"Has my father sent for me, Watson?"
"No, sir, he does not feel well enough to see you now; he will see you after dinner."
With these words, she left the room.
"Better so," said the doctor, as he took leave; "better for you and better for him."
[CHAPTER III]
CAPTAIN FORTESCUE'S PROMISE
WHEN Dr. Cholmondeley had gone, and whilst the old butler was laying the cloth in the dining-room, the Captain sat in an armchair by the fire in the library. How well he knew that room, and how the handsome vulgarity of its furniture had appalled him in days gone by! The gaudy amber-coloured carpet with its huge floral pattern; the table-cloth of velvet plush, but of a different red from that of the carpet; the massive bookcase with its rows of books, chosen because of their gilded binding, but in total disregard of their contents; the pictures on the walls, selected for the splendour of their frames, but possessing nothing in themselves to charm the artistic eye; the great mirror in its elaborate gilt setting; the massive coal-box with its startling pictorial design; the bright blue curtains in the window embellished with a golden pattern; the very ornaments standing on the mantleshelf,—one and all, were costly and magnificent indeed, but at the same time utterly lacking in the very elements of taste or beauty. These, however, he passed over to-day, without even bestowing upon them a single sigh of regret, as he thought of the large sums of money which had been wasted upon them.
But one object in the room he did look at and sigh over, and that was a large picture, hung in a gorgeous gilt frame on the wall, just opposite the chair in which he was sitting. It was the full-length portrait of a woman of about forty, with dark hair, high cheek-bones, and a very red face. She was arrayed in gaudy colours, which harmonized as little with each other as did the colours of the room. It was a heavy, stupid face, with hardly a gleam of intelligence in it.
Captain Fortescue gazed at it, and a pained expression came into his face as he did so. It was the picture of his mother! He had never seen his mother; she had died when he was a few months old, and he often wished that he had never seen her picture. He could have drawn her so differently with the pen of imagination. He could have painted her in such subdued and beautiful colours. He would have made her tall and fair and lovely, with a sweet, gentle face, a graceful figure, and with eyes which had a world of tenderness in them. But here was her picture drawn from life, and she was his mother, and he must try to think as dutifully of her as he could.
Again he said to himself that his father's generosity to him had been a mistake; it had caused him to have feelings and ideals out of keeping with his position; it had made him even dissatisfied with his own mother.