Everybody listened to Daddy even in an age which never listens: he was so obviously always right; he had so evidently found out the secret of an evergreen vitality; he was so sagaciously and unaffectedly devoted to himself, his selfishness was just tempered by that amount of good nature, when it cost him nothing, which makes a person popular; he was naturally good-natured and serviable and kindly when to be so caused him no difficulty; he would even take a little trouble for people when he liked them, and he liked a great many. On the whole, he was a happy and very sensible creature, and if his existence was one long egotism and inutility—if he were really of no more value than a snail on a cabbage-leaf—if the alpha and omega of existence were comprised for him in his own comfort, he was at least pleasant to look at and to listen to, which cannot always be said of persons of great utility. Daddy, moreover, though a very prudent creature, did patch up some quarrels, prevent some scandals, remove some misunderstandings amongst his numerous acquaintances, but it was because he liked smooth waters around his own little barque; life ought to be comfortable, he thought; it was short, it was bothered, it was subject to unforeseen accident, and it was made precarious by draughts, fogs, model stoves, runaway horses, and orange peel on the pavement; but as far as it could be kept so, it ought to be comfortable. All his philosophy centred in that; and it was a philosophy which carried him along without friction.
If Daddy Gwyllian never borrowed, he also never lent half-a-crown; but he got other people to lend it to other people, and this is the next most attractive social qualification which endears us to our friends.
To real necessity he was occasionally very serviceable indeed, so long as it did not put its empty hand in his own pockets; but on the distresses of fine ladies and gentlemen he was exceedingly severe.
Why couldn’t everybody keep straight as he himself had always kept?
“Why do you bother about Cocky and your sister?” he said to Hurstmanceaux, whom he had known from a child, as they sat alone in the ducal smoking-room. “If Cocky and your sister had a million a year to-morrow they’d want a million and a half when the year ended. There are people like that: you can’t alter ’em. Their receptivity is always greater than what they receive. Their maw’s bigger than the biggest morsel you can put into it. Don’t strip yourself for them. You might as well go without your bath for fear the Thames should run dry.”
Daddy was so fond of pretty women (platonically) that he generally forgave them all their sins, which was the easier because they were not sins against himself. But Lady Kenilworth, though he admired her, he did not like her; he gave her a little sly pat whenever he could.
She yawned when he talked, which nobody else ever did, and once, when they were staying at the same country house, when he had offered to ride with her, she had told him in plain terms that she didn’t care for old men in the saddle or out of it.
It was not in human nature to forget and forgive such a reply, even though you were the best natured man in the world. He could not do her much harm, for Mouse was at that height of beauty, fashion and renown at which a person is absolutely unassailable; but when he could breathe on the mirror of her charms and dull it, he did so; when he could slip a little stone under the smoothly-rolling wheel of her life’s triumphal chariot, he did so. It was but rarely. She was a very popular person. Her elastic spirit, her beauty, her grace, her untiring readiness for pleasure, all made her welcome in society; her very insolence was charming, and her word was law on matters of fashion. She was often unkind, often malicious, always selfish, always cruel, but these qualities served to intimidate and added to her potency. People trembled for her verdict and supplicated for her presence. Whether she were leading the cotillon or the first flight, whether she was forming a costume quadrille or bringing down a rocksetter, she was equally admirable, and although she excelled in masculine sports she had the tact always to remain exquisitely feminine in appearance and style. She had had also the tact and the good luck always to preserve her position. She had always done what she liked, but she had always done it in such a way that it had never injured her.
CHAPTER X.
A week or two later Hurstmanceaux saw a paragraph in the morning papers which made him throw them hastily aside, leave his breakfast unfinished, and go to his sister’s house in Stanhope Street. Her ladyship was in her bath. “Say I shall return in half an hour. I come on an urgent matter.” Leaving that message with her servants he went to walk away the time in the Park. It was a fine and breezy morning, but Hurstmanceaux, who always hated the town, saw no beauty in the budding elms, or the cycling women, or even in Jack or Boo, who were trotting along on their little black Shetlands. When the time was up he waited restlessly another half hour in his sister’s boudoir, where he felt and looked like a St. Bernard dog shut up in a pen at a show.