That eldest brother, Lord Saint George, was in truth regarded at
Turnover as being, of all persons in the world, the most august.
The Marquis himself was afraid of his son, and held him in extreme
veneration. To the mind of the Marquis the heir expectant of all the
dignities of the House of Stowte was almost a greater man than the
owner of them; and this feeling came not only from a consciousness
on the part of the father that his son was a bigger man than himself,
cleverer, better versed in the affairs of the world, and more thought
of by those around them, but also to a certain extent from an idea
that he who would have all these grand things thirty or perhaps even
fifty years hence, must be more powerful than one with whom their
possession would come to an end probably after the lapse of eight
or ten years. His heir was to him almost divine. When things at
the castle were in any way uncomfortable, he could put up with the
discomfort for himself and his daughters; but it was not to be
endured that Saint George should be incommoded. Old carriage-horses
must be changed if he were coming; the glazing of the new greenhouse
must be got out of the way, lest he should smell the paint; the game
must not be touched till he should come to shoot it. And yet Lord
Saint George himself was a man who never gave himself any airs; and
who in his personal intercourse with the world around him demanded
much less acknowledgment of his magnificence than did his father.
And now, during this Easter week, Lord Saint George came down to
the castle, intending to kill two birds with one stone, to take his
parliamentary holiday, and to do a little business with his father.
It not unfrequently came to pass that he found it necessary to
repress the energy of his father's august magnificence. He would go
so far as to remind his father that in these days marquises were not
very different from other people, except in this, that they perhaps
might have more money. The Marquis would fret in silence, not daring
to commit himself to an argument with his son, and would in secret
lament over the altered ideas of the age. It was his theory of
politics that the old distances should be maintained, and that the
head of a great family should be a patriarch, entitled to obedience
from those around him. It was his son's idea that every man was
entitled to as much obedience as his money would buy, and to no more.
This was very lamentable to the Marquis; but nevertheless, his son
was the coming man, and even this must be borne.
"I'm sorry about this chapel at Bullhampton," said the son to the
father after dinner.
"Why sorry, Saint George? I thought you would have been of opinion
that the dissenters should have a chapel."
"Certainly they should, if they're fools enough to want to build
a place to pray in, when they have got one already built for them.
There's no reason on earth why they shouldn't have a chapel, seeing
that nothing that we can do will save them from schism."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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