Waiting for a Situation.
Edgar’s calculations, which he began next morning, and carried on for a
great many days after, were of a kind which many men have made before
him, that it would be foolish to call them original. He made elaborate
calculations upon various pieces of paper, by which he made out that
with economy, he could perfectly well live upon his twenty pounds for
two months. To be sure his rent in these rooms in Piccadilly was
preposterously high, and could not by any means be brought within that
calculation. But then he reflected to himself that moving is always
expensive--(he possessed two portmanteaus, a box of books, and a
dressing-case, all of which could have gone in a cab)--and that very
probably he might fall among thieves, and get into the hands of one of
those proverbial landladies who steal the tea, and drink the brandy, in
which case it would be no economy at all to save a few shillings on
rent. In short, Edgar said to himself, loftily, these petty little
savings never tell. You are much less comfortable, and it is just as
expensive. For the same reason, he felt it was much the best way to
continue dining at the club. “It may be sixpence dearer, but it is so
infinitely more comfortable,” he said to himself; and, after all,
comfort was worth an additional sixpence. By striking off the rent of
his rooms altogether from the calculation, it seemed to him that he
could afford his dinners at the club; and if he got his appointment by
Christmas, as he certainly must, it would be so easy to pay the lodgings
in a lump. He jotted down these calculations so often, and upon so many
bits of paper, that he grew to believe in them as if they had been a
revelation. By this it will appear that his doubts about hanging on, and
waiting for the possible Queen’s Messengership which he had at first set
down as out of the question, did not continue to appear so impracticable
as time went on. He said to himself every morning that it was absurd,
but still he did nothing else, and gradually the Queen’s Messengership
grew to be a certain thing to him, upon which he was to enter at
Christmas, or a little later. After all, what did it matter how he spent
a week or two of his time? At eight-and-twenty, life does not appear so
short as some people have found it. A week or two, a month or two, were
neither here nor there.
I can scarcely tell how Edgar occupied himself during these wintry days.
For one thing, he had not been accustomed to regular occupation, and the
desultory life was familiar to him. The days glided past he scarcely
knew how. He did a great many perfectly virtuous and laudable actions.
He went to the British Museum, and to all the collections of pictures;
he even, in sheer absence of anything else to do, went to the Charity
House, which was a little way out of London, and was taken over it by
Sister Susan, his travelling companion, and for an hour or so was seized
upon by the charity fever, which is very contagious, and for some days
kept thinking, as he went about the streets, of all the miserable
souls--not to say bodies--consuming there, in dirt, and disease, and
ignorance. I do not mean to give any account of the Charity-House--at
least, not here and at this moment. But Sister Susan undeniably
exercised a powerful attraction over the young man, as she discoursed in
her cheery voice of her orphans, and her patients, and her penitents,
all of which classes were collected round and in “the House.” She was
not “the Mother,” who was rather a great personage, but she was one of
the elders in the Sisterhood, and her conventual talk was very amusing
to Edgar, who was not used to it. He did all he could to make her talk
of the journey in which they had been fellow-travellers, and of her
young companion; and Sister Susan was cunningly open in certain
particulars:
Yes, she had been in Scotland, in the North, where it was thought things
were ripening for a great work, and where it had been suggested a
Sisterhood might be of use in helping to restore a benighted people to
Christian unity in the bosom of the afflicted Church of Scotland, the
only real representative of Apostolic Christianity among the
Presbyterians, who usurp even that faithful remnant’s name. But it did
not carry out their expectations, Sister Susan allowed. The
Presbyterians were very obstinate and bigoted. Poor creatures, they
preferred their own way, though it could lead to nothing but darkness;
and the idea had to be resigned.
“Was your companion with you on your mission? Miss ---- I forget what you
said was her name,” said deceitful Edgar.
Sister Susan shook her head.
“She has not sufficient experience for that,” she said, decidedly. “No,
no, no. We must not employ new beginners in such delicate work. She was
on a visit, and was anxious to get home. I took charge of her at Lady--I
mean at the request of a relation of hers; and I made her do a little
bit of self-denial, as you saw,” said Sister Susan, laughing, “which is
an excellent thing always--not very comfortable for the body, perhaps,
but excellent for the soul.”
“Do you think so?” said Edgar, whose present experience was not much in
that way, whose givings up had hitherto cost him little, and who had
begun to suspect that, notwithstanding all that had happened to him, and
all that he had bestowed upon others, he had not even begun yet to find
out what self-denial meant.
“Not a doubt of it,” said Sister Susan. She was so sure of everything
that it was a pleasure to see her nod her confident little head, and
cross her hands. “She laughs about it now, and makes a great joke;
though, after all, she says it was a cheat, and the third class was
quite as good as the first--no originals in it, nor genuine poor
people--only you.”
“Did she know me?”
The question burst from him in spite of himself, and it had a somewhat
uncomfortable effect on Sister Susan.
