“You’ve been a bullying ruffian all your life, and no one has had the pluck to stand up to you. I’m sick of it, and I won’t stand it any more. D’you hear?”
At last the Chancellor found words, and beset his son with a torrent of blasphemy, and with foul-mouthed abuse.
“Be quiet!” said the other, standing up to him. “How dare you speak to me like that! It’s no good trying to bully me now.”
“By God, I’ll knock you down.”
Rallington thrust his face close to his father’s, and for a moment fear seized the old man. Here at length was some one whom he could not cow, and he hated his son.
“You’d better not touch me. You can’t thrash me now as you could when I was a boy. I recommend you to take great care.”
Lord Spratte raised his hands, but a trembling came suddenly upon him, so that he could not move.
“Get out of my house,” he screamed. “Get out of my house.”
“I’m only too glad to go.”
The arteries beat in the old man’s head so that he thought some horrible thing would happen to him. He poured out brandy and drank it, but it tasted like water. He sat for hours with clenched fists and scowling brow; and at last with a savage laugh he took his will and with his own hand wrote a codicil in which he deprived his eldest son of every penny he could. This relieved him and he breathed more freely. Presently he called his family together and told them without a word of explanation that Rallington was his son no longer.
“If any of you mention his name, or if I hear that you have had any communication with him, you shall go as he went.”
The pair never met again, for Rallington went abroad and died, unmarried, one month before his father. Thomas, the next son, who had been known all his life as Tommy Tiddler, succeeded the Chancellor as second Earl Spratte of Beachcombe.
But the excellent Theodore, with proper devotion, took care in his biography not even to hint at this characteristic violence. He wrote with a flowing, somewhat pompous style; and the moral pointed by these two handsome volumes was that with uprightness, sobriety, and due allegiance to the Church by law established, it was possible to reach the highest honours. The learned Canon traced the ancestry of his family to very remote periods. He had no difficulty in convincing himself that the plebeian surname was but a vulgar error for des Prats; and to the outspoken ridicule of his elder brother, was able after much study to announce that a member of the English branch of the Montmorencys had assumed the name in the seventeenth century upon his marriage with a French heiress. With these distinguished antecedents it was no wonder that Josiah Spratte should appear a benevolent old gentleman of mild temper and pious disposition, apt to express himself in well-balanced periods. He would have made an excellent churchwarden or a secretary to charitable institutions, but why precisely he should have become Lord Chancellor of England nowhere appeared. In short, the eloquent divine, with the best intentions in the world, wrote a life of his father which was not only perfectly untrue, but also exceedingly tedious.
The book had a certain success with old ladies, who put it beside their works of devotion and had it read to them in hours of mental distress. Sometimes, when they were persons of uncommon importance, the Canon himself consented to read to them; and then, so spirited was his delivery, so well-modulated his voice, it seemed as improving as one of his own sermons. But the Life and Letters certainly had no more assiduous nor enthusiastic reader than the author thereof.
“I don’t think I’m a vain man,” he remarked, “but I can’t help feeling this is exactly how a biography ought to be written.”
There was a knock at the door, and the Canon, replacing the volume at which he had glanced, took out in its stead the first book of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity. He had far too keen a sense of decorum to appear one man to the world and to his immediate relatives another. No unforeseen accident had ever found him other than self-contained, oratorical, and didactic. Not even his family was privileged to see him en robe de chambre.
It was his son who knocked. Lionel had been taking an early service at St. Gregory’s, and had not yet seen his father.
“Come in, come in,” said the Canon. “Good morning, Lionel.”
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, father. I want to book some certificates.”
“You can never disturb me when you are fulfilling the duties of your office, my boy. Pray sit down.”
He put the Ecclesiastical Polity open on the desk.
“Hulloa, are you reading this?” asked the curate. “I’ve not looked at it since I was at Oxford.”
“Then you make a mistake, Lionel. Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity is not only a monument of the English Church, but also a masterwork of the English language. That is my complaint with the clergy of the present day, that they neglect the great productions of their fathers. Stevenson you read, and you read Renan, atheist though he is; but Hooker you have not looked at since you were at Oxford.”
“I see that Andover is dead, father,” said Lionel, to change the conversation.
“I look upon it as an uncommon happy release.”
“I wonder if they really will offer you the bishopric?”
“My dear boy, that is not a subject upon which I allow my thoughts to dwell. I will not conceal from you that, as the youngest surviving son of the late Lord Chancellor, I think I have some claims upon my country. And I have duties towards it as well, so that if the bishopric is offered to me I shall not hesitate to accept. You remember St. Paul’s words to Timothy? This is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop he desireth a good work. But in these matters there is so much ignoble wire-pulling, so much backstairs influence to which my character is not suited and to which I could not bring myself to descend.”
Presently, however, when Canon Spratte strolled along Piccadilly on the way to his club, it occurred to him that the day before he had given his tailor an order for two pairs of trousers. His circumstances had taught him neither to spend money recklessly, nor to despise a certain well-bred economy; and it was by no means impossible that he would have no use for those particular articles of clothing. He walked up Savile Row.
“Mr. Marsden, will you inquire whether those garments I ordered yesterday have been cut yet?”
The tailor passed the question down his speaking-tube.
“No, sir,” he said. “Not yet.”
“Then will you delay them till further notice?”
“Certainly, sir.”
Canon Spratte was going out of the shop when he noticed on a fashion plate the costume of a bishop.
“Ah, do you make gaiters, Mr. Marsden?” said he, stopping.
“Yes, sir.”
“They’re very difficult things to cut. So many of my friends wear very ill-fitting gaiters. Fine day, isn’t it? Good-morning.”
III
When Canon Spratte reached the Athenæum he found a note waiting for him.
My Dear Canon,
I should very much like to have a little talk with you. I find it difficult to say in so many words upon what topic, but perhaps you will guess. I think it better to see you before I do anything further, and therefore should be grateful if you could give me five minutes as soon as possible.
Yours ever faithfully, Wroxham.
He read it, and