“And they are mere children compared to us—silly, thick-headed children! Yet they have all the plums—everywhere.”
Falloden came back. The two men turned eagerly.
“My father thanks you for your offer, gentlemen. He is very sorry he is not able to see you as he hoped. He is not very well this afternoon. But I am to say that he will let you have an answer in twenty-four hours. Then if he agrees to your terms, the matter will have to go before the court. That, of course, our lawyers explained to you—”
“That will not suit me at all!” cried Herr Schwarz. “As far as your father is concerned, my offer must be accepted—or rejected—now.”
He struck his open hand on the polished mahogany of the table beside him.
“Then I am very sorry you have had the trouble of coming down,” said Falloden politely. “Shall I order your carriage?”
The great ship-owner stared at him. He was on the point of losing his temper, perhaps of withdrawing from his bargain, when over Falloden’s head he caught sight of the Titian and the play of light on its shining armour; of the Van Dyck opposite. He gave way helplessly; gripped at the same moment by his parvenu’s ambition, and by the genuine passion for beautiful things lodged oddly in some chink of his common and Philistine personality.
“I have the refusal then—for twenty-four hours?” he said curtly.
Falloden nodded, wrote him a statement to that effect, ordered whisky and soda, and saw them safely to their carriage.
Then pacing slowly through the rooms, he went back towards the library. His mind was divided between a kind of huckster’s triumph and a sense of intolerable humiliation. All around him were the “tribal signs” of race, continuity, history—which he had taken for granted all his life. But now that a gulf had opened between him and them, his heart clung to them consciously for the first time. No good! He felt himself cast out—stripped—exposed. The easy shelter fashioned for him and his by the lives of generations of his kindred had fallen in fragments about him.
“Well—I never earned it!”—he said to himself bitterly, turning in disgust on his own self-pity.
When he reached the library he found his father walking up and down deep in thought. He looked up as his son entered.