The man exulted like a triumphant ogre. He had said to the boy “Win distinction!—it’s in your blood!” and by Gosh! the youngster had gone and done it! He wearied Cowell, Sowell, Dowell, and the rest to the verge of tears with endless boasts—with windy prophecies of Morty’s future greatness. At home, or at his office or Club, or in the sacred ante-rooms of stately Government Departments, he would sit heaving and swelling and fermenting like a large moist, crimson heap of beetroot being distilled into the old Jamaica rum supplied by Mowell to Her Majesty’s Forces—until he broke and burst in bubbles of pride. On an average he must have repeated the “I’m dam’ if I retreat! I’m blest if I do, so there!” utterance upwards of a hundred times a day.
The fact of his son having ceased to write to him since his unrelenting reply to the letter we know of, did not shake the monstrous egotism of the father’s certainty that all would be well between them by-and-by. Meanwhile he laid domineering, greedy hands on all letters that the son wrote to his mother—opening them first, and permitting that much-bullied woman, as a favor, to read them when he had done. He had only to get richer, and Mortimer would come to heel, like a blundering young pointer, none the worse in his owner’s estimation, for having shown spirit in threatening to break away.
And every day that dawned did see the man rise up with a thicker coating of golden mud upon him, to be scraped off and invested in safe things. He had boasted to his heir that he stood to make millions by the War, and his boast was verified. There had been moments when his success had almost frightened him.
But now, between paternal pride and gratified vanity, his greed of gain was quickened, and his few remaining scruples sailed down the wind like thistle-blow. His conscience slept behind his gorgeous waistcoat, seldom calling for Cockle’s pills or any other helpful remedy. He left off jolting up in bed o’ nights with the gray sweat of terror standing on him, when the north-west wind roared among the elms of his country place near Market Drowsing, or bellowed among the sooty chimney-pots of Hanover Square. He could think placidly under these circumstances of The Realm thrashing on her way to the Bay of Balaklava, looking for the Black Sea gale she was not meant to weather through. He could await with calmness the arrival of the cablegram which should cram the coffers of Cowell, Towell, Powell, Sowell, Bowell, Crowell, Dowell, and Co. with solid golden drops wrung from the veins of victimized firms of underwriters—and materially hasten the hour that should transform himself into a glittering joss of solid bullion, before whom the world—and chief of all the world—his son—should burn incense and bow down.
And all the time his Fate was drawing nearer, sword uplifted.... And a day dawned when the blade flashed and fell. And it bit deep through the little slanting forehead, behind which all the creatures of the Noah’s Ark—the Goose and the Donkey uppermost lately—were jumbled and packed away.
It had been a wild wet summer in the British Isles that year, and a wild wet autumn had followed. November had set in with gales and thunderstorms. The floods were out when Jowell went down to his little place in Sloughshire. Suppose him humming “Marble Halls” and building castles in the air of Government hay-trusses at twenty pounds a ton, as the train carried him through the submerged country, where men in punts were lassoing the floating stacks and cornricks, and fishing with grapnels for drowned pigs, sheep, and cows.
Where the land was not under water, laborers were breaking up the green fallows for the Spring sowing. They were veterans or striplings for the most part. Middle-aged men and young men were almost as rare as strawberries in winter—so many had been taken by the War.... And the cry was for more men, and more, unceasingly. At every barracks and police-station, at every town-hall or railway booking-office, gayly-pictured placards were posted offering bounties, baited lines were dangled, to catch the Recruit.... Brakes carrying brass-bands, and with beribboned warriors on the box, drove through the country towns on market days, to the strains of “Rule, Britannia” and “See the Conquering Hero”; the alluring stories of the dashing sergeant, battled with newspaper-reports of a country where there was wonderful little in the way of eating, and scarce a drop o’ beer.
But the bounties scored in the long run. Gearge and Tummus, Market-Day over, would go back to their field-work and plod behind the teams, whistling stray bars of “See the Conquering” and “Rule, Britannia!” Then, as the bright steel share clogged with the fat brown clay, Gearge would throw down the plow-stilts, swearing bitterly:
“Ten shillin’ to-wick and nowt but bread for dinner! I’ll stand it no more—be danged if I do now! Wut say, lad? Ool’t jine th’ Army?”