Reality.
The frost hardened again in the night, and Tottenham’s was all white and
shining when Edgar looked out from his window in the morning. The house
was square and somewhat ugly, but the great semi-circle of trees which
swept round it was made into something magical by the feathery silvering
of the rime which coated every branch and every twig. He made an
exclamation of pleasure when he looked out. The grass, the trees, the
glistening pinnacles of the great conservatory which stretched to the
south, just catching a glimpse of frosty and wavering sunlight upon
their metallic tops, were all virgin white, though here and there it
began to melt in the sun. Edgar had been far from thinking himself happy
when he fell asleep on the previous night; he was still confused and
harassed by his thoughts, keeping up a hopeless struggle against them;
but he woke up in a state of causeless exhilaration, he did not know
why. The hoar frost and the red sunshine went to his head. His heart
beat more lightly than usual, the blood coursed pleasantly through his
veins. He was like most imaginative people, often glad, and sorry he did
not know why, and a certain unreasonable capricious confidence in his
fate came over him to-day. Something good was coming to him he felt
sure.
The breakfast table at Tottenham’s was lively enough. Lady Mary and her
husband were in full and animated discussion about something or other,
with a shoal of opened letters lying before them, and all the newspapers
that could be had, when Edgar made his appearance somewhat late. The
children who were present on the previous night were flanked by another
small pair, too small to be restrained by mamma, who chattered and
crowed, and made themselves very happy. A bright fire was burning, and
the red sunshine shone in, glinting over the white covered table and its
shining dishes.
“Mr. Earnshaw will agree with me,” Lady Mary cried as he went in,
appealing to him.
“Come along, Earnshaw, you will take my side,” said Mr. Tottenham.
They were both eager to claim his help, and the elder children looked up
at him with the freedom of perfect ease and intimacy.
“Nobody can ever call Molly the late one, now Mr. Earnshaw is here,”
cried Phil exulting. They all received him as one of themselves, and in
everything they said there was a silent suggestion that he belonged to
them, that he was to remain with them, which bewildered him beyond
words. The letters on the table were about every subject under heaven.
They had their domestic correspondence, I suppose, and family affairs of
their own; but these epistles were all about “schemes” of one kind and
another, plans for the reformation of heaven knows how many classes of
society, and for the improvement of the world altogether, which indeed
has great need of improvement. I cannot tell what the special question
might be that morning; there were so many of them that it was difficult
for a stranger to discriminate; and as Lady Mary had told him, she and
her husband very seldom agreed. They were both intensely in earnest, and
both threw themselves with all their might into everything they did.
Edgar, however, was not in a mood to utter any oracles, or to associate
himself with one scheme or another. He was disposed to enjoy the strange
holiday which had come to him, he could not tell how. He left the father
and mother to themselves, and addressed himself to the children.
“Phil,” he said, “you and I are ignoramuses, we don’t know about these
deep matters. Talk to me of something within my capacity; or Molly, if
Phil will not talk, do you.”
The reply to this was that both children talked together.
“Mr. Earnshaw, the ice is bearing; what an awful pity it’s Sunday!” said
the boy, “I wanted to tell you whenever you came in--” and “Oh, Mr.
Earnshaw, come to church with us, and I’ll show you the village and my
pet old woman who tells us stories,” said the little girl.
Edgar was delighted. He asked about the ice, what it was, an ornamental
piece of water, or the village pond; and told Molly he would go and see
her village, and try whether he or she could remember most of the
sermon. Phil interfered when he heard this bargain. He shook his head
over the rashness of his new friend.
“She has an awful good memory,” he said, “I wouldn’t try against her,
Mr. Earnshaw, if I was you. She remembers what people said ages and ages
ago, and comes down upon you after you have forgotten all about it. I
wouldn’t go in against Moll.”
“But I haven’t such an awfully good memory for sermons,” said Molly,
with modest deprecation of the excessive praise, “though I do remember
most things pretty well.”
“Molly will win of course; but I shall try my best,” said Edgar. The
children suited him best on this day of exhilaration when his heart was
so foolishly free. He caught the father and mother looking at him, with
significant glances to each other, while this conversation was going on,
and was bewildered to think what they could mean. What did they mean? It
was altogether bewildering and perplexing. The man who attended him that
morning had informed him that he had been told off for his especial
service, and had looked somewhat offended when Edgar laughed and
declared he required no particular tending. “I ’ad my horders, Sir,”
said the man. Everybody seemed to have their orders; and if that curious
insanity of thought which had assailed him yesterday, a running riot of
imagination, for which he did not feel himself to be responsible--if
that came back again, tearing open the doors of his heart, and pouring
through them, was it his fault?
