Does the coming of Sunday make that difference to you or to me? When night comes, does it mean to us that we are to sleep off into oblivion all we have done that day, and begin life afresh next morning? No-o! We are the tired people; the load is never lifted from our backs.
Ah, do we not pay indeed!"
"Oh-ho!" ejaculated Thorpe. He had been listening with growing astonishment to the other's confession.
He was still surprised as he spoke, but a note of satisfaction mounted into his voice as he went on. "You are unhappy, too! You are a young man, in excellent health;you have the wife you want; you understand good tobacco;you have a son. That is a great deal--but my God! think what else you've got. You're the Duke of Glastonbury--one of the oldest titles in England. You're one of the richest men in the country--the richest in the old peerage, at any rate, I'm told. And YOU'RE not happy!"The other smiled. "Ah, the terms and forms survive,"he said, with a kind of pedagogic affability, "after the substance has disappeared. The nobleman, the prince, was a great person in the times when he monopolized wealth.
It enabled him to monopolize almost everything else that was pleasant or superb. He had the arts and the books and the musicians and the silks and velvets, and the bath-tubs--everything that made existence gorgeous--all to himself. He had war to amuse himself with, and the seven deadly sins. The barriers are down now.
Everything which used to be exclusively the nobleman's is now within everybody's reach, including the sins.
And it is not only that others have levelled up to him;they have levelled him down. He cannot dress now more expensively than other people. Gambling used to be recognized as one of his normal relaxations, but now, the higher his rank, the more sharply he is scolded for it.
Naturally he does not know what to do with himself.
As an institution, he descends from a period when the only imaginable use for wealth was to be magnificent with it.
But now in this business age, where the recognized use of wealth is to make more wealth, he is so much out of place that he has even forgotten how to be magnificent.
There are some illustrated articles in one of the magazines, giving photographs of the great historic country-houses of England. You should see the pictures of the interiors.
The furniture and decorations are precisely what a Brixton dressmaker would buy, if she suddenly came into some money.""All the same," Thorpe stuck to his point, "you are not happy."The Duke frowned faintly, as if at the other's persistency.
Then he shrugged his shoulders and answered in a lighter tone. "It hardly amounts to that, I think.
I confess that there are alleviations to my lot.
In the opinion of the world I am one of its most fortunate citizens--and it is not for me to say that the world is altogether wrong. The chief point is--I don't know if you will quite follow me--there are limits to what position and fortune can give a man. And so easily they may deprive him of pleasures which poorer men enjoy! I may be wrong, but it seems impossible to me that any rich man who has acres of gardens and vineries and glass can get up the same affection for it all that the cottager will have for his little flower-plot, that he tends with his own hands.
One seems outside the realities of life--a mere spectator at the show.""Ah, but why not DO things?" Thorpe demanded of him.
"Why merely stand, as you say, and look on?"
The other leant his head back again. "Pray what do you recommend?" he asked almost listlessly.
"Why--politics, for example."
The Duke nodded, with an air of according to the suggestion a certain respect. "Unhappily I am too much of a foreigner,"he commented. "I know Englishmen and their affairs too imperfectly. Sometime--perhaps.""And philanthropic work--you don't care about that,"pursued the other.
"Oh--we go not so far as that," said his Grace, with a deprecatory wave of the hands. "My wife finds many interests in it, only she would not like to have you call it philanthropical. She is London-born, and it is a great pleasure to her to be of assistance to poorer young women in London, who have so little done for them by the community, and can do so little for themselves.
I am much less skeptical about that particular work, I may tell you, than about philanthropy in general.
In fact, I am quite clear that it is doing good. At least it is doing a kindness, and that is a pleasant occupation.
We are really not so idle as one might think. We work at it a good deal, my wife and I.""So am I London-born," Thorpe remarked, with a certain irrelevancy.
After a moment's pause he turned a sharply enquiring glance upon his guest. "This thing that you're doing in London--does it give you any 'pull' there?" "Pull?" repeated the other helplessly.
"If there was something you wanted the people of London to do, would they do it for you because of what you've been doing for them--or for their girls?"The Duke looked puzzled for a moment. "But it isn't conceivable that I should want London to do anything--unless it might be to consume its own smoke," he observed.
"Quite so!" said Thorpe, rising bulkily to his feet, but signifying by a gesture that his companion was to remain seated. He puffed at his cigar till its tip gleamed angrily through the smoke about him, and moved a few steps with his hands in his pockets. "That is what I wanted to get at. Now I'm London-born, I've got the town in my blood. The Thorpes have been booksellers there for generations. The old name is over the old shop still. I think I know what Londoners are like;I ought to. It's my belief that they don't want gifts.
They'll take 'em, but it isn't what they want.
They're a trading people--one of the oldest in the world.
