_Which has to do with one of those Emotional Crises that change the
Whole Tenor of a Man’s Political Convictions_
The millionaire was in the most hearty of good moods--could not sit
still in his office--came home and could not sit still in his home. He
tramped his house; was jocularly familiar with the servants; slapped
the housemaids on the back; gave them half-sovereigns; twitted them
about lovers; chaffed the shocked footman; dug the solemn butler
Pontefract in the waistband; punched him in the chest and wind, the
astounded servant clumsily guarding the threatened parts; and told him
crude stories.
He told every separate servant of his household, as he had told
every separate clerk in his offices on one pretext or other during
the morning, that he was to be the guest of honour at a big banquet
together with the Marquis of Malahide--“the head of our family, sir.”
Mr. Pompey Malahide had always thanked Providence for his own cunning,
for his energy, and, to a certain extent, for his luck--or for that
small portion of good chance that remained from all successes after the
results of his own keen foresight had been deducted, which, to put it
fairly, was little enough. But whilst he felt that he himself shared
with Providence not a little of his own credit, there was one thing
which he frankly set down generously and without reserve of smallest
kind to the gods--that he had been born with a name that was in the
peerage.
The father of Pompey, when he had left the ancestral calling of
rat-catcher on the Lincolnshire estates of the old Marquis of Malahide
and had come up to London town to seek his fortune, had taken the
name of the man for whom he had had the keenest admiration, whilst to
his son he had given in lieu of dedication to the saints the name of
the dog which had brought him most honour at the local tavern. And by
consequence, the son of the rat-catcher, now grown to fortune, had
always felt a kinship between himself and the living marquis, whose
bluff sailor ways and jovial bearing made him the idol of the populace.
Indeed, a print of the great man’s portrait was the most aggressive
decoration in the house--topped by a gilt coronet and flanked, as
it was, by all the prints of the great man’s ancestors that the
art-dealers could find for him or foist upon him--to which central
figure of importance he would always refer as “the head of our house,
sir!”
That night, Pompey Malahide sat at the banquet, and as he sat he
received a whispered communication from a member of the Cabinet at
his right hand that made his face to shine, gorgeous, boisterously
glorified.
And more--when the guests had risen, it made him commit the mistake
which sent titters through the city and laughter through the
fashionable clubs for many a day; and this he did from sheer joyousness
of heart, yet, so intoxicated was he with his magnificence that city
gossips were almost justified in setting it down to the full body of
the wine.
The guests being risen then, and grouping into tattling knots, our
Pompey made his way, exultant, to the group that held the jovial figure
of the sailor-marquis.
“My lord,” said he--“my name is Malahide--Pompey Malahide. My family
is--I--er--believe, in some remote way connected with your lordship’s.”
After the silence that fell, all eyes seeking the twinkling eyes of the
sailor-marquis, our Pompey received his wound.
“Likely enough!” roared the admiral, wringing the fat fingers of the
exultant Pompey in his treacherous grip--“likely enough!” And his
lordship, being mellow with wine, and in a fine rollicking humour,
had slapped him a rousing buffet upon the shoulder so that our Pompey
coughed, and with a big jolly laugh the nobleman blandly accepted the
likelihood.
“Ah, yes--likely enough!” he cried. “The old lord was a damned rogue
amongst the women!”
The Malahides were all hail-fellow thus.
The jesting answer, whilst it had tickled, had not a little shocked
some that stood near, and, perhaps not the least, the sense of delicacy
of the claimant.
A chill aloofness might have made the wounded man adore the idol more.
What tyrannies will we not suffer from the gods! But to be overwhelmed
in city humour had smitten our Pompey in his most sensitive parts.
All that night Pompey Malahide knew no sleep. And he arose in the early
morning ashamed and sorely wounded. It had been a shabby enough blow,
but he had put himself in the way of a drunken fellow’s fisticuff....
Up he got as soon as it was daylight, kicked his heels out of bed, and,
having dressed, ranged restlessly about the house; and it thus chanced
that one of his daughters, Judith, early risen, came upon him, and
twitted him with looking distressed.
In a fit of confidence, he showed the girl the wound. And she, seeing
her opportunity, petted him, and as soon as she in decency could turn
him from his distress, told him of her discovery of the Modeyne
skeleton--opened the ugly cupboard and let it tumble out.
And into the ears of the brooding man the hot red lips dropped a
poisonous suggestion of the girl’s seeking marriage with Horace.
The man was in the mood to see ghosts in every shadow. He was too much
taken up with his own affairs to smell an ugly plot amongst his own kin.
He went to the library, his fast unbroken, and with a sour mouth, and
rang the bell. He told the footman who answered his summons to send a
maid to Miss Modeyne’s room and tell her he would like to see her when
she came down.
Betty came tripping at the summons; shut the door; and stood a-wonder
before the shamed seated man.
