rate of half as many thousand, he who had never earned a sixpence. He
had never had time, he said; he had been kept too busy doing nothing; he
had found no leisure for productive industry. What with teas and dinners
and dances, with visits in country houses and dashes across the channel,
with reading and conversation, dreaming and sleeping, his days and
nights had been too full; and so he had had to raise the balance of
his expenditures by leaving the greater number of his debts unpaid. For
pocket-money he resorted to what he called reversed post-obits. His son
would some day, by inheritance from his maternal grandparents, be a rich
man; and he would surely not refuse, on his father’s death, to buy up
such stamped paper as might bear his father’s autograph; and the Jews
(a race that always set great hopes upon posterity) were happy, with
this prospect in view, to accommodate him at sixty per cent, per annum.
He was tall and lean and loosely built, much given to lounging about in
queer twisted postures, as if double-jointed; whereby a friend was led
to suggest for his consideration that, when hard-up, he might turn an
honest penny by enlisting in some itinerant menagerie as India-rubber
man. One of his eyes met the world unarmoured, with a perfectly vacant
stare; the other glimmered ambiguously behind a circular shield of
glass. He had an odd, musical, rather piping voice, in which he drawled
forth absurdities with such a plaintive, weary, spoiled-child intonation
as seemed to hint wits tottering and spirits drooping under an almost
insupportable burden of fatigue and disappointment; whence, for a
stranger, it was not at once easy to determine if his utterances were
funny or only inconsequential. When I first made his acquaintance, I
remember, I thought for a minute or two that I had stumbled upon a tired
imbecile,—then an amusing one,—then an inspired. Some people branded
him a snob, others a sort of metaphysical rake, but all agreed that he
was an entertaining man.
He had translated the hitherto incomprehensible-seeming motto of his
house, “Estre que fayre,”—“To be rather than to do.” To be: to
be on all sides a highly developed mortal,—a scholar, a connoisseur,
a good talker, an amiable companion, a healthy animal,—was his aim
in life, so nearly as it could be said of him that he had an aim. And
therefore he played golf (it was heartrending, he declared, to see how
badly), took an intelligent interest in foot-ball, read everything
(save the hyperbole!) and kept abreast of what was being done in music,
painting’, sculpture, and keramics: in short, went heavily in for
all forms of unremunerative culture. The theatre he avoided, because he
deemed acting at its best but a bad reflection of the creative arts,
and at its worst, as he maintained we got it nowadays, a mere infectious
disease of the nervous system. Neither would he hunt, shoot, fish, nor
eat of any flesh, because, he explained, it would be unpleasant to have
to consider himself a beast of prey. He had a skillful cook, however,
and fared sumptuously every day on such comestibles as plovers’ eggs
and truffles, milk, honey, fruits, and flowers (is not the laborious
artichoke a flower?), and simple bread and cheese served in half a
hundred delectable disguises. He dined out, to be sure, six or seven
evenings in the week; but these were Barmecide feasts for him, and on
coming home he could sup. When he went to stay in the country he
took his cook with him, instead of his man; and people bore with his
eccentricities because he could say diverting things.
He was an epicure, though a vegetarian, a cynic in a benignant, trifling
way, and a pessimist, though a debonair one.
“A little cheerful pessimism, is a great help here below,” he used
to urge. “It takes one over many a rough place. Has it ever struck you
to reflect how much worse the world might be, if it weren’t so bad?”
Occasionally, no doubt, his pessimism glowed with a less merry hue:
when, for instance, he would be short of funds and hard pressed by duns.
“How many noble fellows have fought loyally in the battle to lead a
life of sweet idleness, and fallen overpowered by the cruel greed of
tradesmen! Am I to be of their number?” he would ask himself sadly at
such moments.
He was the most indefatigable of human men when engaged in pursuits
that were entirely profitless, like arranging picnics, going to parties,
inventing paradoxes, or drinking tea; but when it came to anything
remotely approaching the sphere of Ought, he was the most indolent, the
most prone to procrastination. Far, far too indolent, for example, to be
a possible correspondent,—unless he were addressing a money-lender or
a woman,—whence it resulted that he and his son had written to each
other but desultorily and briefly, and knew appallingly little of each
other’s state of mind. Three or four years ago the boy, having taken
his degree at Harvard, had poised for an instant on the brink of a
resolution to run over and pay his sire a visit; but then he had decided
to wait about doing that till he should have put in “the requisite
number of terms at the Law School to secure his admission to the Bar,”
as he expressed it.
