The old lord took to his pacing again:
“By the dogs, an abortion. He cannot stay on a horse long enough for it to kill him. A horse! Dogs, he hasn’t even the blood of the Wattleses in him—he’d turn giddy on an office-stool unless he were strapped to it. He is the very pick of dancing-masters—he has cast back to the bank-manager, except that he can’t count. There he stands against God’s heaven, a knock-kneed reproach to his Maker.... The nearest thing he gets to a horse is to wear riding-breeches and long boots on the parades of fashionable watering-places. But he has thrown out a virtue we none others have had—he has not gone into opposition to the head of his house. He will be the twenty-sixth in the title, and the other twenty-four have pulled their fathers’ beards. He has promised never to marry without my approval....” He tramped silently for awhile, and burst out again: “And so you think I will refuse to have a word to say to your cub! Well, you are mistaken. But it is on conditions—you understand—on conditions.”
Anthony nodded:
“I must know the conditions,” he said.
“You must? Hoho! still the organizer of victory, eh!”
Anthony said nothing.
He stood and watched the striding figure before him, and bit his teeth on all repartee. He had a dogged desire to win that which he had come to ask; and he was not going to lose it for the sake of a score in grooms’ badinage.
He left the waggeries to the noble lord.
“Look here, friend Anthony—your uncle sold the estates, and rotted in Boulogne. And the county dropped him—he only had the portraits with him when he died. Well! does the world remember that you come of the Plantagenets? does the county remember that your sires were William of Normandy and Charlemagne and Louis Debonair? Not a whit. It thinks you are a damned scribbling fellow; and, by the dogs, you are. And the lordship of the manor is gone to some cheesemonger from down South—and, hoho! I swear it, your arms are on his carriage panels, the great damned peacock’s tail for crest, and the scarlet torteaux and the blessed chevron. All taken over with the lordship of the manor. Yes, by the three scarlet tortoises, their women are wonderful! brand new popinjays on a brand new stick. Nothing old and dingy in the old home, I can promise you—Chippendale and the eighteenth century all thrust out o’ doors, gone to the workmen’s cottages—and the rooms heavy with full-bellied comfortable saddle-bag lounges and the Latest Thing. But—mine host is in Burke, and glitters in Debrett. And you? Beelzebub! you scribble. You are gone down to the bottom of an ink-pot. And the boy! our good Oliver—where will he go? Yet, by my soul, you did one clean thing—you called him after me—you had sufficient pride to put aside your dirty conceit and give him the name of the house. Wherefore, since he is an Oliver, and since he has gone into opposition to his father, who went into opposition to me—and since two negatives make an affirmative—therefore and whereby and notwithstanding, I’ll help the boy; but I say it shall be on conditions.”
Anthony’s one dread was lest he should discover that Caroline was not in the surrender.