She stepped forward anxiously:
“Mr. Malahide,” she said--“I hope you are not ill.”
He shook his head.
He saw that the white hand she put on the desk trembled. A hoarse note
came into her voice:
“I hope nothing has happened to your son--Horace----”
He shook his head.
“No, Miss Betty--but I have had information, through a friend, an old
friend of my family, this morning that I believe is a lie. I hope to
God--it is--a--lie.”
Betty suddenly understood that she was the subject of the interview,
and silence fell upon her. She drew herself up quietly and awaited the
blow.
“Miss Betty, this good lady says that your father was a quite
impossible person. She says that he was a notorious drunkard. Was he?”
Betty bowed her head.
“Yes,” she said simply.
The hope went out of the man’s eyes; he tried again, trusting to a
denial:
“She says that he was the subject of a coroner’s inquest, and that his
disreputable life was the talk of the town a while ago. Was that so?”
Betty said nothing.
“She says that he was a Papist--that you came into my house and
breathed no word of it. Is that so?”
Still no answer.
“She says that your companionship may sully the innocence of my girls;
which is a damned lie--excuse my saying so.... But she says that people
are making comments about my girls being seen with you.... I wish to
God that were a lie too.”
The brooding man put his face in his hands; and there was a long
silence.
He roused after a little while and went on again:
“She says that you, if you stay here, may win the regard of my boy
Horace--she says that it would be worse than Miss Sally Ornce.”
For a moment Betty thought wearily that he referred to the allurements
of some rival lady. It suddenly came to her that the poor fellow meant
_mésalliance_.
The clumsy man gazed miserably out of the window:
“I don’t know what in God’s wonder to do,” he said.
The girl bowed:
“I understand,” she said. “I will go.”
She went and shook hands with him; and quietly left the room....
The two ladies, straining their ears at the door that stood slightly
ajar into the next room, were edified.
They opened the door a little way and peeped in.
They would have been extremely annoyed had they known that Betty had
caught a glimpse of them--had taken in the situation at a flash.
They were surprised to hear their father sigh. When he put his head
down on the table and sobbed, they stole away.
Indeed, tittering over the details afterwards with friends, they
_declared_, if we may take the word of such as listen at doors, that
they were highly amused--that it was near as good as a play....
Betty, tipping the cabman for taking her trunk up to her attic, knocked
at Miss Flora Jennyns’ door, entered, and, running to the little old
lady’s chair, sank on the footstool at her feet and flung her arms
about her knees.
“I have come home,” she said, happy to be with the old gentlewoman
again.
Miss Flora put out her hand and stroked the girl’s brown hair; and she
smiled through tears.
“I have been very lonely,” she said.
A couple of days after Betty had gone, Mr. Pompey Malahide sat down at
his desk, a bland smile upon him, and wrote to his son:
“DEAR HORACE,
The Tory Chest has, you will perhaps have guessed, received another
twenty thousand pounds from me. But one must, as a patriot, make
sacrifices for the good of the country. You will, I feel sure, be
proud to know that the Malahides--our branch of them--are about to
take rank as Baronets.
I regret to state, however, that there has been, at the Carlton,
a distinct aloofness of the members of the Upper House towards me
personally, since we came in with so large a majority, in so much
that I feel, on entering some of these men’s houses, as if I were
breathing air that had passed over ice.
On careful consideration over my political ideals, I have lately come
to the conclusion (and I have aristocratic precedents for changing
my political opinions), that, on receiving my baronetcy, I shall
take the first dramatic and telling opportunity to embarrass the
Government and go over to the other side of the House.
Your affectionate father,
POMPEY MALAHIDE.”
To which Horace replied by return:
“DEAR OLD FATHER,
I wish you would not split your verbs so recklessly.
To resist the condescension of the new aristocracy in the way you
suggest would be, for you, utterly disastrous, both as a matter of
good taste and as a dramatic effect--to say nothing of a bid for
social distinction.
The test of good manners in the highly placed is the capacity for
the exercise of extreme insolence without offence to the estimation
of the class. What would be a vulgarity in you or me is a splendid
airiness in the Prime Minister. Your fine gentleman may seduce a
lady’s maid, but must not be seen to cheat at cards. The tears of a
seduced woman set the tables of the new nobility a-titter; but to win
a guinea by oversharp practice with trumps is to discover the moth
amongst the ermine on the cloak of honour. Your courtier’s manners
are but gaudy beads strung on a thread of menial subtleties. You have
not the practice, my dear father; and would only blunder upon the
indecencies.
The new aristocracy demands our patience--it takes three hundred
years of usage before a family becomes quite used to its own
nobility; by that time it is usually bankrupt.
It is only possible for a man of birth and unassailable breeding to
become a radical without appearing ridiculous.
Your affectionate son,
HORACE.”