CHAPTER XXXV

HIS ORIGIN

Captain Royal was the son of his father; but very few people knew anything about that father. And those few knew little more than that he had made money in business in the North.

The business in fact was that of an unregistered dentist at Blackpool.

Albert Ryle was a curious little fellow. He lived more like a machine than it was possible to conceive a human being could live. He was so regular as to be almost automatic: he had no virtues, and his vices were vigorously suppressed. Early in life he planned out his career according to Programme, and he stuck to it with methodical precision throughout. During his working life, happily for him, there were no such seismic disturbances, utterly beyond his control, as have completely upset the Programme of like automaton men in our own day.

Nor did the unexpected and catastrophic in the way of illness or sudden love ever overwhelm him.

He did not marry: that was part of the Programme. He did not enjoy himself. He lived meanly; but his practice grew and grew, especially among the well-to-do artisans. The middle and upper class he left in the main to the qualified practitioners.

He was extraordinarily efficient, thorough, and precise in his work; he was daring too. He would administer gas himself, and happily had no accidents. He spent nothing on himself, and studied the stock-markets with the same meticulous care which he gave to the human mouth.

On his fiftieth birthday he totted up his capital account and found he had made £25,000--just six months ahead of scheduled time.

His end had been attained. The first part of the Programme had now been accomplished.

Next day--or as near as it was possible--he sold his practice, took down his brass-plate, said good-bye to no one, for he knew no one except in the way of business; and for the first time in his life crossed the Trent, never to recross it.

Albert Ryle never looked back: he moved forward steady as a caterpillar on the trail.

In the North he left behind him everything but the accent which, to his own no small grief, and the unending anguish of his wife, he carried to the grave, and the money he had made in gloomy Lancashire.

He bought a villa in Croydon, modified his name under expert advice, and in the sun of the South country began to live.

Mr. Royal of Deepdene had made money in business in the North. Now he was going to spend it in the South.

Here began the second part of the Programme.

He married a middle-class woman, who had been a companion, and possessed some not very well-founded pretensions to family.

He entered the Church, ignoring formal admission by baptism, and took an active part in the life of the Town.

Capable and tireless, he became in time a Town Councillor, and, better still, a Justice of the Peace for Surrey. His grand ambition, never to be fulfilled in this world, was to be a Deputy Lieutenant of the county of his adoption.

There was one child of the marriage, who was christened at his wife's request, and with his full approval, Hildebrand.

The boy was sent to a first-rate preparatory school, where, being an aggressive youngster, he more than held his own.

Mr. Albert Royal was determined that his son should go to one of "our ancient public schools."

When he broached the subject, the headmaster of the preparatory school was in a dilemma.

Mr. Royal was an admirable parent from the commercial point of view. He paid the fees and never made a fuss; but there was no getting away from Mr. Royal's accent.

Mr. Wortley, an Etonian himself, didn't somehow think Eton was quite the school for Hildebrand. Too damp. There wasn't much chance of a boy getting into Winchester unless his father had been there before him. Had Mr. Royal been at Winchester?--Ah, bad luck. Then Rugby?--But Mr. Royal wouldn't send his son to a North country school. Mr. Royal's home was in the South; and so was his heart. What about Harrow?--Mr. Wortley's face brightened. Harrow was the very thing. He could see Hildebrand at Harrow in his mind's eye.

Later when his partner came into the study, after Mr. Royal's departure, Mr. Wortley announced the news with a little grin.

"Arrow for Ildebrand," he said.

"And quite good enough too," replied the other, who was also an Etonian, with a little snort.

To Harrow, then, Hildebrand went.

And just at the appropriate moment Mr. Royal Senior died.

That was not part of the Programme, but it was consummately tactful.

"My father didn't do much. He was a magistrate in Surrey," sounded so much better than the reality incarnate, rough and red and rather harsh--with the Blackpool accent.

Mr. Royal's opportune death was, in fact, an immense relief to his suffering wife and perhaps to young Hildebrand, who was beginning to know what was what in the world in which he proposed to live and move and have his being.

His school career was a great success. Many admired, not a few envied, nobody liked him; but as a master said--"He likes himself enough to make up for that."

An extremely good-looking boy, full of self-confidence, he was an unusually fine athlete, played racquets for the school, and notched a century against Eton at Lords in a style that made men talk of F. S. Jackson at his best.

His mother was presentable and dressed extremely well.

Young Royal had no objection to being seen about with her, and even invited her down to Speech-day and introduced her to his friends at Lords. It was not to be wondered at that when she died she left the whole of the £25,000 to her only-born.

Hildebrand bore this second bereavement with characteristic fortitude. He was just at the age when the possession of money was rare as it was useful.

He passed high into Sandhurst, and became an Under-Officer. His record there as an athlete, his bit of money, and the use he made of it, enabled him to secure a commission in the coveted Hammer-men. He joined the Regiment with a considerable and deserved reputation, which he more than maintained.

He was not popular with his brother-officers, who said quietly among themselves that he was not a Sahib; while Conky Joe went so far as to assert that he was not even a "white man"; but he was an asset to the Regiment and accepted as such.

Now he had come home on six months' leave with two objects in view. He meant to work for the Staff College--and there were few more ambitious men; and he meant to enjoy himself.

When he returned to England, there was no question where he would settle down.

He knew all about the Hohenzollern, and indeed would boast to his few intimates--and he was fond of boasting--that Madame was an old friend of his, and that he had paid his first visit to the Third Floor when still at Harrow.

Beachbourne indeed suited him very well. It possessed a first-rate crammer; if he wanted Society there was the Club at the West-end, full always of Service men retired or on leave; and he could get as much golf and cricket as he liked.

A terrific worker, he would have no distractions: for he knew very few people socially. There would be no country-house invitations for him; nor did he court them. When he had passed through the Staff College and settled down in London for a spell at the War Office he knew very well that doors, now shut to him, would open. There was no hurry about that. He didn't mean to marry yet: he meant to enjoy himself.

In a word, Captain Royal was an adventurer of a kind by no means uncommon in our day. A Tory in his opinions and his prejudices he lacked the one thing that can make a Tory admirable, and that is Tradition.

When Colonel Lewknor once defined him as "A first-rate officer and a first-class cad," Conky Joe, the kindest of men but a first-rate hater, who had never quite got over the bias imbibed in the atmosphere of the "greatest of all schools," replied with scorn, rare scorn,

"Well, what d'you expect of Harrow?"