face. It’s like this . . .”

  He paused, trying to find words for his confession of faith, while his brother waited with a certain sardonic politeness.

  “It’s like this,” Johnnie repeated at last. “Things aren’t properly distributed. Some of us have far more money than we need. Other people haven’t got enough to live decently.”

  “Like the Governor?” his brother suggested blandly.

  “The Governor had far more than enough, at one time,” Johnnie rejoined hastily. “He wasted it. That’s just my point, Jim. He ought to have thought of all the good he could do with his cash. Instead of that, he just splashed it away on horses, betting, speculating, and all that kind of thing. If he’d any imagination, he’d never have done it. He’d have used his cash to help people worse off than himself. He never thought of them at all. He never even thought of us. But never mind him. Think of the slums, Jim. Think of all those poor devils cooped up in those dens. Some of them never see a green field in their lives. They ought to have a chance. They ought to be taken clean out of these beastly rookeries and planted down in the country with allotments and small holdings. . . .”<
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  As he went on, he warmed to his subject. There was no art or persuasiveness in the curt, jerky sentences, but their very breathlessness betrayed the intensity of the enthusiasm behind them. It was the crude socialism of adolescence, a froth of generous feeling untempered by the slightest experience of the world; and the other descendant of ten generations of squires listened to it with an increasingly evident contempt. At last he broke silence.

  “Very pretty, Johnnie. I seem to have heard something like it before, though. And what does it all amount to, when you come down to dots?”

  Johnnie was evidently stung by the cool disdain in his brother’s tone.

  “It comes down to this, Jim. I’m not going to be a second edition of the Governor. Money’s a trust. That’s what I feel. It’s got to be used for the benefit of other people. Land’s in the same boat. It ought to be used to help as many people as possible and not just for a landowner or two. Take Burling Thorn. There’s land enough to support dozens and dozens of families. You know there is. They could grow potatoes, or keep pigs, and chickens, and sheep, and cattle. A cow, anyway. That’s what ought to be done with big estates. They ought to be split up among people who could use the land properly. That’s what I’d do, if I had Burling Thorn to-morrow.”

  Jim glanced rather curiously at his brother, as though speculating on something suggested by Johnnie’s outburst. Then, in a single word, he summarised his own opinion of these ideas.

  “Rubbish!”

  Johnnie was nettled by this blunt verdict.

  “Oh, indeed? You think so? Well, some other people think differently. Mr. Laxford thinks it’s a splendid scheme.”

  Jim’s eyes narrowed as he heard this revelation. It hardly squared with his own opinion of Laxford’s character; and for a moment or two he pondered over the point in silence, trying to fathom what lay behind the tutor’s approval of such wild-cat schemes.

  “Laxford thinks well of these half-baked notions, does he?” he said thoughtfully, and his tone in itself was a comment on the tutor. “Do you know, Johnnie, I hardly think Laxford’s just the person for you to associate with. He seems to be a bad influence, and he’s getting you right under his thumb, if you ask me. That’s no sound position for you, or any of us. You’d be much better away from him and with us, even if it’s not the lap of luxury.”

  The change from irony to thoughtfulness in Jim’s tone seemed to impress Johnnie despite himself.

  “I can’t see why you’re so set against Mr. Laxford,” he protested in a faintly aggrieved voice. “He’s been a lot of use to me, Jim. He’s broadened my mind. He’s educated me. He’s taught me to think for myself. . . .”

  Jim Brandon ignored the opening offered to him in this last sentence. He shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly as though recognising that Johnnie had chosen his own fate and must be allowed to tread the path he had marked out. Getting up from his chair he took his gun from the corner and dismembered it for cleaning. Then, instead of pursuing his arguments, he passed to another subject; and, in doing so, altered his tone to one of friendly interest.

  “Well, we needn’t discuss these affairs where we don’t see eye to eye, Johnnie. No good getting ratty with each other when I’m only here for so short a time. Was it a good show you saw when you were up in town?”

  “Top-hole and farther up the strap,” Johnnie declared with enthusiasm. “You ought to go and see it, Jim. I haven’t laughed so much since the cat died.”

  He ran on into a long, detailed, and extremely wearisome account of a revue he had seen; but his brother, diligently cleaning his gun, showed no signs of boredom. On the contrary, he listened with well-feigned interest, and even stimulated the narrator with questions when the stream of dull description showed signs of drying up. At last, under this skilful treatment, Johnnie talked himself back into good humour and seemed to have forgotten their earlier disagreement, which was what his brother wanted. Jim had still some information to extract before he could feel satisfied.

  “Not a bad scheme, going up to town now and again to see a show,” he commented. “Nothing like a little judicious levity, as somebody says. And what else did you do with yourself in town? Lunched somewhere? And you must have had dinner before the show, I suppose. How did you fill in the rest of the time?”

