Leonard sprang to his feet. The thing was becoming serious. “It is eleven o’clock,” he said. “I must go.”
“Go? Why, I’ve only just begun to settle down for a quiet talk. I thought we should go on till two or three. And I’ve nearly done; I’ve only got to show that the cheque----”
“No--I must go at once. I have an appointment. I have work to do. I have letters to write.”
Uncle Fred slowly rose. “It’s a degenerate world,” he said. “We never thought the day properly begun before midnight. But if these are your habits--well, Leonard, you’ve done me well. The champagne was excellent. Boy--no, I’ll wait till I get back to the hotel. Then two or three glasses, and so to bed. Moderation--temperance--early hours. These are now my motto and my rule.”
“This way down the stairs,” said Leonard, for his uncle was starting off in the opposite direction.
“One warning. Don’t talk to Chris about that story, for you’ll hear a garbled version--garbled, sir--garbled.” He lurched a little as he walked down the stairs, but otherwise there were no indications of the profound and Gargantuan thirst that he had been assuaging all the evening.
Leonard went home in the deepest depression and shame. Why did he take such a man to such a club? He should have given him dinner in the rowdiest tavern, filled with the noisiest topers.
“He cannot be really what he pretends,” Leonard thought. “A man of wealth is a man of responsibility and position. This man talks without any dignity or reticence whatever. He seems to associate still with larrikins and cattle-drovers; he sits in bars and saloons; he ought to keep better company, if only on account of his prosperity.”
The Family History asserted itself again.
“You have entertained,” it said, “another Unfortunate. Here is a man nearly fifty years of age. He has revealed himself and exposed himself: he is by his own confession, although he is rich and successful, the companion and the friend of riffraff; his sentiments are theirs. He has no morals; he drinks without stint or measure; he has disgraced you in the Club. No doubt the Committee will interfere.”
It is, the moralist declares, an age of great laxity. A man may make a living in more ways than were formerly thought creditable; men are admitted to clubs who formerly would not have dared to put their names down. In Leonard’s mind there still remained, strong and clear, the opinion that there are some things which a gentleman should not do: things which he must not do: companions with whom he must not sit. Yet it appeared from the revelations of this man that, whatever he had done, he had habitually consorted with tramps, hawkers, peddlers, and shepherds.