my eye–and tortured my ear; till at last my very footfalls time
themselves to the brain-racking rhythm of Simon Lathers!–Simon Lathers!
–Simon Lathers! And now, to make its presence in my soul eternal,
immortal, imperishable, you have resolved to–to–what is it you have
resolved to do?”
“To go to Simon Lathers, in America, and change places with him.”
“What? Deliver the reversion of the earldom into his hands?”
“That is my purpose.”
“Make this tremendous surrender without even trying the fantastic case in
the Lords?”
“Ye–s–” with hesitation and some embarrassment.
“By all that is amazing, I believe you are insane, my son. See here
–have you been training with that ass again–that radical, if you prefer
the term, though the words are synonymous–Lord Tanzy, of Tollmache?”
The son did not reply, and the old lord continued:
“Yes, you confess. That puppy, that shame to his birth and caste, who
holds all hereditary lordships and privilege to be usurpation, all
nobility a tinsel sham, all aristocratic institutions a fraud, all
inequalities in rank a legalized crime and an infamy, and no bread honest
bread that a man doesn’t earn by his own work–work, pah!”–and the old
patrician brushed imaginary labor-dirt from his white hands. “You have
come to hold just those opinions yourself, suppose,”–he added with a
sneer.
A faint flush in the younger man’s cheek told that the shot had hit and
hurt; but he answered with dignity:
“I have. I say it without shame–I feel none. And now my reason for
resolving to renounce my heirship without resistance is explained.
I wish to retire from what to me is a false existence, a false position,
and begin my life over again–begin it right–begin it on the level of
mere manhood, unassisted by factitious aids, and succeed or fail by pure
merit or the want of it. I will go to America,, where all men are equal
and all have an equal chance; I will live or die, sink or swim, win or
lose as just a man–that alone, and not a single helping gaud or fiction
back of it.”
“Hear, hear!” The two men looked each other steadily in the eye a moment
or two, then the elder one added, musingly, “Ab-so-lutely
cra-zy-ab-solutely! “After another silence, he said, as one who, long
troubled by clouds, detects a ray of sunshine,” Well, there will be one
satisfaction–Simon Lathets will come here to enter into his own, and I
will drown him in the horsepond. That poor devil–always so humble in
his letters, so pitiful, so deferential; so steeped in reverence for our
great line and lofty-station; so anxious to placate us, so prayerful for
recognition as a relative, a bearer in his veins of our sacred blood–
and withal so poor, so needy, so threadbare and pauper-shod as to
raiment, so despised, so laughed at for his silly claimantship by the
lewd American scum around him–ah, the vulgar, crawling, insufferable
tramp! To read one of his cringing, nauseating letters–well?”
This to a splendid flunkey, all in inflamed plush and buttons and
knee-breeches as to his trunk, and a glinting white frost-work of
ground-glass paste as to his head, who stood with his heels together and
the upper half of him bent forward, a salver in his hands:
“The letters, my lord.”
My lord took them, and the servant disappeared.
“Among the rest, an American letter. From the tramp, of course. Jove,
but here’s a change! No brown paper envelope this time, filched from a
shop, and carrying the shop’s advertisement in the corner. Oh, no, a
proper enough envelope–with a most ostentatiously broad mourning
border–for his cat, perhaps, since he was a bachelor–and fastened with
red wax–a batch of it as big as a half-crown–and–and–our crest for a
seal!–motto and all. And the ignorant, sprawling hand is gone; he
sports a secretary, evidently–a secretary with a most confident swing
and flourish to his pen. Oh indeed, our fortunes are improving over
there–our meek tramp has undergone a metamorphosis.”
“Read it, my lord, please.”
“Yes, this time I will. For the sake of the cat:
14,042 SIXTEENTH. STREET,
WASHINGTON, May 2.
It is my painful duty to announce to you that the head of our illustrious