Some time before Easter cards had been issued for a Costume Ball at
Otterbourne House, _temp._ Charles II., to be given immediately after
Easter. The Duke occasionally lent the mansion to his daughter-in-law
for such entertainments, never very willingly, for he had always to
defray himself the cost of them, and he greatly disliked many members
of her set. But he recognized a certain right in his eldest son’s wife
to have the house sometimes, though he did not concede that it went so
far as for her to inhabit it. Those little dark-eyed children running
about Otterbourne House, and Harry Brancepeth going in and out of it
continually--“Not whilst I live,” said the Duke to himself. After him,
Cocky must do as he chose. Cocky would probably let it, or sell it at
once for a monster hotel.
She arranged her ball greatly to her satisfaction in every detail
before she went down for the Easter recess. But there was one thing
which had been difficult. That was, to persuade the Duke, who always
insisted on revising her list for parties given at his houses, whether
in town or country, to allow that of Massarene to remain on it. He
inquired who the Massarenes were; and did not inquire only of herself,
but of others. He was most decidedly opposed to the presence of such
people at Otterbourne House. But Blair Airon was not yet definitely
purchased, and it had been given to her to understand that unless the
gates of Otterbourne House unclosed, that purchase never might be
ratified. All her ingenuity, all her cajolery, all her infinite skill
in the manipulation of the minds and wills of men, failed absolutely
for a long time with the old Duke. He would not have a man come from
God knew where--well, from the State of Dakota, that was equally
indefinite--brought within his doors; and everything she could think of
to say only rooted him more firmly in his prejudices.
“Odious, insolent, ill-natured, pigheaded, spiteful, out-of-date old
wretch!” exclaimed Mouse, as she read a note from him, and cast it
across the room to her husband.
“The Pater? Oh, I say, choose your language,” said Cocky.
In his shrivelled heart, dry and sere as a last year’s leaf, if there
was one remnant of regard and respect left, it was for his father.
Besides, like most men, he always disagreed with anything his wife
said. He read the note in a glance.
“Won’t swallow man from Dakota,” he said, under a smile. “Well, I
wouldn’t have swallowed him if he hadn’t greased my throat so well.”
“Hush!”
“Who’s to hear? Dogs don’t blab, bless ’em!”
“I dislike to hear such things said, even in jest.”
Cocky chuckled.
“What do you bother the pater about him for? I’ve swallowed him;
society’s swallowed him; all the royal folks have swallowed him. Why
can’t you leave the pater in peace?”
“Why? Why? Because it is absolutely necessary that the Massarenes
should be seen at Otterbourne House--seen at _my_ ball! The refusal
is an insult to _me_! Your father is a hundred years out of date.
The country is practically a republic; we shall all have our lands
taken from us before long and parcelled out to Jack and Jill. It is
ridiculous to be stiff-necked about knowing people. All stiffness of
that sort went out when the Hanoverian line came in. What’s half the
peerage? Titled tradesmen. They have got Richemont. Could your father
afford Richemont? There’s only one aristocracy now left; it’s Money.
When I have been getting them everywhere, and everybody so kind about
it, what shall I look to people when I don’t have them at my own ball?
Your father has no consideration for me; he never has. Put it as a
personal favor to myself, and you see what he answers--within a week of
the ball!”
Cocky listened quietly, because it was diverting to see his wife so
displeased and to hear her so incoherent. He liked her to be “in a
wax”; he hated to think things went as smoothly as they usually did go
with her; but he saw the gravity of the dilemma. If Otterbourne would
not have the Massarenes, then he and she would be like the farm-girl
of fable--“_Adieu, veau vache cochons canvée!_” There might even ensue
inquiries from high places, and rebuffs which even the talent of
Richemont would not avert. Cocky, to whom the talent of Richemont was
agreeable (he lunched and dined whenever he chose at Harrenden House),
and more agreeable the master of Richemont (who accepted his signature
as if it were Rothschild’s), saw that this was one of those exceptional
occasions on which he would do better for himself to side with the
mother of the four little poppets upstairs.
“I’ll see pater about the thing if you’re so set on it,” he said, with
unusual amiability.
“Can you do anything?” she said doubtfully and sullenly.
