Roden

“ Vansittart gave a little nod as she looked at him. Roden had drawn forward a chair, and she sat down, after a moment's hesitation, in front of the open fire.
“So I have always heard,” she answered, “and a great philanthropist.”
“Oh—yes.” Roden paused and took a chair. “Oh yes; but Tony Cornish is our right-hand man. The people seem to place greater faith in him than they do in Lord Ferriby. When it is Cornish who asks, they give readily enough. He is business-like and quick, and that always tells in the long run.” ”

“ Mr. Roden was in hospital, and there was only Mrs. Roden and a kid to milk thirty cows. Of course I, like an ass, offered to help, forgetful that I had my own to see to, and by the time I thought of my own affairs it was getting dusk and the delayed thunderstorm threatened. We hurried off, I with two empty cream cans slung, Chinaman fashion, on a stick across the shoulders, the wife with a billy containing a jewfish still alive, which Mrs. Roden had given her—a special luxury we hadn't tasted for a year. We had just got into the thick scrub when the storm burst on us. ”

“ Roden read the letter, and put it in his pocket without a word. It had touched his vanity. He had had few dealings with men of the standing and position of Cornish, and here was this peer's nephew and peer's grandson appealing to him as to a friend, classing him together with himself as a man of the world. No man has so little discretion as a vain man. It is almost impossible for him to keep silence when speech will make for his glorification. Roden arrived at the works well pleased with himself, and found Von Holzen in their little office, put out, ill at ease, domineering. ”

“ Has it not been stated that she was travelling with her maid?
“I see,” she said, when she saw him again the next day after dinner in the salon, “that your great philanthropic scheme is now an established fact. I have taken a great interest in its progress, and of course know the names of some who are associated with you in it.”
Roden laughed indifferently, well pleased to be recognized. His notoriety was new enough and narrow enough to please him still. There is no man so much at the mercy of his own vanity as he who enjoys a limited notoriety. ”

“ For man is essentially the first of the “game” animals and beneath fine clothes there nearly always beats a heart ready, quite suddenly, to snatch the fearful joy of battle.
Von Holzen did not disappoint him, but came flying on silent feet, like some beast of prey, from the darkness. Cornish had played half-back for his school not so many years before. He collared Von Holzen low, and let him go, with a cruel skill, heavily on his head and shoulder. Not a word had been spoken, and, in the stillness of the summer night, each could hear the other breathing.
Roden stood quite still. ”

“ I never pulled any rougher on a horse’s mouth in my life than I’d like anybody to pull on mine.”
“I wish some of my friends would take [77] that for their motto,” said Roden. “I’m thinking I’ll let you ride Bonnibel some time, if she will.” ”

“ Vansittart shrugged her shoulders and leant back in her deep chair.
“He strikes me as a person with infinite capacity for holding his cards. That is all. But perhaps he has no good cards in his hand? Nothing but rubbish—the twos and threes of ordinary drawing-room smartness—and never a trump. Who can tell? Qui vivra verra, Miss. Roden. It may not be in my time that the world shall hear of Tony Cornish—the real world, not the journalistic world, I mean. He may ripen slowly, and I shall be dead. I am getting elderly. How old do you think I am, Miss Roden?”
“Thirty-five,” replied Dorothy ”

“ Roden heard with supreme delight the confidential voice of a little nigger announcing through the key-hole (their favorite channel of communication) that his “trunks dun come.”
He got with all speed through his ablutions, and, when his boxes were brought, [42] into a well-worn shooting-coat and knickerbockers, determining as he laced his hob-nailed boots to “do” the farm thoroughly that morning, and devote the rest of the day to mountain-climbing and explorations generally. ”

“ They are a desperate set of fellows; men engaged in a dangerous industry do not wear kid gloves.”
Mrs. Vansittart was watching him across the low tea-table; for Roden rarely looked at his interlocutor. He had more of her attention than he perhaps suspected.
“Ah,” she said, rather more indifferently than before, “I think you exaggerate Herr von Holzen's importance in the world.”
“I do not exaggerate the danger into which Cornish will run if he is not careful,” retorted Roden, half sullenly. ”

