_Wherein it is seen that a Man is More or Less Responsible for his
Father_
Noll, arriving on Horace’s landing, found Babette outside the door; and
she was sobbing.
“What! Babette?” said he--“and crying?”
Babette brushed her fingers across her eyes:
“No,” she said; her trembling lips giving her the lie.
“Babette, why?”
He put his hand on her shoulder kindly.
Babette stamped her foot:
“I am _not_ crying,” she said; and a large tear fell.... She made an
effort and said: “Horace is going home.... He is going--away.”
She opened the door, and they went in together.
Noll walked into the studio; but the silken rustle of Babette’s skirts
passed the door, and hurried on into the darkness of the house.
In the deep dusk of the studio sat four or five figures, smudgy dark
shadows, sprawling in armchairs.
“Is that you, Noll?” cried Horace from behind the red spark where a
cigarette glowed.
“Yes--I thought you were alone----”
“Did you want me?”
“There’s no hurry, old boy,” said Noll, and added grimly: “It can wait.”
“That’s right,” said Horace, pushing a chair towards him with his foot.
“There’s the bottle by you--and a glass--and the dried cabbage of
Egypt. Set it ablaze and talk.”
Horace struck a match on the seat of his breeches as Noll flung into
the chair, and handed the flame to him; and Noll, setting the light to
a cigarette, saw the faces of Bartholomew Doome and four of the Five
Foolish Virgins in the gloom.
The light went out.
“Your room’s all dismantled, Horace,” said he.
“Yes,” said Horace--“I’m off home. I was just sending Jonkin with a
note to tell you. I’m giving my farewell feast of departure to-morrow
night--next day I’m off.”
“Why?”
Horace shifted uneasily in his chair; and then he laughed.
“My father’s become chairman of his newspaper company; and he’s
going to give an address to a learned society on the Dignity of
Literature.... I can’t stand that.... After all, one is more or less
responsible for one’s father.... Indeed, the drawback of having a
father is that he has the right to bear the same name.”
“But----”
“Oh, yes, Noll--I know. They call him the Napoleon of the Press in the
newspapers. In his own newspapers ... yes,” said Horace drily; and
added judicially, making every allowance for the defendant: “Of course,
the old gentleman _may_ be the Napoleon of the Press--perhaps he is. I
don’t see why I should wrangle about that. And I’m bound to say that,
since they called him so, he has shaved off his city whiskers and keeps
his hand thrust into the breast of his frock-coat, and pretends to
think a lot, and isn’t so beastly familiar with millionaires. He wanted
to wear a grey overcoat last winter, but I had to draw the line. You
see, the old man has no flare for the subtleties.”
Doome coughed in the darkness:
“How did you break it to him, Horace?” he asked drily.
Horace pshawed:
“I told him he couldn’t do it--he’d be getting into a damned black
cocked hat next,” he sighed heavily: “I hate to be rude to my father,”
he said--“it always hurts me more than it does him.”
There was a long silence.
“I don’t think, Horace,” said Noll, “that you make allowances for your
father.”
“Well, there’s something in that,” said Horace. “However, we’ll allow
that the old gentleman is the Napoleon of the Press. And of course he
and the mother are in the thick of life. Indeed, the mother’s gowns are
always described in the morning paper after a big social function--and,
by St. Paquin, it’s extraordinary how well they sound in _print_;
yet--I don’t know how it is--for she is a comely woman--but when you
put a gold ornament upon my mother it looks like brass--she’s one of
those women who, when she hangs diamonds round her neck, looks like
a ball-room chandelier. She’s as sound as the apostles beneath her
stays, but she has about as much taste as a housemaid--or the House
of Brunswick. Then, the old gentleman dines with old Lord Bardolph
Nankhill--sits at meat with Cabinet Ministers--and has been seen at
Marlborough House. All that, of course, cannot do him any real harm.
But--the Dignity of Literature! and to a learned society! No ... it
can’t be done.”