“Well, I don’t know. I’ll tell him Billy’s reforming me--making an
honest man of me in Fleet Street, and that he’ll damage me if he shuts
his doors on the beggars. Perhaps he’ll believe it, perhaps he won’t;
I’ll try.”
“I’ve sent them their cards; tell him so.”
“That wouldn’t move him a jot; but when I do the eldest son rather
well, and make believe to see the errors of my ways, I can get a thing
or two out of Poodle--sometimes. After all----”
After all, thought Cocky, there had been days, though it seemed odd
enough to think so now, when he had been a clean and pretty little
child jumping up on to his father’s knee. The duke thought of those
far-away days oftener than he did, and Cocky was never ashamed to
_exploiter_ the remembrance to base ends.
“Go at once, then,” said his wife ungraciously.
Cocky nodded. But when he had reached the door he looked back between
the curtains, a rather diabolic grin upon his thin fair features.
“I won’t tell pater you sold Blair Airon instead of selling Black
Hazel. Ain’t I magnanimous?”
He disappeared, whilst the Blenheims barked shrilly at his memory.
Cocky turned into his own den and strengthened his courage with an
“eye-opener” of the strongest species; then he took his way to his
father’s mansion looking on St. James’s Park--a beautiful and majestic
house built by Christopher Wren, and coveted ardently by an hotel
company.
As he spun along the streets in a hansom, for Cocky never went a
yard on foot if he could help it, he changed his intended tactics;
the reformation dodge would not do; the duke, who could on occasion
be disagreeably keen-sighted, would inevitably discover beneath it
accepted bills and unworthy obligations.
“I’ll touch him up in his loyalty,” he thought. “The Poodle’s a
Cavalier in his creeds.”
He found the duke at home with a slight touch of gout in his left foot.
“I suppose he comes for money,” thought Otterbourne, for Cocky did
not cross his threshold once in three months. But Cocky made it soon
apparent that his motive was more disinterested.
“You wrote a very sharp note to my wife just now,” he said. “It has
worried her.”
The duke looked at him with sarcastic incredulity.
“Are you going to pose as your wife’s champion? It is late in the day.”
“No, I ain’t,” said Cocky. “Do you mind my lighting up, Pater?”
Otterbourne indicated with a gesture that when anything was painful to
him an unpleasant trifle did not matter. Cocky lit his cigar.
“You won’t let her invite these new people, the Massarenes?”
“Most decidedly not. Is it necessary to inquire?”
“Well, you see, you put her in a hole.”
“Your language is not mine; but I conclude you mean that I
inconvenience her. I regret it if it be so, but I cannot say otherwise.”
“Why did you object to the people?”
“I might more pertinently inquire why did you know them?”
“Everybody does.”
“Everybody does--through you, or rather through your wife. At least, so
I have heard.”
“Oh, we run ’em, yes.”
Otterbourne’s silence was eloquent.
“You see it’s just that,” Cocky pursued with engaging frankness. “When
the town’s taken ’em on our word it will be such a slap in the face to
her if you won’t let ’em into your house. We must take Willis’s Rooms
or some place instead of giving the ball here, but that will make
people talk.”
“And cost you money,” said the duke with significance.
“And there’s another thing, you know. _He’s_ gone to ’em through us.
Mouse persuaded him. He’ll be rough on us if he hears you set up your
back; there might be an awful rumpus; it might be unpleasant for
him--the papers would magnify the thing.”
“You seem to make a mountain out of a molehill,” said the duke with
suspicion and impatience. “Go to Willis’s Rooms. You can ask any number
of shoeblacks there that you please.”
“You don’t see the thing as it is. You’ll get her into trouble with
the Prince, and give the Press a lot of brick-bats to shy at him: I
know you’d regret that. I shouldn’t have come to bother you if I didn’t
think the thing of some importance. After all you can’t reasonably
exclude a man received at Court.”
“My bootmaker goes to Court, and my stationer. Very worthy persons, but
they don’t dine with me.”
“But Massarene won’t dine with you: we only want him to come to the
ball; and it’s her ball and it’s not yours.”
“The house is mine as yet,” said the duke stiffly.
“And will be yours twenty years after I’m tucked up; I’m dead
broke--legs and lungs.”
“You have ruined yourself.”
This was so obvious that Cocky did not notice it.
