[42] “Have you indeed? Very obliging of you,” was all the Duke could say. “You think,” went on the Duchess, having got again out of the tanglewood into a straight run, “you think that a Duke can go about like an old-clothes man, and his Duchess like a laundress, and be respected. That shows what a fool you are, John. You imagine in your stupidity that people in our position can defy appearances and do just as we like. So we can; but the world very soon takes care to show us that if we like to drop out it won’t detain us. To-day the world thinks exactly as much of us as we show it we think of ourselves. It was all very well while the Feudal System lingered, and there was no moneyed mob to challenge us. In these days of shallow pretension and surface estimation a Duke in a bad hat is thought less of than a bookmaker in a good one; a dowdy Duchess cannot hold her own against a smart milliner. The world to-day does not bother itself to think who you are, and what your ancestors have been and done, in short what that bad hat really covers; it wants you to show unmistakably that you spend your money—or other peoples’—and add to the general amusement. Everything is theatrical nowadays, all glitter and show, and the crowd does not ask itself what the gorgeous scenery looks like from the back. It is as though people preferred a highly coloured landscape in the theatre, just canvas, distemper and limelight, to the real thing on one of our estates. Yes, John, you are a fool not to see what I’ve done for you and your House.” The Duke accepted the long lecture, not because it[43] convinced him or uprooted his belief in the infallibility of his family ways, but because he was given no chance of interrupting it. When it had come to an end, he said, not unnaturally, “I don’t quite see what all this has to do with the present business. What are we going to do?” [43] “I have told you,” insisted the Duchess. “Go down to the clubs and face it out.” “I’m damned if I do,” said the Duke, exasperated to find his patience had gained him nothing. “If you are going to be vulgar——” began the Duchess. “I’m not going down to the clubs,” he maintained. “You’ve got to go, John, and the sooner the better.”
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