"MY DEAR BOY,
"You'll wonder I haven't answered that capital letter you sent me, giving a description of Westhope and its people, and your life there. You'll wonder, because you are young; when you're as old as I am you won't wonder at anything, except when you sometimes find a man tell the truth; but you shouldn't wonder then, because it would only be an accident. I am very glad that you seem to be so comfortable among the swells, but I never had much fear about it. I know them root and branch, the whole lot, though I'm only an old bird-stuffer; but I'm like Ulysses, I've seen men and cities, and used my eyes--used 'em so much that, by Jove! I don't think they'll last me much longer--at least, for the fine work in my business. What was I saying? Oh, I see; I know the swells, and I know that if they see a man respect himself they always respect him. All of 'em, sir; don't make any mistake about it. All of 'em, the most ineffable transparencies, who think you're sewn up and stuffed in quite a different way from themselves, the kindly noodles, and the clever people--for there are clever people, a few, even among swells--all like to see a man respect himself. You'll have found out by this time, if you did not know it before, that Lord Hetherington is one of the kindly noodles, and one of the best of 'em. He can't help believing in his blood, and his lineage, and his descent from those bloodthirsty, ignorant old ruffians of the Middle Ages, whose only good was that they killed other bloodthirsty, ignorant old ruffians, and he can't help being a fool, that being the penalty which a man generally has to pay for being able to boast of his descent; but he is harmless and kind-hearted. How goes on the book? Take my advice, and make it light and anecdotical. Boil down those old chronicles and parchments of the great West family, and serve them up in a soufflet. And don't let your heavy pedagogical style be seen in the dish! If you do, everybody will know at once that my lord has had nothing to do with the book on the title-page of which his name figures. I suppose it wouldn't do to put in any bad spelling, would it? That would be immensely reassuring to all who know Lord Hetherington as to the real authorship.
"And my lady, how is that grande dame? I've grinned a hundred times, thinking over your face of indignation and disgust at the manner in which she received you that day we went to call on their magnificences at the Clarendon, with a view to your engagement! How does she treat you now? Has she ordered you to black her boots yet, or to wash her lap-dog, or to take your meals with her lady's-maid? Or, more likely still, has she never taken any notice at all of you, having no idea of your existence, beyond the fact that there is a writing-machine--you--in the library, as there is a churn in the dairy, and a mangle in the laundry! And does this behaviour gird you, and do you growl inwardly about it, or are you a philosopher, and able to despise anything that a woman can do to hurt you? If the latter, come up to town at once, and I will exhibit you in a show as a lusus naturae,and we will divide the profits and make our fortunes.
"And while on that subject, Walter, let me drop my old cynical fun, and talk to you for a minute honestly and with all the affection of which my hard, warped, crabbed nature is capable. I can write to you what I couldn't say to you, my boy, and you won't think me gushing when I tell you that my heart had been tight locked and barred for years before I saw you, and that I don't think I've been any the worse since you found a key somehow--God knows how--to unlock it. Now, then, after that little bit of maudlin nonsense, to what I was going to say. The first time we were ever in my old room together talking over your future, I proposed to start you for Australia. You declined, saying that you couldn't possibly leave England; and when I pressed you about the ties that bound you here, and learned that you had no father or mother, you boggled, and hesitated, and broke down, and I was obliged to help you out of your sentence by changing the subject. Do you remember all that? And do you think I didn't know what it all meant? That marvellous stupidity of young men, which prevents them from thinking that any one has ever been young but themselves! I knew that it meant that you were in love, Walter, and that's what I want to ask you about. From that hour until the day we pressed hands in farewell at Euston Square, you never alluded to her again! In the long letter which you sent me, and which now lies before me, a letter treating fully of your present and your future life, there is no word of her Don't think I am surprised at a fine, generous, hearty, hopeful young fellow not giving his love-confidence to a withered, dried-up old