“Come, Pater, do give in; don’t get us in a row with the Prince; when
he’s accepted these people to please us it would enrage him awfully if
he learned you wouldn’t let ’em in. He’d ask you about it, of course,
or have you asked by somebody.”
“And if he asks why I do let them in?”
“He won’t do that; he goes there.”
The duke was silent. He sighed. He could not mend the manners or the
men of a time which was out of tune with him.
But Cocky’s argument had weight. He was of all things kind and
chivalrous, and would have no more caused a scandal or a scene than
he would have set fire to St. James’s Palace next door to him. He
reflected on the matter; saw clearly how ugly it was, look at it how
you would, and at last conceded permission to let the new people come
on the condition, however, that they should not be introduced to
himself. “I am too old,” he said, “to digest American cheese.”
His daughter-in-law, who did not care in the least for this
stipulation, went gaily to luncheon at Harrenden House, and interested
herself graciously about their costumes, which were a source of great
anxiety to both of them.
“May I wear my diamonds?” asked Mrs. Massarene; her diamonds were a
great resource and support to her in society.
“Oh, the more diamonds the better?” said Mouse. “Of course you’ll go as
somebody’s grandmother, a Hyde perhaps? You need only telegraph to your
people in Paris the epoch; they’ll know exactly what to send you; they
know your age and appearance.”
Margaret Massarene was not pleased, and felt that persons of high rank
could be most unpleasantly rude.
“What time is it?” asked her lord, who had not rightly understood.
“Charles the Second’s. Do you know who Charles the Second was?” asked
Mouse with a malicious little laugh.
“Him as had his head took off?” asked Mr. Massarene.
Her laugh became a melodious scream of delight.
“Oh, you are too delightful! There were no standards in your young
days, were there, Billy?”
He reddened angrily under his thick dull skin; he was ashamed of his
blunder, and he hated to be called Billy, even by those lovely lips.
Finally it was decided that he should go as Titus Oates, and should get
his dress from Paris, and should learn to say, “O Lard.”
“Remember, the man is not to speak to me, not to approach me,” said
Otterbourne to his daughter-in-law on the day of the ball, when she had
come to give a glance at the completed decorations.
“Oh, he quite understands that,” she replied. “I have told him you
dislike strange men, as some people are afraid of strange dogs.”
She laughed gaily as she spoke.
“You might have told him,” said the duke drily, “that there are
old-fashioned persons who think that their acquaintance should be kept
as clean as their hands.”
“_That_ he wouldn’t understand,” replied Mouse.
“What makes you protect such people?”
“Oh! I don’t know! In other ages everybody had a pet jester; now
everybody has a pet _parvenu_. One runs him; it’s great fun.”
The duke was silent.
“You know,” she continued, “he bought Vale Royal of Gerald. Surely all
the family ought to be rather nice to him?”
“You surprise me,” replied the duke. “I sold Seeton Pastures to a
grazier last year; but the obligation to be ‘nice’ to the purchaser
was not in the contract. The sale of Vale Royal was a great disgrace
to Roxhall, for his affairs were by no means in such a state as to
necessitate or excuse it. But whether his loss or his gain, the sale is
certainly his affair; and no one else’s.”
“Oh, you look at things so--so--stiffly,” said his daughter-in-law. “We
don’t, you know.”
“I am aware that you do not,” said Otterbourne with significance; and
dropped the subject.
When Clare Courcy, lovely as a dream, had been first married to his
son, the duke, fascinated out of his better judgment, had admired and
been inclined to love his daughter-in-law. Even now he could not be
wholly insensible always to the witchery of the prettiest woman in
England. He knew her worthlessness; he was aware that his son, bad as
he had been before, had become ten times worse in every way since his
marriage; he could never see the little black-eyed, fair-haired cherubs
of the Kenilworth nurseries without a sigh and a curse in his own
thoughts; but she at certain moments fascinated him still.
“I may send the bills in to Masters, I suppose?” she asked. Colonel
Masters was the duke’s agent, a silent, conscientious ex-soldier
entirely insensible to her own attractions.
“Certainly. He has my authority to discharge them all. You seem to me
to have been more extravagant than usual in your orders.”
