Free Fate Cannot Harm Me by J. C. Masterman Page B

until now, been untroubled by jealousy or quarrels. The one had always spoken with brotherly and generous appreciation of the other’s work; a cynic might have thought them something too much of a mutual admiration society. Yet something had most clearly occurred to strain and mar their long-established friendship. Thoughtfully Monty considered the case, considering in his mind first Robin and then Basil.
    The Hon. Basil Paraday-Royne had been born with the largest of large silver spoons in his mouth. Indeed, the expression hardly did justice to his good fortune. The spoon was, at the least, gold. He was brilliant, he was successful, he was happy, he was rich, he was good-looking, he was popular. What gift had been omitted? He was the younger son of Lord Royne, whose barony dated from the days of the Younger Pitt; it had been bestowed, as Basil was wont to explain in moments of expansion, in return for a shameless application of wealth for electoral purposes. In the twentieth century, therefore, it was old enough to be respectable, and carried with it none of the responsibilities which attach to a tradition of service to the State. No Royne had ever distinguished himself in any way whatever, and none had ever departed from the accepted canons of behaviour suitable to his rank and position. None, that is, until Basil’s father, who, to the amazement of his friends, hadmarried a French
comtesse
. He had been acting, in accordance with the wholly irrational habit of the time, as an unpaid
attaché
at the Embassy in Paris, a position for which he was in all ways except one entirely unfitted; there he had met and fallen in love with Elaine de Jauvecour who, astonishingly, had also fallen in love with him. She was beautiful, young and talented. In the overwhelmingly British and Victorian atmosphere of Royne Park her spirit had withered. She had died ten years later, already a little faded, a little querulous, but still, when she wished, a dazzling and gifted woman. Unlike his two elder brothers Basil took after his mother, not only in appearance but also in intelligence. His career at Eton had been brilliant, for he did all things easily and many things with grace and distinction. Though he was neither laborious nor consistently energetic, he was ambitious, and had contrived to win more intellectual distinctions than usually fell to the lot of an Oppidan; he was a fine, though rather flashy, athlete, had played in the eleven at Lord’s, and had been a figure of some importance in the Eton world. Perhaps his foreign blood made him somewhat precocious; in any case, he declined to follow his brothers to Oxford, and plunged at once into the world of Society, of travel and literature and sport. That he was successful in them all stood to reason. His first book, a slight but witty account of a journey to Kashmir, had been enthusiastically received and praised beyond its deserts. Since then he had written half a dozen books, on widely different subjects—all graceful, well written, often cynical, never very profound. He had travelled widely, and amused himself in the society of half a dozen capitals. Probably few men of his age were better known or more envied. And yet, as Monty, who didn’t really like him, had once said, there was “a streak,” yes, undoubtedly, a streak. Exactly to define that streak was beyond Monty’s powers—he was conscious of it, as of something vaguely, indefinablydisturbing. Possibly it was the consciousness of success too easily won which engendered a disguised but irritating pride and just the faintest tinge of patronage; possibly only something un-English, exotic, faintly precious, which prevented complete sympathy between him and his contemporaries. Anyhow—a streak. Sir Smedley Patteringham 3 had once sourly remarked that no one so universally popular as Basil had been known in Society in his day, and that no one had so few friends.
    Monty smiled to himself as he