“ We chemists, you see, do not trust each other. No; but I can make malgamite here before your eyes—to show you that it is harmless—what?” He spoke easily, with a certain fascination of manner, as a man to whom speech was easy enough—who was perhaps silent with a set purpose—because silence is safe. “But it is a long process,” he added, holding up one finger, “I warn you. It will take me two hours. And you, who have perhaps not dined, and this Roden, who is tired out—”
“Roden can go home—if he is tired,” said Cornish.
“Well,” answered Von Holzen, with outspread hands, “it is as you like. ”

“ The man pointed out the building. “But the Herr Professor is in the factory,” he said. “It is mixing-day to-day. I will, however, fetch him.”
Mrs. Vansittart walked slowly towards the office where Roden had told her that the safe stood wherein the prescription and other papers were secured. She knew it was mixing-day and that Von Holzen would be in the factory. She had sent Roden on a fool's errand to Park Straat to await her return there. Was she going to succeed? Would she be left alone for a few moments in that little office with the safe? ”

“ Major White made a sudden movement, but Cornish laid his hand quickly upon the soldier's arm.
“I will manage Lord Ferriby. What is your answer?”
“No,” replied Von Holzen, instantly, as if he had long known what the ultimatum would be.
Cornish turned interrogatively to Roden. His eyes urged Roden to accept.
“No,” was the reply.
Mr. Wade took out his large gold watch and looked at it.
“Then there is no need,” he said composedly, “to detain these gentlemen any longer.”
CHAPTER XXVII. COMMERCE. “The world will not believe a man repents. And this wise world of ours is mainly right.” ”

“ When Lord Ferriby decided to accede to Roden's earnest desire that he should go to The Hague, he was conscious of conferring a distinct favour upon the Low Countries.
“It is not a place one would choose to go to at this time of year,” he said to a friend at the club. “In the winter, it is different; for the season there is in the winter, as in many Continental capitals.”
One of the numerous advantages attached to an hereditary title is the certainty that a hearer of some sort or another will always be forthcoming. ”

“ Dorothy Roden came forward and shook hands with Cornish. She looked up at him, taking him all in, in one quick intuitive glance, from his smooth head to his neat boots.
“It is horribly cold,” she said. One cannot always be original and sparkling, and it is wiser not to try too persistently. She turned and re-entered the drawing-room, with Cornish following her. The room itself was prettily furnished in the Dutch fashion, and there were flowers. Dorothy Roden's manner was that of a woman; no longer in her first girlhood, who had seen en and cities. She was better educated than her brother ”

“ Vansittart, looking into the fire; “and who is Herr von Holzen?”
Roden paused for a moment, and the lady, looking half indifferently into the fire, noticed the hesitation.
“Oh, he is a scientist—a professor at one of the universities over here, I believe. At all events, he is a very clever fellow—analytical chemist and all that, you know. It is he who has made the discovery upon which we are working. He has always been interested in malgamite, and he has now found out how it may be manufactured without injury to the workers. ”

“ He has been attempting for some time to get the men to refuse to work, and these same men have written to ask him to meet them at the works at ten o'clock, when Roden is at Utrecht, and Von Holzen is out. There is no question of reaching the works at all. They are going to lie in ambush in a hollow of the Dunes, and knock him on the head about half a mile from here north-east.” And Major White paused in this great conversational effort to consult a small gold compass attached to his watch-chain. ”

“ Vansittart, seating herself at the breakfast-table. “You are not to be of the party?”
“No,” answered Dorothy. “I have never had the opportunity or the inclination to ride.”
“Ah, I know,” laughed the elder woman. “Horses are old-fashioned, and only dowagers drive in a barouche to-day. I suppose you ride a bicycle, or would do so in any country but Holland, where the roads make that craze a madness. I must be content with my old-fashioned horse. If, in moving with the times, one's movements are apt to be awkward, it is better to be left behind, is it not, Mr. Roden?” ”

