Alone.
Edgar did not well know where to go on his arrival in London. He knew
nothing about London except in its most expensive regions, and the only
place to which he could direct the driver of the cab into which he
jumped, was the chambers in Piccadilly which he had occupied in his
earlier days. He said to himself “For a day or two it cannot matter
where I live;” and, besides, the season was over and everything cheap,
or so, at least, Edgar thought.
The first thing he had to do was to see that his lawyers had carried out
his directions and paid his debts--the number of which appalled him--out
of his capital. Decidedly it was time that he should do something, and
should shake himself out of those habits of a rich man, which had, in
these three years, though he had no idea of it, compromised him to the
extent of half his little fortune. This debt he felt he could not trifle
with. The more indifferent he was about money, and the better able he
was to do without it, the more necessity was there for the clearing off
to begin with, of everything in the shape of debt. After all was paid,
and the residue settled on the old lady at Loch Arroch, there remained
to him about a hundred pounds in the bank, besides the two ten-pound
notes which he had in his pocket-book. “I must not touch the money in
the bank,” he said to himself, with a prudence which contrasted
beautifully with his other extravagances, “that must remain as something
to fall back upon. Suppose, for instance, I should be ill,” Edgar
reasoned with himself, always with a delicious suppressed consciousness
of the joke involved under the utter gravity and extreme reasonableness
of his own self-communings, “how necessary it would be to have something
to fall back upon!” When he had made this little speech to himself, he
subsided into silence, and it was not until half-an-hour later that he
permitted himself to laugh.
Both of his own suggestions seemed so oddly impossible to him. To be
ill--he, in whose veins the blood ran so lightly, so tunefully, his
pulse beating with the calm and continued strength of perfect harmony;
or to want a pound or two--he who had possessed unlimited credit and
means which he had never exhausted all his life. The change was so great
that it affected him almost childishly--as a poor man might be affected
by coming into a sudden fortune, or as a very young wife is sometimes
affected by the bewildering and laughable, yet certain fact, that she,
the other day only a little girl in pinafores, is now at the head of a
house, free to give as many orders as she pleases, and sure to be
obeyed. The extreme humour of the situation is the first thing that
strikes a lively girl, under these circumstances, and it was the humour
of it which struck Edgar: a fact, perhaps, which may lower his character
in the reader’s eyes. But that, alas, I cannot help, for such as he was,
such I must show him, and his character had many defects. Often had he
been upbraided that he did not feel vicissitudes which looked like ruin
and destruction to minds differently constituted. He did not--he was the
most _insouciant_, the most care-hating of men. Up to this period of his
life he had found the means, somehow, of getting a smile, or some gleam
of fun, out of everything that happened. When he could not manage this
the circumstances were very strange indeed, and I suppose he felt it;
but at all events, in such cases, he kept his failure to himself.
As soon as he had refreshed himself and breakfasted, he went out to see
his lawyer, who received him with that air of melancholy disappointment
which distinguishes all agents who are compelled to carry out what they
think the foolish will of their principals: but who submitted the
accounts to him, which showed that his directions had been obeyed,
explaining everything in a depressed and despondent voice, full of the
sense of injury.
“I am compelled to say, Mr. Earnshaw,” said this good man, “that, as you
have paid so little attention to our wishes, I and my firm would
hence-forward have declined to take charge of your business
transactions, if it had been the least likely that you would have had
any more business to do; but as this is not possible, or at least
probable--”
“You will continue to do it,” said Edgar, laughing. “I hope so; it would
be kind of you. No, I don’t suppose I shall have much more business to
do.”
“And may I ask without offence,” said Mr. Parchemin, who was an old
friend of Edgar’s old friend, Mr. Farqakerley, and had taken up the
foolish young fellow on the recommendation of that excellent and
long-established family solicitor. “May I ask how, now you have given
away all your money, you mean to live?”
“I must work,” said Edgar, cheerfully.
