_Which touches upon the Pains of Enjoying the Glow of Self-Abasement
whilst Maintaining a Position of Dignity_
As Noll and Horace stood on the platform of the railway-station at
Oxford, waiting for the London express to take them to town, Horace
Malahide began to feel some discomfort about the brooding mood of the
other--for the first time he was distressed with the question whether
they ought not to have remained at Oxford. He knew that Noll had but
narrow means. Guessing that Noll was in some embarrassment as to how
to explain his sudden return to his people, he, to divert him from
worrying, called his wandering attention to a newspaper criticism upon
a book which had just come out and was creating considerable stir in
the literary world.
Horace, holding up the newspaper criticism, put his finger upon the
name of Caroline Baddlesmere. Noll roused and read the notice. The
writer, Anthony Bickersteth, was proclaimed as the founder of a new
school--a new star had risen above the dead level of the commonplace
literature of the day--and all of the review that was not violent
praise of this Anthony Bickersteth was the cover for a bitter and
sneering screed against the work of Caroline Baddlesmere, who, so
it bluntly averred, had gone well-nigh to destroying English as an
artistic language. The writer’s judgment would have been of more
weight, perhaps, had his English been of more value; but even his
ill-balanced phrasing, his academic eyes, his dullard’s palate, and his
faulty ear, could not altogether damn the object of his adoration; and
Noll, struck by the beauty of phrasing in some of the quoted passages,
bought a copy of the book at the station stall as the train came
clanking in. He ran through its pages on his journey to town....
As they rattled through the outskirts of London, Horace, who had been
watching the other’s face, asked:
“Is it any good, Noll?”
Noll shut up the book, and stretched himself:
“Very good,” said he--“but I think the fellow would have shown better
taste not to hit at my mother in the Preface.”
There was a long pause.
Horace broke it:
“Noll, old boy,” said he--“shall I drive you home?”
“I’m not going home, thanks,” said Noll--and he added, seeing surprise
in the eyes of the other: “I’ve got to face old Lord Wyntwarde
first--he’s a sort of relation of mine--and has been paying for my
being at Oxford.... My own people are very badly off.... I don’t
think I ought to let the unpleasantness of the interview fall upon my
people. And I’m funking it....” And he added grimly, after a while: “I
understand why men sometimes get drunk.”
Horace laughed:
“Oh,” said he--“it’ll blow over all right.... Look here, Noll; you’d
better come to my people to-day, stay over the night, and go on
to-morrow to the eating of dirt....”
So it came that Noll spent his first evening in the Malahide household.
And the girls both vowed the next day to their separate bosom friends
that they “had met their fate.” It leaked out during the confidences of
each that Horace had discovered to them that the youth was kinsman to a
certain Lord Wyntwarde....
The hot-headed old lord stood a-straddle before his fireplace, and
smiled grimly.
How the blood of this house repeated itself!
Here was this young fellow pacing up and down the room as though he
were laying down the terms of a surrender.
By the dogs, a handsome young fellow! Like his mother--with a trick or
two of the father in him.
He himself had thus prowled this room in like disgrace with the lord of
the house years ago. What a while ago!... This lad’s father also--now
this one! By the book, wonderful!
The fact was that the old lord’s wilful admiration followed this proud
lad with a sense of affection that was strange to him--the youth
appealed to him more than did the more elaborate father. He had more of
the beauty of the old house about him.
“Noll, my lad,” said he, “I haven’t been listening over-well to what
you have been saying--I’ve been thinking hard that you ought to have
been my son.”
Noll stopped in his walk, stopped in his talk--hesitated.
He uttered an embarrassed laugh:
“I have been apologizing, sir,” he said.
“Have you?” growled Wyntwarde. “That is a relief to me--I thought you
were ordering _me_ to apologize.”
Noll shrugged his shoulders, and took to his pacing of the room again,
silenced.
The old lord watched him grimly, saying nothing.
Noll suddenly halted, swung round, and faced him:
“I am sorry, sir,” said he--“I ought to have rid you of my company
before this. But I felt bound to make you what poor reparation I could
for all your goodness to me. I did not write, because--a personal
apology is always far more punishment to me than the written word. This
has been a punishing task to me--I have dreaded it--loathed it. And
yet, I fear, it has seemed but a lame and sorry reparation to you.... I
will not fret you any longer. I am done.”
Wyntwarde laughed:
“Oho, Noll--so you are run dry at last!... Now I can get a word
in edgeways; and I, too, may cackle, though it lack your literary
finish.... You see, as we are in the confessional, I may say I have
been a bit of a dog in my day. And, by Beelzebub! the gout hasn’t
altogether driven the last spark out of me yet.... The tongues still
wag about me, I have no smallest doubt.... It isn’t for me to preach
you a sermon on your tom-follies, for they are infernally like my own.
By God, you are no curate, there’s that much against you in heaven.
Still, I will tell you bluntly, I have only had one fear for you--and
that is the dandified schoolmaster that is in the heart of your father.
