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can’t get a wine like our Heidsieck under twenty shillin’ a bottle anywhere in London;” and, dropping his voice, he added: “There’s only five hundred dozen left. I drink it every night of my life.”
    â€œI’ll think of it,” old Jolyon would answer; but when he did think of it there was always the question of fifty guineas entrance fee, and it would take him four or five years to get in. He continued to think of it.
    He was too old to be a Liberal, had long ceased to believe in the political doctrines of his club, had even been known to allude to them as “wretched stuff,” and it afforded him pleasure to continue a member in the teeth of principles so opposed to his own. He had always had a contempt for the place, having joined it many years ago when they refused to have him at the Hotch Potch owing to his being “in trade.” As if he were not as good as any of them! He naturally despised the club that
did
take him. The members were a poor lot, many of them in the city—stockbrokers, solicitors, auctioneers—what not! Like most men of strong character but not too much originality, old Jolyon set small store by the class to which he belonged. Faithfully he followed their customs, social and otherwise, and secretly he thought them “a common lot.”
    Years and philosophy, of which he had his share, had dimmed the recollection of his defeat at the Hotch Potch; and now in his thoughts it was enshrined as the queen of clubs. He would have been a member all these years himself, but, owing to the slipshod way his proposer, Jack Herring, had gone to work, they had not known what they were doing in keeping him out. Why! they had taken his son Jo at once, and he believed the boy was still a member; he had received a letter dated from there eight years ago.
    He had not been near the Disunion for months, and the house had undergone the piebald decoration which people bestow on old houses and old ships when anxious to sell them.
    â€œBeastly colour, the smoking room!” he thought. “The dining room is good!”
    Its gloomy chocolate, picked out with light green, took his fancy.
    He ordered dinner, and sat down in the very corner, at the very table perhaps! (things did not progress much at the Disunion, a club of almost radical principles) at which he and young Jolyon used to sit twenty-five years ago, when he was taking the latter to Drury Lane, during his holidays.
    The boy had loved the theatre, and old Jolyon recalled how he used to sit opposite, concealing his excitement under a careful but transparent nonchalance.
    He ordered himself, too, the very dinner the boy had always chosen-soup, whitebait, cutlets, and a tart. Ah! if he were only opposite now!
    The two had not met for fourteen years. And not for the first time during those fourteen years old Jolyon wondered whether he had been a little to blame in the matter of his son. An unfortunate love affair with that precious flirt Danae Thornworthy (now Danae Pellew), Anthony Thornworthy’s daughter, had thrown him on the rebound into the arms of June’s mother. He ought perhaps to have put a spoke in the wheel of their marriage; they were too young; but after that experience of Jo’s susceptibility he had been only too anxious to see him married. And in four years the crash had come! To have approved his son’s conduct in that crash was, of course, impossible; reason and training—that combination of potent factors which stood for his principles—told him of this impossibility, and his heart cried out. The grim remorselessness of that business had no pity for hearts. There was June, the atom with flaming hair, who had climbed all over him, twined and twisted herself about him—about his heart that was made to be the plaything and beloved resort of tiny, helpless things. With characteristic insight he saw he must part with one or with the other; no half measures could serve in