My Lord Gore could not conceal an instinct of fastidious disapproval
as he walked homeward with his son along Pall Mall. Sumptuousness came
before godliness in his scheme of values, and though poverty and
slovenliness were inevitable to the world, my lord found them useful as
a respectable background to heighten the effect of an exquisite
refinement in dress. But to have a soiled and weather-beaten scamp
familiarly at one’s elbow offered too crude a contrast, and suggested a
sinister interest in Whitefriars.
“What a devil of a mess you are in, Jack, my man!” And there was a
slight lifting of my lord’s nostrils. “You might have sent one of the
men to me instead of making a martyr of yourself.”
The reference to martyrdom carried a perfect sincerity, for it would
have pained Stephen Gore inexpressibly to have been caught in a seedy
coat.
John Gore met his father’s critical sidelong glance.
“It is only in plays and poems, sir, that you find your adventurer clean
and splendid. We were muzzle to muzzle with those heathen for half a
day; the prison they put us in was monstrously dirty; and the vegetation
they plant in their gardens and about their fields seems to have been
created with a grudge against people who have to run. We ran, sir, like
heroes, despite aloes, cacti, and thorns like a regiment of foot with
sloped pikes. After such incidents one has a tendency toward torn
clothes.”
My lord nodded.
“Still, Jack,” said he, “when you fall in a ditch and get muddied to the
chin, you do not stroll home through the park at three in the afternoon.
You should read _Don Quixote_, sir—a great book that.”
“I am more of a philosopher than the Spaniard.”
His father did not trouble to suppress a sarcastic smile.
“Oh, if you are a philosopher I have nothing more to say, save that you
have chosen the wrong school. There is the philosophy of clothes to be
considered at this happy period of ours. If you wish to try your
Diogenes’ humor, go to court in some such scraffle. You would be clapped
in the Tower for insulting the King.”
John Gore laughed.
“Who himself knows what ragged stockings and flea-ridden beds mean.”
“Exactly so, sir, and therefore any tactless allusion to the past would
be uncourtierlike in the extreme.”
My lord betrayed some impatience in his last retort, very possibly
because he beheld a group of acquaintances approaching with all the
niceness of fashionable distinction. The young gallants of the court had
all the merciless cynicism of premature middle-age. Genius, to prove
itself, scintillated with satire. Even when the youngsters laughed,
their laughter symbolized an epigram, a caricature, or a lampoon.
Lord Gore advanced very valiantly under the enemy’s fire. The party
numbered among its members Tom Chiffinch, the redoubtable royal pimp.
There was an ironical lifting of hats. John Gore’s costume had
interested the party for the last twenty yards of its approach. My lord
would have marched past with flags flying. But from some instinct of
devilry the gentlemen appeared overjoyed at the _rencontre_.
“We must take you with us to the Mall, my lord.”
“His Majesty has a match there.”
“Bring your friend with you, sir. By-the-way, who is he?” And Chiffinch
took Stephen Gore familiarly by the button and dropped his voice to a
forced whisper.
My lord’s dignity did not falter. He had caught a peculiar look in his
son’s eyes that pricked the pride in him.
“Gentlemen, Captain John Gore, my son.”
They bowed, all of them, with sarcastic deference.
“Delighted, sir.”
“You have seen hard service, sir.”
“No doubt you are a great traveller. May I ask your honor whether it is
true that the Spaniards in Peru grow their beards down to their belts?”
The man in the red coat showed no trace of temper.
“I lost my laces and my ribbons on the coast of Africa, gentlemen,” he
said. “They are a slovenly crew—those Barbary corsairs. It is a
pleasure to find myself once more among—men.”
My lord stood regarding the upper windows of a house with stately
unconcern. He glanced sharply at his son, and then bowed to Chiffinch
and his party.
“Come, Jack. Simpson of the Exchange must have been waiting an hour for
you. My son is like King John, gentlemen—he has lost bag and baggage to
the sea.”
