"But do come; change your dress, return and dine with me; you will have
just time, Harley. You will meet the most eminent men of our party;
surely they are worth your study, philosopher that you affect to be."
Thus said Audley Egerton to Lord L'Estrange, with whom he had been
riding (after the toils of his office). The two gentlemen were in
Audley's library. Mr. Egerton, as usual, buttoned up, seated in his
chair, in the erect posture of a man who scorns "inglorious ease."
Harley, as usual, thrown at length on a sofa, his long hair in careless
curls, his neckcloth loose, his habiliments flowing--_simplex
munditiis_, indeed--his grace all his own; seemingly negligent, never
slovenly; at ease every where and with every one, even with Mr. Audley
Egerton, who chilled or awed the ease out of most people.
"Nay, my dear Audley, forgive me. But your eminent men are all men of
one idea, and that not a diverting one--politics! politics! politics!
The storm in the saucer."
"But, what is your life, Harley?--the saucer without the storm?"
"Do you know, that's very well said, Audley; I did not think you had so
much liveliness of repartee. Life--life! it is insipid, it is shallow.
No launching argosies in the saucer. Audley, I have the oddest fancy--"
"_That_ of course," said Audley drily; "you never have any other. What
is the new one?"
HARLEY (with great gravity).--"Do you believe in Mesmerism?"
AUDLEY.--"Certainly not."
HARLEY.--"If it were in the power of an animal magnetizer to get me out
of my own skin into somebody else's! _That's_ my fancy! I am so tired of
myself--so tired! I have run through all my ideas--know every one of
them by heart; when some pretentious impostor of an idea perks itself up
and says, 'Look at me, I'm a new acquaintance'--I just give it a nod,
and say, 'Not at all, you have only got a new coat on; you are the same
old wretch that has bored me these last twenty years; get away.' But if
one could be in a new skin! if I could be for half-an-hour your tall
porter, or one of your eminent matter-of-fact men, I should then really
travel into a new world.[13] Every man's brain must be a world in itself,
eh? If I could but make a parochial settlement even in yours,
Audley--run over all your thoughts and sensations. Upon my life, I'll go
and talk to that French mesmerizer about it."
[13] If, at the date in which Lord L'Estrange held this
conversation with Mr. Egerton, Alfred de Musset had written
his comedies, we should suspect that his lordship had
plagiarized from one of them the whimsical idea that he here
vents upon Audley. In repeating it, the author at least can
not escape from the charge of obligation to a writer whose
humor, at least, is sufficiently opulent to justify the loan.
AUDLEY (who does not seem to like the notion of having his thoughts and
sensations rummaged, even by his friend, and even in fancy).--"Pooh,
pooh, pooh! Do talk like a man of sense."
HARLEY--"Man of sense! Where shall I find a model? I don't know a man of
sense!--never met such a creature. Don't believe it ever existed. At one
time I thought Socrates must have been a man of sense;--a delusion; he
would stand gazing into the air, and talking to his Genius from sunrise
to sunset. Is that like a man of sense? Poor Audley, how puzzled he
looks! Well, I'll try and talk sense to oblige you. And first--(here
Harley raised himself on his elbow)--first, is it true, as I have heard
vaguely, that you are paying court to the sister of that infamous
Italian traitor?"
"Madame di Negra? No; I am not paying _court_ to her," answered Audley
with a cold smile. "But she is very handsome; she is very clever; she is
useful to me--I need not say how nor why; that belongs to my _metier_ as
politician. But, I think, if you will take my advice, or get your friend
to take it, I could obtain from her brother, through my influence with
her, some liberal concessions to your exile. She is very anxious to know
where he is."
"You have not told her?"
"No; I promised you I would keep that secret."
"Be sure you do; it is only for some mischief, some snare, that she
could desire such information. Concessions! pooh! This is no question of
concessions, but of rights."
"I think you should leave your friend to judge of that."
"Well, I will write to him. Meanwhile, beware of this woman, I have
heard much of her abroad, and she has the character of her brother for
duplicity and--"
"Beauty," interrupted Audley, turning the conversation with practiced
adroitness. "I am told that the Count is one of the handsomest men in
Europe, much handsomer than his sister still, though nearly twice her
age. Tut--tut--Harley! fear not for me. I am proof against all feminine
attractions. This heart is dead."
