CHAPTER XXVII.
COMING INTO COLLISION WITH THE PROPRIETIES.
It is not surprising that, in his new station, “Cobbler” Horn should have committed an occasional breach of etiquette. It was unlikely that he would ever be guilty of real impropriety; but it was inevitable that he should, now and again, set at nought the so-called “proprieties” of fashionable life. In the genuine sense of the word, “Cobbler” Horn was a Christian gentleman; and he would have sustained the character in any position in which he might have been placed. But he had a feeling akin to contempt for the punctilious and conventional squeamishness of polite society.
It was, no doubt, largely for this reason that “society” did not receive “the Golden Shoemaker” within its sacred enclosure. Not that it rejected him. He had too much money for that; half his wealth would have procured him the entrée to the most select circles. But the attitude he assumed towards the fashionable world rendered impossible his admission to its charmed precincts. He made it evident that he would not, and could not, conform to its customs or observe its rules. The world, indeed, courted him, at first, and would gladly have taken him within its arms. Fashion set to work to woo him, as it would have wooed an ogre possessed of his glittering credentials. But he repelled its advances with an amused indifference verging on contempt.
“Cobbler” Horn foiled, by dint of sheer unresponsiveness, the first attempt to introduce itself to him made by the world. On his return from America, one of the first things which attracted his attention was a pile of visiting cards on a silver salver which stood on the hall table. Some of these bore the most distinguished names which Cottonborough or its vicinity could boast. There were municipal personages of the utmost dignity, and the representatives of county families of the first water. It had taken the world some little time to awake to a sense of its “duty” with regard to the “Cobbler” who had suddenly acceded to so high a position in the aristocracy of wealth. But when, at length, it realized that “the Golden Shoemaker” was indeed a fact, it set itself to bestow upon him as full and free a recognition as though the blood in his veins had been of the most immaculate blue.
It was during his absence in America that the great rush of the fashionable world to his door had actually set in. But Miss Jemima had not been taken unawares. She had supplied herself betimes with a manual of etiquette, which she had studied with the assiduity of a diligent school-girl. She had also, though not without trepidation, ordered a quantity of visiting cards, and had them inscribed respectively with her own and her brother’s names. And thus, when Society made its first advances, it did not find Miss Jemima unprepared.
When “Cobbler” Horn espied the visiting cards on his hall table, he said to his sister:
“What, more of these, Jemima?”
“Yes, Thomas,” she responded, with evident pride; “and some of them belong to the best people in the neighbourhood!”
“And have all these people been here?” he asked, taking up a bunch of the cards between his finger and thumb, and regarding them with a mingling of curiosity and amusement.