Now, it appeared, the requisite number had been achieved, for early in
May, along with the first whiffs of warm air, shimmers of sunshine,
and rumblings of carriage-wheels in the Park, the elder man received a
letter that ran like this:—
“My dear Father,
“You will, I am sure, be glad to know that I have passed my final
examinations, and shall shortly have the right to sign LL. B. after my
name, as well as to practise in the courts.
“I mean to sail for Europe on the 1st of June, by the Teutonic, and
shall reach London about the 8th. I should like to spend the summer with
you in England, familiarising myself with British institutions, and in
the fall go through France and Germany, and down into Italy to pass the
winter. But of course I should submit my plans to your revision.
“My grandfather and grandmother are keeping very well, and join me in
love to you.
“Your affectionate son,
“Harold Weir.”
“The lad seems to have some humour,” was the senior Weir’s
reflection upon this epistle. “‘British institutions’ is rather
droll. And if his style seems a trifle stiff in the joints, that only
results from youth and a legal education. I trust to Providence, though,
that he mayn’t have LL. B. engraved upon his card;—these Americans
are capable of anything. However I shall be glad to see him.”
And he began to picture pleasantly to himself the fun that awaited him
in having a well set-up young man of five and twenty, whose pockets were
full of money (the maternal grandfather saw to that, thank goodness),
to knock about with; and he looked forward almost eagerly to the 8th of
June. They would finish the season in town together, and afterwards do
a round of country houses, and then make for the Continent: and, taking
one consideration with another, it would be a tremendous lark. That
Harold was well set-up he knew from a photograph. His only fear on
the score of appearance concerned his colouring. That might be trying.
However, he would hope not; and anyhow, in this world we must take the
bitter with the sweet.
He went to Euston (having had due telegraphic warning from Liverpool) to
welcome the youth on the platform; and he didn’t quite know whether
to be pleased or dismayed when he saw him step from a third-class
compartment of the train. It was rather smart than otherwise to travel
third-class, of course; but how could a young American, fresh from
democracy, be aware of this somewhat recondite canon of aristocratic
manners? and might the circumstance not argue, therefore, parsimony or a
vulgar taste?
He had no doubt at all, however, about the nature of the emotion that
Harold’s hat aroused in him; for not only was it a “topper,”
but—as if travelling from Liverpool in a topper weren’t in itself
enough—it had to be a topper of an outlandish, un-English model; and
he shuddered to speculate for what plebeian provincial thing people
might have been mistaking this last fruit of his gentle family tree. He
hurried the hat’s wearer out of sight, accordingly, into his brougham,
and gave the word to drive.
“But my baggage?” cried the son.
“Oh, my man will stop behind and look after that. Give him your
receipt.”
His hat apart, Harold was really a very presentable fellow, tall and
broad-shouldered, with a clear eye, a healthy brown skin, and a generous
allowance of well-cropped brown hair; and on the whole he wasn’t badly
dressed: so that his father’s heart began to warm to him at once. His
cheeks and lips were shaven clean, like an actor’s or a priest’s,
whereby a certain rigidity was imparted to the lines of his mouth. He
held himself rather rigidly too, and bolt upright: but as his father
had noticed a somewhat similar effect in the bearing of a good many
unexceptionable young Oxford and Cambridge men, he put it down to the
fashion of a generation, and didn’t allow it to distress him.
“I had no idea you kept a carriage,” Harold remarked, after an
interval.
“Oh, I should ruin myself in cab-fares, you know,” Weir explained.
“I presume London is a pretty dear city?”
“Oh, for that—shocking!”
“I came down on the cars third-class. I want to get near the people
while I am over here, and see for myself how their status compares to
that of ours. I want to get a thorough idea of the economic condition
of England, and see whether what David A. Wells claims for free trade is
true.”
“Ah, yes—yes,” his father responded, dashed a little. But the
boy’s voice was not unpleasant; his accent, considering whence
he came, far better than could have been expected; and as for
his locutions, his choice of words, “I must cure you of your
Americanisms,” the hopeful parent added.
“Sir?” the son queried, staring.
“There, to begin with, don’t call me sir. Reserve that for Royalty.
