CHAPTER XII.
GEORGE BERTRAM DECIDES IN FAVOUR OF THE BAR.
George Bertram did not return directly to England. Since he had been in Turkey, he had made arrangement by letter with his friend Harcourt to meet him in the Tyrol, and to travel home with him through Switzerland. It was about the middle of June when he left Constantinople, and Harcourt was to be at Innspruck on the 5th August. George might therefore well have remained a week or two longer with his father had either of them so wished; but neither of them did wish it. The living at Constantinople was dear, and George's funds would not stand much more of it; and Sir Lionel, free and easy as he was, still felt his son's presence as some impediment—perhaps in the way of his business, perhaps in that of his pleasures.
From Constantinople Bertram went up across the Balkan to the Danube, and thence through Bucharest into Transylvania, travelling, as in those days was necessary, somewhat by permission of the Russian authorities. He then again struck the Danube at Pesth; remained some little time there; again a week or so at Vienna; from thence he visited Saltzburg, and exactly on the appointed day shook hands with his friend in the hall of the old "Golden Sun" at Innspruck.
At first, on leaving his father, George was very glad to be once more alone. Men delighted him not; nor women either at that moment—seeing that his thoughts were running on Caroline Waddington, and that her presence was not to be had. But by the time that he found himself in the Tyrol, he was delighted once more to have a companion. He had of course picked up Englishmen, and been picked up by them at every town he had passed; one always does; some ladies also he had casually encountered—but he had met with no second Caroline. While wandering about the mountains of Transylvania, he had been quite contented to be alone: at Pesth he had not ceased to congratulate himself on his solitude, though sometimes he found the day a little too long for his purpose in doing so; at Vienna he was glad enough to find an old Oxonian; though, even while enjoying the treat, he would occasionally say to himself that, after all, society was only a bore. But by the time he had done the Saltzburg country, he was heartily sick of himself, somewhat sick also of thinking of his love, and fully able to re-echo all that Harcourt had to say in praise of some very fine old wine which that fastidious gentleman caused to be produced for them from the cellars of the "Golden Sun."
Innspruck is a beautiful little town. Perhaps no town in Europe can boast a site more exquisitely picturesque. Edinburgh would be equal to it, if it had a river instead of a railroad running through its valley and under its Castle-hill. But we sojourned too long in the Holy Land to permit of our dwelling even for half a chapter in the Tyrol. George, however, and his friend remained there for a fortnight. They went over the Brenner and looked down into Italy; made an excursion to those singular golden-tinted mountains, the Dolomites, among which live a race of men who speak neither German nor Italian, nor other language known among the hundred dialects of Europe, but a patois left to them from the ancient Latins; they wandered through the valleys of the Inn and its tributaries and wondered at the odd way of living which still prevails in their picturesque castellated mansions.
For awhile Bertram thought that Harcourt was the best companion in the world. He was as agreeable and easy tempered as his father; and was at the same time an educated man, which his father certainly was not. Harcourt, though he put his happiness in material things perhaps quite as much as did Sir Lionel, required that his material things should be of a high flavour. He was a reading man, addicted, in a certain cynical, carping sort of way, even to poetry, was a critic almost by profession, loved pictures, professed to love scenery, certainly loved to watch and scrutinize the different classes of his brother-men. He was gifted pre-eminently with a lawyer's mind, but it was not a lawyer's mind of a vulgar quality. He, too, loved riches, and looked on success in the world as a man's chief, nay, perhaps his only aim; but for him it was necessary that success should be polished. Sir Lionel wanted money that he might swallow it and consume it, as a shark does its prey; but, like sharks in general, he had always been hungry,—had never had his bellyful of money. Harcourt's desire for money was of a different class. It would not suit him to be in debt to any one. A good balance at his banker's was a thing dear to his soul. He aimed at perfect respectability, and also at perfect independence.
For awhile, therefore, Harcourt's teaching was a great improvement on Sir Lionel's, and was felt to be so. He preached a love of good things; but the good things were to be corollaries only to good work. Sir Lionel's summum bonum would have been an unexpected pocketful of money, three months of idleness in which to spend it, and pleasant companions for the time, who should be at any rate as well provided in pocket as himself. Harcourt would have required something more. The world's respect and esteem were as necessary to him as the world's pleasures.
But nevertheless, after a time, Harcourt's morality offended Bertram, as Bertram's transcendentalism offended Harcourt. They admired the same view, but they could not look at it through the same coloured glass.
"And so on the whole you liked your governor?" said Harcourt to him one day as they were walking across a mountain range from one valley to another.