“Man,” said he, “when I first saw you I thought you had changed into a disillusioned misanthropist. But I’m wrong. You haven’t changed a bit.”
A few minutes later they reached Woburn Place. Doggie showed him into the sitting-room on the drawing-room floor. A fire was burning in the grate, for though it was only early autumn, the evening was cold. The table was set for Doggie’s dinner. Phineas looked round him in surprise. The heterogeneous and tasteless furniture, the dreadful Mid-Victorian prints on the walls—one was the “Return of the Guards from the Crimea,” representing the landing from the troop-ship, repellent in its smug unreality, the coarse glass and well-used plate on the table, the crumpled napkin in a ring (for Marmaduke who in his mother’s house had never been taught to dream that a napkin could possibly be used for two consecutive meals!), the general air of slipshod Philistinism—all came as a shock to Phineas, who had expected to find in Marmaduke’s “rooms” a replica of the fastidious prettiness of the peacock and ivory room at Denby Hall. He scratched his head, covered with a thick brown thatch.
“Laddie,” said he gravely, “you must excuse me if I take a liberty; but I canna fit you into this environment.”
Doggie looked about him also. “Seems funny, doesn’t it?”
“It cannot be that you’ve come down in the world?”
“To bed-rock,” said Doggie.
“No?” said Phineas, with an air of concern. “Man, I’m awful sorry. I know what the coming down feels like. And I, finding it not abhorrent to a sophisticated and well-trained conscience, and thinking you could well afford it, extracted a thousand pounds from your fortune. My dear lad, if Phineas McPhail could return the money——”
Doggie broke in with a laugh. “Pray don’t distress yourself, Phineas. It’s not a question of money. I’ve as much as ever I had. The last thing in the world I’ve had to think of has been money.”
“Then what in the holy names of Thunder and Beauty,” cried Phineas, throwing out one hand to an ancient saddle-bag sofa whose ends were covered by flimsy rags, and the other to the decayed ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, “what in the name of common sense are you doing in this awful inelegant lodging-house?”
“I don’t know,” replied Doggie. “It’s a fact,” he continued after a pause. “The scheme of decoration is revolting to every æsthetic sense which I’ve spent my life in cultivating. Its futile pretentiousness is the rasping irritation of every hour. Yet here I am. Quite comfortable. And here I propose to stay.”