the truth when he described himself as a bad player, and since he was the Chancellor’s partner, things did not go very smoothly. The elder man took no trouble to hide his annoyance when the other made a mistake, and expressed his opinion of the subaltern’s intelligence with more bluntness than civility.
“Oh, confound you, shut up!” cried the guardsman at last. “How d’you expect a fellow to play if you go on ragging him like a fish-wife?”
“I don’t think you know who I am, sir,” answered the Chancellor, with frowning brows.
“Oh yes, I do! You’re the Lord Chancellor, aren’t you? But you might mind your manners for all that. You’re not in your dirty police-court now.”
For the rest of that rubber the distinguished lawyer never opened his mouth.
But next time he was worsted in debate the results were more serious. Lord Spratte, still restless after the attainment of his ambition, was seized with the desire to found a great family; and on this account wished his eldest son, who had assumed the title of Viscount Rallington, to marry a certain heiress of important connections. The lady was not unwilling, but Rallington stubbornly refused. At first, white with rage, Lord Spratte asked how he dared to cross him; and he showered upon his son that abundant vituperation of which he was the finest master in England. But without effect. The Chancellor was so astounded at this display of spirit that for once in his life he condescended to argue. His son stood firm. Then the old man burst out again with violent temper.
“And who the devil are you?” he cried. “Haven’t I raised you from the gutter? What would you be without me? By God, you shall do whatever I tell you.”
Rallington lost all patience. He put off the timidity with which for years he had endured so much and went up to his father.
“Look here, don’t talk to me like that. I’ll marry a barmaid if I choose, and be damned to you!”
The Chancellor’s hair stood on end with wrath, and he gasped for breath. His passion was such that for a minute he could not speak. Then his son, driven at length to open rebellion, poured out the hatred which had so long accumulated. He reminded him of the tyranny with which he had used his whole family, and the terror in which he had held them. He had robbed them of all freedom, so that they were slaves to his every whim. To his angry violence and to his selfishness all their happiness had been sacrificed.
“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