“Why?” asked Doome. “Society accepts the words of an associate of
Cabinet Ministers in a Tory Government as revelation sent direct from
God.”
“Why?” scoffed Horace. “If learned societies want hints about the
commercialism of the Press, the traffic in brains, then pa’s the man
of whom to ask advice--but the Dignity of Letters! Good God!... An
English newspaper should look like a gentleman’s property. The _Times_
is a journal that ought to be in every gentleman’s waste-paper basket.
It’s always wrong--but it is magnificently wrong. It is consistent.
To vote at the polls on the advice of the _Times_ is almost to make a
virtue of vice. To vote against it is to come near to statesmanship
and is the first principle of political honour. But this newspaper of
the father’s is sometimes right, only in such bad taste. He has taken
the whole look of distinction from the daily broadsheet.... He has
vulgarized the printed page. The very print cries out against him.
He has debased the manners of journalism until they are as coarse as
the traffic in manures, as ignoble as money-lending, as truthful as
a company-promoter’s prospectus, as ponderous in wit and humour as
an American advertisement, its political, artistic, social and all
other ideals as high as the imagination of shop-walkers. He has even
vulgarized the word Empire. The people whom he employs but scrape a
living, and they therefore give of their worst--the consequence is the
employment of illiterate and unscrupulous cads in what ought to be one
of the noblest and most accomplished and most sacred of callings, the
enlightenment of the nation.... Tshah! in his hands the magazine has
become a thing of shame--filled with illustrations that are a public
misfortune.... No. My father is a millionaire. He has grown rich--that
is all. Pa is a very good fellow; but he don’t know anything about
the Dignity of Letters. I must go home. This thing cannot be done--it
cannot be done.”
Noll, finding Horace taken up with his own affairs, felt shy of telling
him his trouble; and it was borne in upon him sadly enough that his
friend was leaving him, and had to be about his own business--far away
from him at the very time he most wanted his sympathy. An overwhelming
sense of loneliness came upon him, and the silence was profound.
The melancholy sense of coming departure--of the breaking up of old
pleasant associations, of the passing out from their midst of a
congenial and blithe companion and a happy face--set them all brooding.
It was abundantly clear that Horace Malahide was being packed; for
the valet, who had always before been hidden, though never far away,
could now be heard in the next room brushing clothes and buzzing at the
business.
“Oh,” said Horace, rousing--“by the way, you fellows will want mourning
for my feast of departure to-morrow!”
He turned towards the door beneath which gleamed a yellow streak of
candle-light:
“Jonkin!” he called.
The door opened, and in the golden glory of the doorway stood the
ineffable Jonkin. He was dressed like a student, short black coat, big
black tie, velvet waistcoat, corduroy trousers and all; but the dignity
of the gentleman’s gentleman glowed within.
“Yessir!” said he.
“Bring those boxes of black kid gloves, black neckties, and the crape
for these gentlemen to choose from,” said Horace.
“Yessir!” said Jonkin.
He brought the cardboard boxes with stealthy walk, and handed them
about.
“Jonkin,” said Horace--“is everything packed?”
“The serious baggage is all ready, sir,” said Jonkin.
“I want you to take it all away the very first thing in the morning,
and get it out of sight and off to London before the men arrive to
drape the room.”
“Yessir.”
“Not a thing about the place here after to-morrow morning but what will
go into my oldest and most battered bullock-trunk and my portmanteau.”
“Yessir.”
“And you understand you are not to leave any silver-mounted things
about.”
“Yessir.”
“Oh, and Jonkin--reserve me a first-class carriage by the next
morning’s boat-train for Boulogne.”
“Yessir.”
“Be in it yourself.”
“Yessir.”
“With my dressing things.”
“Yessir.”
“And English clothes.”
“Yessir.”
“I will go as far as Amiens third class.”
“Yessir.”
“Oh--and Jonkin----”
“Yessir.”
“If there’s a beastly row in the railway-station and I’m in it, for
God’s sake don’t look anxious, or as if you belong to me.”
“No, sir,” said Jonkin.