Dronda to be sold! The words switched back before Clive's eyes that figure of Reality that recently he had forgotten. Dronda to be sold! He saw his own youth coloured with the green of the lawns, the silver of the lake, the deep red brick of the old house. Dronda to be sold!
"But that's impossible, father!" he cried.
He found, however, that a great deal more than that was possible. He had never possessed, as he had been used sometimes proudly to boast, a very good head for figures, and the old man had not a great talent for making things clear, but the final point was that the Income Tax and the general increased expenses of living had made Dronda impossible.
"Also, my boy," Lord Dronda added, "all the money you've been spending lately—your mother only confessed to me last week. You'll have to get some work and settle down at it. I'm sorry, but the old days are gone."
I'm quite aware that this is not a very original story. On how many occasions in how many novels has the young heir to the entails been suddenly faced with poverty and been compelled to sit down and work? Nine times out of ten most nobly has he done it, and ten times out of ten he has won the girl of his heart by so doing.
The only novelty here is the moment of the catastrophe. Here was the very period towards which, through years and years of discomfort and horror in France, young Clive had been looking. "After the war he would have the time of his life"; "after the war" had arrived and Dronda was to be sold! His first impulse was to abuse fate generally and his father in particular. One glance at the old man checked that. How funny he looked, sitting there on the edge of the sofa, his thick stick between his knees, his hat tilted back, and that air of bewildered perplexity on his round face as of a baby confronted with his first thunder-storm. His thick-set, rather stout body, his side-whiskers, his rough red hands—all seemed to remove him completely from the smart, slim, dark young man who sat opposite him. Nevertheless Clive felt the bond. He was suddenly in unison with his father as he had never been, in all his life, with his mother. His father and he had never had what one would call a "heart-to-heart" conversation in their lives—they did not have one now. They would have been bitterly distressed at such an idea. All Clive said was:
"What a bore! I didn't know things were like that. You ought to have told me."
To which Dronda replied, his eyes wistfully on his son's empty sleeve:
"I didn't think it would get so bad. You'll have to find some work. No need for us to bother your mother about it."