He looked around him as he spoke; they were standing in a long gallery
at the head of the grand staircase. Flowers--flowers--flowers, met the
eye in every direction, and the various devices which held the electric
lights were concealed on the walls by millions of roses and orchids.
“I suppose it is an old-fashioned idea,” said Otterbourne; “but I think
a gentleman’s house should be thought good enough for his friends, even
for his future sovereigns, without all this dressing-up and disguising.
Modern fashions are extremely snobbish.”
“They certainly are; there I quite agree with you,” said his
daughter-in-law, and meant what she said. “A fine house like this wants
no dressing-up. But we must do as other people do, or look odd.”
“Or you think you must,” said the duke, viewing with small pleasure
a suit of Damascene armor which an ancestor had worn before Acre and
Antioch, wreathed and smothered with long trails made of the united
blossoms of cattleya and tigredia, whilst within its open vizor two
golden orioles sat upon a nest.
“Do you think that in good taste?” he said, pointing to it.
“No; execrable. Nothing done in time is ever otherwise,” said Mouse
with unusual sincerity. “We are never merry, and we are never sorry;
so we heap up flowers to make believe for us at our dances and our
burials. You are quite right, Pater, in the abstract. But, you see, we
can’t live in the abstract. We must do as others do.”
“I should have thought the only true privilege of birth was to set
us free of that obligation,” said Otterbourne, to whom his noble old
palace looked on these occasions very much like the sweep who was
muffled up in evergreens as Jack-in-the-Green on May-day in the little
old-world country town which clustered under the hills of his big
place, Staghurst Castle.
“Of course he is right enough,” she thought, as she drove away. “The
house would be ten thousand times better left to itself, and we are
all as vulgar as it is possible to be. We have lost the secret of
elegance--we have only got display. Why couldn’t he give me a blank
check, instead of making me send in the bills to Masters? He is such a
screw! He wants to save all he can for his precious ’Beric.”
Alberic Orme was the duke’s second son; he was in Orders, was a scholar
of high degree, held one of his father’s livings, had married the
daughter of a rural dean, and was the especial object of the ridicule,
derision, and suspicion of Cocky and his wife.
Judging Lord Alberic by themselves, they attributed to him and his
hostile influence every one of the duke’s acts which was disagreeable
to them. He was the one of his family nearest to the heart and to the
ear of the duke; the other two being officers in cavalry regiments,
both somewhat spendthrifts and troublesome, and his daughters having
married early and being little with him.
To be dressed up like a tomfool, and prate like a poll parrot, as he
phrased it in his own thoughts, was unutterably odious to William
Massarene, but he was powerless under his enslaver’s orders. When the
Easter recess was passed and the great night came, he appeared as
Titus Oates, looking and feeling very ridiculous with his stout bowed
legs in black silk stockings and ruffled breeches; but, after all, it
was not worse than Court dress, and it had procured him admittance to
Otterbourne House.
“Mind, the man is not to speak to me; not here, nor anywhere even
at any time,” said the duke to his daughter-in-law, nervously and
apprehensively.
“No, he never shall,” she promised; but she knew that nobody who would
see him there would be aware of the stipulation.
She had got him to Otterbourne House and had fulfilled one of the
clauses of the unwritten contract by which Blair Airon was sold.
The ball was a great pageant and a great success; and she, as the most
exquisite of Nell Gwynnes, with all her lovely natural hair curling
over her shoulders, was very kind to Titus Oates, guided his squat
stiff unaccustomed limbs through the mazes of one quadrille, and even
snatched a few moments to present him to some great people; and as her
father-in-law made but a brief appearance in the rooms and only spoke
with the royal personages present and two or three of his intimate
friends, she found little difficulty in avoiding the introduction to
him of the “man from Dakota.”
“Another time, another time,” she said vaguely, and William Massarene
was dazzled and quieted.
Cocky was present for half an hour, looking a shaky, consumptive, but
not inelegant Grammont, for his figure was slender and his features
were good. He was infinitely diverted by the sight of William Massarene.
“Passes muster, don’t he, when he don’t open his mouth?” he said to
Hurstmanceaux. “Lord, what an ugly mug he’s got! But the women are
always asking for his photo. Haha! we’ve got it in Stanhope Street
large as life. Pater won’t let him be taken up to him, and you won’t
know him either. You’re both wrong. He’s thoroughly respectable, and
he’s got a lot of my paper.”
