"How little they know," he said to himself, as he went down the crowded steps to Platform No. 5. "I sometimes think I ought to tell them that I am not one of themselves."
[CHAPTER II]
A DIFFICULT POSITION
CAPTAIN FORTESCUE was in good time for his train, and secured a corner seat in the carriage. He bought a book at the stall and opened it when the train started, but he read only a few pages. He was wondering why his father had sent for him, and what explanation of the telegram he would receive on his arrival.
When he was last at home, he had thought his father was aged and altered, and therefore he had suspected that illness was the reason of his summons. Yet, from the letter received the day before, he had evidently been out as usual, and it contained no hint of his feeling indisposed at the time of writing it. Was there any other cause which had led to this unexpected and sudden call to return home at once?
Between Captain Fortescue and his father there was nothing whatever in common. Their ideas, their way of looking at things, their habits of life were totally and diametrically opposed. His father was a wealthy man, but not even his son could stretch his filial affection sufficiently far to call him a gentleman.
Mr. Fortescue was a man who had risen, people were accustomed to say, when they spoke of him. And yet he had not risen. His position in life was altered; instead of being a miner, obliged to work hard for his daily bread, he had become a landed proprietor. How this had been accomplished, his son had not the remotest idea; but he had never risen. He was exactly the same uneducated, vulgar man that he had been in his days of hard work and poverty. He could barely read or write, both were done in his own fashion, and he never made the slightest effort to improve in either. He cared for little but eating and drinking: he domineered over his servants and dependants at one moment, and spoilt them the next: he was lavish in his expenditure at times, and at other times would haggle over a halfpenny: he had not even learnt to speak King's English; his talk was the talk of the mine; even his groom could speak more grammatically, and could express himself with a less provincial accent.
No one realized all this more than Mr. Fortescue's own son; and yet it gave him a pang even to harbour the thought of it for a moment. For he had been a good father to him in many ways. He had shouted at him and blustered at him from his youth up, but he had never grudged him anything. He had lavished money in the most prodigal way on his son's education. He had sent him to the most expensive preparatory school that could be found, when he was only seven years old. From thence, the boy had gone to Eton, and in due course had passed into Sandhurst. No nobleman's son had ever had more spent upon him. The best coaching that London could produce had been his; he had been given every opportunity, every possible advantage.
Fortescue had been gazetted to a cavalry regiment, and his pay consequently was far from adequate for his expenses; but no money that he needed was withheld from him. A handsome allowance was supplemented by numerous cheques, to supply the wherewithal for various outgoings in the way of travelling or pleasure. The Honourable Evelyn Berington, Lady Earlswood's younger son, who had been his friend throughout the whole of his Sandhurst course, had far less money to spend than he had. And all this made Fortescue feel that, whatever his father might be, and however much his lack of refinement might jar upon him, it was his bounden duty to give him the affection and respect due from a loyal and grateful son. Besides which, Kenneth Fortescue was a man of honest religious belief. He knew the requirements of the Fifth Commandment. He know that, so far as it was possible for him to honour his father, that honour must be readily and cheerfully given.
And yet, at times, the incongruity of his position was keenly realized by him. He felt it very strongly on this particular December night, when he was being carried away swiftly into the darkness north of Birmingham. That was the real reason which prevented him from reading as he journeyed on; he was too busy doing battle with himself; he was fighting against his natural repugnance to all that was common or vulgar, his innate shrinking from the home where refinement of feeling or expression found no place. He was deeply grateful to his father for all that he had done for him in the past; and yet, that night, he was inclined to think that it had been a terrible mistake. He had been educated out of his proper position; his friends and acquaintances were all men moving in an utterly different circle; his sympathies and interests and attractions were in a sphere which he could never have any right to enter. If Lady Earlswood had seen his father, she would never have dreamt for a moment of inviting him to her Christmas house-party or of reckoning him amongst her friends.