CHAPTER LXVIII
Wherein it is seen that a Man is More or Less Responsible for his Father
Noll,arriving on Horace’s landing, found Babette outside the door; and she was sobbing.
“What! Babette?” said he—“and crying?”
Babette brushed her fingers across her eyes:
“No,” she said; her trembling lips giving her the lie.
“Babette, why?”
He put his hand on her shoulder kindly.
Babette stamped her foot:
“I amnotcrying,” she said; and a large tear fell.... She made an effort and said: “Horace is going home.... He is going—away.”
She opened the door, and they went in together.
Noll walked into the studio; but the silken rustle of Babette’s skirts passed the door, and hurried on into the darkness of the house.
In the deep dusk of the studio sat four or five figures, smudgy dark shadows, sprawling in armchairs.
“Is that you, Noll?” cried Horace from behind the red spark where a cigarette glowed.
“Yes—I thought you were alone——”
“Did you want me?”
“There’s no hurry, old boy,” said Noll, and added grimly: “It can wait.”
“That’s right,” said Horace, pushing a chair towards him with his foot. “There’s the bottle by you—and a glass—and the dried cabbage of Egypt. Set it ablaze and talk.”
Horace struck a match on the seat of his breeches as Noll flung into the chair, and handed the flame to him; and Noll, setting the light to a cigarette, saw the faces of Bartholomew Doome and four of the Five Foolish Virgins in the gloom.
The light went out.
“Your room’s all dismantled, Horace,” said he.
“Yes,” said Horace—“I’m off home. I was just sendingJonkin with a note to tell you. I’m giving my farewell feast of departure to-morrow night—next day I’m off.”
“Why?”
Horace shifted uneasily in his chair; and then he laughed.
“My father’s become chairman of his newspaper company; and he’s going to give an address to a learned society on the Dignity of Literature.... I can’t stand that.... After all, one is more or less responsible for one’s father.... Indeed, the drawback of having a father is that he has the right to bear the same name.”
“But——”
“Oh, yes, Noll—I know. They call him the Napoleon of the Press in the newspapers. In his own newspapers ... yes,” said Horace drily; and added judicially, making every allowance for the defendant: “Of course, the old gentlemanmaybe the Napoleon of the Press—perhaps he is. I don’t see why I should wrangle about that. And I’m bound to say that, since they called him so, he has shaved off his city whiskers and keeps his hand thrust into the breast of his frock-coat, and pretends to think a lot, and isn’t so beastly familiar with millionaires. He wanted to wear a grey overcoat last winter, but I had to draw the line. You see, the old man has no flare for the subtleties.”
Doome coughed in the darkness:
“How did you break it to him, Horace?” he asked drily.
Horace pshawed:
“I told him he couldn’t do it—he’d be getting into a damned black cocked hat next,” he sighed heavily: “I hate to be rude to my father,” he said—“it always hurts me more than it does him.”
There was a long silence.
“I don’t think, Horace,” said Noll, “that you make allowances for your father.”
“Well, there’s something in that,” said Horace. “However, we’ll allow that the old gentleman is the Napoleon of the Press. And of course he and the mother are in the thick of life. Indeed, the mother’s gowns are always described in the morning paper after a big social function—and, by St. Paquin, it’s extraordinary how well they sound inprint; yet—I don’t know how it is—for she is a comely woman—but when you put a gold ornament upon my mother it looks like brass—she’s one of those women who, when she hangs diamonds round her neck, looks like a ball-room chandelier. She’s as sound as the apostles beneath her stays, but she has about as much taste as a housemaid—or the House of Brunswick. Then, the old gentleman dines with old Lord Bardolph Nankhill—sits at meat with Cabinet Ministers—and has been seen at Marlborough House. All that, of course, cannot do him any real harm. But—the Dignity of Literature! and to a learned society! No ... it can’t be done.”
