‘His mother,’ Noel answered, dropping his voice a little with a sort of instinctive reverential inflection. ‘Ah, that, now, is a very different matter.’
‘Well, you see, my dear fellow, I’ve never seen either my father or my mother since I was quite a small boy of eight years old or thereabouts. I was sent home to Joyce’s school then, as you know; and after that, I went to Rugby, and next to Cambridge; and I’ve almost entirely forgotten by this time even what my father and mother look like. When they sent me home those two photographs there, a few months back, I assure you there wasn’t a feature in either face I could really and truly recognise or remember.’
‘Precious handsome old gentleman your father, anyhow,’ Noel observed, looking up carelessly at the large framed photograph above the fireplace. ‘Seems the right sort too. Fine air of sterling coininess also, I remark, about his gray hair and his full waistcoat and his turn-down shirt-collar.’
‘O Noel, please; don’t talk that way!’
‘My dear fellow, it’s the course of nature. We fall as the leaves fall, and new generations replace us and take our money. Good for the legacy duty. Now, is your governor sugar or coffee?’
‘Sugar, I believe—in fact, I’m pretty sure of it. He often writes that the canes are progressing, and talks about rattoons and centrifugals and other things I don’t know the very names of. But I believe he has a very good estate of his own somewhere or other at the north end of the island.’
‘Why, of course, then, that’s the explanation of it—as safe as houses, you may depend upon it. The old gentleman’s as rich as Crœsus. He makes you a modest allowance over here, which you, who are an unassuming, hard-working, Chitty-on-contract sort of fellow, consider very handsome, but which is really not one quarter of what he ought to be allowing you out of his probably princely income. You take my word for it, Teddy, that’s the meaning of it. The old gentleman—he has a very knowing look about his weather-eye in the photograph there—he thinks if you were to go out there and see the estate and observe the wealth of the Indies, and discover the way he makes the dollars fly, you’d ask him immediately to double your allowance; and being a person of unusual penetration—as I can see, with half a glance, from his picture—he decides to keep you at the other end of the universe, so that you may never discover what a perfect Rothschild he is, and go in for putting the screw on.’
Edward Hawthorn smiled quietly. ‘It won’t do, my dear fellow,’ he said, glancing up quickly at the handsome open face in the big photograph. ‘My father isn’t at all that sort of person, I feel certain, from his letters. He’s doing all he can to advance me in life; and though he hasn’t seen me for so long, I’m the one interest he really lives upon. I certainly did think it very queer, after I’d taken my degree at Cambridge and got the Arabic scholarship and so forth, that my father didn’t want me to go out to the island. I naturally wanted to see my old home and my father and mother, before settling down to my business in life; and I wrote and told them so. But my father wrote back, putting me off with all sorts of made-up excuses: it was the bad season of the year; there was a great deal of yellow fever about; he was very anxious I should get to work at once upon my law-reading; he wanted me to be called to the bar as early as possible.’
‘And so, just to please the old gentleman, you left your Arabic, that you were such a swell at, and set to work over Benjamin on Sales and Pollock on Mortgages for the best years of your lifetime, when you ought to have been shooting birds in Devonshire or yachting with me in the Princess of Thule off the west coast of Scotland. That’s not my theory of the way fathers ought to be managed. I consented to become a barrister, just to pacify Sir Walter for the moment; but my ideas of barristering are a great deal more elastic and generous than yours are. I’m quite satisfied with getting my name neatly painted over the door of some other fellow’s convenient chambers.’
‘Yes, yes, of course you are. But then your case is very different. The heir to an English baronetcy needn’t trouble himself about his future, like us ordinary mortals; but if I didn’t work hard and get on and make money, I shouldn’t ever be able to marry—at least during my father’s lifetime.’