CHAPTER XXXVI
Which touches upon the Pains of Enjoying the Glow of Self-Abasement whilst Maintaining a Position of Dignity
AsNoll and Horace stood on the platform of the railway-station at Oxford, waiting for the London express to take them to town, Horace Malahide began to feel some discomfort about the brooding mood of the other—for the first time he was distressed with the question whether they ought not to have remained at Oxford. He knew that Noll had but narrow means. Guessing that Noll was in some embarrassment as to how to explain his sudden return to his people, he, to divert him from worrying, called his wandering attention to a newspaper criticism upon a book which had just come out and was creating considerable stir in the literary world.
Horace, holding up the newspaper criticism, put his finger upon the name of Caroline Baddlesmere. Noll roused and read the notice. The writer, Anthony Bickersteth, was proclaimed as the founder of a new school—a new star had risen above the dead level of the commonplace literature of the day—and all of the review that was not violent praise of this Anthony Bickersteth was the cover for a bitter and sneering screed against the work of Caroline Baddlesmere, who, so it bluntly averred, had gone well-nigh to destroying English as an artistic language. The writer’s judgment would have been of more weight, perhaps, had his English been of more value; but even his ill-balanced phrasing, his academic eyes, his dullard’s palate, and his faulty ear, could not altogether damn the object of his adoration; and Noll, struck by the beauty of phrasing in some of the quoted passages, bought a copy of the book at the station stall as the train came clanking in. He ran through its pages on his journey to town....
As they rattled through the outskirts of London, Horace, who had been watching the other’s face, asked:
“Is it any good, Noll?”
Noll shut up the book, and stretched himself:
“Very good,” said he—“but I think the fellow would have shown better taste not to hit at my mother in the Preface.”
There was a long pause.
Horace broke it:
“Noll, old boy,” said he—“shall I drive you home?”
“I’m not going home, thanks,” said Noll—and he added, seeing surprise in the eyes of the other: “I’ve got to face old Lord Wyntwarde first—he’s a sort of relation of mine—and has been paying for my being at Oxford.... My own people are very badly off.... I don’t think I ought to let the unpleasantness of the interview fall upon my people. And I’m funking it....” And he added grimly, after a while: “I understand why men sometimes get drunk.”
Horace laughed:
“Oh,” said he—“it’ll blow over all right.... Look here, Noll; you’d better come to my people to-day, stay over the night, and go on to-morrow to the eating of dirt....”
So it came that Noll spent his first evening in the Malahide household. And the girls both vowed the next day to their separate bosom friends that they “had met their fate.” It leaked out during the confidences of each that Horace had discovered to them that the youth was kinsman to a certain Lord Wyntwarde....
The hot-headed old lord stood a-straddle before his fireplace, and smiled grimly.
How the blood of this house repeated itself!
Here was this young fellow pacing up and down the room as though he were laying down the terms of a surrender.
By the dogs, a handsome young fellow! Like his mother—with a trick or two of the father in him.
He himself had thus prowled this room in like disgrace with the lord of the house years ago. What a while ago!... This lad’s father also—now this one! By the book, wonderful!
The fact was that the old lord’s wilful admiration followed this proud lad with a sense of affection that was strange to him—the youth appealed to him more than did the more elaborate father. He had more of the beauty of the old house about him.
“Noll, my lad,” said he, “I haven’t been listening over-well to what you have been saying—I’ve been thinking hard that you ought to have been my son.”
Noll stopped in his walk, stopped in his talk—hesitated.
He uttered an embarrassed laugh:
“I have been apologizing, sir,” he said.
“Have you?” growled Wyntwarde. “That is a relief to me—I thought you were orderingmeto apologize.”
Noll shrugged his shoulders, and took to his pacing of the room again, silenced.
The old lord watched him grimly, saying nothing.
Noll suddenly halted, swung round, and faced him:
“I am sorry, sir,” said he—“I ought to have rid you of my company before this. But I felt bound to make you what poor reparation I could for all your goodness to me. I did not write, because—a personal apology is always far more punishment to me than the written word. This has been a punishing task to me—Ihave dreaded it—loathed it. And yet, I fear, it has seemed but a lame and sorry reparation to you.... I will not fret you any longer. I am done.”
Wyntwarde laughed:
“Oho, Noll—so you are run dry at last!... Now I can get a word in edgeways; and I, too, may cackle, though it lack your literary finish.... You see, as we are in the confessional, I may say I have been a bit of a dog in my day. And, by Beelzebub! the gout hasn’t altogether driven the last spark out of me yet.... The tongues still wag about me, I have no smallest doubt.... It isn’t for me to preach you a sermon on your tom-follies, for they are infernally like my own. By God, you are no curate, there’s that much against you in heaven. Still, I will tell you bluntly, I have only had one fear for you—and that is the dandified schoolmaster that is in the heart of your father. The Ffolliotts never had any of the damned studious habits—we have always been sportsmen and gentlemen. And, by my soul, I believe you are bitten by the self-same dog.... It’s this literary business that makes me anxious about you; but a lampoon and a sharp tongue we all of us had the knack of using—thatdon’t go with long hair and inky fingers and spectacles nor a milkman’s seat on a horse. By God, you may lampoon the Lord Chancellor, for allIcare—I never go to the House of Lords except to keep the damned idiot in his place. Lords Chancellor nowadays seem to think the Upper House is a confounded dames’ school. Damn all Lords Chancellor, say I——”
“Yes, sir—damn all Lords Chancellor!” said Noll drily.
