It was not very long after this that Frank Renton was accosted by one of his friends in the regiment with what seemed to him a very odd sort of request. ‘Look here, Frank,’ said young Edgbaston, who was a son,--it is unnecessary to add,--of Lord Brummagem, and a very popular, good-natured young fellow, ‘I’ve promised to produce you at the Riches’, where I am going to lunch. Don’t struggle, my boy. They are going to have your brother Laurie, and you must come.’
‘My brother Laurie!’ cried Frank in amazement. ‘And who are the Riches; and what do they want me for? I never heard of the people that I know of. I suppose it is one of your jokes?’
‘It’s very witty to be sure,’ said Edgbaston, ‘but it is not one of my jokes. Papa Rich is something in the City. He was a cheesemonger once upon a time, I believe; but that’s all left behind long ago. Alf Rich, of the Buffs, is one of his sons. You know Alf. He gives capital dinners and eke luncheons. And they’re all intensely jolly, from the pater down to little Nelly. Come along. I promised to bring you. And you’ll meet your brother, if that’s any inducement. Old Rich told me he was to be there.’
‘Laurie to be there! I don’t understand it,’ said Frank.
‘Old Rich buys pictures to no end,’ said Edgbaston; ‘perhaps that’s why your brother’s going; or perhaps he’s after little Nelly. And not a bad speculation either, I can tell you. She’s a nice little girl;--and heaps, cartloads, mountains of tin. If Laurie don’t go in for that style of thing, I’d recommend it to your own consideration.’
‘If it’s so desirable, why do you let it go among your friends in this liberal way?’ said Frank. ‘It’s not in Laurie’s line, I fear,’ he added with a sigh. To tell the truth, the conditions and prospects of his elder brothers lay much on Frank’s mind. He felt easy about himself; but he disapproved of the others, especially Laurie, whom everybody had disapproved of from his cradle,--and felt that he was in a bad way.
‘Then come along, and try your luck, my boy,’ said his friend. And the consequence was that by noon Frank and half-a-dozen more were flying over the green, balmy, awakening country on Edgbaston’s drag. They were all in high spirits, with that delightful sense of fulfilling every duty that can be looked for from a Guardsman which is the soul of pleasure. And Frank Renton, puritanical as he had been in respect to his brother Laurie and Alice Severn, was soon chatting about ‘little Nell,’ whom he had never seen, as familiarly as any of them. So that it is evident stern principle alone was not involved in his displeasure with his brother. The young men were not at all contemptuous of the good things to be had at Richmont; but the family who were to receive them there did not count for much. Old Rich spent his money freely to give them pleasure, and got laughed at for his pains; Mamma Rich, or Rich _mère_, as they call her, was not much more respectfully treated; and as for Nelly Rich, her name was bandied about from mouth to mouth with the most unscrupulous ease. ‘If I were you, So-and-so, I’d certainly go in for little Nell,’ one and another of those lively youths would say from time to time. She had ‘heaps of tin’--that was her grand characteristic,--and was evidently ready to drop into anybody’s arms who should do her the honour to hold them out to her. But the talk was a matter of course, not meaning half that it seemed to mean. And half at least of her critics were dumb before Nelly, and had an unfeigned dread of her keen little bright eyes and sharp speeches. Richmont itself was a big house in a big park, conveying to the ordinary spectator no sense of present incongruity with its past. The old part of the mansion was in the east wing, and not visible from the front, and all that could be seen by the party in the drag was the vast white modern façade, very fresh and clean as yet, with great plate-glass windows, and a wide hospitable door, opening into a hall with scagliola pillars. At this door old Rich stood, waving his hand in sign of welcome. The flower-beds on the lawn were already full of every bright thing which could be had at the season, and the whole place was alit and alive with wealth, and warmth, and movement. ‘To think that a fine old place like this should drop into the greasy hands of an old cheesemonger!’ said one of the men as they drove through the leafy avenue. But they were all quite willing to be the cheesemonger’s guests, and to drink his wine, and enjoy the good things his greasy gold had provided.