“I see,” replied Hurstmanceaux, and felt once more that beside the worldly wisdom of his sisters he was indeed a novice.
“You live in the country till you forget everything,” said Lady Wisbeach.
During the visits of the Duchess of Otterbourne to Vale Royal her hostess saw a great change in her. “That pretty creature isn’t what she was, William,” she said to her husband. “She don’t cheek you as she used to do, and she seems quite down in the dumps. Surely it can’t be that she’s fretting on account of the death of that little drunkard?”
William Massarene did not look at his wife as he answered. “’Tis want of dollars frets her, my good woman. That’s a disease as ages these young ’uns fast. Thoroughbred mares want gilded oats.”
“Deary me! What’s the use of being a duchess if you don’t get gilded oats?” said his wife. She was troubled by the idea of anyone so exalted being brought so low as to want money. Being tender-hearted she redoubled her attentions to her guest, but being tactless she mingled with them a familiarity for which their object would willingly have murdered her, and which she resented all the more bitterly because she was forced to conceal her resentment.
He got far beyond all social need of her now. His position was secure in the county, in the country, in the world. Men knew what he was worth both in millions and in mind, and they feared him. He did not scruple to treat them like dirt, as he expressed it, and it was they who wanted him now, they who had to sue for his good offices and bear his snubs.
For some few people like Hurstmanceaux he was still only a cad sitting on a pile of money-bags; but these were so very few that they did not count, and he could very well do without them.
All the pick of the Tory party came to Vale Royal, shot his pheasants and partridges, drank his rare wines, asked his opinion, and shook his hand. If out of his hearing they still called him a blackguard American, they were now extremely civil to his face, and when he wanted them he had only to whistle. It pleased his love of dominion and his sense of successful effort. He felt that all these noble people, pretty people, fastidious people, all these political chiefs and swell notabilities and leaders of parliament and of fashion, were as so many comedians, all playing for him. He hated them for a great many reasons: for their polished accents, for their way of bowing, for the ease with which they wore their clothes, for the trick they had of looking well-bred even in shabby gowns or old shooting-coats. But he despised them; he could afford to despise them, and they could not afford to despise him.
When he thought of this he passed his tongue over his lips with a relishing gesture, like a dog who has been eating a beefsteak.
With the world, as with the Duchess of Otterbourne, he had ceased to be suppliant—he had become master; and he had always been a hard master, he had always thought that the best argument was a long strip of cowhide.