“Clearly; but what can you work at?”
“You have hit the difficulty exactly,” said Edgar, laughing. “To tell
the truth, I don’t know. What do you suppose I could do best? There must
be many men in my position, left in the lurch by circumstances--and they
must have some way of providing for themselves. What do they generally
do?”
“Go to the dogs,” said Mr. Parchemin, succinctly, for he was still
offended, and had not yet forgiven his impracticable client.
“I sha’n’t do that,” said Edgar as briefly--and with, for the first
time, and for one of the first times in his life, a shade of offence on
his face.
“There are a good many other things they try to do,” said Mr. Parchemin;
“for instance they take pupils--most men feel themselves capable of that
when they are driven to it; or they get into a public office, if they
have interest and can pass the examination; or they read for the bar if
they have friends who can support them for a dozen years; or they write
for the papers--”
“Stop a little,” said Edgar; “I have no friends to support me--I can’t
write--I don’t think I could pass an examination--”
“After twenty, and unless you’ve been crammed for the purpose, I don’t
know anyone who could,” said Mr. Parchemin, solemnly.
“And I doubt whether I could teach anything that any man in his senses
would wish to know.”
“I doubt it also,” said the lawyer, “judging, if you will pardon me for
saying so, by your guidance of your own affairs.”
“But a tutor does not teach boys how to guide their own affairs,” said
Edgar, recovering his sense of the joke.
“That is true too. A man may be very wise in giving good advice, and
admirable on paper, and yet be fool enough in other respects. There was
Goldsmith, for instance. But why shouldn’t you write? Plenty of stupid
fellows write in the papers. You are not stupid--”
“Thanks,” cried Edgar, laughing.
“Of course, you have read what Thackeray says on that subject--in
‘Pendennis,’ you know--how it is all a knack that anybody can learn; and
it pays very well, I have always heard. There is no sort of nonsense
that people will not read. I don’t see why you should not try the
newspapers; if you know any one on the staff of the _Times_, for
instance--that is a splendid opening--or even the _News_ or the
_Telegraph_.”
“But, alas, I don’t know anyone.”
“Do you mean to say you never met any of those press fellows? when you
were a great man, you know, when you were fashionable? At your club, for
instance? You must have met some of them. Think! Why, they go
everywhere, it’s their trade; they must have news. And, by the way, they
have made their own of you first and last; the Arden estate, and the
law-suit that was to be, and the noble behaviour of the unfortunate
gentleman, &c., &c. You have figured in many a paragraph. Some of them
you must know.”
“Newmarch used to dabble in literature,” said Edgar, doubtfully.
“Newmarch--Lord Newmarch! Why, that is better still. He’s in the
Ministry, a rising young fellow, with the Manchester interest, and a few
hundred thousands a-year behind him. He’s your very man; he’ll get you
something; a school-inspectorship, or something of that sort, at the
very least. What is he, by-the-bye? Education and that sort of thing is
his hobby, so, of course, he’s put somewhere, like Dogberry, where there
shall be no occasion for such vanities. Ah! I thought so; Foreign
Office. He knows about as much of foreign politics, my dear Sir, as my
office boy. That’s why he’s put in; that’s the present people’s way.”
“I don’t think I should like to ask a favour of Newmarch,” said Edgar,
with hesitation; and there suddenly rose in his mind a spiritual
presence which he had never before recognised nor expected to see, a
something which was Pride. He himself was so unaffectedly surprised by
the apparition that he did not know how to encounter it; but sat silent,
wondering, and unable to understand the new dilemma in which he found
himself. No; Newmarch was the last person of whom he should like to ask
a favour, he said to himself.
“Is there any one else whom you would like better?” said Mr. Parchemin,
somewhat satirically. “So far as we have got, Lord Newmarch’s is much
the most practicable aid you could get. Would you prefer to ask your
favour from anyone else?”
