CHAPTER XXXIII
Which has to do with one of those Emotional Crises that change the Whole Tenor of a Man’s Political Convictions
Themillionaire was in the most hearty of good moods—could not sit still in his office—came home and could not sit still in his home. He tramped his house; was jocularly familiar with the servants; slapped the housemaids on the back; gave them half-sovereigns; twitted them about lovers; chaffed the shocked footman; dug the solemn butler Pontefract in the waistband; punched him in the chest and wind, the astounded servant clumsily guarding the threatened parts; and told him crude stories.
He told every separate servant of his household, as he had told every separate clerk in his offices on one pretext or other during the morning, that he was to be the guest of honour at a big banquet together with the Marquis of Malahide—“the head of our family, sir.”
Mr. Pompey Malahide had always thanked Providence for his own cunning, for his energy, and, to a certain extent, for his luck—or for that small portion of good chance that remained from all successes after the results of his own keen foresight had been deducted, which, to put it fairly, was little enough. But whilst he felt that he himself shared with Providence not a little of his own credit, there was one thing which he frankly set down generously and without reserve of smallest kind to the gods—that he had been born with a name that was in the peerage.
The father of Pompey, when he had left the ancestral calling of rat-catcher on the Lincolnshire estates of the old Marquis of Malahide and had come up to London town to seek his fortune, had taken the name of the man for whom he had had the keenest admiration, whilst to his son he had given in lieu of dedication to the saints the name of the dog which had brought him most honour at the local tavern. And by consequence, the son of the rat-catcher, now grown to fortune, had always felt a kinship between himself and the living marquis, whose bluff sailor ways and jovial bearing made him the idol of the populace.
Indeed, a print of the great man’s portrait was the most aggressive decoration in the house—topped by a gilt coronet and flanked,as it was, by all the prints of the great man’s ancestors that the art-dealers could find for him or foist upon him—to which central figure of importance he would always refer as “the head of our house, sir!”
That night, Pompey Malahide sat at the banquet, and as he sat he received a whispered communication from a member of the Cabinet at his right hand that made his face to shine, gorgeous, boisterously glorified.
And more—when the guests had risen, it made him commit the mistake which sent titters through the city and laughter through the fashionable clubs for many a day; and this he did from sheer joyousness of heart, yet, so intoxicated was he with his magnificence that city gossips were almost justified in setting it down to the full body of the wine.
The guests being risen then, and grouping into tattling knots, our Pompey made his way, exultant, to the group that held the jovial figure of the sailor-marquis.
“My lord,” said he—“my name is Malahide—Pompey Malahide. My family is—I—er—believe, in some remote way connected with your lordship’s.”
After the silence that fell, all eyes seeking the twinkling eyes of the sailor-marquis, our Pompey received his wound.
“Likely enough!” roared the admiral, wringing the fat fingers of the exultant Pompey in his treacherous grip—“likely enough!” And his lordship, being mellow with wine, and in a fine rollicking humour, had slapped him a rousing buffet upon the shoulder so that our Pompey coughed, and with a big jolly laugh the nobleman blandly accepted the likelihood.
“Ah, yes—likely enough!” he cried. “The old lord was a damned rogue amongst the women!”
The Malahides were all hail-fellow thus.
The jesting answer, whilst it had tickled, had not a little shocked some that stood near, and, perhaps not the least, the sense of delicacy of the claimant.
A chill aloofness might have made the wounded man adore the idol more. What tyrannies will we not suffer from the gods! But to be overwhelmed in city humour had smitten our Pompey in his most sensitive parts.
All that night Pompey Malahide knew no sleep. And he arose in the early morning ashamed and sorely wounded. It had been a shabby enough blow, but he had put himself in the way of a drunken fellow’s fisticuff....
Up he got as soon as it was daylight, kicked his heels out of bed, and, having dressed, ranged restlessly about the house; and it thus chanced that one of his daughters, Judith, early risen, came upon him, and twitted him with looking distressed.
In a fit of confidence, he showed the girl the wound. And she, seeing her opportunity, petted him, and as soon as she in decency could turn him from his distress, told him of her discovery of theModeyne skeleton—opened the ugly cupboard and let it tumble out.
And into the ears of the brooding man the hot red lips dropped a poisonous suggestion of the girl’s seeking marriage with Horace.
The man was in the mood to see ghosts in every shadow. He was too much taken up with his own affairs to smell an ugly plot amongst his own kin.
He went to the library, his fast unbroken, and with a sour mouth, and rang the bell. He told the footman who answered his summons to send a maid to Miss Modeyne’s room and tell her he would like to see her when she came down.
Betty came tripping at the summons; shut the door; and stood a-wonder before the shamed seated man.
She stepped forward anxiously:
“Mr. Malahide,” she said—“I hope you are not ill.”
He shook his head.
He saw that the white hand she put on the desk trembled. A hoarse note came into her voice:
“I hope nothing has happened to your son—Horace——”
He shook his head.
“No, Miss Betty—but I have had information, through a friend, an old friend of my family, this morning that I believe is a lie. I hope to God—it is—a—lie.”
Betty suddenly understood that she was the subject of the interview, and silence fell upon her. She drew herself up quietly and awaited the blow.
“Miss Betty, this good lady says that your father was a quite impossible person. She says that he was a notorious drunkard. Was he?”
Betty bowed her head.
“Yes,” she said simply.
The hope went out of the man’s eyes; he tried again, trusting to a denial:
“She says that he was the subject of a coroner’s inquest, and that his disreputable life was the talk of the town a while ago. Was that so?”
