Lionel was often out of the way. He aspired to lead the life of a very smart young man indeed. He confided to me that it was somewhat of a mystery to him that in all the years he had been about town he had only lately succeeded in getting into the particular set he desired to mix with. He was a member of one or two extremely select clubs, although the absolute holy of holies he could not enter, despite the fact that Sir Anthony was still as far off Sibella as he had ever been—at least, such was my impression. The infatuated baronet was prepared to thrust Lionel down the throats of his most intimate circle.
Sir Anthony might have a curious pronunciation of the Queen’s English, which dispensed with final “g’s,” and clipped the majority of words in an altogether surprising manner; he might wear checks which to a chess enthusiast would at once have suggested a problem; he might have a partiality for spats and white bowlers; he might even swear occasionally in the presence of women, but in spite of all these things he remained undeniably a gentleman; for being a gentleman has nothing to do with grammar or morals. In time a street urchin may acquire the one, and a Nonconformist parson may have the other, but the fact of being a gentleman resides in the individual’s consciousness. Therefore it is useless for those to whom public companies and cheeses and cheap teas have stood for the goose with the golden eggs to watch my lord’s peculiarities or the characteristics of even plain John Brown, gentleman. They never can be gentlemen. Their sons may. Their sons’ sons surely will be, but they themselves will feel conscious that they are not the right article till their dying day. They may be the best of fellows, the most upright of men, the most polished of speakers, but they will hear it whispered behind their backs every now and then that “Hang it all, the man’s not a gentleman, you know!”
And I am convinced that had I, Israel Rank, been completely a gentleman on both sides I could never have penned the above snobbish paragraph. It is the reticence of gentlemen, and their lack of statement of claim, that keeps up all the barriers and holds democracy at bay.
Lionel Holland might have felt more secure if his father had sent him to Eton and Oxford, which he could well have afforded to do, but to old Mr. Holland these were almost mythical places. Lionel himself spoke with characteristic unkindness of his father for not having done so. He was, fortunately for himself, impervious to many slights and snubs which would have driven a more self-respecting youth back into his own circle.
When I had first advised him to go in for politics I did not imagine the matter would have been so easily arranged. Another and a cleverer man, equally rich, might have waited for years for such an opportunity. The seat he was selected to contest happened, however, to be in that part of the country in which lay Sir Anthony Cross’s estate, and what with Sir Anthony’s own influence and the influence of the people around with whom he was connected by ties of marriage or of interest, he was practically able to secure Lionel’s election. If the latter had the least notion of Sir Anthony’s real motive for all this attention he was evidently prepared to accept it, and laugh in his sleeve at the fool who was carrying his pigs to such a bad market. The son of the man who had risen to wealth from the position of a street boy had plenty of shrewd cunning, and could bide his time. Men of high and noble honour and unstainable integrity do not make fortunes, or at least very rarely, and the valuable qualities of those who do are not as a rule lost in a generation.
Chapter XVII
My affairs stood thus. I proposed to marry Miss Gascoyne if I could, but I had no notion of breaking with Sibella.
All this time I was closely debating which of the obstacles in my way I should remove next.
There had been three Henry Gascoynes. The youngest was gone. There remained two, and one of them, nearly ninety, was scarcely worth considering. He was hardly likely to marry, and if he did so children were almost out of the question, although I had not made myself acquainted with his physical condition and method of life. He lived the existence of a recluse on a miniature estate somewhere in the lake district. None of the Gascoynes that I was acquainted with had ever met him.
The remaining Henry Gascoyne was a parson and a childless widower. He was sixty-two years of age. His cure was in Lincolnshire, and one of the very few livings still worth having. The eminently spiritual method of selection practised by the Established Church was testified to by the fact that the living had been the gift of his wife’s father, and the claims of a curate who had done the work of the parish for thirty years, representing the valetudinarian and octogenarian vicar, had been passed over. Country livings are an appanage of family, not of church. Even that good old-fashioned custom, however, is going with the diminution in the value of tithes. It is no use struggling to retain what is not worth having.