The village lay at the park gates; but villages so near London are not
like villages in the depths of the country. This was one where there was
a number of smaller gentlefolks, tributaries on all great occasions of
Tottenham’s; but when they had a chance, very glad to note any
deficiency on the part of the man whom they called a _nouveau riche_,
and even a shopkeeper, which was the title of deepest reproach they
could think of. Indeed if Mr. Tottenham had not married Lady Mary, I
believe he would have had many little pricks and stings from his poor
yet well-born neighbours; but a Lady Mary in English village society
cannot do wrong. It was a pleasant walk to church, where they all went
together, the children walking demurely in honour of Sunday, though
Phil’s eye and heart were tempted by the long expanse of white which
showed between two lines of green at the right side of the road.
“It is hard enough to bear the big town carriage,” he said
confidentially to Edgar, “or one of the farmer’s huge carts.”
“We’ll go and see it after church,” said Edgar in the same tone; and so
the little procession moved on. Perhaps Lady Mary was the one who cared
for this family progress to church the least. Mr. Tottenham, though he
was given over to schemes of the most philosophical description, was the
simplest soul alive, doing his duty in this respect with as light a
heart as his children. But Lady Mary was very “viewy.” She was an
advanced liberal, and read the “Fortnightly,” and smiled at many things
that were said out of the pulpit once a week. Sometimes even she would
laugh a little at the “duty” of going to church, and hearing old Mr.
Burton maunder for half an hour; but all the same she respected her
husband’s prejudices, and the traditions of the superior class, which,
even when it believes in natural equality, still feels it necessary to
set an example to its neighbours. Lady Mary professed sentiments which
were inclined towards republicanism and democracy; but nevertheless she
knew that she was one of the gods, and had to conduct herself as became
that regnant position among men.
“There goes the shopkeeper and his family,” said Mrs. Colonel
Witherington from her window, which looked out on the village green.
“Girls, it is time to put on your bonnets. A man like that is bred up to
be punctual; he comes to church as he goes to the shop, as the hour
strikes. There he goes--”
“As ostentatiously humble as ever,” said one of the girls.
“And he has got one of the shopmen with him, mamma,” said Myra, who was
the wit of the family. “Not a bad looking draper’s assistant; they
always have the shopmen out on Sundays. Poor fellows, it is their only
day.”
“Poor fellows, indeed! I suppose Lady Mary thinks because she is an
earl’s daughter she can do whatever she likes; introducing such people
as these into the society of gentle-folks,” cried the mother. “Myra,
don’t stand laughing there, but put on your things.”
“We need not go into their society unless we please,” said Myra.
“And to be sure an Earl’s daughter _can_ do whatever she likes; no
nonsense of that description will make _her_ lose caste,” said the
eldest Miss Witherington, turning away from the window with a sigh. This
poor young lady, not being an Earl’s daughter, had not been able to do
as she liked, or to marry as she liked, and she felt the difference far
more keenly than her mother did, who was affected only in theory. This
was one of the many scraps of neighbourly talk which went on at Harbour
Green when the party from Tottenham’s were seen walking through the
village to church. Lady Mary was an Earl’s daughter, and she _did_ take
it upon her to do precisely as she liked; but her neighbours directed
most of their indignation upon her husband who had no such privileges, a
man who was civil to everybody, and whom they all confessed, whenever
they wanted anything of him, to be the best-natured fellow in the world.
The service in the little church was not so well-conducted as it might
have been, had Lady Mary taken more interest in it; but still the lesser
authorities had done something for the training of the choir, and a
gentle Ritualism, not too pronounced as yet, kept everything in a
certain good order. Lady Mary herself did not take the same honest and
simple part in the devotions as her husband and children did; various
parts of the service went against her views; she smiled a little as she
listened to the sermon. A close observer might have noticed that, though
she behaved with the most perfect decorum, as a great lady ought, she
yet felt herself somewhat superior to all that was going on. I cannot
say that Edgar noticed this on his first Sunday at Harbour Green, though
he may have remarked it afterwards; but Edgar’s mind was not at the
present moment sufficiently free to remark upon individual peculiarity.