“Why?” asked Doome. “Society accepts the words of an associate of Cabinet Ministers in a Tory Government as revelation sent direct from God.”
“Why?” scoffed Horace. “If learned societies want hintsabout the commercialism of the Press, the traffic in brains, then pa’s the man of whom to ask advice—but the Dignity of Letters! Good God!... An English newspaper should look like a gentleman’s property. TheTimesis a journal that ought to be in every gentleman’s waste-paper basket. It’s always wrong—but it is magnificently wrong. It is consistent. To vote at the polls on the advice of theTimesis almost to make a virtue of vice. To vote against it is to come near to statesmanship and is the first principle of political honour. But this newspaper of the father’s is sometimes right, only in such bad taste. He has taken the whole look of distinction from the daily broadsheet.... He has vulgarized the printed page. The very print cries out against him. He has debased the manners of journalism until they are as coarse as the traffic in manures, as ignoble as money-lending, as truthful as a company-promoter’s prospectus, as ponderous in wit and humour as an American advertisement, its political, artistic, social and all other ideals as high as the imagination of shop-walkers. He has even vulgarized the word Empire. The people whom he employs but scrape a living, and they therefore give of their worst—the consequence is the employment of illiterate and unscrupulous cads in what ought to be one of the noblest and most accomplished and most sacred of callings, the enlightenment of the nation.... Tshah! in his hands the magazine has become a thing of shame—filled with illustrations that are a public misfortune.... No. My father is a millionaire. He has grown rich—that is all. Pa is a very good fellow; but he don’t know anything about the Dignity of Letters. I must go home. This thing cannot be done—it cannot be done.”
Noll, finding Horace taken up with his own affairs, felt shy of telling him his trouble; and it was borne in upon him sadly enough that his friend was leaving him, and had to be about his own business—far away from him at the very time he most wanted his sympathy. An overwhelming sense of loneliness came upon him, and the silence was profound.
The melancholy sense of coming departure—of the breaking up of old pleasant associations, of the passing out from their midst of a congenial and blithe companion and a happy face—set them all brooding.
It was abundantly clear that Horace Malahide was being packed; for the valet, who had always before been hidden, though never far away, could now be heard in the next room brushing clothes and buzzing at the business.
“Oh,” said Horace, rousing—“by the way, you fellows will want mourning for my feast of departure to-morrow!”
He turned towards the door beneath which gleamed a yellow streak of candle-light:
“Jonkin!” he called.
The door opened, and in the golden glory of the doorway stood the ineffable Jonkin. He was dressed like a student, short black coat, big black tie, velvet waistcoat, corduroy trousers and all; but the dignity of the gentleman’s gentleman glowed within.
“Yessir!” said he.
“Bring those boxes of black kid gloves, black neckties, and the crape for these gentlemen to choose from,” said Horace.
“Yessir!” said Jonkin.
He brought the cardboard boxes with stealthy walk, and handed them about.
“Jonkin,” said Horace—“is everything packed?”
“The serious baggage is all ready, sir,” said Jonkin.
“I want you to take it all away the very first thing in the morning, and get it out of sight and off to London before the men arrive to drape the room.”
“Yessir.”
“Not a thing about the place here after to-morrow morning but what will go into my oldest and most battered bullock-trunk and my portmanteau.”
“Yessir.”
“And you understand you are not to leave any silver-mounted things about.”
“Yessir.”
“Oh, and Jonkin—reserve me a first-class carriage by the next morning’s boat-train for Boulogne.”
“Yessir.”
“Be in it yourself.”
“Yessir.”
“With my dressing things.”
“Yessir.”
“And English clothes.”
“Yessir.”
“I will go as far as Amiens third class.”
“Yessir.”
“Oh—and Jonkin——”
“Yessir.”
“If there’s a beastly row in the railway-station and I’m in it, for God’s sake don’t look anxious, or as if you belong to me.”
“No, sir,” said Jonkin.