I said I must try to break you of some of your Americanisms.”
“Oh, I know. The English say railway for railroad, and box for
trunk.”
“Ah, if it began and ended there!” sighed Weir.
“But I don’t see why our way isn’t as good as theirs. We’ve got
a population of sixty millions to their thirty, and——”
“Oh come, now! Don’t confuse the argument by introducing figures.”
But at this Harold stared so hard that his father’s conscience smote
him a little, and he asked sympathetically, “I’m afraid you take
life rather seriously, don’t you?”
“Why, certainly,” the young man answered with gravity. “Isn’t
that the way to take it?”
“Oh, bless you, no. It’s too grim a business. The proper spirit to
take it in is one of unseemly levity.”
“I don’t think I understand you—unless you’re joking.”
“You need limbering up a bit, that’s all,” declared his father.
“But I say, we must get you a decent hat. Later in the day I’m going
to trot you off to Mrs. Midsomer-Norton’s for tea. Well stop at
a hatter’s now.” And he gave the necessary instructions to his
coachman.
“What is the matter with the hat I’ve got on?”
“We’re not wearing that shape in London.”
“What will a new one cost?”
“Don’t know. I’m sure. Five-and twenty shillings, I expect.”
“Well, this one cost me eight dollars in Boston just about three
weeks ago. Don’t you think it would be extravagant to get a new one so
soon?”
“Oh, damn the extravagance. We must ‘gae fine’ whatever we do.”
This time there was a distinct shadow of pain in Harold’s stare; and
he preserved a rueful silence till the brougham drew up at Scott’s.
He followed his father into the shop, however, and submitted stolidly to
the operation of being fitted. When it came to paying, he pulled a very
long face indeed, and appeared to have an actual mechanical difficulty
in squeezing the essential coin from his purse.
“Now you look like a Christian,” his father averred, as they got
back into the carriage.
“I hate to throw away money, though.”
“For goodness’ sake don’t tell me you’re close-fisted.”
“I don’t think it’s right to throw away money.”
“That’s a New England prejudice. You’ll soon get over it here.”
“I don’t know. A man ought never to be wasteful—especially with
what he hasn’t earned.”
“Ah, there’s where I can’t agree with you. If a man had earned his
money he might naturally have some affection for it, and wish to keep
it. But those who like you and me are entirely vicarious in their
sacrifice, and spend what other folk have done the grubbing for, can
afford to be royally free-handed.”
Harold made no response, but it was evident that he had a load on his
mind for the remainder of their drive.
At Mrs. Midsomer-Norton’s the young man’s bewilderment and
melancholy seemed to deepen into something not far short of horror,
as he formed one of a group about his father, and heard that
personage singsong out, with an air of intense fatigue, his flippant
inconsequences.
There was a little mite of a man present, with a fat white face and
a great shock of red hair, whom the others called the Bard; and he
announced that he was writing a poem in which it would be necessary to
give a general definition of Woman in a single line; and he called upon
the company to help him.
“Woman,” wailed Weir, languidly, as he leaned upon the mantelpiece,
“Woman is—such sweet sorrow.”
There was a laugh at this, in which, however, Harold could not join.
Then the Bard cried, “That’s too abstract;” and Weir retorted,
drawling, “Oh, if you must have her defined in terms of matter, Woman
is a mass of pins.” Harold slunk away into a corner, to hide his
shame. He felt that his father was playing the fool outrageously.
The Bard curled himself up, cross-legged like the bearded Turk, upon the
hearthrug, and repeated some verses. He called them a “villanelle,”
and said they were “after the French.”
“I have lost my silk umbrella,
Someone else no doubt has found it:
I would like to catch the fella!
“Or it may be a femella
Cast her fascination round it.
I have lost my silk umbrella.
“Male or female, beau or hella,
Who hath ventured to impound it,
I would like to catch the fella!
“Talk about a tourterella!
I’d rather lose a score, confound it.
I have lost my silk umbrella.
“It was new and it was swella!
If I had his head I’d pound it,
I would like to catch the fella.
“ Hearken to my ritoumella,
From my heart of hearts I sound it,—
I have lost my silk umbrella,
I would like to catch the fella.”
Everybody laughed; but Harold thought the verses silly and
uninteresting, and full of vain repetitions; and he wondered that
grown-up men and women could waste their time upon such trivialities.
