Having finally succeeded in mastering this great idea, I hurried off to
Jack to congratulate him.
I found him in his room. He was lying down, looking very blue, very dismal, and utterly used up. At first, I did not notice this, but burst forth in a torrent of congratulations, shaking his hand most violently. He raised himself slightly from the sofa on which he was reclining, and his languid hand did not return my warm grasp, nor did his face exhibit the slightest interest in what I said. Seeing this, I stopped short suddenly.
"Hallo, old boy!" I cried. "What's the matter? Any thing happened?
Isn't it true, then?"
"Oh, yes," said Jack, dolefully, leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees, and looking at the floor.
"Well, you don't seem very jubilant about it. Any thing the matter? Why, man, if you were dying, I would think you'd rise up at the idea of seven thousand a year."
Jack said nothing.
At such a check as this to my enthusiastic sympathy, I sat in silence for a time, and looked at him. His elbows were on his knees, his face was pale, his hair in disorder, and his eyes were fixed on the wall opposite with a vacant and abstracted stare. There was a haggard look about his handsome face, and a careworn expression on his broad brow, which excited within me the deepest sympathy and sadness. Something had happened—something of no common kind. This was a something which was far, very far, more serious than those old troubles which had oppressed him. This was something far different from those old perplexities—the entanglements with three engagements. Amid all those he was nothing but a big, blundering baby; but now he seemed like a sorrow-stricken man. Where was the light of his eyes, the glory of his brow, the music of his voice? Where was that glow that once used to pervade his fresh, open, sunny face? Where! It was Jack—but not the Jack of old. It was Jack—but
"Alas! how changed from him
That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!"
Or, as another poet has it—
'"Twas Jack—but living Jack no more!"