They parted with ironical smiles, my lord spreading himself like an
Indian in full sail.
“Who the devil may Simpson be?” asked the son, bluntly.
His father frowned.
“My recommendation, sir.” And in a lower voice: “The first tailor in the
kingdom, you booby; the one reputation that might carry shot into those
gentlemen’s hulls. Such is the world, sir, that you can be put in
countenance by uttering the name of your tailor.”
Concerning his adventures, John Gore spoke with the grim reserve of a
man who had learned that the least impressive thing in this world is to
boast. He had lost his ship and seen the walls of an African prison, an
ironical climax to a seventeenth-century Odyssey. More from incidental
allusions than from any coherent confession, his father learned that he
had touched even Japan and far Cathay, his knight-errantry of the sea
carrying him into more than one valiant skirmish. An unhappy whim had
lured him, when homeward-bound, into the blue sea of the Phœnicians and
the Greeks, there to be pounced upon by a squadron of African rovers.
They had carried his decks by boarding after a five hours’ fight.
My lord listened with an air of fatherly condescension before reverting
to the eternal topic of clothes.
“I must turn you loose in my wardrobe, Jack, my man. You can contrive a
makeshift for a week or two. We must have Simpson in for you to-morrow.”
His manner was semijocular and genial, as though this man of many oceans
were still a boy poling a punt on an ancestral fish-pond. My lord had
never travelled, save into France and Holland, and the wild by-ways of
the world had no significance for him. As a courtier and an aristocrat
he was a complete and perfect figure, and the life of a gentleman about
court had given him the grandiose attitude of one who had turned the
last page of worldly philosophy. He had said what he pleased for many
years to the great majority of people with whom he had come in contact.
His “air” itself suggested the majestic finality of experience.
They supped together in the house of St. James’s Street, my lord asking
questions in a perfunctory fashion, often interrupting the replies by
irrelevant digressions and displaying the careless contempt of the
egotist for those superfluous subjects of which he condescended to be
ignorant. It appeared to the son that the father was preoccupied by
other matters. It was only when they came to the discussion of certain
questions concerning property that my lord showed some of the acumen of
the master of the many tenants.
“How much have you lost by this voyage of yours? As for throwing money
into the sea—”
John Gore pretended to no grievance.
“It is only what other men would have spent on petticoats and horses.
Call it an eccentric extravagance. I have had a glimpse of the earth to
balance the loss. About my Yorkshire property?”
“I have had my hand on it, Jack. Swindale has been a success as steward.
More money—for the sea’s maw. Is that the cry?”
John Gore maintained a meditative reserve.
“Possibly.”
“I have the rent-roll—and a copy of the accounts in my desk. Go down
and see Swindale for yourself. There is no need to think of such a means
as a mortgage. Money has been accumulating. Besides, my boy, though your
mother left her property to you, my own purse is always open.”
The son thanked him, and changed to another subject—a subject that had
been lurking for an hour or more in the conscious background of my
lord’s mind.
“How is Lionel Purcell?”
Stephen Gore turned his wineglass round and round by the stem, eying his
own white fingers and the exquisite lace of his ruffles.
“Dead,” he said, shortly.
The man in the red coat drew his heels up under his chair and leaned his
elbows on the table.
“Dead! Why, of all the quiet, careful livers—”
“He had no say in the matter. Some one killed him.”
There was a short pause. The elder man’s face remained a stately,
meditative mask. He raised the wineglass and sipped the wine, pressing
his lace cravat back with his left hand.
“It was a sad affair, Jack, and came as a blow to me.”
“Who killed him?”
“Ah, that is the question! No one knows. I suspect that no one will ever
know.”
“Was there a reason?”
My lord looked at his son shrewdly, meaningly.
“A man of the world could infer. These scholars—well—they have blood
in them like other mortals. We breathe nothing of it—because of the
girl.”
“Barbara?”
My lord nodded.
