But with me placed in my ridiculous position--poverty
has been the most unbearable torture one can imagine.
You see, there is no way in which I can earn a penny.
I had to leave the Army when I was twenty-three--the
other fellows all had plenty of money to spend, and it
was impossible for me to drag along with a title and an
empty pocket. I daresay that I ought to have stuck to it,
because it isn't nearly so bad now, but twelve years ago
it was too cruel for any youngster who had any pride
about him--and, of course, my father having made rather
a name in the Army, that made it so much harder for me.
And after that, what was there? Of course, the bar and medicine
and engineering and those things were out of the question,
in those days at least. The Church?--that was more so still.
I had a try at politics--but you need money there as much
as anywhere else--money or big family connections.
I voted in practically every division for four years,
and I made the rottenest speeches you ever heard of at
Primrose League meetings in small places, and after all
that the best thing the whips could offer me was a billet
in India at four hundred a year, and even that you took
in depreciated rupees. When I tried to talk about
something at home, they practically laughed in my face.
I had no leverage upon them whatever. They didn't care
in the least whether I came up and voted or stopped at home.
Their majority was ten to one just the same--yes, twenty
to one. So that door was shut in my face. I've never
been inside the House since--except once to show it to an
American lady last summer--but when I do go again I rather
fancy"--he stopped for an instant, and nodded his handsome