Candler appeared.
“These—these gentlemen are going. Is everything ready?”
“The cab is at the door, m’lord. The usual cab.”
Captain Douglas made one last desperate effort. “Sir!” he said. “My lord—”
The Lord Chancellor turned upon him with a face that he sought to keep calm, though the eyebrows waved and streamed like black smoke in a gale. “Captain Douglas,” he said, “you are probably not aware of the demands upon the time and patience of a public servant in such a position as mine. You see the world no doubt as a vastly entertaining fabric upon which you can embroider your—your facetious arrangements. Well, it is not so. It is real. It is earnest. You may sneer at the simplicity of an old man, but what I tell you of life is true. Comic effect is not, believe me, its goal. And you, sir, you, sir, you impress me as an intolerably foolish, flippant and unnecessary young man. Flippant. Unnecessary. Foolish.”
As he said these words Candler approached him with a dust coat of a peculiar fineness and dignity, and he uttered the last words over his protruded chest while Candler assisted his arms into his sleeves.
“My lord,” said Captain Douglas again, but his resolution was deserting him.
“No,” said the Lord Chancellor, leaning forward in a minatory manner while Candler pulled down the tail of his jacket and adjusted the collar of his overcoat.
“Uncle,” said Captain Douglas.
“No,” said the general, with the curt decision of a soldier, and turned exactly ninety degrees away from him. “You little know how you have hurt me, Alan! You little know. I couldn’t have imagined it. The Douglas strain! False Witness—and insult. I am sorry, my dear Moggeridge, beyond measure.”