Denis

§1

providence failed to do its duty by Basil Reginald Anthony St. Denis. If he had been born heir to Lord Herringdale's title and estate, instead of being merely a second cousin on his mother's side, he would have been an ornament to the peerage. The stately ritual of the House of Lords would have been decorated by his presence. The bay windows of a certain club overhanging Piccadilly would have derived distinction from his profile.

But his birth and station were unpropitious to his happiness; for he was the only son of a country rector who inhabited a Devonshire rectory seven times too large for his stipend or his needs.

His father came of Huguenot stock, and his mother was a descendant of that Countess Herringdale whose melting delicious beauty languishes from more than one of the canvases of Sir Peter Lely. If life in the Rectory at Trotover was frugal, it was dignified. Basil's infant porringer was bent and dented, but it was an heirloom of seventeenth-century silver. He cut his teeth on fine Georgian plate, and bruised his head against the angle of a Jacobean oak chest. The Rector, his father, dined easily and often with the County, and carried the ordered ritual of his Services into the conduct of his daily life.

As for Basil, he was a lovely child. His flower-like complexion and sweet fluting voice won the hearts of his papa's parishioners. Had the laburnum trees from the Rectory garden scattered golden sovereigns instead of golden blossoms on to his perambulator, no family in his father's parish would have grudged the compliment, and Basil himself would have recognized that nature did no more than her duty by him.

It was not that in adult life he cultivated appetites for great wealth and luxury. Political responsibility fatigued, and business adventure repelled him. He remarked upon several occasions that true civilization was incompatible with the life of action, and he disliked nothing more heartily than the untempered energy of pioneers. All that he asked of fortune was adequate opportunity to exercise fastidious taste.

It must be admitted that, considering the circumstances of his birth, Providence made erratic efforts to assist him. Lord Herringdale, charmed by the manner and appearance of his young kinsman, offered to bear the expenses of Basil's education at Eton and at Oxford. At Eton, Basil laid the foundation of a fine sense of social discrimination and achieved an understanding of the gulf which separates those who have been to the greater English public schools from those who have not. It took him several years to realize in how considerable a majority are those who have not been there.

Dependence upon charity, however, is accompanied by notable disadvantages. When Basil eventually went to Oxford, his education in the arts of civilized living involved him in certain trivial expenses. The cultivation of a palate cannot be achieved on grocer's port and Australian Harvest Burgundy. The arts of hospitality cannot be mastered without practice. The unerring discipline of the collector's taste cannot be achieved without trial and error. Naturally, such education costs money. Naturally, it was for such education that Basil assumed he had been sent to Oxford.

Lord Herringdale failed to realize his full responsibility. When the bills came in after Basil's first year, he sent for the young man and subjected him to the discomfort of an interview which, in Basil's opinion, transgressed the bonds of civilized conversation. Lord Herringdale demanded promises; he made conditions; he filled his kinsman with vicarious shame. At that age Basil blushed to see gentlemen misconduct themselves. For the first and last time he abandoned his own principle of compromise and resignation. He refused to return to Oxford on Lord Herringdale's terms.

He went home to the Rectory. He remained there for

several weeks contemplating the re-edition of some trifles of eighteenth-century verse which had appealed to him at Oxford. He applied unsuccessfully for the posts of assistant-curator of Chinese embroideries at the Dulwich Museum, and adviser on Adams Decorations to Messrs.