That was one of Mr. Cato’s chief preoccupations. What was the Prince’s
social station in England? How much deference might be demanded of the
world? Who were the people to whose company he had a natural right? One
must neither prejudice his future by assuming too low a value for him,
nor expose him to any rebuff by claiming too much.
The question was one beyond Mr. Cato’s own competence. His thoughts
turned to his nephew Pendred. Not a country nephew this, with any
implication of humbleness. Quite the contrary; Pendred Lillico,
ex-Lieutenant of the Grenadiers, son of Mr. Cato’s half-sister, who had
married a hitherto obscure baronet in the days of her beauty. Pendred
was a dancing man, a well-known man, a pattern of manners, an arbiter
of fashions. They rarely met: Mr. Cato was secretly afraid of his
nephew; Pendred seldom had occasion to boast of his uncle.
He arrived on his motor-car--small, fair, translucent, admirable. The
occasion suited him. Appreciation was his _métier_--appreciation of
frocks, laces, china, women, men. He knew hallmarks, pottery-marks,
marks of breeding, marks of coming success. Mr. Cato passed the morning
before his arrival in a restless state; he was nervous as to the
verdict.
‘How much a year, do you say?’ asked Pendred, in his touching little
glass voice.
‘Two thousand.’
‘H’m ... Borneo.... Can I see him?’
‘But that makes no difference, does it?’
‘It’s everything.’
‘But, surely dukes and millionaires aren’t estimated on their personal
value?’
‘Oh, once you get into big figures!’
‘But a man’s social value....’
‘Social value, my dear uncle, is human value.’
‘Well, I’m delighted to hear it.’
‘On two thousand a year, that is.... Well, let’s see your man. I think
I shall be able to give you an opinion.’
Prince Dwala was seated in an armchair in the library--nursing the
fire, remote, abstracted. So abstracted that he took no notice of
their entrance. Pendred put his head on one side and tried to sketch a
rough estimate; he was puzzled. He put his head on the other side and
attempted a new valuation. Mr. Cato touched the Prince on the shoulder.
‘I’ve brought you my nephew to make your acquaintance.’
Dwala gave a long sigh and looked up.
‘Nephew ... what’s a nephew?’
‘_This_ is my nephew,’ said Mr. Cato, presenting Pendred, who stepped
delicately forward, smiling, with hand extended.
The Prince drew him towards himself. Then suddenly, without any
warning, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he took
him up in his arms and carried him to the light to make a better
examination. Mr. Cato stood petrified. Pendred lay perfectly still,
looking up with frightened blue eyes. Dwala seated himself on the edge
of the table by the window, and put Pendred on his knee. It was the
first finished product of civilisation that he had seen, perfect at
every point. He smelt him; he stroked his hair and ears; he felt the
fineness of his clothes; and growled a deep guttural growl of delight.
‘I should like to have a nephew, too.’
‘Put him down, put him down,’ cried Mr. Cato, finding voice: ‘you
mustn’t treat Pendred like that!’
Dwala glided obediently off the table, set Pendred on a chair, and
crouched at his feet looking up.
‘Does it talk?’ he asked.
‘That’s right. Of course he does. Pendred’s a terrible chatterbox.
He’ll talk your head off.’
‘Please make it talk.’
‘How can he talk when you frighten him to death like that?’
‘Don’t be absurd, Uncle Wyndham,’ said Pendred plaintively: ‘I’m not
at all frightened, thank you.’ He pulled out his case of gold-tipped
cigarettes, and lighted one, at which Dwala growled again and clapped
his hands.
‘Did you have a jolly voyage? I hear you were quite a lion on board.
Terrible long journey. Awful bore travellin’. What do you think of
England?’
‘Pretty voice! pretty voice!’ said the Prince, stroking one of his
little boots. ‘Will it eat? He pulled a biscuit out of his pocket and
put it up to Pendred’s lips. Pendred slipped his legs away and jumped
up.
‘No, thanks awfully. I must be gettin’ home. People to tea. Awful
bore.’ And with this he bolted straight out of the door and through
the house to his motor-car, which was snorting and jumping up and down
outside, in charge of a man in shiny black surrounded by a crowd of
ragamuffins. He was half-way down the road when Mr. Cato emerged in
pursuit.
The Prince sat by the fire, nodding his head in high spirits, and
ejaculating: ‘Awful bore! Awful bore!’
‘How dare you?’ said Mr. Cato, coming in a moment later, and shutting
the door behind him.
‘Dare what?’
‘How dare you treat my nephew like that? Pendred! A gentleman! A future
baronet! Here am I, working my fingers to the bone to get justice
done to you--at it night and day, spending my substance, sacrificing
everything--and then, when I invite my nephew out here, who might have
helped you in your London career, you treat him like that! You drive
him out of the house--he even forgot his gloves.’
‘I liked him. I wanted to keep him.’
‘You treat him like a child, like a plaything, a doll. You forget that
he is a man.’
‘Is he a man?’
‘He was twenty-eight in June. Of course he’s a man.’
‘I didn’t know. He has no eye.’
‘No eye? What do you mean?’
‘Nothing here.’ The Prince moved his hand over his eyes. ‘Nothing
behind.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. Eye or no eye, I’ll beg you for the future
to be respectful to _everybody_, mind you--_everybody_, high or low.