“Know you?” she said. “What--what--a curious question, Mr. Earnshaw!
Now, how could she know you? You never saw her before.”
“I suppose not,” said Edgar, doubtfully.
“Why, you know you never did,” said Sister Susan, with her usual
confident tone, and indeed Edgar felt that she must be right. “You took
her for a Sister,” she added, with a merry laugh.
“How should I know the difference?” asked piteously the young man.
“Why, she had not this, nor this, nor this,” said the Sister,
triumphantly touching one part of her dress after another. “She had on a
simple black dress, and cloak, and veil--that was all. A good little
girl,” she continued, “our orphans are all fond of her, and she is very
nice to those young sisters of hers, who are much more taken out
now-a-days than she is, and carry everything before them--especially
since she went off so much, poor dear.”
“Has she gone off?” Edgar asked, more and more interested, he could
scarcely tell why.
“Oh, dreadfully; lost her pretty colour, and her hair used to come out
in handfuls; she has been obliged to have it cut off to save it. She is
not like what she was, poor thing; but I hope,” added Sister Susan
devoutly, “that thinking so much more seriously than she used to do,
the change will be of great benefit to her soul.”
“Poor Miss--! You have not told me her name,” said Edgar.
“Haven’t I?” said Sister Susan. “Dear, dear, there is the bell for
chapel, and I can’t stay with you any longer. There are a few benches
near the door where strangers are allowed to go, if you wish to stay for
evensong.”
Edgar stayed, chiefly, I fear, out of mere listlessness, and took his
place in the corner by the door allotted to Philistines of the male
gender, with much submission and docility. The little chapel was very
richly decorated, the light intercepted by small painted windows, the
walls one mass of mural ornament. He compared it in his imagination,
with a smile, to the bare little convent chapels he had seen and heard
of in countries where the institution appeared more natural. Here there
was a profusion of ecclesiastical luxury, an absolute parade of
decoration. It struck him with a double sense of incongruity, but there
was no one to whom he could express this evil sentiment: Sister Susan
did not appear again as he had hoped, and he wended his way back to town
with some additional information, which he had not possessed when he
left. Why should he be so curious about Miss ----, the nameless one? He
had thought her another Sister, and entertained no profuse curiosity in
respect to her at first; but now it seemed to him that only a little
more light might make her visible to him. There was no reason why he
should find her out, or why he should wish to do so; but great is the
perversity of human nature--perhaps this was the special reason why the
thought occupied him so much.
It was very strange to so friendly a soul to have no friends whom he
could go to, whom he could talk to, no friendly house where the door
would open to him, and faces smile at his sight. It is true that for
three years he had been severed, to a great degree, from domestic
pleasures, which do not thrive at foreign centres of cosmopolitan
resort--but yet he had never been without a large circle of
acquaintances, and had occasionally seen the old friends of his boyhood
here and there; but in London, in October and November, whom could he
expect to see? The stray man who dropped in now and then at the club,
was on the wing between two country houses, or was going to join a party
somewhere, or home to his people. Some men, of course, must live in
London, but these men, I presume, did not go much to their club, or else
they were so little among the number of Edgar’s friends that they did
not count. Now and then one would join him at dinner, or in one of the
long walks he took, and he made a friend or two at the Museum, among the
books and prints. But he was like an Australian emigrant, or other exile
in savage places. These were all men, and he never saw the face of a
woman except in the streets or shops, unless it was his landlady, who
did not interest him.
How strangely different from the old days, in which so many fair women
would smile and listen to the young man who was at once so rich and so
original, a great landed proprietor, with the opinions of a
revolutionary. It was not his downfall, however, which had made all the
difference, which was a comfort to him; for, indeed, the families whom
he had once visited were out of London. Sometimes it occurred to him
that if the Thornleighs had been in town, he would have gone to them and
asked leave to be admitted just once or twice, for pure charity, and he
had walked several times past their house in Berkeley Square, and gazed
at its closed shutters with half a notion of calling on the housekeeper,
at least, and asking to see the place in which he had spent so many
pleasant hours. He used to live all over again his first visit to
London, with an amused pleasure in recalling all his own puzzles and
difficulties. He seemed to himself to have been a boy then, almost a
child, playing with fate and his life, and understanding nothing of all
that was around him. To have ten thousand a year one time, and no income
at all the next, but only a hundred pounds in the bank “to fall back
upon,” and the vague promise of a post as Queen’s Messenger at
Christmas--what a change it was! Though to be sure, even now, Edgar said
to himself, there were more people in London worse off than he, than
there were people who were better off. A hundred pounds in the bank is,
in reality, a fortune--as long as you can keep it there; and a man who
has the post of Queen’s Messenger is independent, which is as much as
any prince can be.
