The Lazarus Machine

Chapter 2

Captain John Watson sat in his older brother's study.  He no longer wore his uniform but he held himself with military precision.

"Marriage?"

"Yes, John," Harry replied shortly.  "I'd do it myself but Clara's family has refused my suit." Not that her family had the funds to dower their daughter enough to meet Harry Watson's needs.  He knew that, and somehow, they guessed that, too.  They wouldn't throw away their perfect daughter and her healthy, if not estate-saving, dowry on a wastrel like Harry Watson.  The Watsons were without funds and, more recently, without connections.  Harry felt more and more spurned with every trip to London.

Clara's father's refusal was not surprising, given the heavy whorls of exhaustion beneath Harry's eyes and the ever-present glass of port or sherry or Scotch whisky beneath his hand.  Harry picked one up now, port by the color and time of day, and took a gulp.  It was never a refined sip.

"We need the money, John.  The estate simply won't hold together without an influx of cash.  I had to borrow to pay the estate taxes when father died, and those loans are quickly coming due.  I've tightened the household budget as much as I dared to keep up a good front, but soon I'll have to borrow just to pay the staff that is left.  I don't even know that there is anyone else who will lend to me."

Harry continued to get more worked up, as if John was fighting him.  "Who do we let go next?  Which tenants have to try and pay more rent?  Which parcels of land do we sell off just to keep afloat, only to wonder where the payment is coming from next month?  I could sell everything and we'd be debt free, but we'd have nothing left at all."

"Harry, please, I'm not fighting.  I understand."

The look on Harry's face told John that his acquiescence was almost worse. 

"Of course you do, John.  You were ever the dutiful one, the obedient one.  You made father proud.  If you hadn't been off at war when he fell ill, he would have made you his heir instead of me.  He didn't trust me to take care of things, and here I am, proving him right."

"Father didn't take care of things properly, either, Harry, if he left the estate with enough debt to be bankrupted by estate taxes."

"You're just saying that to try to make me feel better, John.  It won't work.  You were always his favorite and I was just his damned failure."

John sighed.  No matter what he said to Harry, he wouldn't be able to win this age-old fight.  Long before John had gone to university, to medical lectures, to war, he and Harry tended towards animosity.  Harry hadn't liked the shining golden boy born to his father's second wife, and John hadn't liked the unending roughhousing inflicted upon him by his elder brother since before John was able to defend himself.  They'd been separated by age, school, and the army, but John was back at the estate now, with no one but Harry and the servants, contributing his meager army pension to the running of the household.

"So, which wealthy, illustrious family would willingly thrust one of their unfortunate children into such a household?"

Harry glared at him.

"Don't be daft, John.  One that needs a husband for their embarrassment of a second son."

"Embarrassment?"

"Some scandal at university, perhaps.  I have no idea.  We are not of a level fit to gossip about it."  Harry sounded rather snide, as if he'd tried to find out details and been rudely rebuffed.  "It hardly matters, with the amount of money they're offering."

John didn't reply – it wouldn't make any difference if he did.  Harry had found a solution, somehow, and would cling to it desperately, through any sort of dissuasion.  John could protest, refuse, be thrown out to fend for himself on his pension and his cane, and be reminded daily that he'd let everyone down.  The livelihood of many people relied on the estate, and refusal would throw their fortunes to the wind.

"They'll be in from London tomorrow afternoon," Harry informed him, with a gesture of dismissal.