Yes, they certainly were very amusing, his children; he very much enjoyed their jokes. But recently it had been borne in upon him that they did not care so very much about his. He often felt de trop in the billiard-room—his own billiard-room; especially when Arnold was at home.
He suddenly remembered how bored he and Hugh Mallam used to be by his own father’s jokes—or, rather, puns; and those quotations of his! Certain words or situations would produce automatically certain quotations; for instance, if his austere and ill-favoured wife or daughter revoked at Whist, it would be, “When lovely woman stoops to folly!” And, unfortunately, his partner’s surname was Hope; unfortunately, because every time one of them said, “Mr. Hope told me so,” it would be, “Hope told a flattering tale.”
But surely he, Dick, wasn’t as tedious as that? He rarely made a pun, and never a quotation; nevertheless, he did not seem to amuse his children.
Good Lord! He would be fifty-seven his next birthday—the age his father was when he died. It seemed incredible that he, “Little Dickie,” should be the age of his own father.
Damn them! Damn them! He didn’t feel old—and that was the only thing that mattered.
He stuck out his chin obstinately, put on his eyeglasses again, and, returning to his novel, was very soon identified, once more, with the hero, and hence—inviolate, immortal, taboo. Whether hiding in the bracken, or lurking, disguised, in low taverns of Berlin, what had he to fear? For how could revolvers, Delilahs, aeroplanes, all the cunning of Hell or the Wilhelm Strasse, prevail against one who is knit from the indestructible stuff of shadows and the dreams of a million generations? He belonged to that shadowy Brotherhood who, before Sir Walter had given them names and clothed them in flesh, had hunted the red deer, and followed green ladies, in the Borderland—not of England and Scotland, but of myth and poetry. As Hercules, he had fought the elements; as Mithras, he had hidden among the signs of the Zodiac; as Osiris, he had risen from the dead.
No; the hero of these romances cannot fall, for if he fell the stars would fall with him, the corn would not grow, the vines would wither, and the race of man would become extinct.
3
Rory Dundas, being a capricious young man, devoted himself, that morning, not to Concha, but to Anna and Jasper.