All these philosophisings were wonderfully true, but they did not take
away the uncomfortable, desolate, profitless sensation of living alone
in London without friends, doing nothing except live, which, when you
live for the mere sake of living, and because you can’t help it, is,
perhaps, the dreariest occupation on earth. And in November--when London
is at its worst, and the year at its worst, when the gloomy daylight is
short, and the weary nights are long, and when everything that bears the
guise of amusement palls upon the man who has nothing to do but amuse
himself.
Sometimes Edgar, in momentary desperation, thought of rushing off to his
former haunts abroad, sometimes of turning back to Loch Arroch, helping
in whatever might be doing, getting some share in human life, and some
place among his fellows; but then the remembrance would strike him that,
now-a-days, he could not do what he pleased, that he had no money but
that hundred pounds in the bank, and no way of getting any now till the
appointment came.
By-and-by, however, his opinion began to change about the hundred pounds
in the bank. It changed by slow degrees after he had changed his second
ten-pound note, and saw those last precious sovereigns slipping out of
his grasp, which they did with a strange noiseless celerity
inconceivable to him. How did they go? When he counted up all he had
spent, every sixpence seemed so modest, so natural! and yet they were
gone, he knew not how; vanished even, he thought, while he was looking
at them. Then the thought arose in his mind, why keep a hundred pounds
in the bank? It was a waste of capital, money which brought in no
return; and for that matter, if it was merely to secure something to
“fall back upon,” fifty pounds were just as good as a hundred. The
income of a Queen’s Messenger was good, he said to himself (he had not,
in reality, the least idea what it was!), and when he got his
appointment it would be very easy to put back the other fifty pounds if
he found it expedient. But the more he thought of it the less he saw any
need for keeping so much money lying useless. He never could get any
income from so small a sum, and the fifty pounds was quite enough for
any sudden emergency. Or supposing, he said, seventy-five? Seventy-five
pounds was magnificent as a fund to fall back upon; and it was with a
feeling that twenty-five pounds had been somehow added, not taken from
his capital, that he went to the bank one day in December and drew out
the quarter, not the half, of his little stock of money. With
twenty-five pounds in his pocket and seventy-five in the bank, he felt
much richer than with the poor little undivided hundred. And somehow
every day as he grew poorer, he became more convinced that it would be
the most short-sighted economy to remove from his Piccadilly lodgings,
or to relinquish his dinners at the club. Why, they were cheap,
absolutely cheap, both the one and the other, in comparison with the
nasty meals and wretched lodgings for which, no doubt, he might pay a
little less money. He even became slightly extravagant and disposed to
buy little knick-knacks, and to consume little delicacies as his means
grew smaller and smaller.
I cannot tell what produced this curious state of feeling in Edgar’s
mind. There is a kind of giddiness and desperation of poverty which
seizes a man when he is in the act of spending his last parcel of coin.
It must all go so soon that it seems worse than useless to _ménager_ the
little remnant, and a kind of _vertige_, a rage to get it all over,
comes upon the mind. Perhaps it is the same feeling which makes men in a
sinking ship leap wildly into the water to meet their fate instead of
waiting for it; and as time went on the impulse grew stronger and
stronger. The seventy-five pounds of capital seemed magnificent in
December; but after Christmas it seemed to Edgar that even his fifty
pounds was too much to be lying useless; and he had a little bottle of
champagne with his dinner, and resolved that, as soon as the bank was
open, he would draw, say ten pounds. After all, what was the use of
being so particular about “something to fall back upon?” Probably he
would never want it. If he fell ill, being a Queen’s Messenger, it was
much more likely that he should fall ill in Berlin or Vienna, or Rome or
Naples, than at home--and then it would be some one’s duty to mind him
and take care of him. And if it should be his fate to die, there would
be an end of the matter. Why should he save even forty pounds?--he had
no heir.
Poor Edgar! it was a kind of intoxication that had seized him, an
intoxication caused by idleness, loneliness, and the separation of his
life from that of every one else around him. Somehow, though Christmas
came and passed and he heard nothing, he could not pluck up courage to
go to Downing Street again. Of course the appointment would come some
day, most likely to-morrow. He was not going to worry Newmarch to death
by going to him every day. He could wait till to-morrow. And so things
went on till it ran very hard with the solitary young man. It occurred
to him one day that his clothes were getting shabby. To be sure he had
unlimited credit with his tailor, having just paid a large bill without
inquiry or question; but the fact of feeling yourself shabby when you
have very little money is painful and startling, and gives the
imagination a shock. After this his mind lost the strange ease which it
had possessed up to this moment, and he grew troubled and restless. “I
must go to Newmarch again,” he acknowledged at last to himself, and all
at once wondered with a sudden pang whether his Messengership was as
certain as he had hoped. “I must go to Newmarch to-morrow,” he said over
and over again as, somewhat dazed and giddy with this sudden thought, he
went along the pavement thoughtfully towards the club, which had become
a second home to him. It was the end of January by this time, and a few
more people were beginning to appear again in these regions. He went in
to his dinner, saying the words to himself mechanically and half aloud.