“You are quite right,” said Edgar, rousing himself. “The fact is, I
don’t like asking favours at all. I suppose I expected the world to come
to me and offer me a living, hat in hand. Of course, it is absurd.”
“Lord Newmarch is probably too high and mighty to prefer a friend unless
he is sure it will be for the public interest, etc.,” said Mr.
Parchemin. “He will say as much, at least, you may be sure of that. And
I advise you to be prepared for a great deal of this sort of lofty
rubbish; but don’t pay any attention to it. Don’t take offence.”
Edgar laughed; but the laugh was unexplainable to anyone but himself. He
had not been in the habit of taking offence; he had never borne anybody
a grudge, so far as he knew, in his life; but along with the new-born
pride which had arisen in him, was the faculty of offence coming too?
These were the first fruits of poverty, spectres which had never
crossed his sunny pathway before. And though he laughed, not with
amusement, but in a kind of dazed acknowledgment of the incongruity of
things, the sense of the joke began to fail in Edgar’s mind. The
whimsical, pleasant fun of the whole proceeding disappeared before those
apparitions of Anger and Pride. Alas, was it possible that such a vulgar
material change as the loss of money could bring such evil things into
being? His friendly, gentle soul was appalled. He laughed with pain, not
with amusement, because of the strange unlikeness of this new state of
mind to anything he had known before.
“Newmarch, I suppose, is not in town; he can’t be in town at this time
of the year,” he said, with a momentary hope of postponing his
sufferings at least.
“Ah, my dear Sir,” said the lawyer, “he is one of the new brooms that
sweep clean. Besides, there is something going on between Russia and
Prussia that wants watching, and it’s Lord Newmarch’s business to be on
the spot. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll see him at once. Before the
season begins he can’t have so many applicants. Go, if you’ll take my
advice, at once.”
Edgar winced, as a man cannot but wince who is thrown into the class of
“applicants” at a blow. Why shouldn’t he be an applicant? he said to
himself as he went out. Better men than he had been obliged to kick
their heels in great men’s anterooms; but fortunately the reign of
patrons was so far over now. Was it over? While human nature continued
could it ever be over? or would it not be necessary as long as the world
lasted that there should be some men holding out the hand to ask, and
others to give? Not so very long ago Lord Newmarch had come to him,
Edgar, hat in hand, so to speak, wanting not place or living, but the
good graces of a rich and fair young lady with whom her brother might
advance him. Her brother! There gleamed up before Edgar, as he walked
through the dusty October streets, the sudden glimpse he had seen at the
roadside station of Margaret waiting for her brother. Alas, yes! Most
people had sisters, if not something still dearer, to greet them, to
hear the account of all they had done, and consult what remained to do.
I do not know how it was that at this moment something brought into
Edgar’s mind the two ladies who had travelled with him from Scotland.
Probably the mere word Sister was enough; or perhaps it was because one
of them, the elder, was just turning the corner of the street, and met
him two minutes after. She smiled with a momentary hesitation (she was
forty at the least), and then stopped to speak.
“I had not a chance to thank you for getting our cab and looking after
our luggage. It was very kind; but my young friend was in a great
hurry.”
“She was, I suppose, of your sisterhood, too,” said Edgar, with a
curiosity which was quite unjustifiable, and for which he could not
account.
“Who? Miss ----. Oh! dear no,” said the good-humoured Sister. “She is
what we call an associate, and does what she can for our charges, the
poor people--in something like our dress; but it is far from being the
dress of a professed sister,” the excellent woman added, adjusting her
cross and collar. “I daresay you will meet her some day in society, and
you need not tell her great friends that a Sister of the Charity House
made her travel third class. We always do it; but fine people do not
like to know.”
“I should have to betray myself,” said Edgar laughing, “if I betrayed
you.”
“That is true,” said the Sister. “If you ever pass by the Charity House
at Amerton ask for Sister Susan, and I shall be glad to show you over
it. I assure you it is something to see.”