And Cocky, leaving his brother-in-law furious, sneaked off to find the
buffets.
It was a very splendid and gorgeous scene in the great house which
Wren had designed, and many a famous painter had decorated. Margaret
Massarene gazed at it as she sat in solitary state, blazing with
diamonds and admirably attired in black velvet and white satin,
with that due regard to her age which it had so wounded her to hear
suggested. No one noticed her, no one remembered her; but some
very stately dowagers near her glanced at her now and then with an
expression which made her wish that she were back again in Dakota by
her oil-stove and her linen-wringer.
“’Tis a mighty pretty sight,” thought Margaret Massarene as she sat
and looked on; “and William’s dancing is a thing I never did think to
see in all my days. But these women look as if they’d like to duck me
in a pond.”
Carrie Wisbeach, who was genuinely good-natured, observed her
neglected and isolated aspect, and called to her side a fresh-colored
pleasant-looking person, old, but hale and bright-eyed, who had taken
with success the name of Samuel Pepys.
“Daddy, let me take you up to the Massarene woman,” she whispered.
“She’s so dreadfully disconsolate, and they give extraordinarily good
dinners.”
He looked and made a little wry face.
“They’ve got Von Holstein’s cook,” she added persuasively.
“Really? Richemont?”
“Yes, Richemont; and the best cellar now in London. Come, make yourself
pleasant!”
“Ronnie won’t know ’em,” said the gentleman, glancing down the rooms to
where Hurstmanceaux stood, looking very handsome but extremely bored,
wearing the dress which a Courcy had worn when ambassador for Charles
to the French Court.
“Ronnie!” said Lady Wisbeach. “If Ronnie’s fads were attended to we
should know nobody except our own families. Come along!”
He reluctantly submitted, deriving courage as he went from the memories
of Von Holstein’s _chefs_. Her aunts looked unutterable reproach
at Carrie Wisbeach as she murmured the inarticulate formula which
presented Mr. Gwyllian of Lostwithiel to Mrs. Massarene.
“Pretty sight, isn’t it?” he said, as he sank back on cushions beside
her.
“A beautiful sight,” said Margaret, with unction, “and one as I never
thought to see, sir.”
He stared and laughed.
“Unsophisticated soul!” he thought. “Why has cruel fate brought you
amongst us? Tell me,” he murmured, “is it true that you have Von
Holstein’s cook?”
If she had, he would wait and take her to the supper-tables; if she had
not, he would at once leave her to her fate.
“Meaning the German Ambassador’s, sir?” she replied. “Yes, we have.”
“Ah!” He decided to take her to supper.
“But I can’t say as we like him.”
“What?” It was like hearing anybody say they did not like Dante, or
Jean de Reszké, or truffles, or comet-claret.
“No, sir, we don’t,” she answered; “he doesn’t cook himself at all.”
“Of course he doesn’t! You might as well say that a pianist should make
the piano he plays on, and shoot an elephant to get ivory for his keys!
Richemont--it is Richemont whom you have?--is a surpassing artist.”
“’Tis easy to be an artist, sir, if you set a lot of people working and
send up their work in your name,” said Margaret Massarene. “He don’t do
naught all day--the under-cooks say so--and he gets more’n a thousand
guineas a year; and he called Mr. Massarene an imbecile because he
wouldn’t eat snails! Now I put it to you, sir, what’s the use of being
able to pay for the fat of the land if you’re to put up with hodmedods
out of the hedges?”
Gwyllian laughed so delightedly that the two terrible dowagers turned
to glance at him with a Medusan frown.
“After all,” he thought, “one does get a great deal more fun out of
this kind of people than one ever gets out of one’s own.” And he took
her in to supper, and made himself exceedingly pleasant. He was one
of those wise persons who if they cannot be pleasant with others are
nothing at all.
Under the gentle exhilaration produced by a little sparkling wine,
Mrs. Massarene amused him infinitely, and he cleverly extracted from
her more about life in Dakota than the rest of London had learned
in a year; he was even made acquainted with the oil-stove and the
linen-wringer.