Betty said nothing.
“She says that he was a Papist—that you came into my house and breathed no word of it. Is that so?”
Still no answer.
“She says that your companionship may sully the innocence of my girls; which is a damned lie—excuse my saying so.... But she says that people are making comments about my girls being seen with you.... I wish to God that were a lie too.”
The brooding man put his face in his hands; and there was a long silence.
He roused after a little while and went on again:
“She says that you, if you stay here, may win the regard of my boy Horace—she says that it would be worse than Miss Sally Ornce.”
For a moment Betty thought wearily that he referred to theallurements of some rival lady. It suddenly came to her that the poor fellow meantmésalliance.
The clumsy man gazed miserably out of the window:
“I don’t know what in God’s wonder to do,” he said.
The girl bowed:
“I understand,” she said. “I will go.”
She went and shook hands with him; and quietly left the room....
The two ladies, straining their ears at the door that stood slightly ajar into the next room, were edified.
They opened the door a little way and peeped in.
They would have been extremely annoyed had they known that Betty had caught a glimpse of them—had taken in the situation at a flash.
They were surprised to hear their father sigh. When he put his head down on the table and sobbed, they stole away.
Indeed, tittering over the details afterwards with friends, theydeclared, if we may take the word of such as listen at doors, that they were highly amused—that it was near as good as a play....
Betty, tipping the cabman for taking her trunk up to her attic, knocked at Miss Flora Jennyns’ door, entered, and, running to the little old lady’s chair, sank on the footstool at her feet and flung her arms about her knees.
“I have come home,” she said, happy to be with the old gentlewoman again.
Miss Flora put out her hand and stroked the girl’s brown hair; and she smiled through tears.
“I have been very lonely,” she said.
A couple of days after Betty had gone, Mr. Pompey Malahide sat down at his desk, a bland smile upon him, and wrote to his son:
“Dear Horace,The Tory Chest has, you will perhaps have guessed, received another twenty thousand pounds from me. But one must, as a patriot, make sacrifices for the good of the country. You will, I feel sure, be proud to know that the Malahides—our branch of them—are about to take rank as Baronets.I regret to state, however, that there has been, at the Carlton, a distinct aloofness of the members of the Upper House towards me personally, since we came in with so large a majority, in so much that I feel, on entering some of these men’s houses, as if I were breathing air that had passed over ice.On careful consideration over my political ideals, I have lately come to the conclusion (and I have aristocratic precedents for changing my political opinions), that, on receiving my baronetcy, I shall take the first dramatic and telling opportunity to embarrass the Government and go over to the other side of the House.Your affectionate father,Pompey Malahide.”
“Dear Horace,
The Tory Chest has, you will perhaps have guessed, received another twenty thousand pounds from me. But one must, as a patriot, make sacrifices for the good of the country. You will, I feel sure, be proud to know that the Malahides—our branch of them—are about to take rank as Baronets.
I regret to state, however, that there has been, at the Carlton, a distinct aloofness of the members of the Upper House towards me personally, since we came in with so large a majority, in so much that I feel, on entering some of these men’s houses, as if I were breathing air that had passed over ice.
On careful consideration over my political ideals, I have lately come to the conclusion (and I have aristocratic precedents for changing my political opinions), that, on receiving my baronetcy, I shall take the first dramatic and telling opportunity to embarrass the Government and go over to the other side of the House.
Your affectionate father,Pompey Malahide.”
To which Horace replied by return:
“Dear old Father,I wish you would not split your verbs so recklessly.To resist the condescension of the new aristocracy in the way you suggest would be, for you, utterly disastrous, both as a matter of good taste and as a dramatic effect—to say nothing of a bid for social distinction.The test of good manners in the highly placed is the capacity for the exercise of extreme insolence without offence to the estimation of the class. What would be a vulgarity in you or me is a splendid airiness in the Prime Minister. Your fine gentleman may seduce a lady’s maid, but must not be seen to cheat at cards. The tears of a seduced woman set the tables of the new nobility a-titter; but to win a guinea by oversharp practice with trumps is to discover the moth amongst the ermine on the cloak of honour. Your courtier’s manners are but gaudy beads strung on a thread of menial subtleties. You have not the practice, my dear father; and would only blunder upon the indecencies.The new aristocracy demands our patience—it takes three hundred years of usage before a family becomes quite used to its own nobility; by that time it is usually bankrupt.It is only possible for a man of birth and unassailable breeding to become a radical without appearing ridiculous.Your affectionate son,Horace.”
“Dear old Father,
I wish you would not split your verbs so recklessly.
To resist the condescension of the new aristocracy in the way you suggest would be, for you, utterly disastrous, both as a matter of good taste and as a dramatic effect—to say nothing of a bid for social distinction.
The test of good manners in the highly placed is the capacity for the exercise of extreme insolence without offence to the estimation of the class. What would be a vulgarity in you or me is a splendid airiness in the Prime Minister. Your fine gentleman may seduce a lady’s maid, but must not be seen to cheat at cards. The tears of a seduced woman set the tables of the new nobility a-titter; but to win a guinea by oversharp practice with trumps is to discover the moth amongst the ermine on the cloak of honour. Your courtier’s manners are but gaudy beads strung on a thread of menial subtleties. You have not the practice, my dear father; and would only blunder upon the indecencies.
The new aristocracy demands our patience—it takes three hundred years of usage before a family becomes quite used to its own nobility; by that time it is usually bankrupt.
It is only possible for a man of birth and unassailable breeding to become a radical without appearing ridiculous.
Your affectionate son,Horace.”