AT breakfast next morning Mr. Cato groaned a good deal over his letters.
‘Well, Wyndham, what does Pendred say?’ asked sister Emily.
Mr. Cato frowned, and shook his head in a menacing aside, enjoining discretion.
‘I was afraid so,’ he said, after breakfast, when Dwala had retired to the study fire. ‘Pendred is very pessimistic. Oh dear, oh dear! And yet, who can say he is not right after the way he was treated? “I am afraid that the same thing cannot be said of your protégé. Quite apart from his rudeness to me—of which I will say nothing, if you will do the same—it is evident that Prince Dwala is not a gentleman. Not at present, at any rate. There is a brusquerie about him which would do very well in a Hapsburg or a Hohenzollern, but not in a deposed Borneo Prince. He doesn’t know how to sit down; nor in fact what to sit on. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands; all his movements are too large, and, as Lady Hamish would say, ‘too conclusive.’” Pendred won’t come to lunch on Tuesday—I was afraid not; he leaves town on Monday. However, there is a ray of hope. It is really very generous of Pendred, considering. It is certainly worth trying. “Gentlemen are made as well as born. Captain Howland-Bowser acquired it because he was determined to succeed; and now nobody would know he was not a gentleman, and in fact a very fine gentleman, and received everywhere. Of course it is a secret. I should never have known if Warbeck Wemyss had not told me himself. Present the letter I enclose, and let him see that you mean perfect discretion.”’
‘Who is Warbeck Wemyss? Not the ...’
‘Of course.’
‘The actor?’
‘Gives lessons in manners, do you mean?’
‘But won’t it be very expensive?’
‘Of course Wyndham means the Prince to pay himself.’
‘Now Clara, once for all, let me hear no more of these hints. The Prince shall not pay. We have no right to expect it, poor fellow. We have done very well without going to the country this year, and surely we can manage to do it again. If the worst comes to the worst we can move into a smaller house when the Prince leaves us. You must try to be more economical; the bills come to far more than they ought to.’ He closed the discussion by leaving the room.
Warbeck Wemyss consented, on terms. It was a ‘wrench,’ as Traddles would have said; but surely it was worth while. The lessons were a great amusement for the Prince. The going out into the passage; the entering the library, hat in hand; the surprise on Mr. Wemyss’s part; the little interchange on health and weather; the play with his monstrous gloves: the more elaborate lessons; introductions; forgetfulnesses; the assumption of grave interest while a humble Wemyss endeavoured to recall to him where they had met before; the pretended dinners; the new words; the manner of gallantry; the manner of confidence; the gestures and ejaculations of patience under a long anecdote—a thousand situations which pictured a new and delightful universe before his eyes. Dwala had the imitative faculty in perfection; he almost cried with humble joy when Wemyss clapped him on the shoulder, and assured him that he would make a gentleman of him in no time. Mr. Cato was delighted with the teacher’s reports: a little slapdash at first; rather random in the use of ‘rippin’’ and ‘awful bore,’ but quicker progress than he had ever seen.