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.
[102]“odious, insolent, ill-natured, pigheaded, spiteful, out-of-date old wretch!”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[103] 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[104] 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.”
[105]“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?”
[106]“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.
[107]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[108] 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[109] 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.
[110]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[111] 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.
[112]“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.
[113]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[114] 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[115] 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[116] 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[117] 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[118] 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[119] 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.