skittle like myself; I never expected it; I should not mention it now, save that I fear that the state of affairs can be scarcely satisfactory between you, or you, who have placed your whole story unreservedly before me, would not have hidden this most important part of it. Nor do I want to ask you for a confidence which you have not volunteered. I only wish you to examine the matter calmly, quietly, and under the exercise of your common sense, of which you have plenty. And if it is unsatisfactory in any way---give it up! Yes, Walter, give it up! It sounds harshly, ridiculously, I know, but it is honest advice, and if I had had any one to say it to me years and years ago, and to enforce my adoption of it, I should have been a very different man. Believe in no woman's love, Walter; trust no woman's looks, or words, or vows. 'First of all would I fly from the cruel madness of love,' says Mr. Tennyson, and he is right. Cruel madness, indeed we laugh at the wretched lunatic who dons a paper crown, and holds a straw for a sceptre, while all the time we are hugging our own tinsel vanities, and exulting in our own sham state! That's where the swells have the pull, my boy! They have no nonsense about mutual love, and fitness, and congeniality, and all that stuff, which is fitted for nothing but valentine-mongers and penny-romancists; they are not very wise, but they know that the dominant passion in a man's heart is admiration of beauty, the dominant passion in a woman's is ambition, and they go quietly into the mart and arrange the affair, on the excellent principle of barter. When I was your age I could not believe in this, had high hopes and aspirations, and scouted the idea of woman's inconstancy--went on loving and hoping and trusting, from month to month, and from year to year, wore out my youth and my freshness and my hope, and was then flung aside and discarded, the victim of 'better opportunities' and 'improved position.' Oh, Lord! I never intended to open my mouth about this, but if you ever want to hear the whole story, I'll tell you some day. Meanwhile, think over these hints, my boy Life's too short and too hard as it is, and--verbum sap.
"Most probably you'll never take any further notice of me, after that. If you have corns, I must have been hard and heavy upon them, and you'll curse my impertinence; if you haven't, you'll think me the prosiest of old bores. Just like me. I see plainly that I must have made a mess of it, whichever way it turns up.
"You tell me to send you news. Not much about; but what there is, encouraging and good for the cause. There is very little doubt that at the general election, which will come off in a few months, we shall be stronger by far than we ever expected, and shall cut the combs of some of those aristocrats and plutocrats very close indeed. There is a general feeling that blood and moneybags have divided the spoil too long, and and that worth and intellect may be allowed a chance of being brought into play. There are three or four men at the club, whom you know, and who are tolerably certain of seats, and who, if once they get the opportunity of making their voices heard in Parliament, will show the world of what stuff real Englishmen consist. Who do you think is helping us immensely? Shimmer, he of Bliffkins's! He has got an engagement on the Comet--a new journal which has just started in our interest, and he is writing admirably. A good deal of Lemprière's dictionary, and Bohn's quotations, and Solomon's proverbs, mixed up with a dashing incisive style and sound Saxon English, has proved immensely telling. People are buying the Comet everywhere, and Shimmer's salary has been twice raised, and he has been applied to for his photograph. He does not come much to Bliffkins's now, greatly to old Wickwar's relief. The old gentleman has expressed his opinion that since Robsperry (he is supposed to have meant Robespierre) there has been no such sanguinary democrat as Shimmer. When will you come back to us, Walter? I look at the place where I used to see you sitting, before I ever spoke to you; I sit and stare at it now until I feel my eyes---- D--d old fool!
"Good-bye, boy. Let me hear from you again soon. You know what you promised if ever you wanted money or anything. J.B.
"Opened again to say Shimmer has been here inquiring after you. Comet people want a correspondent at Berlin--special and important. S. thinks you'll do. Will you go? J.B."
The company had long since departed from Westhope; the family had long since retired to rest; dim lights glimmered here and there in the windows; but Walter Joyce remained sitting on the side of his bed, with Jack Byrne's open letter in his hand. When he wrote it the old man little thought what a field of painful speculation he had laid open for its recipient.