It was about ten minutes’ walk to The Lilies through the park; but as the night was so lovely, the baronet proposed they should take the longer way by the road, and see the river by moonlight. They walked on for a while without speaking. Raymond was enjoying the beauty of the scene, the gold of the fields and the green of the meadows, all shining alike in silver, the identity of the trees and flowers merged in uniform radiancy; he fancied his companion was admiring it too, until the latter broke the spell by an unexpected exclamation: “What an infernal bore money is, my dear fellow! I mean the want of it.”
“Mon Dieu!” was the count’s astonished comment. And as Sir Simon said nothing more, he looked up at him uneasily: “I thought things had come all right again, mon cher?”
“They never were right; that’s the deuce of it. If I’d found them right, I wouldn’t have been such an ass as to put them wrong. A man needn’t be a saint or a philosopher to keep within an income of ten thousand pounds a year; the difficulty is to live up to the name of it when you haven’t got more than the fifth in reality. A man’s life isn’t worth a year’s purchase with the worry these rascally fellows give one—a set of low scoundrels that would suck your vitals with all the pleasure in life, just because you happen to be a gentleman. Here’s that architect fellow that ran up those stables last year, blustering and blowing about his miserable twelve hundred pounds as if it was the price of a cathedral! I told the fellow he’d have to wait for his money, and of course he was all readiness and civility, anything to secure the job; and it’s no sooner done than he’s down on me with a hue-and-cry. He must have his money, forsooth, or else he’ll be driven to the painful necessity of applying through his man of business. A fellow of his kind threatening me with his man of business! The impertinence of his having a man of business at all! But I dare say it’s a piece of braggadocio; he thinks he’ll frighten the money out of me by giving himself airs and talking big. I’ll see the scoundrel further! There’s no standing the impudence of that class nowadays. Something must be done to check it. It’s a disgrace to the country to see the way they’re taking the upper hand and riding rough-shod over us. And mark my words if the country doesn’t live to regret it! We landed proprietors are the bulwark of the state; and if they let us be sent to the wall, they had better look to their own moorings. Mark my words, Bourbonais!”
Bourbonais was marking his words, but he was too bewildered to make any sense out of them. “I agree with you, mon cher, the lower orders are becoming the upper ones in many ways; but what does that prove?”
“Prove! It proves there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark!” retorted Sir Simon.
“But how does that affect the case in question? I mean what has it to do with this architect’s bill?”
“It has this to do with it: that if this fellow’s father had attempted the same impertinence with my father, he’d have been sent to the right-about; whereas he may insult me, not only with impunity, but with effect! That’s what it has to do with it. Public opinion has changed sides since my father lived like a gentleman, and snapped his fingers at these parasites that live by sucking our blood.”
Raymond knew that when Sir Simon got on the subject of the “lower” orders and their iniquities, there was nothing for it but to give him his head, and wait patiently till he pulled up of his own accord. When at last the baronet drew breath, and was willing to listen, he brought him back to the point, and asked what he meant to do about the twelve-hundred-pound bill. Did he see his way to paying it? Sir Simon did not. It was a curious fact that he never saw his way to paying a bill until he had contracted it, and until his vision had been sharpened by some disagreeable process like the present, which forced him to face the alternative of paying or doing worse. These new stables had been a necessary expense, it is true, and he was very forcible in reiterating the fact to Raymond; but the latter had a provoking way of reverting to first principles, as he called it, and, after hearing his friend’s logical demonstration as to the absolute necessity which had compelled him to build—the valuable horses that were being damaged by the damp of the old stables; the impossibility of keeping up a hunting stud without proper accommodations for horses and men; the economy that the outlay was sure to be in the long run, the saving of doctor’s bills, etc.; the “vet.” was never out of the house while the horses were lodged in the old stables—M. de la Bourbonais said: “But, mon cher, why need you keep a hunting stud, why keep horses at all, if you can’t afford it?”
This was a question that never crossed Sir Simon’s mind, or, if it did, it was dismissed with such a peremptory snub that it never presented itself again. It was peculiarly irritating to have it thrust on him now, at a moment when he wanted some soothing advice to cheer him up. The idea, put into words and spoken aloud by another, was, however, not as easily ignored as when it passed silently through his own mind; it must be answered, if only by shutting the door in its face.
“My dear Raymond,” said the baronet in his affectionate, patronizing way, “you don’t quite understand the matter; you look at it too much from a Frenchman’s point of view. You don’t make allowance for the different conditions of society in this country. There are certain things, you see, that a man must do in England; society exacts it of him. A gentleman must live like a gentleman, or else he can’t hold his own. It isn’t a matter of choice.”