“What a nice kind man! How interested he do seem!” she thought, poor
creature, unconscious that the oil-stove and the linen-wringer would
make the diversion of a dozen dinner-tables, manipulated with that
skill at mimicry which was one of Daddy Gwyllian’s social attractions.
Her husband saw her from a distance, and divined that she was being
“drawn”; but he was powerless. He was in waiting on an aunt of Lady
Kenilworth’s, a very high and mighty person with aquiline features and
an immense appetite. It was her garrulous stupidity and her clumsy
ingenuousness which made him hate her with a hate which deepened every
day. Why had he hung such a millstone round his neck when he had been
a farm-lad in County Down? Her good and kindly qualities, her natural
sincerity, simplicity, and good nature were all homely instincts, no
more wanted in her new life than a pail of fresh milk was wanted at one
of the grand dinners at Harrenden House.
Once she had gone back to Kilrathy, the place of her birth, and
revisited the pastures, the woods, the streams, which she had known
in girlhood. The big house in the midst of the green lands was shut
up; bad times had told there as in so many other places in the land;
the family she had served was abroad, impoverished, alienated, and
all but forgotten. But nothing else was changed. The same great trees
spread their vast shadows above the grass; the same footpaths ran
through the meadows; the same kind of herds fed lazily, hock deep in
clover, the rain shining on their sleek sides, their breath odorous
on the misty air; the same kind of birds sang above her head. Every
step of the way was familiar to her: here was the stile where she
had listened first to William’s wooing; there the footbridge which
she had crossed every market day; here the black hazel coppice where
she had once lost a silver sixpence; there the old oak stump where
the red cow had been suddenly taken with labor pains; the rich long
grass, the soft grey rain, the noisy frogs in the marsh, the brimming
river with the trout up-leaping amongst the sword rush and the dock
leaves--all these and a thousand other familiar things were just as
they had been five-and-thirty years before; but none of the people
guessed that the lonely lady so richly dressed, walking silently
through the water meadows, had once been Margaret Hogan. She did not
dare make herself known to any of them; she stole into the churchyard
and sat by her parents’ graves in the dusk, and gathered a few daisies
off the nameless mounds, and stole away again feeling ashamed as of
some overt act. She saw a barelegged girl going home with the cattle,
a switch in her hand and a gleam of sunset light coming through the
rain-clouds and touching her red hair and her red kirtle; and in an odd
breathless, senseless kind of ingratitude to fate, she wished that her
Kathleen--Katherine--were that cow-girl, threading that fragrant twilit
path with the gentle kine lowing about her, and a little calf nibbling
at a bunch of clover in her hand.
“’Twas a good life when all was said,” she murmured, a good life,
washed by the dews, freshened with the winds, sweetened by the flowers.
She left a bank note at the poor-box of the little church, and returned
to her grandeur and greatness, bearing in memory for many a day that
pleasant sound of the cattle chewing the wet grasses in the dusk,
smelling in memory for many a day the honey scent of the cowslips in
the wide pastures by the river. Those memories were shut up in her
heart in secret; she would not have dared to speak of them to her
husband, or her daughter, but they were there, as the withered daisies
were in the secret drawer of her dressing-case; and they kept a little
corner of feeling alive in her poor puffed-out stiffened overstretched
soul, so overweighted with its cares and honors.
It seemed wonderful to her that she should be a grand rich lady going
to Court and wearing diamonds. Through all these years through which
the millions had been accumulating she had not been allowed to know
of their accumulation, or permitted to cease from privations and
incessant labor. More than a quarter of a century had been to her a
period of toil quite as severe in one way as the life as a dairy-girl
had been here in another way. Often and often in the bitter winters
and scorching summers of the Northwest she had thought as of a lost
paradise of these peaceful pastures, where no greater anxiety had
burdened her than to keep her cows in health and have her milking
praised.
It was a fine thing to be a fine lady; yes, no doubt she was very proud
of her new station in the world. But still, these white satin corsets
of Paris which laced her in so tightly were less easy than the cotton
jacket and the frieze coat; her hands laden with rings or imprisoned in
gloves could not do the nimble work which they had been used to do; and
the unconcealed contempt of the “smart society” in which she lived had
not the warmth and comfort which had been in the jokes and the tears of
the farm-girls when a cow upset the milk she had given or the boys came
home fresh from a fair. It was all much grander of course in this, but
ease was wanting.