On their way home he took his father to task. “Of course you didn’t
mean the things you said in that lady’s house?” he began.
“Why? Did I say anything I hadn’t oughter?”
Harold frowned in wonder at his father’s grammar, and replied
severely, “You said a good many things that you couldn’t have meant
You said a lie in time saves nine. You said consistency is the last
refuge of a scoundrel. You said a lot of things that I can’t remember,
but which seemed to me rather queer.”
“Oh, we’re a dreadfully frisky set, you know,” Weir explained.
Then he turned aside for an instant, to get rid of an importunate
hansom, that had sauntered after them for a hundred yards, the driver
raining invitations upon them from his “dicky.”—“No, I
won’t be driven. I’ll be led, but I won’t be driven,” he said,
resolutely. “You’ll get accustomed to us, though,” he continued,
addressing his son.
“Do you mean to say the people of your set are always like that?
Why, there wasn’t a single person there that you could converse with
seriously about anything.”
“I didn’t want to, I’m sure,” his father protested.
But the son’s commentary was not to be diverted. “I asked that
gentleman they called Major what he thought the effect of smokeless
powder would be upon future warfare; and he looked perfectly paralysed,
and said he didn’t know, he was sure. And that member of Parliament
from Sheffingham, I asked him what the population of Sheffingham was,
and he didn’t know. And that lady,—Lady Angela something,—-I asked
her how she liked ‘Robert Elsmere,’ and she said she didn’t know
him.”
“I’m afraid our friends thought you had rather a morbid appetite for
information, Harold.”
“Well, I must say, I thought they were very superficial. All froth and
glitter. Nothing solid or genuine about them. And that poem that little
red-haired man recited! Now in American houses of that sort you’d hear
serious conversation.”
“Your taste is austere. But you must be charitable, you must make
allowances. Besides, some of us aren’t so superficial as you’d
think. All that glitters isn’t pinchbeck. Major Northbrook, for
example, is the best polo player in England. And Lady Angela Folbourne
is very nearly the most disreputable woman. A reg’lar bad un, you
know, and makes no bones of it, either. Perfectly, frankly, cynically
wicked. Yet somehow or other she contrives to keep her place in
society, and goes to Court. You see, she must have solid qualities, real
abilities, somewhere?”
“How do you mean she’s wicked,—in what sense?”
“Oh, I say! You mustn’t expect me to dot my i’s and cross my t’s
like that. A sort of société en commandite, you know.”
“You mean——?”
“Yes, quite so.”
“Why, but then, gracious heavens! she’s no better than a—than a
professional——”
“Worse, worse, my clear. She’s an amateur.”
“I’m surprised you should know such a woman.”
“Oh, bless you, she’s a Vestal Virgin to ladies I could introduce
you to across the Channel.”
“How horrible!” cried the young American.
“For pity’s sake, don’t tell me you’re a Nonconformist,” his
father pleaded.
“I’m an Episcopalian,” the son answered. He relapsed into his
stare; and then at dinner it turned out that he was a teetotaller and
didn’t use tobacco.
In his diary, before he went to bed. Harold made this entry:—
“London cab-fares are sixpence a mile, with a minimum of a shilling.
There are upwards of 10,000 cabs in London. The city is better paved
than Boston, but not so clean. Many of the wards preserve their original
parochial systems of government. The people aren’t so go-ahead as
ours, and the whole place lacks modernity. The tone of English society
seems to be very low. To-morrow I shall visit Westminster Abbey, St.
Paul’s Cathedral, Hyde Park, the British Museum, and the Victoria
Embankment. Qy.: what was the cost of the construction of the latter?”
That will give a notion of the dance he led his father on the following
day. Harold stared at most of the “sights,” as he called them, in
solemn silence. Of Westminster, however, he remarked that it was in a
bad state of repair. “The English people don’t seem to have much
enterprise about them,” he said. “Now if this were in America—”
But his father did not catch the conclusion. St. Paul’s struck him as
surprisingly dirty. “You should see the new Auditorium in Chicago,”
he suggested. “I was out there last year. That’s what I call fine
architecture.” And then, as they drove along the Embankment, he
propounded his query anent its cost; and his father cried, “If you ask
me questions like that. I shall faint.” Harold’s diary that night
received this pathetic confidence:—
“On the whole London doesn’t come up to any of the large American
cities. As for my father, I hoped yesterday that he was only putting it
on for a joke, but I’m afraid now that he really is very light-minded.
