“We are going to Cattaro. Augustus has been named consul there.”
“Darling child, you don't know what you are saying. Is n't a consul a horrid creature that lives in a seaport, and worries merchant seamen, and imprisons people who have no passports?”
“I declare I have n't a notion of his duties,” said Nelly, laughing.
“Oh, I know them perfectly. Papa always wrote to the consul about getting heavy baggage through the customhouse; and when our servants quarrelled with the porters, or the hotel people, it was the consul sent some of them to jail; but are you aware, darling, he is n't a creature one knows. They are simply impossible, dear, impossible.” And as she spoke she lay back in her chair, and fanned herself as though actually overcome by the violence of her emotion.
“I must hope Augustus will not be impossible;” and Nelly said this with a dry mixture of humor and vexation.
“He can't help it, dearest. It will be from no fault of his own. Let a man be what he may, once he derogates there's an end of him. It sounds beautifully, I know, to say that he will remain gentleman and man of station through all the accidents of life; so he might, darling, so long as he did nothing—absolutely nothing. The moment, however, he touches an emploi it's all over; from that hour he becomes the Customs creature, or the consul, or the factor, or whatever it be, irrevocably. Do you know that is the only way to keep men of family out of small official life? We should see them keeping lighthouses if it were not for the obloquy.”
“And it would be still better than dependence.”
“Yes, dearest, in a novel—in a three-volume thing from Mudie—so it would; but real life is not half so accommodating. I 'll talk to Gusty about this myself. And now, do tell me about yourself. Is there no engagement? no fatal attachment that all this change of fortune has blighted? Who is he, dearest? tell me all! You don't know what a wonderful creature I am for expedients. There never was the like of me for resources. I could always pull any one through a difficulty but myself.”
“I am sorry I have no web to offer you for disentanglement.”
“So then he has behaved well; he has not deserted you in your change of fortune?”