Wyntwarde laughed:
“Yes,” said he—“we wander.... Now, look you here, Noll—this house is free to you as long as you keep your fingers from ink-stains and your lips from preaching—the stables are not empty of horses. And, what’s more, I still hold to my bond. The ’Varsity is over—down goes three hundred a year. It would be damned bad morals to give you that again. But you shall have a couple of hundred a year as long as rumour speaks well of you; but the day you throw up the society of gentlemen and mix with the inky-fingered gentry, I will not only cancel you from my will, but, by the dogs, I stop even the allowance——”
“I do not accept benefits under threat, sir,” said Noll.
Wyntwarde stopped, scowled—burst into a laugh, and passed the matter by:
“I would make it more,” he said; “but I suspect the ink-pot——”
“If I have a mind to spill ink I will spill it,” said the youth hotly.
The old lord chuckled:
“You are your father’s son, my boy, on occasion,” said he. “Well, there’s nothing to attract you here just now; but you had better come down for the hunting next winter, eh?”
Noll made a step towards him—hesitated—his mouth hardened:
“I cannot stay in a house, sir, which my mother has struck off her visiting list,” he said sullenly.
The old lord laughed loudly and long:
“By God,” said he—“you are a man!”
He went to the youth and gripped him by the shoulders:
“No, Noll—it can’t be. Your mother would never stand the new aristocracy—it’s so damned like the old profligacy—without the breeding.... Good-bye, my boy; and damn all ink-stains, say I!”...
As Noll reached London he decided to go and see his mother, and make her acquainted with his doings and his intentions. He had an uneasy feeling that he had unjustly neglected her of late.
He was glad to find, when he arrived, that his father was away from home.
As his mother stood there in her attic, listening to him, Noll was filled with a glow of pride in her gentle womanly dignity and her resourceful and uncomplaining good breeding.
The place had an air that made the word “attic” classical....
Noll, somewhat embarrassed as to how to broach the subject, had begun by denouncing the preface to the new book which held a sneer at his mother; and she had laughed it quietly by. Then Noll had told her of the reviews; and ended by giving her something of a lesson in the art of letters! He himself thought very well of this new book—and gave his mother more than one good hint from Anthony Bickersteth.
Caroline turned to the little mirror over the mantel, as the youth finished speaking, to hide a little dry smile that played about her mouth. She touched her hair with handsome white hands. It was a trick she had.
Noll saw the movement; caught the reflected smile in the mirror; and faltered.
It came to him that he had been just a trifle patronizing to his mother about this new book by Anthony Bickersteth—a little condescending about her powers. He was chilled with a sudden uneasiness.
“Well, Noll?” she asked.
Noll went to the attic window and looked out:
“Mother,” said he—“I feel ashamed of these doles from Wyntwarde—I must win a career with the pen, and be rid of them.”
“You are taking to the hardest trade in the world, Noll—and all the harder because it looks the easiest. Still, I am wholly with you in the sentiment. I should be sorry indeed to see you dependent on Wyntwarde. And I am glad to have you at home—I was looking at your child toys last night, and—I—felt—almost—as if—you were dead!”
Noll was silent for awhile:
“I find it rather hard to say what I came to say, mother, after that,” said he.
“Ah, Noll,” she said—“it is not your fault or mine that childhoodmust pass, with all its delight—we might as well try to hold the hand of death.... Say what you came to say——”
“Well, mother—I have found a couple of rooms in New Inn, that will just hold me; and, without Wyntwarde’s help, I ought to be able to keep myself and get into the way of winning my own bread in a very few months.”
Caroline Baddlesmere sighed:
“Yes, Noll—it is perhaps better that you should make your own life—and in your own way. It is one of the agonies of motherhood that the brood must leave the nest.”
“No, mother—it is not that.... I have to pass a room on the stairs that—in the passing—makes my heart ache—takes the man out of me.”
His lip trembled.
“Yes, Noll; I understand. I have seen you fret at many things here—as I myself have sometimes fretted at them.... I am able, too, to help you a little now—I have had a little windfall——”
Noll left the window and went to his mother. He put his hands on her shoulders:
“No, mother. I will have none of it. You ought not to be living in an attic—and I am not going to help to keep you there. It is one of the prospects that will make me work—that I should see you in your proper position. Not that, God knows, this attic has ever given me a moment’s shame; for you have made it a palace to me.”
Caroline kissed his handsome face:
“Noll,” said she—“you are something of a man.”