“My dear Ronnie! Those new folk your sister’s running are too
delicious for anything,” said Daddy Gwyllian to Hurstmanceaux in the
smoking-room. “I took the woman into supper, and on my soul I never
laughed more at the Coquelins! I’m going to dine there on Sunday;
they’ve got Richemont.”
“More shame for you, Daddy!” said Hurstmanceaux. “I never thought you’d
worship the golden calf.”
“Well, rich people are pleasant to know,” said Daddy Gwyllian. “They’re
comfortable; like these easy chairs. Borrow of ’em? No, ’tisn’t that.
I never borrowed, or wanted to borrow, half-a-crown in my life. But
they’re indirectly so useful. And they’re pleasant. You can turn
lots of things on to them. You can get lots of fun out of them. You
can do such a deal for your friends with them. Rich people are like
well-filled luncheon-baskets; they make the journey with ’em mighty
pleasant. The wine’s dry and the game-pie’s good, and the peaches are
hothouse, and it’s all as it should be and no bother.”
“I travel on cold tea,” said Hurstmanceaux with dry significance.
“Oh, lord, my dear Ronnie, I know you do,” said Gwyllian. “But I can’t
stomach cold tea, and a good many other people can’t either. Now your
poor folks are cold tea and my rich folks are dry sherry. Economy’s a
damned ugly thing, you know, at its best. When I go down to shoot with
poor folks I know they put me in a cold room and expect my servant to
clean my gun. The wealth of my neighbor means my own comfort. The want
of means of my friend means my own want of _bien-être_ when I go to
see him. Naturally I don’t go. Equally naturally I do go where I am
sure to get all I want. I don’t want any bills backed, but I do want a
warm house, a dry wine, and a good cook. The very good cooks only go
nowadays to the very rich people; that is to the _rôture_. I dined at a
royal palace last month execrably; I was ill afterwards for twenty-four
hours. I know one of the chamberlains very well; I got to the bottom of
this horrible mystery; the king pays so much a head for his dinners,
wine included! I fled from that capital. The royal dynasty is very
ancient, very chivalrous, very heroic, but I prefer the Massarenes.”
“I dare say you are right,” said Hurstmanceaux bitterly. “The adoration
of new wealth is not so much snobbism as selfishness.”
“It is not snobbism at all in us,” said Gwyllian, “the snobbism is on
their side. They kiss our boots when we kick ’em. Why shouldn’t we kick
’em if they like it?”
“I don’t blame your kicking them for a moment. I blame your legs being
under their dinner-tables while you do it.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” said Daddy. “‘_Je prends mon bien où je
le trouve_,’ and if there’s a good cook in a house I go there.”
“There are good cooks at the Clubs.”
“Passable. But when I dine at a club I have to pay for my dinner,” said
Gwyllian with a chuckle. “I don’t borrow money, but I like to save it.
I should not pay a guinea for a peach, but a couple of guinea peaches
taste uncommon good when somebody else provides ’em.”
“What a beast you make yourself out, Daddy!”
“I’m a man of my time, dear boy,” said Gwyllian, as he opened a silver
cigarette-case which a pretty woman had won at a bazaar raffle and
given to him.
Daddy was popular with both the sexes. Everybody liked him, though
nobody could tell why they did so.
He was one of those men who do nothing all their lives except run to
and fro society like dogs in a fair. He was of ancient descent, and
had enough to live on, as a bachelor, without, as he had averred, ever
wanting to borrow half-a-crown of anybody. He had a little nest of
three rooms in Albemarle Street, full of pretty things which had all
been given him chiefly by ladies, and he was seen in London, in Paris,
in Homburg, in Cowes, in Cannes, in Monaco, in Biarritz, at the height
of their respective seasons with unvarying regularity: farther afield
he did not go often; he liked to have his familiar world about him.
He was now an old man, and to the younger generation seemed
patriarchal; he had been called Daddy for more years than anybody
could remember. But he was healthy and strong, for he had always taken
care of himself; he could shoot with the best of them still, and could
sit up all night and look fresh and rosy after his shower-bath in the
morning.
