"Whatever may be the result, it's best you should know it soon, Gordon. Nothing unfits a man for every thing so much as being in a state of doubt."
"I'll end mine at once, Charley. No; not at once. I must first see if that Botanical-Fête arrangement is coming off, and after that I'll speak to her father. Devilish solemn phrase that, eh, Charley!"
"It won't be so dreadful in carrying out as it sounds, my boy. Clear out now; you shan't have another instant!"
Gordon Frere nodded laughingly at his friend; and after making a hurried toilet in his own room started off for Queen Anne Street, while Charles Yeldham seated himself at his desk.
But not to work; his mind was too full for that. The short light conversation just recorded had given Charles Yeldham matter for much deliberation. When a man's life is thoroughly engrossed by mental work, the few humanising influences which he allows to operate on him are infinitely more absorbing than the thousand fleeting affections of the light-hearted and the thoughtless. When Charles Yeldham gave his thoughts a holiday from his conveyancing, and turned them from the attorneys who employed him and the work which they brought him to do, his mind reverted generally to the loved ones in the vicarage at home or to the two men whose friendship he had time and opportunity to cultivate. Never was younger brother better loved than was Gordon Frere by the large-hearted, large-brained philosopher whose chambers he shared. It was indeed from the elder-brother point of view that Yeldham regarded Frere. As a boy Gordon had been the one private pupil whom the old vicar had admitted into his house; and later in life he had passed two long vacations reading at the seaside with his old tutor and the members of his family. Charley loved the young man with all the large capacity of his loving nature, looked with the most lenient eye on his boyish frivolities and dissipations, and had hitherto never feared for his future, hoping that he would settle down into some useful career before he thought of settling himself for life. But the conversation just held had entirely changed his ideas. Gordon, unstable, unsettled, without any means or resources, had announced his intention of taking a wife. And what a wife! Of the young lady herself Yeldham knew nothing; but certain pleadings which he had drawn some twelve months beforehand in a case which never came into court, and which had been settled by mutual arrangement, had given him a very clear insight into the character of Mr. Edward Scrope Guyon, and into that worthy gentleman's resources and manner of life. With such a man Yeldham felt perfectly certain that an impecunious scion of a good family like Gordon Frere coming as a pretender for his daughter's hand would not have the smallest chance of success; and it was with a heavy heart that he sat idly sketching figures on his blotting-pad, and turning over all that he had recently heard in his mind.
"I don't see my way out of it," said he, throwing down his pen at length, and plunging his hands into his pockets. "I don't see my way out of it, and that's the truth. Gordon is hard hit, I believe,--harder hit than he has ever been yet, and means all fairly and honourably; but fair play and honour won't avail much, I imagine, in carrying out this connection--at least with the male portion of the family. A man with the morals of a billiard-marker and an income of a couple of thousand a-year would have a better chance with old Guyon than a Bayard or a Galahad. He's a bad lot, this Mr. Guyon, but as sharp as a ferret, and he'll read Gordon like a book. All the poor boy's talk about what his political influence and what his father must do for him, and all that, won't weigh for an instant with a man like Guyon, who is up to every move on the board, and who will require money down from any one bidding for his daughter's hand. I wonder what the girl's like, and how much of the play rests in her hands. That old rip would never be base enough to make her his instrument in advancing his own fortune? And yet how often it's done, only in a quieter and less noticeable manner! Gad! I begin to think I am a bit of a cynic, as Gordon chaffingly, calls me, when I find these ideas floating through my head; and I'm sure any one would imagine I was one, or worse, if; knowing my own convictions, they had heard me advise that poor boy to see old Guyon and lay his statement before him. But I'm convinced that that is the only way of dealing with such a matter as this. Have the tooth out at once; the wrench will do you good and prevent any chance of floating pains in the future. Guyon will handle the forceps with strength and skill, and poor Gordon will think that half his life is gone with the tug. But once over, when he begins to find that the gap is not so enormous as he at first imagined, when he sees people don't notice the alteration in his appearance, he'll begin to think it was a good job that it happened while he was yet young, and he'll settle down and get to work, and perhaps make the name and reputation which his talents, if they had any thing like fair play, entitle him to. It's wonderful the different light in which men see these things. There's my boy there just mad for this girl, raving about her beauty, going into ecstasies about her hair and eyes and figure; and here am I, his chum and intimate, who can safely say that never in the course of a life extending now to some six-and-thirty years, have I had the faintest idea of what being in love is like. Lord, Lord! what a queer world it is! and what is for the best? Perhaps, if I had had nice smooth fair hair instead of a shock-head of bristles, I should have been kneeling at ladies' feet instead of stooping over my desk, and writing sonnets for girls instead of drawing pleas for attorneys. I know which pays best, but I wonder which is the most interesting. 'Never felt the kiss of love, nor maiden's hand in mine,' eh? Well, I don't know that I'm much the worse for that. Maidens' hands seem to lead one into all sorts of scrapes; and as for the kiss of love---- Why, what time's that?"
The striking of the clock on the mantelpiece roused him from his reverie; and looking up, he discovered that his intended five-minutes' absence from work had been extended over two hours, and that the daylight of the late summer time was beginning to fade. So, with a heavy sigh, he lit his reading-lamp and settled down to his desk again. Like every other man accustomed to hard work, he found it immediate relief from thought, and soon became immersed in his writing, at which he slaved away until it was time to get some dinner. He had no heart to walk up to the club that evening. He might meet some fellows of his acquaintance there,--very possibly Gordon himself; and he was not inclined to chatter upon trivial subjects. So he put on his hat, and strode over to the Cock; the quiet solemnity of the old tavern at that hour of the evening, when the late diners had departed and the early supper-eaters had not yet arrived, being thoroughly congenial to his feelings. After his dinner he went back to his chambers; and after smoking a pipe, during which process he again fell a-thinking over Gordon's trouble, he returned to his work, and was in full swing when he heard a key in the lock, and the next minute Mr. Gordon Frere entered the room.
"Hallo, Gordon!" said Charley, looking up at the clock; "why, it's not eleven; what on earth brings you home so early, young un?"
"Happiness, Charley! jolliness, old fellow! It's all right about to-morrow; Kate's going to the fête, and---- After dinner at the Club I went up into the strangers' smoking-room, and there wasn't any one there I knew--only a couple of old fellows, who sat and smoked in silence; and so I got thinking it all over; and what a stunning girl she is, and how sure I am that she's fond of me, and how fond I am of her--regularly hit, you know; and so I thought it would be horrible somehow to go any where after,--to the theatre, you know, or to hear the fellows chaffing in the way they do about--women and every thing; and so I came home."
"Just in time to wish me good-night, my boy. I'm off to bed."