“This is the stuff your hero is made of, Seccombe,” jeered Godalming.
“Not bad stuff,” Seccombe heard an unexpected ally say. “The stuff, as Seccombe put it, that grasps a nettle firmly.”
“Oh,” conceded Sir Harry, “Bantison was nettle enough. But as to steam—!” He shrugged his shoulders, and gave Mr. Seccombe the opening for which he angled.
“It does not appeal to you to go to Lancashire and better Hepplestall’s example?” he asked blandly.
“Good God!” said Sir Harry, and the Club was with him.
“There might be wisdom in a visit to your estates,” said Mr. Seccombe, and the Club was, vociferously, with him. Mr. Seccombe smiled secretly: he had, gently but thoroughly, accomplished his purpose of turning the volatile thought of the Club away from his argument. He had raised a laugh at Whitworth’s expense, a brutal laugh, a “Vae Victis” laugh: he had focused attention on the case of Sir Harry Whitworth.
It was not an unusual case. This society had a leader known, with grotesque inappropriateness, as the First Gentleman in Europe and the First Gentleman in Europe had invented a shoe-buckle. Whitworth tripped over the buckle; he criticized it in ill-chosen company and news of his traitorous disparagement was carried to the Regent. Whitworth was in disgrace.
The usual thing and the discreet thing was to efface oneself for a time, but Harry Whitworth had the conceit to believe himself an ornament that the Prince could not dispense with. He stayed in town, daily expecting to be recalled to court: and the frank laughter of Almack’s was a galling revelation of what public opinion thought of his prospects of recall.
It was a humiliation for a high-spirited gentleman, and an embarrassment. To challenge a Club was to invite more ridicule, while to single out Mr. Seccombe, the first cause of his discomfiture, was equally impossible; Seccombe was too old for dueling; one did not go out with a man old enough to be one’s grandfather. There was Godalming, but, again, he feared ridicule: Godalming’s special offense was that he laughed loudly, but Godalming habitually laughed loudly and one couldn’t challenge for insulting emphasis a man who was naturally emphatic.
Whitworth saw no satisfactory way out of it, till Verners, mindful of Dorothy, supplied an opportunity for retreat.