“You young ’uns have no stamina,” he said once to Brancepeth when he
found that young man measuring the drops of his digitalis. “It is the
way you were brought up. In my time we were fed on bread and milk, and
rice-pudding, and wore low frocks till we were eight or nine, and never
even saw what the grown-up folks ate. You were all of you muffled up
to your chins in the nurseries, and got at by the doctors, and plied
with wine and raw meat, and told that you had livers and lungs and
digestions before you could toddle, and given claret and what not at
luncheon, and made old men of you before you were boys. Dilitation
of the heart, have you got? Hypertrophy, eh? Lord bless my soul, you
shouldn’t know you’ve got a heart, except as a figure of speech, when
you swear it away to a woman.”
Everybody listened to Daddy even in an age which never listens: he was
so obviously always right; he had so evidently found out the secret of
an evergreen vitality; he was so sagaciously and unaffectedly devoted
to himself, his selfishness was just tempered by that amount of good
nature, when it cost him nothing, which makes a person popular; he was
naturally good-natured and _serviable_ and kindly when to be so caused
him no difficulty; he would even take a little trouble for people when
he liked them, and he liked a great many. On the whole, he was a happy
and very sensible creature, and if his existence was one long egotism
and inutility--if he were really of no more value than a snail on a
cabbage-leaf--if the alpha and omega of existence were comprised for
him in his own comfort, he was at least pleasant to look at and to
listen to, which cannot always be said of persons of great utility.
Daddy, moreover, though a very prudent creature, did patch up some
quarrels, prevent some scandals, remove some misunderstandings amongst
his numerous acquaintances, but it was because he liked smooth waters
around his own little barque; life ought to be comfortable, he thought;
it was short, it was bothered, it was subject to unforeseen accident,
and it was made precarious by draughts, fogs, model stoves, runaway
horses, and orange peel on the pavement; but as far as it could be kept
so, it ought to be comfortable. All his philosophy centred in that; and
it was a philosophy which carried him along without friction.
If Daddy Gwyllian never borrowed, he also never lent half-a-crown; but
he got other people to lend it to other people, and this is the next
most attractive social qualification which endears us to our friends.
To real necessity he was occasionally very serviceable indeed, so
long as it did not put its empty hand in his own pockets; but on the
distresses of fine ladies and gentlemen he was exceedingly severe.
Why couldn’t everybody keep straight as he himself had always kept?
“Why do you bother about Cocky and your sister?” he said to
Hurstmanceaux, whom he had known from a child, as they sat alone in
the ducal smoking-room. “If Cocky and your sister had a million a year
to-morrow they’d want a million and a half when the year ended. There
are people like that: you can’t alter ’em. Their receptivity is always
greater than what they receive. Their maw’s bigger than the biggest
morsel you can put into it. Don’t strip yourself for them. You might as
well go without your bath for fear the Thames should run dry.”
Daddy was so fond of pretty women (platonically) that he generally
forgave them all their sins, which was the easier because they were not
sins against himself. But Lady Kenilworth, though he admired her, he
did not like her; he gave her a little sly pat whenever he could.
She yawned when he talked, which nobody else ever did, and once, when
they were staying at the same country house, when he had offered to
ride with her, she had told him in plain terms that she didn’t care for
old men in the saddle or out of it.
It was not in human nature to forget and forgive such a reply, even
though you were the best natured man in the world. He could not do
her much harm, for Mouse was at that height of beauty, fashion and
renown at which a person is absolutely unassailable; but when he could
breathe on the mirror of her charms and dull it, he did so; when he
could slip a little stone under the smoothly-rolling wheel of her
life’s triumphal chariot, he did so. It was but rarely. She was a very
popular person. Her elastic spirit, her beauty, her grace, her untiring
readiness for pleasure, all made her welcome in society; her very
insolence was charming, and her word was law on matters of fashion. She
was often unkind, often malicious, always selfish, always cruel, but
these qualities served to intimidate and added to her potency. People
trembled for her verdict and supplicated for her presence. Whether she
were leading the cotillon or the first flight, whether she was forming
a costume quadrille or bringing down a rocksetter, she was equally
admirable, and although she excelled in masculine sports she had the
tact always to remain exquisitely feminine in appearance and style.
She had had also the tact and the good luck always to preserve her
position. She had always done what she liked, but she had always done
it in such a way that it had never injured her.