The sense of novelty or something else more exciting still worked in
him, and left him in a state of vague agitation; and when the service
being over, Lady Mary hurried on with the children, on pretence of
calling on some one, and left Mr. Tottenham with Edgar, the young man
felt his heart beat higher, and knew that the moment at last had come.
“Well, Earnshaw! you have not had much time to judge, it is true; but
how do you think you like us?” said Mr. Tottenham. The question was odd,
but the questioner’s face was as grave as that of a judge. “We are hasty
people, and you are hasty,” he added, “so it is not so absurd as it
might be; how do you think you shall like us? Now speak out, never mind
our feelings. I am not asking you sentimentally, but from a purely
business point of view.”
“I am so hasty a man,” said Edgar, laughing, with a much stronger sense
of the comic character of the position than the other had, “that I made
up my mind at sight, as one generally does; but since then you have so
bribed me by kindness--”
“Then you do like us!” said Mr. Tottenham, holding out his hand, “I
thought you would. Of course if you had not liked us our whole scheme
would have come to nothing, and Mary had rather set her heart on it. You
will be sure not to take offence, or to think us impertinent if I tell
you what we thought?”
“One word,” said Edgar with nervous haste. “Tell me first what it has
been that has made you take such a warm interest in me?”
Mr. Tottenham winced and twisted his slim long person as a man in an
embarrassing position is apt to do. “Well,” he said, “Earnshaw, I don’t
know that we can enter into it so closely as that. We have always taken
an interest in you, since the time when you were a great friend of the
Thornleigh’s and we were always hearing of you; and when you behaved so
well in that bad business. And then some months ago we heard that you
had been seen coming up from Scotland--travelling,” Mr. Tottenham added,
with hesitation, “in the cheap way.”
“Who told you that?” Edgar’s curiosity gave a sharpness which he had not
intended to his voice.
“Come, come,” said Mr. Tottenham good-humouredly; “that is just the
point which I cannot enter into. But you may permit us to be interested,
though we can’t describe in full detail how it came about. Earnshaw,
Mary and I are fanciful sort of people, as you perceive; we don’t always
keep to the beaten path; and we want you to do us a favour. What I am
going to ask may be a little irregular; it may sound a little
obtrusive; you may take it amiss; though I hope not--”
“I shall not take it amiss in any case,” Edgar managed to say; but his
heart was beating very loudly, and an agitation for which he could not
account had got possession of his whole being. His mind went wildly over
a whole world of conjecture, and I need not add that he was utterly
astray in everything he thought of, and did not reach to the faintest
notion of what his companion meant to be at.
“In the first place,” said Mr. Tottenham nervously, “it is evident that
you must wait till there is an opening in that business with Newmarch. I
don’t doubt in the least that he wants to have you, and that he’ll give
you the first vacancy; but he can’t kill off a man on purpose, though I
dare say he would if he could. I don’t go on to say in the second place,
as I might perhaps, that a Queen’s Messenger has a very wearisome life,
and not much to make amends for it--”
Here he paused to take breath, while Edgar watched and wondered, getting
more and more bewildered every moment in the maze of conjecture through
which he could not find his way.
“Of course,” said Mr. Tottenham, himself displaying a certain amount of
rising excitement, “I don’t mean to say that you ought not to accept
such an appointment if it was offered. But in the meantime, what are you
to do? Live in London, and waste your resources, and break your spirit
with continual waiting? I say no, no, by no means; and this is what put
it into my head to say what I am going to say to you, and to insist
upon your coming here.”
What was he going to say? Still Edgar, subdued by his own excitement,
could make no reply. Mr. Tottenham paused also, as if half fearing to
take the plunge.
“What we meant, Earnshaw,” he said abruptly, at last, “what Mary and I
want, if you will do it, is--that you should stay with us and take
charge of our boy.”
