They owed nothing to anybody. They had no estates to keep up; no poor people depended upon them; the clerks and porters at the office were not to call dependents, though probably—out of good nature, when they were ill or trouble arose in their families, if it happened to come under the notice of the head of the firm, he would fling them a little money, perhaps with an admonition, perhaps with a joke. But this was pure liberality, generosity as his friends called it. He had nothing to “keep up.”
Even the sick gamekeeper who had been hurt by a fall, though he was in the new tenant’s service, was Lady Allonby’s servant, and it was she who had to support his family while he was ill. The rich people were responsible for nobody. If they were kind—and they were not unkind—it was all to their credit, for they had no duty to any one.
This was how the head of the house considered his position. “I don’t know anything about your land burdens, your feudal burdens,” he would say; “money is what has made me. I pay taxes enough, I hope; but I’ve got no sentimental taxes to pay, and I won’t have anything to say to such rubbish. I am a working man myself, just like the rest. If these fellows will take care of their own business as I did, they will get on themselves as I have done, and want nothing from anybody. I’ve no call even to ‘keep up’ my family; they ought to be working for themselves, as I was at their age. If I do, it’s because the girls and their mother are too many for me, and I have to yield to their prejudices.”
These were Mr. Dirom’s principles: but he threw about his money very liberally all the same, giving large subscriptions, with a determination to stand at the head of the list when he was on it at all, and an inclination to twit the others who did not give so liberally with their stinginess; “What is the use of making bones of it?” he said, with a flourish to Sir John, who was well known to be in straightened circumstances; “I just draw a cheque for five hundred and the thing’s done.”
Sir John could no more have drawn a cheque for five hundred than he could have flown, and Mr. Dirom knew it; and the knowledge gave an edge to his pleasure. Sir John’s twenty-five pounds was in reality a much larger contribution than Mr. Dirom’s five hundred, but the public did not think of this. The public said that Sir John gave the twenty-five because he could not help it, because his position demanded it; but Mr. Dirom’s five hundred took away the breath of the spectators. It was more than liberal; it was magnificent.
Mr. Dirom was a man who wore white waistcoats and large well-blown roses in his coat. He swaggered, without knowing it, in his walk, and in his speech, wherever he was visible. The young people were better bred, and were very conscious of those imperfections. They preferred, indeed, that he should not “trouble,” as they said, to come home, especially to come to the country when business prevented. There was no occasion for papa to “trouble.” Fred could take his place if he was detained in town.
In this way they showed a great deal of tender consideration for their father’s engagements. Perhaps he was deceived by it, perhaps not; no one could tell. He took his own way absolutely, appearing when it suited him, and when it did not suit him leaving them to their own devices. Allonby was too far off for him, too distant from town: though he was quite willing to be known as the occupier of so handsome a “place.” He came down for the first of the shooting, which is the right thing in the city, but afterwards did not trouble his family much with his presence, which was satisfactory to everybody concerned. It was not known exactly what Mr. Dirom had risen from, but it was low enough to make his present elevation wonderful, and to give that double zest to wealth which makes the self-made man happy.
Mrs. Dirom was of a different order. She was two generations at least from the beginning of her family, and she too, though in a less degree than her children, felt that her husband’s manners left something to be desired. He had helped himself up by her means, she having been, as in the primitive legend, of the class of the master’s daughters: at least her father was the head of the firm under which Dirom had begun to “make his way.” But neither was she quite up to the mark.
“Mamma is dreadfully middle-class,” the girls said. In some respects that is worse than the lower class. It made her a little timid and doubtful of her position, which her husband never was. None of these things affected the young people; they had received “every advantage.”
Their father’s wealth was supposed to be immense; and when wealth is immense it penetrates everywhere. A moderate fortune is worth very little in a social point of view, but a great fortune opens every door.