The Ffolliotts never had any of the damned studious habits--we have
always been sportsmen and gentlemen. And, by my soul, I believe you are
bitten by the self-same dog.... It’s this literary business that makes
me anxious about you; but a lampoon and a sharp tongue we all of us had
the knack of using--_that_ don’t go with long hair and inky fingers and
spectacles nor a milkman’s seat on a horse. By God, you may lampoon the
Lord Chancellor, for all _I_ care--I never go to the House of Lords
except to keep the damned idiot in his place. Lords Chancellor nowadays
seem to think the Upper House is a confounded dames’ school. Damn all
Lords Chancellor, say I----”
“Yes, sir--damn all Lords Chancellor!” said Noll drily.
Wyntwarde laughed:
“Yes,” said he--“we wander.... Now, look you here, Noll--this house is
free to you as long as you keep your fingers from ink-stains and your
lips from preaching--the stables are not empty of horses. And, what’s
more, I still hold to my bond. The ’Varsity is over--down goes three
hundred a year. It would be damned bad morals to give you that again.
But you shall have a couple of hundred a year as long as rumour speaks
well of you; but the day you throw up the society of gentlemen and mix
with the inky-fingered gentry, I will not only cancel you from my will,
but, by the dogs, I stop even the allowance----”
“I do not accept benefits under threat, sir,” said Noll.
Wyntwarde stopped, scowled--burst into a laugh, and passed the matter
by:
“I would make it more,” he said; “but I suspect the ink-pot----”
“If I have a mind to spill ink I will spill it,” said the youth hotly.
The old lord chuckled:
“You are your father’s son, my boy, on occasion,” said he. “Well,
there’s nothing to attract you here just now; but you had better come
down for the hunting next winter, eh?”
Noll made a step towards him--hesitated--his mouth hardened:
“I cannot stay in a house, sir, which my mother has struck off her
visiting list,” he said sullenly.
The old lord laughed loudly and long:
“By God,” said he--“you are a man!”
He went to the youth and gripped him by the shoulders:
“No, Noll--it can’t be. Your mother would never stand the new
aristocracy--it’s so damned like the old profligacy--without the
breeding.... Good-bye, my boy; and damn all ink-stains, say I!”...
As Noll reached London he decided to go and see his mother, and make
her acquainted with his doings and his intentions. He had an uneasy
feeling that he had unjustly neglected her of late.
He was glad to find, when he arrived, that his father was away from
home.
As his mother stood there in her attic, listening to him, Noll was
filled with a glow of pride in her gentle womanly dignity and her
resourceful and uncomplaining good breeding.
The place had an air that made the word “attic” classical....
Noll, somewhat embarrassed as to how to broach the subject, had begun
by denouncing the preface to the new book which held a sneer at his
mother; and she had laughed it quietly by. Then Noll had told her of
the reviews; and ended by giving her something of a lesson in the art
of letters! He himself thought very well of this new book--and gave his
mother more than one good hint from Anthony Bickersteth.
Caroline turned to the little mirror over the mantel, as the youth
finished speaking, to hide a little dry smile that played about her
mouth. She touched her hair with handsome white hands. It was a trick
she had.
Noll saw the movement; caught the reflected smile in the mirror; and
faltered.
It came to him that he had been just a trifle patronizing to his mother
about this new book by Anthony Bickersteth--a little condescending
about her powers. He was chilled with a sudden uneasiness.
“Well, Noll?” she asked.
Noll went to the attic window and looked out:
“Mother,” said he--“I feel ashamed of these doles from Wyntwarde--I
must win a career with the pen, and be rid of them.”
“You are taking to the hardest trade in the world, Noll--and all the
harder because it looks the easiest. Still, I am wholly with you in the
sentiment. I should be sorry indeed to see you dependent on Wyntwarde.
And I am glad to have you at home--I was looking at your child toys
last night, and--I--felt--almost--as if--you were dead!”
Noll was silent for awhile:
“I find it rather hard to say what I came to say, mother, after that,”
said he.
“Ah, Noll,” she said--“it is not your fault or mine that childhood
must pass, with all its delight--we might as well try to hold the hand
of death.... Say what you came to say----”
“Well, mother--I have found a couple of rooms in New Inn, that will
just hold me; and, without Wyntwarde’s help, I ought to be able to
keep myself and get into the way of winning my own bread in a very few
months.”
Caroline Baddlesmere sighed:
“Yes, Noll--it is perhaps better that you should make your own
life--and in your own way. It is one of the agonies of motherhood that
the brood must leave the nest.”
“No, mother--it is not that.... I have to pass a room on the stairs
that--in the passing--makes my heart ache--takes the man out of me.”
His lip trembled.
“Yes, Noll; I understand. I have seen you fret at many things here--as
I myself have sometimes fretted at them.... I am able, too, to help you
a little now--I have had a little windfall----”
Noll left the window and went to his mother. He put his hands on her
shoulders:
“No, mother. I will have none of it. You ought not to be living in an
attic--and I am not going to help to keep you there. It is one of the
prospects that will make me work--that I should see you in your proper
position. Not that, God knows, this attic has ever given me a moment’s
shame; for you have made it a palace to me.”
Caroline kissed his handsome face:
“Noll,” said she--“you are something of a man.”