When the knowing ones, for once, stand in
With some dark flyer meant at last to win—
and the owners of one or two dangerous horses are put on, a "monkey to nothing," I believe they go through the form of registering it as a bet; so we may as well dignify the Earl's compact by that convenient name. It is more than likely that Clydesdale made the confession himself. He had little delicacy in such matters when he knew his man; and no Oriental despot could be more insolent in his cynicism. If he had thought he could do so safely, he would have offered money to her nearest relation, to serve him in his pursuit of any woman he might fancy, without the faintest scruple or shame.
However the revelation was made, Max Vavasour never betrayed to Knowles his consciousness of the confederacy by word or sign; but he would look at the latter occasionally with a very peculiar expression in his cold dark eyes. There was something of curiosity in that look, more of dislike and contempt. The wily schemer would accept readily the aid of any instrument, however repulsive, that would serve his purpose; but they never were stifled for one moment—the instincts of patrician pride. Harding was no favourite of Lady Mildred's; and her manner towards him could not be said to be cordial now; but there certainly was a shade more of courtesy and attention. She suggested now and then that his name should be added to the dinner-list, which she had never done before; and honoured him at times with a fair share of her evening's conversation. There was nothing strange in this. Knowles was evidently a rising man; and "my lady" made a point of being at least civil to such people, though she would just as soon have thought of asking a real Gorilla to her house, as any living celebrity—soldier, priest, lawyer, or literate—simply because he chanced to be the lion of the day.
CHAPTER XII.
RUMOURS OF WARS.
Harding Knowles had never been a hard-working man. Very little more reading would have turned a good Second in classics into an easy First, and this was so well known at Oxford that he might have had as many pupils as he liked during the year that he resided there after taking his degree. He would only take two or three—"just to have something to do in the morning," he said; and these were all of the Clydesdale stamp—men whose connexion was worth a good deal, while their preparation cost no sort of head-work or anxiety. He had been called to the bar since then, but had never pretended to follow up the profession. There was not a trace of business about his chambers in the Temple; no face of clerk or client ever looked out at the chrysanthemums through those pleasant windows, the sills of which were framed and buried in flowers. He could write a clever article, or a sharp sarcastic critique, when the fit seized him, and made a hundred or so every year thus in an easy desultory way: the Rector's allowance was liberal, so that Harding had more than enough to satisfy all his tastes, which were by no means extravagant; in fact, he saved money. But he was avaricious to the heart's core, and could be painstaking and patient enough when the stake was really worth his while to win. He did not tarry long at Dene after Clydesdale's departure—long enough, though, to have another incentive to exertion in the latter's cause. Personal pique was added now to the mere greed of gain. The merest trifle brought this about, and you would hardly understand it without appreciating some anomalies in Knowles's character.
There never was a more thorough-going democrat. From his birth his sympathies and instincts had all taken the same direction, and these had been strengthened and embittered by his mother's evil training. He disliked the patrician order intensely; but their society seemed to have a strange fascination for him, judging from the pertinacity he displayed in endeavouring to gain and confirm a footing there. He would intrigue for certain invitations in the season as eagerly as a French deputy seeking the red ribbon of honour. Yet he was always uncomfortable when his point was gained, and he found himself half way up the much-desired staircase. The mistress of the mansion greeted him probably with the self-same smile that she vouchsafed to nine-tenths of the five hundred guests who crowded her rooms; but Knowles would torment himself with the fancy that there was something compassionate or satirical in the fair dame's look, as if she penetrated a truth, of which he was himself conscious—that he had no business to be there. He felt that, if he got a fair start, he could talk better than the majority of the men around him; but he felt, too, that he had no chance against the most listless or languid of them all. They were on their own ground, and the intruder did not care to match himself against them there; his position was far too constrained, his footing too insecure. How he hated them, for the indolent nonchalance and serene indifference that he would have given five years of life to be able to assume! A wolfish ferocity would rise within him as he watched a beardless Coldstreamer dropping his words slowly, as if each were worth money and not lightly to be parted with, into the delicate ear of a haughty beauty from whom Knowles scarcely dared to hope for a recognising bow. The innocent object of his wrath was probably only sacrificing himself to the necessities of the position, while his thoughts reverted with a tender longing to the smoking room of his club, or anticipated the succulent chop that Pratt's was bound to provide for him before the dawning.
In all other respects, Harding was as little sensitive as the most obstinate of pachyderms. He did not know what shame meant, and an implied insult that would have roused another savagely would scarcely attract his notice. You have seen one instance of this already. But he was nervously and morbidly alive to the minutest point affecting his position in society. After assisting at one of those assemblies of the haute volée, he would review in his memory every incident of the evening, and would be miserable for weeks afterwards if he thought he had made himself ridiculous by any awkwardness of manner or any incongruity of word or deed. If the choice had been forced upon him, he would have committed a forgery any day, sooner than a gaucherie.
I suppose everybody is sensitive somewhere, and it is only a question whether the shaft hits a joint in the harness, and so some go on for years, or for ever, without a scratch or a wound. Sometimes the weak point is found out very oddly and unexpectedly.