Tristram of Blent | Page 4

They could not alter the date of the death; they could not
alter the date of the wedding; perhaps it would seem rather more
possible to alter the date of the birth. At any rate, that is no business of
mine. I have set the story down because it seemed a curious and
interesting episode, but it is nothing to me who succeeds or ought to

succeed to this or that title or estate. For my own part, I am inclined to
hope that the baby's prospects in life will not be wrecked by the absurd
Russian habit of using the Old Style.
To return to serious questions, the customs-barrier between----"
Mr Jenkinson Neeld laid down his friend's Journal and leant back in his
chair.
"Really!" he murmured to himself. "Really, really!"
Frowning in a perplexed fashion, he pushed the manuscript aside and
twiddled the blue pencil between his fingers. The customs-barrier of
which Josiah Cholderton was about to speak had no power to interest
him. The story which he had read interested him a good deal; it was an
odd little bit of human history, a disastrous turn of human fortunes.
Besides, Mr Neeld knew his London. He shook his head at the Journal
reprovingly, rose from his chair, went to his book-case, and took down
a Peerage. A reminiscence was running in his head. He turned to the
letter T (Ah, those hollowly discreet, painfully indiscreet initials of
Josiah Cholderton's! Mysteries perhaps in Baxton, Yorks, but none in
Pall Mall!) and searched the pages. This was the entry at which his
finger stopped--or rather part of the entry, for the volume had more to
say on the family than it is needful either to believe or to repeat:--
"Tristram of Blent--Adelaide Louisa Aimée, in her own right
Baroness--23rd in descent, the barony descending to heirs general.
Born 17th December 1853. Married first Sir Randolph Edge, Bart.--no
issue. Secondly, Captain Henry Vincent Fitzhubert (late Scots Guards),
died 1877. Issue--one son (and heir) Hon. Henry Austen Fitzhubert
Tristram, born 20th July 1875. The name of Tristram was assumed in
lieu of Fitzhubert by Royal Licence 1884. Seat--Blent Hall, Devon----"
Here Mr Neeld laid down the book. He had seen what he wanted, and
had no further concern with the ancestry, the ramifications, the abodes
or possessions of the Tristrams of Blent. To him who knew, the entry
itself was expressive in what it said and in what it omitted; read in
conjunction with Josiah Cholderton's Journal it was yet more eloquent.

By itself it hinted a scandal--else why no dates for the marriages? With
the Journal it said something more. For the 20th is not "early in July."
Yet Mr Neeld had never heard--! He shut the book hastily and put it
back on the shelf. Returning to his desk, he took up the blue pencil. But
on second thoughts this instrument did not content him. Scissors were
to his hand; with them he carefully cut out from the manuscript the
whole account of Mr Cholderton's visit to Heidelberg (he would run no
risks, and there was nothing important in it), dated it, marked it with the
page to which it belonged in the Journal, and locked it away in a
drawer.
He felt resentful toward his dead friend Josiah Cholderton. If there be a
safe pastime, one warranted to lead a man into no trouble and to
entangle him in no scandals, it would seem to lie in editing the Journal
of a Member of Parliament, a Commercial Delegate, an Inventor of the
Hygroxeric Method of Dressing Wool. Josiah Cholderton had--not
quite for the first time--played him false. But never so badly as this
before!
"Good gracious me!" he muttered. "The thing is nothing more nor less
than an imputation on the legitimacy of the son and heir!"
That same afternoon he went over to the Imperium to vote at the
election of members. It struck him as one of the small coincidences of
life that among the candidates who faced the ballot was a Colonel
Wilmot Edge, R.E.
"Any relation, I wonder?" mused Mr Neeld as he dropped in an
affirmative ball. But it may be added, since not even the secrets of club
ballots are to be held sacred, that he bestowed one of a different sort on
a certain Mr William Iver, who was described as a "Contractor," and
whose name was familiar and conspicuous on the hoardings that
screened new buildings in London, and was consequently objectionable
to Mr Neeld's fastidious mind.
"I don't often blackball," he remarked to Lord Southend as they were
sitting down to whist, "but, really, don't you think the Imperium should
maintain--er--a certain level?"

"Iver's a devilish rich fellow and not a bad fellow either," grunted my
lord.

II
MR CHOLDERTON'S IMP