“The whole tragedy broke something in the child. She was bright and
sparkling enough, you remember, though always a little fierce. There is
the fear—”
He paused expressively, with his eyes on his son’s face.
“There is the fear of madness. The thing seems to have worn on her,
chafed her mind. Anne Purcell and I have done what we can, for God
knows—I was Lionel Purcell’s friend. But there is always the chance.
She is not like other women.”
My lord spoke as a man who feels an old burden chafe his shoulder. As
for the son, he was looking beyond his father at the opposite wall. He
recalled the girl as he had seen her in the garden. She had baffled him.
Here was the explanation.
“It is well that she should never know,” he said, gravely; “she has
enough to haunt her—without that.”
My lord had finished his wine and fruit. He rose from the table, and,
catching sight of himself in a Venetian mirror on the wall, turned away
with a slight frown.
“You had better amuse yourself choosing some of my clothes,” he said. “I
have business to-night with Pembroke, and I may be late. Richards will
give you the keys. We are much of a size, Jack, though you are shorter
in the shanks. Thank the Lord for one mercy, I have not put on too much
fat.”
By the light of a couple of candles in silver sconces John Gore amused
himself in my lord’s bedroom, with the boy Sparkin to act as a
self-constituted judge of fashions. Mr. Richards, who had accompanied
them, indulged in a few polite and irrelevant directions, and then
departed, as though he found the boy’s company incompatible with his
own. Every corner of the bedroom soon had its selection of satins,
camlets, and cloths, for Sparkin appeared possessed by an exuberant
desire to see and handle everything.
My lord’s wardrobe was the wardrobe of a gentleman who had a fancy for
every color and for every combination of shades. His stockings were to
be numbered by the dozen, and Sparkin, half hidden in a chest, baled the
stuffs out as though he were baling water out of a boat.
“Easy, there, you young hound. What manner of tangle do you think you
are making?”
The boy turned a hot and happy face to him.
“Take your choice, captain. What would some of the Greenwich girls give
for a picking! How does crushed strawberry please you?”
John Gore was standing in front of a mirror trying on a coat.
“That’s a sweet thing, captain. Just look at the lace. Here’s a chest we
haven’t opened yet.”
“Leave it alone, then. You have tumbled enough shirts to give Tom
Richards work for a week.”
Sparkin had been fumbling with the keys. He found the right one as John
Gore spoke, and lifted the chest’s lid as though there was no
disobedience in looking.
“What have you got there?”
Supremely tempted, Sparkin had fished out a periwig and clapped it on
his head. He pulled it off again just as briskly, merely remarking that
“the thing tickled.” A second dive of the arm brought up a black cloak
edged with gold cord and lined with purple silk.
“Bring that here, boy.”
Sparkin obeyed, and John Gore swung it over his shoulders.
“Just your color, captain,” said the boy, seriously.
“Thanks for a valuable opinion. Well, put it aside with the shirts and
stockings I have chosen. The devil take you, but what a fearsome mess
you have made!”
“That’s soon mended, captain.” And, after depositing the black cloak on
the bed, he proceeded to fill his arms with my lord’s luxuries, and
tumble them casually into chest and cupboard.
“Here, leave the clothes alone.”
“But—”
“You had better, out of regard for those new breeches of yours. Richards
must come up and restore order.”
A spasm of vivacious devilry lit up the boy’s face.
“So he had, captain. He is such a particular man! Shall I call down the
stairs?”
“Yes, call away.”
Sparkin disappeared, and John Gore heard his voice piping through the
house.
“Richards—Tom Richards there! I say Richards—Mr. Thomas Richards, the
captain’s orders are that you are to come aloft and clear up the
clothes.”
Sparkin’s voice reached to the nether regions, for slow and unwilling
footsteps were heard below. The boy slipped down the stairs and met the
man with a loud whisper.
“The captain has made a most fearsome muddle, Tom. He’s turned out every
chest and cupboard in the room. Just you come and look. It’s like a rag
booth at a fair.”