Social position makes no difference. Now you’ve spoilt everything.
Pendred’s offended. He won’t come back. How can you get on if you
behave like that?’
Mr. Cato had heard of a man ‘having a leg,’ but never of a man having
‘no eye.’ It conveyed nothing to him. But the idea was clear and
even elementary to Dwala. Being a beast, endowed with no reason,
having only instinct and that μονὴ αἰσθήματος, or persistence of
impressions, which takes the place of reason in the lower animals,
he was incapable of the rational classification of natural things
which characterises the human outlook. His criteria of species were
distinct but illogical; his categories did not tally with human
categories; they fell short of them and they overlapped them. Species
was defined for him, not by the grouping of attributes, but by an
abstract something--a spiritual essence inherent in the attributes.
He was guided, to put it in philosophical terms, not by ‘phenomena,’
but by ‘noumena.’ For instance, he knew a horse from a donkey, not by
its size, its ears, or its coat, not on consideration, but abruptly,
instinctively, round the corner, by an effluence of individuality; in
short, by its ‘equinity.’ So too, in the forest, he had always known
a venomous cobra from a harmless grass-snake at any distance, not by
considerations of form or colour--considerations which might often have
led to too late a conclusion--but merely by its ‘cobrinity.’ But this
attitude is liable to error; and Prince Dwala had been led astray by
it. His notion of the essence of humanity was formed from the men he
had first met; it was limited and imperfect. It included an element not
essential to humanity, this ‘eye’ of which he spoke: a thing difficult
to define; something revealed in the bodily eye; not exactly strength
of will or power to command; not entirely dignity or courage; some
reflection rather of the spirit of the universe, a self-completeness
and responsibility, a consciousness of individual independence. This he
had known and felt in the American, in the Soochings, in Mr. Cato, in
the housemaid--it was the basis of his respect and obedience; but it
was wanting in Pendred Lillico.
It was fortunate that he was disabused of error so early in his career.
He could afford to laugh at his foolishness later--he saw what mistakes
of behaviour it would have led him into; for when he came to know
London better, he found that the mass of people, both in drawing-rooms
and slums, indubitably men, altogether lacked the ‘eye’ which he had
thought essential.
X
At breakfast next morning Mr. Cato groaned a good deal over his letters.
‘Well, Wyndham, what does Pendred say?’ asked sister Emily.
Mr. Cato frowned, and shook his head in a menacing aside, enjoining
discretion.
‘I was afraid so,’ he said, after breakfast, when Dwala had retired
to the study fire. ‘Pendred is very pessimistic. Oh dear, oh dear!
And yet, who can say he is not right after the way he was treated? “I
am afraid that the same thing cannot be said of your _protégé_. Quite
apart from his rudeness to me--of which I will say nothing, if you will
do the same--it is evident that Prince Dwala is not a gentleman. Not at
present, at any rate. There is a _brusquerie_ about him which would do
very well in a Hapsburg or a Hohenzollern, but not in a deposed Borneo
Prince. He doesn’t know how to sit down; nor in fact what to sit on.
He doesn’t know what to do with his hands; all his movements are too
large, and, as Lady Hamish would say, ‘too conclusive.’” Pendred won’t
come to lunch on Tuesday--I was afraid not; he leaves town on Monday.
However, there is a ray of hope. It is really very generous of Pendred,
considering. It is certainly worth trying. “Gentlemen are made as well
as born. Captain Howland-Bowser acquired it because he was determined
to succeed; and now nobody would know he was not a gentleman, and in
fact a very fine gentleman, and received everywhere. Of course it is
a secret. I should never have known if Warbeck Wemyss had not told me
himself. Present the letter I enclose, and let him see that you mean
perfect discretion.”’
‘Who is Warbeck Wemyss? Not _the_ ...’
‘Of course.’
‘The actor?’
‘Gives lessons in manners, do you mean?’
‘But won’t it be very expensive?’
‘Of course Wyndham means the Prince to pay himself.’
‘Now Clara, once for all, let me hear no more of these hints. The
Prince shall _not_ pay. We have no right to expect it, poor fellow. We
have done very well without going to the country this year, and surely
we can manage to do it again. If the worst comes to the worst we can
move into a smaller house when the Prince leaves us. You must try to
be more economical; the bills come to far more than they ought to.’ He
closed the discussion by leaving the room.
Warbeck Wemyss consented, on terms. It was a ‘wrench,’ as Traddles
would have said; but surely it was worth while. The lessons were
a great amusement for the Prince. The going out into the passage;
the entering the library, hat in hand; the surprise on Mr. Wemyss’s
part; the little interchange on health and weather; the play with
his monstrous gloves: the more elaborate lessons; introductions;
forgetfulnesses; the assumption of grave interest while a humble
Wemyss endeavoured to recall to him where they had met before; the
pretended dinners; the new words; the manner of gallantry; the manner
of confidence; the gestures and ejaculations of patience under a long
anecdote--a thousand situations which pictured a new and delightful
universe before his eyes. Dwala had the imitative faculty in
perfection; he almost cried with humble joy when Wemyss clapped him on
the shoulder, and assured him that he would make a gentleman of him in
no time. Mr. Cato was delighted with the teacher’s reports: a little
slapdash at first; rather random in the use of ‘rippin’’ and ‘awful
bore,’ but quicker progress than he had ever seen.