They heard the footsteps of the servant climbing the stairs, and in ten seconds my Lord Gore had the first news of his seafaring and unshaven son.
VI
My Lord Gore could not conceal an instinct of fastidious disapproval as he walked homeward with his son along Pall Mall. Sumptuousness came before godliness in his scheme of values, and though poverty and slovenliness were inevitable to the world, my lord found them useful as a respectable background to heighten the effect of an exquisite refinement in dress. But to have a soiled and weather-beaten scamp familiarly at one’s elbow offered too crude a contrast, and suggested a sinister interest in Whitefriars.
“What a devil of a mess you are in, Jack, my man!” And there was a slight lifting of my lord’s nostrils. “You might have sent one of the men to me instead of making a martyr of yourself.”
The reference to martyrdom carried a perfect sincerity, for it would have pained Stephen Gore inexpressibly to have been caught in a seedy coat.
John Gore met his father’s critical sidelong glance.
“It is only in plays and poems, sir, that you find your adventurer clean and splendid. We were muzzle to muzzle with those heathen for half a day; the prison they put us in was monstrously dirty; and the vegetation they plant in their gardens and about their fields seems to have been created with a grudge against people who have to run. We ran, sir, like heroes, despite aloes, cacti, and thorns like a regiment of foot with sloped pikes. After such incidents one has a tendency toward torn clothes.”
My lord nodded.
“Still, Jack,” said he, “when you fall in a ditch and get muddied to the chin, you do not stroll home through the park at three in the afternoon. You should read Don Quixote, sir—a great book that.”
“I am more of a philosopher than the Spaniard.”