said Albert Edward.
It did indeed seem a shame to Clive that anyone should have to work at all—that nice girl Fanny, for instance, who was portress downstairs, or that poor old decrepit-looking thing who was night-porter and opened the door for Clive at four in the morning.
He told Fanny what he thought. Fanny laughed. "I love my work, sir," she said; "I wouldn't be without it for anything."
"Wouldn't you really, now?" said Clive, staring at her.
Dimly he perceived that these months after the Armistice and during the early months of 1919 were a queer time—no one seemed to know what was going to happen. The state of the world was very uncomfortable did one look into it too closely; even into the chaste and decorous quarter of St. James's rumours of impending revolution penetrated. People were unhappy—had not enough to eat, had no roof over their heads, always one thing or another. The papers were beastly, so Clive gave up looking at them, save only the Sporting Times, and devoted his hours that were saved from dancing to a little gentle betting, to wondering whether Joe Beckett would beat Goddard, and when he had beaten him to wondering whether he would beat Georges Carpentier, and to playing a rubber or two of auction bridge at White's, and to entertaining the ladies and gentlemen already mentioned.
He was not, during this period, worrying at all about money. He very seldom saw his old father, who never came up to town and never wrote letters. Old Lord Dronda, who was now nearly seventy, stayed at the place in Hertfordshire—he loved cows and pigs and horses, and Clive imagined him perfectly happy in the midst of these animals.
He had an ample allowance, but was compelled to reinforce it by writing cheques on his mother's account. She had, when he lost his arm, given him an open cheque-book on her bank. There was nothing too good for such a hero. He did not naturally think about money, he did not like to be bothered about it, but he was vaguely rather proud of himself for keeping out of the money-lenders' hands and not gambling more deeply at bridge. Luckily, dancing left one little time for that—"Keeps me out of mischief, jazzing does," he told his friends. He had, in his room, a photograph of his father—an old photograph, but like the old man still. Lord Dronda was squarely built and had side-whiskers and pepper-and-salt trousers. He looked like a prosperous farmer. His thighs were thick, his nose square, and he wore a billycock a little on one side of his head. Clive had not seen his father for so long a time that it gave him quite a shock to come in one afternoon and find the old man sitting under his photograph, a thick stick in his hand and large gaiters above his enormous boots. He was looking about him with a lost and bewildered air and sitting on the very edge of the sofa. His grey bowler was on the back of his head.
"Hullo, Guv'nor!" Clive cried. Clive was a little bewildered at the sight of the old man. His plan had been a nap before dressing for dinner. He had been dancing until six that morning, and was naturally tired, but he was a kindly man, and therefore nice to his father.
"I'm delighted to see you!" he said. "But whatever are you doing up here?"
The old man was not apparently greatly delighted to see Clive. He was lost and bewildered, and seemed to have trouble in finding his words. He stammered and looked helplessly about him.
His son asked him whether he'd have any tea. No, he wouldn't have any tea—no, nothing at all.
"The fact is," he brought out at last, "that Dronda's to be sold, and I thought you ought to know."
Dronda to be sold! The words switched back before Clive's eyes that figure of Reality that recently he had forgotten. Dronda to be sold! He saw his own youth coloured with the green of the lawns, the silver of the lake, the deep red brick of the old house. Dronda to be sold!
"But that's impossible, father!" he cried.
He found, however, that a great deal more than that was possible. He had never possessed, as he had been used sometimes proudly to boast, a very good head for figures, and the old man had not a great talent for making things clear, but the final point was that the Income Tax and the general increased expenses of living had made Dronda impossible.
"Also, my boy," Lord Dronda added, "all the money you've been spending lately—your mother only confessed to me last week. You'll have to get some work and settle down at it. I'm sorry, but the old days are gone."
I'm quite aware that this is not a very original story. On how many occasions in how many novels has the young heir to the entails been suddenly faced with poverty and been compelled to sit down and work? Nine times out of ten most nobly has he done it, and ten times out of ten he has won the girl of his heart by so doing.
The only novelty here is the moment of the catastrophe. Here was the very period towards which, through years and years of discomfort and horror in France, young Clive had been looking. "After the war he would have the time of his life"; "after the war" had arrived and Dronda was to be sold! His first impulse was to abuse fate generally and his father in particular. One glance at the old man checked that. How funny he looked, sitting there on the edge of the sofa, his thick stick between his knees, his hat tilted back, and that air of bewildered perplexity on his round face as of a baby confronted with his first thunder-storm. His thick-set, rather stout body, his side-whiskers, his rough red hands—all seemed to remove him completely from the smart, slim, dark young man who sat opposite him. Nevertheless Clive felt the bond. He was suddenly in unison with his father as he had never been, in all his life, with his mother. His father and he had never had what one would call a "heart-to-heart" conversation in their lives—they did not have one now. They would have been bitterly distressed at such an idea. All Clive said was:
"What a bore! I didn't know things were like that. You ought to have told me."
To which Dronda replied, his eyes wistfully on his son's empty sleeve:
"I didn't think it would get so bad. You'll have to find some work. No need for us to bother your mother about it."
The old man got up to go. His eyes moved uncomfortably from one photograph to another. He pulled at his high collar as though he felt the room close.
"Sure you won't have anything?" said Clive.
"No, thanks," said his father.
"Well, don't you worry. I'll get some work all right. I'll have to pull my horns in a bit, though."
And that was positively all that was said. Dronda went away, that puzzled, bewildered look still hovering between his mouth and his eyes, his grey bowler still a little to one side.
After he was gone Clive considered the matter. Once the first shock was over things were really not so bad. The loss of Dronda was horrible, of course, and Clive thought of that as little as might be, but even there the war had made a difference, having shaken everything, in its tempestuous course, to the ground, so that one looked on nothing now as permanent. As to work, Clive would not mind that at all. There was quite a number of things that he would like to do. There were all these new Ministries, for instance; he thought of various friends that he had. He wrote down the names of one or two. Or there was the City. He had often fancied that he would like to go into the City. You made money there, he understood, in simply no time at all. And you needed no education. … He thought of one or two City men whom he knew and wrote down their names.
One or two other things occurred to him. Before he went out to dine he had written a dozen notes. He liked to think that he could be prompt and business-like when there was need.
During the next day or two he had quite a merry time with his friends about the affair. He laughingly depicted himself as a serious man of business, one of those men whom you see in the cinemas,
