JUST A DISAGREEABLE OLD MAN
The luncheons at Grosvenor Square were always rather dull and formal,
but Louisa did not mind that very much. She was used to dull and
formal affairs: they were part and parcel of her daily life. London
society is full of it. The dull and formal dominate; the
others--vulgar if more lively--were not worth cultivating.
Then, she almost liked Lord Radclyffe, because he was so fond of Luke.
And even then "almost" was a big word. No one--except Luke--could
really like the old man. He was very bad tempered, very dictatorial, a
perfect tyrant in his own household. His opinions no one dared
contradict, no one cared to argue with him, and his advanced Tory
views were so rabid that he almost made perverts from the cause, of
all those whom he desired to convince.
And even these were few, for Lord Radclyffe had no friends and very
few acquaintances. He had a strange and absolute dislike for his
fellow men. He did not like seeing people, he hated to exchange
greetings, to talk or to mingle with any crowd that was purely on
pleasure bent. He went up to the House and made speeches--political,
philanthropic, economic speeches--which Luke prepared for him, and
which he spoke without enthusiasm or any desire to please. This he
did, not because he liked it or took any interest in things political,
philanthropic or economic, but only because he considered that a man
in his position owed certain duties to the State--duties which it
would be cowardly to shirk.
But he really cared nothing for the thoughts of others, for their
opinions, their joys, or their sorrows. He had schooled himself not to
care, to call philanthropy empty sentiment, politics senseless
ambition, economics grasping avarice.
His was a life entirely wrapped up in itself. In youth he had been
very shy: a shyness caused at first by a serious defect of speech
which, though cured in later years, always left an unconquerable
diffidence, an almost morbid fear of ridicule in its train.
Because of this, I think, he had never been a sportsman--or, rather,
had never been an athlete, for he was splendid with a gun and the
finest revolver shot in England, so I've been told, and an
acknowledged master of fence, but with bat, ball, or racquet he was
invariably clumsy.
He had always hated to be laughed at, and therefore had never gone
through the rough mill of a tyro in athletics or in games. Arthur, one
of his brothers, had been a blue at Oxford; the other one, James--you
remember James de Mountford? was the celebrated cricketer; but he, the
eldest, always seemed to remain outside that magic circle of sport,
the great ring of many links which unites Englishmen one to another in
a way that no other conformity of tastes, of breeding, or of religion
can ever do.
Because of this diffidence too, no doubt, he had never married. I was
told once by an intimate friend of his, that old Rad--as he was
universally called--had never mustered up sufficient courage to
propose to any woman. And as he saw one by one the coveted
matrimonial prizes--the pretty girls whom at different times he had
admired sufficiently to desire for wife--snapped up by more
enterprising wooers, his dour moroseness grew into positive chronic
ill-humour.
He liked no one and no one liked him: and during sixty years of life
he had succeeded in eliminating from his entire being every feeling of
sentiment save one. He had to all appearances an absolutely callous
heart: he cared neither for dog nor horse--he ordered a splendid mare
to be shot without the slightest compunction after she had carried him
in the hunting field and in the park faithfully and beautifully for
over eight years, just because she had shied at a motor-car and nearly
thrown him. He was not cruel, you know, just callous in all respects
save one: void of all sentiment--he called it sentimentality--save in
his affection for Luke.
Luke had been--ever since he was a growing lad--the buffer in the
establishment between the irascible master and the many subordinates.
From Mr. Warren--the highly paid and greatly snubbed secretary--down
to the maids below stairs, one and all brought troubles, complaints,
worries to Mr. Luke. No one dared approach his lordship. A word out of
season brought instant dismissal, and no one thought of leaving a
place where, besides excellent wages, there was the pleasure of
waiting on Mr. Luke. Never Mr. de Mountford, you notice, always Mr.
Luke. He had grown up amongst the household; Winston, the old
coachman, had taught him to ride; Mary, now housekeeper, then a nurse,
had bathed him in a wash-hand basin when he was less than eighteen
inches long.
Therefore the atmosphere of the gloomy old house pleased Louisa
Harris. With the perfect and unconscious selfishness of a woman in
love, she gauged everything in life just as it affected Luke. She even
contrived to like Lord Radclyffe. He trod on every one of her moral
and spiritual corns, it is true; he had that lofty contempt for the
entire feminine sex which pertains to the Oriental, more than to the
more civilized Western races; he combated her opinions, both religious
and political, without any pretence at deference; he smoked very
strong cigars in every room in the house, without the slightest regard
for the feelings of his lady visitors; he did or left undone a great
many other things which would tend to irritate and even to offend a
woman accustomed to the conventional courtesies of daily social life;
but when Luke entered a room, where, but a moment ago, Lord Radclyffe
had been venting his chronic ill-humour on an offending or innocent
subordinate, the old man's dour face would become transfigured,
irradiated with a look of pride and of joy at sight of the man on whom
he had lavished all the affection of which his strong nature was
capable.
Luke could do no wrong. Luke was always right. He could argue with his
lordship, contradict him, obtain anything he liked from him. Eternal
contradictions of human nature: the childless man in perfect adoration
before a brother's son; the callous, hard-hearted misanthrope soft as
wax in the hands of one man.