“I shall come some day or other,” said Edgar, not quite knowing what he
said. Who was she then, the girl with the veil who kept herself shrouded
from him? She had not seemed _farouche_ or unfriendly. She had waited
quietly while he did what he could for them at the railway station. She
had even touched his hand lightly as he put her into the cab; but there
had seemed to be three or four veils between him and her countenance.
During all the long journey he had seen of her nothing but the little
white hand stealing from under the cover of her cloak; but somehow his
dream came back to him, and wove itself in with the semblance of this
veiled stranger. Absurd! but sometimes an absurdity is pleasant and
comforting, and so it was in this case. He could not have said what
fancies came into his head, or if he had any fancies. No, he was past
dreaming, past all that kind of boyish nonsense, he said to himself. But
yet the recollection of the veiled maiden was pleasant to him, he could
scarcely have told why.
Lord Newmarch was at his office, and he was ready after some time to see
his visitor, whom he greeted with sufficient friendliness and good
feeling. Lord Newmarch had been very democratic in his day; he had taken
workmen in their working clothes to dine with him at his club in his hot
youth, and had made them very uncomfortable, and acquired a delightful
reputation himself for advanced ideas; which was a very great thing for
a new lord, whose grandfather had been a small shopkeeper, to do. But
somehow he was a great deal more at his ease with the working men than
with his former friend and equal, now reduced to a perfectly incredible
destitution of those ordinary circumstances which form the very clothing
and skin of most men. Edgar was in soul and being, no doubt, exactly the
same as ever; he had the same face, the same voice, the same thought and
feelings. Had he lost only his money Lord Newmarch would not have felt
the difficulty half so great, for indeed a great many people do
(whatever the world may say) lose their money, without being dropped or
discredited by society. But something a great deal more dreadful had
happened in Edgar’s case. He had lost, so to speak, himself; and how to
behave towards a man who a little while ago had been his equal, nay his
superior, and now was not his equal, nor anybody’s, yet the same man,
puzzled the young statesman beyond expression. This is a very different
sort of thing from entertaining a couple of working men to the much
astonishment (delightful homage to one’s peculiarities) of one’s club.
The doctrine that all men are brothers comes in with charming piquancy
in the one case, but is very much less easy to deal with in the other.
Lord Newmarch got up with some perturbation from his seat when Edgar
came in. He shook him warmly by the hand, and said,
“Oh, Arden--ah, Earnshaw,” looking at the card. “I beg your pardon. I am
delighted to see you.”
And then they both sat down and looked at each other after the warmth of
this accost, and found, as so often happens, that they had nothing more
to say. I do not know a more embarrassing position in ordinary
circumstances, even when there is no additional and complicating
embarrassment. You meet your old friend, you shake hands, you commit
yourself to an expression of delight--and then you are silent. He has
sailed away from you and you from him since you last met, and there is
nothing to be said between you, beyond that first unguarded and uncalled
for warmth of salutation, the emblem of an intimacy past. This is how
Lord Newmarch accosted Edgar; and Edgar accepted the salutation with a
momentary glow at his breast. And then they sat down and looked at each
other; they had given forth all the feeling they had toward each other,
and how could they express sentiments which had no existence? They had
to glide involuntarily into small talk about the empty state of town,
and the new Minister’s devotion to business, and the question between
Prussia and Russia which he had to keep at his post to watch. Lord
Newmarch allowed, with dignified resignation, that it was hard upon him,
and that an Under Secretary of State has much that is disagreeable to
bear; and then he added politely, but thinking to himself--oh, how much
easier were two, nay half-a-dozen working-men, than this!--an inquiry as
to the nature of his old friend’s occupation. “What,” said the
statesman, crossing and uncrossing his legs two or three times in
succession to get the easiest position, and with a look at his shoes
which expressed eloquently all the many events that had passed since
their last meeting, “What are you doing yourself?”