The last words he uttered hastily, and almost sharply, as if throwing
something out that burned him while he held it. And oh! dear reader, how
can I express to you the way in which poor Edgar fell, fell, low down,
and lower down, as into some echoing depth, when these words fell upon
his dismayed and astonished ears! Take charge of their boy! God help
him! what had he been thinking about? He could not himself tell;
nothing, a chimera, the foolishest of dreams, some wild fancy which
involved the future in a vain haze of brightness with the image of the
veiled maiden in the railway carriage, and of Gussy, who was never
veiled. Oh, Heaven and earth! what a fool, what a fool he was! She had
nothing to do with it; he himself had nothing to do with it. It was but
a benevolent scheme of people with a great many benevolent schemes about
them, for the relief of a poor young fellow whom they knew to be in
trouble. That was all. Edgar went on walking as in a dream, feeling
himself spin round and round and go down, as to the bottom of some well.
He could hear that Mr. Tottenham went on speaking, and the hum of his
voice made, as it were, a running accompaniment to his own hubbub of
inarticulate thoughts; Edgar heard it, yet heard it not. When he woke up
from this confusion, it was quite suddenly, by reason of a pause in the
accompanying voice. The last words his bewildered intelligence caught up
were these:
“You will think it over, and tell me your decision later. You will
understand that we both beg you to forgive us, if we have said or done
anything which is disagreeable to you, Earnshaw. You promise me to
remember that?”
“Disagreeable!” Edgar murmured half consciously. “Why should it be
disagreeable?” but even his own voice seemed to be changed in his own
ear as he said it. He was all changed, and everything about him. “I must
go across to the pond before I go in,” he added, somewhat abruptly. “I
promised Philip to look at the ice;” and with scarcely any further
excuse, set off across the grass, from which the whiteness and crispness
of the morning frosts had been stolen away by the sun. He could not get
free of the physical sensation of having fallen. He seemed to himself to
be bruised and shaken; he could do nothing with his mind but realize and
identify his state; he could not discuss it with himself. It did not
seem to him even that he knew what he had been thinking of, what he had
been hoping; he knew only that he had fallen from some strange height,
and lay at the bottom somewhere, aching and broken in heart and
strength, stunned by the fall, and so confused that he did not know what
had happened to him, or what he must do next. In this state of mind he
walked mechanically across the grass, and gazed at the frozen pond,
without knowing what he was doing, and then strode mechanically away
from it, and went home. (How soon we begin to call any kind of a place
home, when we have occasion to use it as such!). He went home, back to
his room, the room which surely, he thought to himself, was too good for
Mr. Tottenham’s tutor, which was the post he had been asked to occupy.
Mr. Tottenham’s boy’s tutor, that was the phrase.
It was his own repetition of these words which roused him a little; the
tutor in the house; the handy man who was made to do everything; the one
individual among the gentlemen of the house whom it was possible to
order about; who was an equal, and yet no equal. No, Edgar said to
himself, with a generous swelling of his heart, it was not thus that a
dependent would be treated in Mr. Tottenham’s house; but the very idea
of being a dependent struck him with such sharp poignancy of surprise,
as well as pain, that he could not calm himself down, or make the best
of it. He had never tasted what this was like yet. When he had made his
application to Lord Newmarch, the experience had not been a pleasant
one; but it was short at least, and the position he had hoped for had
been independent at least. In it, he would have been no man’s servant,
but the Queen’s, whom all men delight to serve. Mr. Tottenham’s tutor
was a very different thing.
He sat at his window, and heard without knowing the great luncheon-bell
peal out through all the echoes. He felt that he could not go downstairs
to confront them all, while still in the confusion and stupor of his
downfall; for he had sustained a downfall more terrible than anyone
knew, more bewildering than he could even realize himself; from vague,
strange, delicious suspicions of something coming which might change all
his life, down to a sickening certainty of something come, which would
indeed change everything in every way, in the estimation of the world
and of himself.
Mr. Tottenham walked home very seriously on his side, after this
interview. He had some sort of comprehension that the proposal he had
just made was one which, at the first hearing, would not delight his new
friend; and he was sufficiently friendly and large-minded to permit the
young man a little moment of ruffled pride, a little misery, even a
little offence, before he could make up his mind to it, notwithstanding
that it was, on the part of the Tottenhams, an impulse of almost pure
and unmixed charity and kindness which had suggested it. They were
impulsive people both, and fond of making themselves the Providence of
poorer people; and the very best thing that can be said of them, better
even than their universal and crotchety willingness to serve everybody
who came in their way, was their composure when the intended recipients
of their bounty hesitated, or, as sometimes happened, kicked at it
altogether. Their kindnesses, their bounties, their crotchets, and their
theories were all mixed up together, and might occasionally be less
good, and do less good than they were meant to do; but the toleration
which permitted a prospective _protégé_ to weigh the benefit offered,
without any angry consciousness of his want of gratitude, was admirable,
and much more unusual in this world than even the kindness itself. Mr.