  But this innocently worded feeler met with no better fate than earlier probings of the same subject. Johnnie relapsed into his awkward manner, though it was clear that his hostility had died down.

  “Oh, we buzzed about a bit. Here and there, you know. I had to buy some things: shirts, collars, and some shoe-laces.”

  “You weren’t seeing a lawyer, were you?” Jim demanded with marked suspicion in his tone.

  Curiously enough, Johnnie seemed quite relieved by this question.

  “A lawyer? Oh, no, nothing of that sort.”

  “I thought perhaps you were hunting for advice behind our backs,” Jim confessed.

  “No, really, Jim, I wasn’t.”

  This denial satisfied Jim as to the lawyer, for lying was unheard-of in Johnnie’s code. Still, he had noted that faint uneasiness in his brother’s manner, and he guessed that business of some sort—quite apart from the buying of shirts and collars—had been at the back of that trip to London. It puzzled him; but he saw from Johnnie’s manner that nothing would be gained by further questions. He rose from his chair and walked over to the window which looked out upon a rather neglected lawn.

  “Seems a pretty fair-sized place, this,” he commented. “Some partridge-shooting, isn’t there? Who’s paying for it all? The rent of it, I mean.”

  “Di’s finding the money just now,” Johnnie admitted incautiously, and then seemed to wish he had not spoken. “I’m to pay her back, some time,” he added.

  “Who’s Di?” his brother demanded, turning round.

  “Mrs. Laxford,” Johnnie explained with a flush, as though he had been caught in a fault.

  Jim Brandon frowned heavily.

  “H’m! I knew it could hardly be coming out of Laxford’s vast resources. D’you know, Johnnie, if I were you, I shouldn’t borrow from a woman. It’s done, of course. But not by people of our sort.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, really,” Johnnie assured him with a pretence of indifference which was belied by his heightened colour. “Mr. Laxford knows all about it, of course. In fact, he suggested it. Besides, Di only signs the cheques; she’s got nothing to do with the money, really.”

  “Indeed? That’s a bit rum, isn’t it?”

  Johnnie disregarded this question and Jim, forbearing to press it, continued:

  “And she keeps you in pocket-money too, I suppose. Well, see you make a note of what you get from her—every penny, mind. That sort of transaction ought to be done shipshape fashion, if it’s done at all.”

  Johnnie had his excuse ready.

  “Well, I have to have some cash to spend, you know, Jim. And the Governor never sends me a stiver. In fact, it’s t’other way about, sometimes. Mr. Laxford’s been giving him a pound or two, now and again. Anyway, he used to.”

  “Is that so?”

  Jim Brandon’s tone showed that he disliked this subject, just as Johnnie fought shy of discussing his business in town. It was no pleasure to the elder brother to be reminded that his father had come so low as to sponge on the tutor whom he distrusted. He dropped the matter, came away from the window, and halted before the glass-fronted gun cabinet in which three shot-guns stood amid a long row of empty places.

  “Not an impressive show,” Jim commented with a faint sneer. “A bit lonesome, they look, don’t they? Who owns this one?”

  He opened the cabinet and lifted one of the guns to examine it.

  “That’s a house-gun,” Johnnie explained. “I mean, it was left here when we took over the place. The keeper uses it sometimes.”

  Jim replaced the gun and took up another.

  “Is this another of the same?”

  “Yes. The third’s Mr. Laxford’s.”r />
  Jim replaced the gun in the cabinet without comment and closed the glass door.

  “I see you’ve got a new 12-bore yourself,” he said, turning to his brother. “Found your old 20-bore getting a bit light for you, eh? I wish I could afford a new one, but the old cylinder has to do for all the shooting I ever get, these days.”

  Johnnie evidently felt the implied comparison between them.

  “Oh, mine isn’t an eighty-guinea one,” he explained with a slight titter. “Mr. Laxford picked it up for me second-hand.”

  Then, apparently feeling that the introduction of Laxford’s name was tactless, he hurried on:

  “Are you still in your Company Team in the Terriers, Jim?”

  His brother nodded.

  “That’s about all the shooting I’ve had for ever so long. Still, I think I can still hit a haystack as well as the next man. I’ll take you on again, Johnnie, to-morrow morning, if you like.”

  Johnnie grinned approvingly.

  “All right. Only you’ll need to get up decently early.”

  A thought seemed to cross Jim’s mind and he paused before replying.

  “One thing,” he qualified his challenge, “you’ll have to be a bit less careless with your gun than you were this afternoon, if you get me to go out with you again. I don’t want an ear blown off as an object-lesson to you in gun sense. Why the devil can’t you learn to handle guns with proper care?”

  “I’m careful enough,” Johnnie protested sulkily.

  “Meaning that you haven’t blown your skull inside out, so far? You’re damned easily satisfied. But you’ll kindly not shoot to my side, if it’s all the same to you. It shakes my nerve.”