"Nay, nay; it is not for you to speak thus--leave that to me. But even
_I_ will not say it. The heart never dies. And you; what have you
lost?--a wife; true: an excellent noble-hearted woman. But was it love
that you felt for her? Enviable man, have you ever loved?"
"Perhaps not, Harley," said Audley, with a sombre aspect, and in
dejected accents; "very few men ever have loved, at least as you mean by
the word. But there are other passions than love that kill the heart,
and reduce us to mechanism."
While Egerton spoke, Harley turned side, and his breast heaved. There
was a short silence; Audley was the first to break it.
"Speaking of my lost wife, I am sorry that you do not approve what I
have done for her young kinsman, Randal Leslie."
HARLEY (recovering himself with an effort).--"Is it true kindness to bid
him exchange manly independence, for the protection of an official
patron?"
AUDLEY.--"I did not bid him. I gave him his choice. At his age I should
have chosen as he has done."
HARLEY.--"I trust not; I think better of you. But answer me one question
frankly, and then I will ask another. Do you mean to make this young man
your heir?"
AUDLEY (with a slight embarrassment).--"Heir, pooh! I am young still. I
may live as long as he--time enough to think of that."
HARLEY.--"Then now to my second question. Have you told this youth
plainly that he may look to you for influence, but not for wealth?"
AUDLEY (firmly).--"I think I have; but I shall repeat it more
emphatically."
HARLEY.--"Then I am satisfied as to your conduct, but not as to his. For
he has too acute an intellect not to know what it is to forfeit
independence; and, depend upon it, he has made his calculations, and
would throw you into the bargain in any balance that he could strike in
his favor. You go by your experience in judging men; I by my instincts.
Nature warns us as it does the inferior animals--only we are too
conceited, we bipeds, to heed her. My instincts of soldier and gentleman
recoil from that old young man. He has the soul of the Jesuit. I see it
in his eye--I hear it in the tread of his foot; _volto sciolto_, he has
not; _i pensieri stretti_ he has. Hist! I hear now his step in the hall.
I should know it from a thousand. That's his very touch on the handle of
the door."
Randal Leslie entered. Harley--who, despite his disregard for forms, and
his dislike to Randal, was too high-bred not to be polite to his junior
in age or inferior in rank--rose and bowed. But his bright piercing eyes
did not soften as they caught and bore down the deeper and more latent
fire in Randal's. Harley then did not resume his seat, but moved to the
mantlepiece, and leant against it.
RANDAL.--"I have fulfilled, your commissions, Mr. Egerton. I went first
to Maida-Hill, and saw Mr. Burley. I gave him the check, but he said
'it was too much, and he should return half to the banker;' he will
write the article as you suggested. I then--"
AUDLEY.--"Enough, Randal! we will not fatigue Lord L'Estrange with these
little details of a life that displeases him--the life political."
HARLEY.--"But _these_ details do not displease me; they reconcile me to
my own life. Go on, pray, Mr. Leslie."
Randal had too much tact to need the cautioning glance of Mr. Egerton.
He did not continue, but said, with a soft voice, "Do you think, Lord
L'Estrange, that the contemplation of the mode of life pursued by others
_can_ reconcile a man to his own, if he had before thought it needed a
reconciler?"
Harley looked pleased, for the question was ironical; and, if there was
a thing in the world he abhorred, it was flattery.
"Recollect your Lucretius, Mr. Leslie, _Suave mare_, &c., 'pleasant from
the cliff to see the mariners tossed on the ocean.' Faith, I think that
sight reconciles one to the cliff--though, before, one might have been
teased by the splash from the spray, and deafened by the scream of the
sea-gulls. But I leave you, Audley. Strange that I have heard no more of
my soldier. Remember I have your promise when I come to claim it.
Good-by, Mr. Leslie, I hope that Mr. Burley's article will be worth
the--check."
Lord L'Estrange mounted his horse, which was still at the door, and rode
through the Park. But he was no longer now unknown by sight. Bows and
nods saluted him on every side.
"Alas, I am found out then," said he to himself. "That terrible Duchess
of Knaresborough, too--I must fly my country." He pushed his horse into
a canter, and was soon out of the Park. As he dismounted at his father's
sequestered house, you would have hardly supposed him the same
whimsical, fantastic, but deep and subtle humorist that delighted in
perplexing the material Audley. For his expressive face was unutterably
serious. But the moment he came into the presence of his parents the
countenance was again lighted and cheerful. It brightened the whole room
like sunshine.