Tottenham hurried off to his wife, and told her all about it; and the
two together waited for Edgar’s decision with sympathetic excitement,
almost as much disturbed in their minds as he was, and with no indignant
feeling that their good intentions were having scanty justice. On the
contrary, they discussed the matter as they might have done something in
which their _amour propre_ was not at all engaged.
“I hope he will see it is the best thing for him,” said Mr. Tottenham.
“Of course it is the best thing for him, and he must see it,” said the
more impetuous Lady Mary; but neither one nor the other declared that he
would be a fool or ungrateful if he neglected this opening, as so many
intending benefactors would. They discussed it all the afternoon, taking
their Sunday stroll together through the greenhouses, which were
splendid, and talking of nothing but Edgar.
“He must do it; we must insist upon it, Tom,” Lady Mary cried, growing
more and more eager.
“I cannot make him, dear, if he don’t see it,” said the husband, shaking
his head.
Thus both upstairs and downstairs there was but one subject of
consideration. The ugly things about dependence, about domestic slavery,
about the equal who would not be an equal, which Edgar was saying to
himself, found no echo in the talk of the good people, full of wealth
and power to benefit others, who puckered their brows on the subject
downstairs. In this respect the thoughts of the poor man whom they
wanted to befriend, were much less generous than theirs who wanted to
befriend him. He judged them harshly, and they judged him kindly. He
attributed intentions and motives to them which they were guiltless of,
and thought of himself as degraded in their eyes by the kindness they
had offered; while, in fact, he had become a most important person to
them, solely on that account--a person occupying a superior position,
with power to decide against or for them, to honour or discredit their
judgment. Indeed, I am bound to allow that Edgar was not generous at all
at this moment of his career, and that his hosts were. But ah me! it is
so much easier to be generous, to be tolerant, to think the best, when
you are rich and can confer favours; so difficult to keep up your
optimist views, and to see the best side of everything, when you are
poor!
“He will either come down and tell us that he accepts, or he will pack
his things and go off to-night,” said Lady Mary as they waited. They
were seated in the conservatory, in the centre circle under the
glittering glass dome, which had been built to give room for the great
feathery branches of a palm tree. This was the favourite spot in which
all the pretty luxury of these conservatories culminated. Some
bright-coloured Persian rugs were laid on the floor, here and there,
upon which were some half-dozen chairs, half rustic and wholly
luxurious. All the flowers that art can extract or force from nature in
the depth of Winter were grouped about, great moon-discs of white
camellias, heaths covered with fairy bells, spotless primulas rising
from out the rough velvet of their leaves. The atmosphere was soft as a
moderate gentle Summer, and the great palm leaves stirred now and then
against the high dome of glass. Mr. Tottenham lounged on a rustic sofa,
with a cloud of anxiety on his face, and Lady Mary, too anxious to
lounge, sat bolt upright and listened. Why were those good people
anxious? I cannot tell; they wanted, I suppose, to succeed in this good
action which they had set their hearts on doing; they did not want to be
foiled; and they had set their hearts upon delivering Edgar from his
difficulties, and making him comfortable. Along with their other
sentiments there was mixed a certain generous fear lest they should have
been precipitate, lest they should have hurt the feelings and wounded
the pride of their friend whom they wished to serve. I wish there were
more of such people, and more of such susceptibilities in the world.
They sat thus, until the twilight grew so deep and shadowy that they
could scarcely see each other. It was very cold outside, where
everything began again to congeal and whiten, and all the world resigned
itself with a groan to the long, long interval of dead darkness,
hopelessness, and cold which must deepen before day. At the end of a
vista of shrubs and great evergreen plants, the red glow of the
drawing-room fire shone out, shining there like a ruddy star in the
distance. Lady Mary drew her shawl round her with a little shiver, and
her husband got up and yawned in the weariness of suspense. Had he gone
away without giving an answer? Had they done nothing but harm, though
they had wished so much to do good. They both started like a couple of
guilty conspirators when at length a step was heard approaching, and
Edgar appeared, half hesitating, half eager, against the glow of the
distant fire.