“ Other portraits are in the General Hospital, and for Saltley College he painted a portrait of George William, fourth lord Lyttelton [q. v.] He also painted three portraits of Lord Palmerston. Roden's work was almost entirely confined to his native town and its neighbourhood, where it was much esteemed. He died on Christmas day 1892, at his sister's house in Handsworth, after a long illness. He rarely exhibited works at the London exhibitions. ”

“ I know how Englishmen are ’bout their horses. Some time, if the boy as rides her gets sick, if you’ll let me I’ll show you whether I kin ride or no.”
“Your father says you ride like an Indian,” said Roden.
[76]
She moved her shoulders beneath her loose gray jacket with something very like a shrug. “I don’t bleeve father ever saw a Injun in his life,” she remarked. “You wait; I’ll show you.”
“I don’t doubt you have a good seat,” said Roden, pleasantly; he took particular pains to speak pleasantly always to Herrick and his daughter. “But the chief thing with a horse like Bonnibel is the hands. ”

“ Wade, who was always business-like, had reopened his writing-case when he saw Roden, and now came forward to hand him a written paper.
“That is a copy,” he said, “of the telegram we have sent to Creil. He can come here and select what men he wants—the steady ones and the skilled workmen. With each man we will hand him a cheque in trust. The others can take their money—and go.”
“And drink themselves to death as expeditiously as they think fit,” added Cornish, the philanthropist—the fashionable drawing-room champion of the masses. ”

“ Three days later Roden and Usurper figured in a hurdle race of some note in the neighborhood.
This Usurper was by King Tom, out of Uarda, and as rank a brute as ever went headlong at his hurdle, often taking off nearly a length too soon. Virginia, who had seen him day after day at his work, ventured timidly to suggest to Roden that one of the lads should ride the horse. He laughed, and told her he had thought her above that very ordinary failing of women—nervousness. [105] She said nothing more, turning short on her heel with the customary dissenting movement of her fine shoulders. ”

“ He must at all events be allowed the virtues of a generation which is eminently practical and capable of overcoming the small difficulties of everyday life. He was quick to decide and prompt to act.
Then he seated himself in a carriage alone, with a sigh of relief at the thought that in a few days he would be back in London. His responsibility ended at The Hague, where he was to hand over the malgamite workers to the care of Roden and Von Holzen. ”

“ Then he went off to be weighed, and Virginia dismounted from Pokeberry, and gave a little nigger a cent or two to hold the mare.
She went and leaned against the railing, waiting for the start. All went well enough until the finish. Roden came sweeping down the homestretch in an easy canter, Usurper well in hand and going game as a pebble, and one more hurdle to jump.
Virginia held her breath; she had a horrible [107] certainty that Usurper would refuse that last hurdle, or do something equally idiotic. Roden sent him at it in fine form. ”

“ I kyarn’ bear no one to tech me when—when I’m like this.”
Alas! alas! Virginia, when were you ever “like this” before, in the whole course of your seventeen years of strength and health and placid, if bovine, contentment?
The dinner, thanks to Virginia, was a success. Roden’s wines were excellent. [173] They were going to ask Virginia to sing for them. Roden said he thought it would please her so much. After dinner Mrs. Erroll sat down to the piano, and the sweethearts wandered off into the “greenhouse,” leaving open the door between the rooms. ”

“ It was his intention to try stud-farming in Virginia. No better horseman than Roden ever put boot in stirrup. He had, as an old pad-groom once remarked, “a genus for osses.” It was a mania, a fad of the most pronounced type, with him. No woman’s eye had ever possessed for him half the charm that did the full orbs of his favorite mare, Bonnibel, as she gazed lustrously upon him over her well-filled manger. No sheen of woman’s hair had ever vied, in his opinion, with the satin flanks of Bonnibel. What was it to love a woman? ”