He perceived that to his mother the established order of things there in her little island was sacred—an arrangement to be still further upheld and solidified. She had suddenly become a part of a great system, intrusted with a care for its maintenance and stability, as one of its guardians. Before, it had mattered little to her, for she was not of it. Now it was very different.
Slowly David followed Clark to his own apartments. He had been given those of the old lord, his uncle. Everything about him was dark, massive, and rich, but without grace. His bags and boxes had been unpacked and his dinner suit laid in readiness, and Clark stood stiffly awaiting orders.
"Will you have a shave, my lord?"
The man's manner jarred on him. It was obsequious, and he hated it. Yet it was only the custom. Clark was simple-hearted and kindly, filling his little place in the upholding of the system of which he was a part; had his manner been different, a shade more familiar, David would have resented it and ordered him out,—but of this David was not conscious. In spite of his scruples, he was born and bred an aristocrat.
"No—a—I'll shave myself." Still the man waited, and, taking up David's coat, flicked a particle of dust from the collar. "I don't want anything. You may go."
"Thank you." Clark melted quietly out of the apartment.
"Thanks me for being rude to him," thought David, irritably; "I shall take pleasure in being rude to him. My God! What a farce life is over here! The whole thing is a farce."
He shaved himself and cut his chin, and when he appeared later with a patch of court-plaster thereon, Clark commented to himself on "his lordship's" inability to do the shaving properly.
As David thought over his mother's words—her outlook on life—his sister's idle aims—the companionships she must have and the kind of talk to which she must listen—he grew more and more annoyed. He contrasted it all with the past. His mother, who had been so noble and fine, seemed to have lost individuality, to have become only a segment of a circle which it was henceforth to be her highest care to keep intact. Laura must become a part of the same sacred ring, and he, too, must join hands with those who formed it and make it his duty to keep others out.