He wears an eyeglass and speaks with a strong English accent. Expenses
this day. And so forth.”
The elder Weir, at the same time, was likewise engaged in literary
composition:—
“My Dear Mrs. Winchfield.—
“I am in great distress about my son. You don’t believe I’ve got
one? Oh, but I give you my word! He’s just reached me from America,
where I left him as a hostage a quarter of a century ago. And he’s
full of the most awful heathenish ideas. I never met so serious
a person. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke; he thinks I’m
undignified, if you can imagine that; and he objects to my calling him
Hal, though his name is Harold. I feel like a frisky little boy beside
him,—like the child that is father to the man. Then his thirst for
knowledge is positively disgraceful. He has nearly killed me to-day,
doing London, guide-book in hand, and asking such embarrassing
questions. Can you tell me, please, how long the Houses of Parliament
were a-building?
“And how many dollars there are in the vaults of the Bank of England?
And what the salary of a policeman is? And who is ‘about the biggest
lawyer over here?’ The way he dragged me up and down the town was
most unfilial. We’ve been everywhere, I think, except to my club. But
he’s a very good-looking fellow, and I don’t doubt he’s got the
right sort of stuff dormant in him somewhere, only it wants bringing
out. I can’t help feeling that what he needs is the influence of a
fine, sensitive, irresponsible woman, someone altogether wayward
and ribald, to lighten and loosen him, and impart a little froth and
elasticity.
“I was entirely broken-hearted when I heard that you were going to
stop at Sere all summer; but even for adversity there are sweet uses;
and I wish you would ask my boy down to stay with you. I’m sure you
can do him good, unless too many months of country air have made a sober
woman of you. Do try to Christianise him, and a father’s heart will
reward you with its blessing.
“Yours always,
“A. Weir.”
Then Harold went down to Sere; and a fortnight later Mrs. Winchfield
wrote as follows to his parent:—
“Dear Weir,—
“I’m afraid it’s hopeless. I’ve done my utmost, and I’ve
failed grotesquely. Yesterday I chanced to say, in your young one’s
presence, to Colonel Buttington, who’s staying here, that if my
husband were only away, I should so enjoy a desperate flirtation with
him. Harold, dear boy, looked scandalised, and by and by, catching
me alone, he asked (in the words of Father William’s interlocutor)
whether I thought at my age it was right? He is like the Frenchman
who took his wife to the play, and chid her when she laughed, saying,
‘Nous ne sommes pas ici pour nous amuser,’ I am sending him back by
the morning train to morrow. Keep him with you, and try to cultivate a
few domestic virtues. A vous,
“Margaret Winchfield.”
Harold arrived, looking very grave. But his father looked graver still,
and he invited the young man into the library, and gave him a piece of
his mind. It produced no sensible effect. At last, “Well, I hope at
least you tipped the servants liberally?” the poor man questioned.
“No, sir, I don’t believe in tipping servants. What are they paid
their wages for?”
“You’re quite irreclaimable,” the father cried. “May I ask how
long you mean to remain in England?”
“I think I shall need about two months to do it thoroughly.”
His father left the room, and gave orders to his man to pack for a long
journey.
A SLEEVELESS ERRAND.
“J’ai perdu via tourterelle,
Je veux aller apres elle.”
I.
It had been the old familiar story, in its most hackneyed version.
She was nineteen; he was three or four and twenty, with an income
just sufficient to keep him in bread and cheese, and for prospects and
position those of an art-student in a land of money-grubbers. And
her parents, who were wise in their generation, wouldn’t hear of a
betrothal; whilst the young people, who were foolish in theirs, hadn’t
the courage of their folly. And so—the usual thing happened. They
vowed eternal constancy—“If it can’t be you, it sha’n’. be
anyone!”—and said good-bye.
He left his native hemisphere, to acquire technique in the schools of
Paris; and she, after an interval of a year or two, married another man.
Yet, though in its letter their tale was commonplace enough, the spirit
of it, on his side at least, was a little rare. I suppose that most
young lovers love with a good deal of immediate energy; but his love
proved to be of a fibre that could resist the tooth of time. At any
rate, years went their way, and he never quite got over it; he was true
to that conventional old vow.