Read Online The Man from St. Petersburg by Ken Follett - Free Book Online Page A

Later he discovered that it had been Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B flat minor, and since then he went to hear it played at every opportunity, although he never told Lydia why.
    When he left the embassy he went back to his hotel to change his clothes, for he had an appointment to play cards at midnight. He was a keen gambler but not a self-destructive one: he knew how much he could afford to lose, and when he had lost it he stopped playing. Had he run up enormous debts he would have been obliged to ask his father to pay them, and that he could not bear to do. Sometimes he won quite large sums. However that was not the appeal of gambling for him: he liked the masculine companionship, the drinking and the late hours.
    He did not keep that midnight rendezvous. Pritchard, his valet, was tying Stephen’s tie when the British ambassador knocked on the door of the hotel suite. His Excellency looked as if he had got out of bed and dressed hastily. Stephen’s first thought was that some kind of revolution was going on and all the British would have to take refuge in the embassy.
    “Bad news, I’m afraid,” said the ambassador. “You’d better sit down. Cable from England. It’s your father.”
    The old tyrant was dead of a heart attack at sixty-five.
    “Well, I’m damned,” Stephen said. “So soon.”
    “My deepest sympathy,” the ambassador said.
    “It was very good of you to come personally.”
    “Not at all. Anything I can do.”
    “You’re very kind.”
    The ambassador shook his hand and left.
    Stephen stared into space, thinking about the old man. He had been immensely tall, with a will of iron and a sour disposition. His sarcasm could bring tears to your eyes. There were three ways to deal with him: you could become like him, you could go under, or you could go away. Stephen’s mother, a sweet, helpless Victorian girl, had gone under, and died young. Stephen had gone away.
    He pictured his father lying in a coffin, and thought: You’re helpless at last. Now you can’t make housemaids cry, or footmen tremble, or children run and hide. You’re powerless to arrange marriages, evict tenants to defeat Parliamentary bills. You’ll send no more thieves to jail, transport no more agitators to Australia. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
    In later years he revised his opinion of his father. Now, in 1914, at the age of fifty, Walden could admit to himself that he had inherited some of his father’s values: love of knowledge, a belief in rationalism, a commitment to good work as the justification of a man’s existence. But back in 1895 there had been only bitterness.
    Pritchard brought a bottle of whiskey on a tray and said: “This is a sad day, my lord.”
    That my lord startled Stephen. He and his brother had courtesy titles—Stephen’s was Lord Highcombe—but they were always called “sir” by the servants, and “my lord” was reserved for their father. Now, of course, Stephen was the Earl of Walden. Along with the title, he now possessed several thousands of acres in the south of England, a big chunk of Scotland, six racehorses, Walden Hall, a villa in Monte Carlo, a shooting box in Scotland and a seat in the House of Lords.
    He would have to live at Walden Hall. It was the family seat, and the Earl always lived there. He would put in electric light, he decided. He would sell some of the farms and invest in London property and North American railroads. He would make his maiden speech in the House of Lords—what would he speak on? Foreign policy, probably. There were tenants to be looked after, several households to be managed. He would have to appear in court in the season, and give shooting parties and hunt balls—
    He needed a wife.
    The role of Earl of Walden could not be played by a bachelor. Someone must be hostess at all those parties, someone must reply to invitations, discuss menus with cooks, allocate bedrooms to guests and sit at the foot of the long table in the dining room of Walden Hall.