If my reader is astonished that Mr. Hankes should have offered himself for such an expedition, it is but fair to state that the surprise was honestly shared in by that same gentleman. Was it that he made the offer in some moment of rash enthusiasm; had any impulse of wild chivalry mastered his calmer reason; was it that curious tendency which occasionally seems to sway Cockney natures to ascend mountains, cross dangerous ledges, or peep into volcanic craters? I really cannot aver that any of these was his actual motive, while I have my suspicion that a softer, a gentler, though a deeper sentiment influenced him on this occasion. Mr. Hankes—to use a favorite phrase of his own—“had frequent occasion to remark” Miss Kellett's various qualities of mind and intelligence; he had noticed in her the most remarkable aptitude for “business.” She wrote and answered letters with a facility quite marvellous; details, however complicated, became by her treatment simple and easy; no difficulties seemed to deter her; and she possessed a gift—one of the rarest and most valuable of all—never to waste a moment on the impracticable, but to address herself, with a sort of intuition, at once, to only such means as could be rendered available.
Now, whether it was that Mr. Hankes anticipated a time when Mr. Dunn, in his greatness, might soar above the meaner cares of a business life,—when, lifted into the Elysian atmosphere of the nobility, he would look down with contemptuous apathy at the straggles and cares of enterprise,—or whether Mr. Hankes, from sources of knowledge available peculiarly to himself, knew that the fortunes of that great man were not built upon an eternal foundation, but shared in that sad lot which threatens all things human with vicissitude; whether stern facts and sterner figures taught him that all that splendid reputation, all that boundless influence, all that immense riches, might chance, one day or other, to be less real, less actual, and less positive than the world now believed them to be; whether, in a word, Mr. Hankes felt that Fortune, having smiled so long and so blandly on her favorite, might not, with that capriciousness so generally ascribed to her, assume another and very different aspect,—whatever the reason, in short, he deemed the dawn of his own day was approaching, and that, if only true to himself, Mr. Hankes was sure to be the man of the “situation,”—the next great star in the wide hemisphere that stretches from the Stock Exchange to—the Marshalsea, and includes all from Belgravia to Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Miss Kellett's abilities, her knowledge, her readiness, her tact, a certain lightness of hand in the management of affairs that none but a woman ever possesses, and scarcely one woman in ten thousand combines with the more male attributes of hard common-sense, pointed her out to Mr. Hankes as one eminently suited to aid his ambition. Now, men married for money every day in the week; and why not marry for what secured not alone money, but fame, station, and influence? Mr. Hankes was a widower; his own experience of married life had not been fortunate. The late Mrs. Hankes was a genius, and had the infirmities of that unsocial class; she despised her husband, quarrelled with him, lampooned him in a book, and ran off with the editor of a small weekly review that eulogized her novel. It was supposed she died in Australia,—at least, she never came back again; and as the first lieutenant gravely confirms the sun's altitude when he mutters, “Make it noon,” so Mr. Hankes, by as simple a fiat, said, “Make her dead,” and none disputed him. At all events, he was a widower by brevet, and eligible to be gazetted a husband at any moment.
Miss Kellett possessed many personal attractions, nor was he altogether insensible to them; but he regarded them, after all, pretty much as the intended purchaser of an estate might have regarded an ornamental fish-pond or a flower-garden on the property,—something, in short, which increased the attraction, but never augmented the value. He was glad they were there, though they by no means would have decided him to the purchase. He knew, besides, that the world set a high price on these things, and he was not sorry to possess what represented value of any kind. It was always scrip, shares, securities, even, although one could not well say how, when, or where the dividend was to be paid.
There was another consideration, too, weighed materially with him. The next best thing, in Mr. Hankes's estimation, to marrying into a good connection, was to have none at all,—no brothers, no sisters-in-law, no cousins-german or otherwise, no uncles, aunts, or any good friends of parental degree. Now, except a brother in the Crimea,—with an excellent chance of being killed,—Sybella had none belonging to her. In the happy phrase of advertisements, she had no encumbrances. There was no one to insist upon this or that settlement; none to stipulate for anything in her favor; and these were, to his thinking, vast advantages. Out of these various considerations our reader is now to fashion some of the reasons which induced Mr. Hankes to undertake an excursion alike foreign to his taste and uncongenial to his habits; but as a placeman would not decline the disagreeables of a sea-voyage as the preliminary to reaching the colony he was to govern, so this gentleman consoled himself by thinking that it was the sole penalty attached to a very remunerative ambition.
If Sybella was not without some astonishment at his proposal to accompany her, she never gave herself the slightest trouble to explain the motive. She acceded to his wish from natural courtesy and the desire to oblige, and that was all. He had been uniformly polite and civil in all their intercourse; beyond that, he was not a person whose companionship she would have sought or cared for, and so they rode along, chatting indifferently of whatever came uppermost,—the scene, the road, the season, the condition of the few people who formed the inhabitants of this wild region, and how their condition might possibly be affected by the great changes then in progress near them.
Guarded and cautious as he was in all he said, Mr. Hankes could not entirely conceal how completely he separated, in his own mind, the success of the great scheme and the advantage that might accrue to the people; nor was she slow to detect this reservation. She took too true and just a view of her companion's temper and tone to approach this theme with the scruples that agitated herself, but at once said,—
“Let us suppose this scheme to be as prosperous as its best friends can wish it, Mr. Hankes; that you all—I mean you great folk, who are directors, chairmen, secretaries, and so forth—become as rich and powerful as you desire, see your shares daily increasing in value, your speculations more and more lucrative, what becomes of the people—the poor man—all this while?”
“Why, of course he participates in all these successes; he grows rich too; he sells what he has to sell at a better market, obtains higher wages for his labor, and shares all our prosperity.”
“Granted. But who is to teach him the best use of this newly acquired prosperity? You, and others like you, have your tastes already formed; the channels are already made in which your affluence is to run: not so with him; abundance may—nay, it will—suggest waste, which will beget worse. Who are to be his guides,—who his examples?”