They were not walking fast. The horse seemed to feel that the human wayfarers were in a sauntering mood, and fell accommodatingly into a lounging gait like theirs.
If there were eyes there constructed to see in the dark, they would have seen two countenances, one sincere, the other adjusted to that sort of sham sympathy and regret which Hogarth, with all his delicacy and power, portrays in the paternal alderman who figures in the last picture of “Marriage à la Mode.”
There was much anxiety in Charles’ face, and a certain brooding shame and constraint which would have accounted for his silence. In that jolly dog, Harry, was discoverable, as I have said, quite another light and form of countenance. There was a face that seemed to have discharged a smile, that still would not quite go. The eyelids drooped, the eyebrows raised, a simulated condolence, such as we all have seen.
In our moral reviews of ourselves we practise optical delusions even upon our own self-scrutiny, and paint and mask our motives, and fill our ears with excuses and with downright lies. So inveterate is the habit of deceiving, and even in the dark we form our features by hypocrisy, and scarcely know all this.
“Here’s the turn at last to Cressley Common; there’s no talking comfortably among these trees; it’s so dark, any one might be at your elbow and you know nothing about it—and so the old man is very angry.”
“Never saw a fellow so riled,” answered Harry; “you know what he is when he is riled, and I never saw him so angry before. If he knew I was here—but you’ll take care of me?”
“It’s very kind of you, old fellow; I won’t forget it, indeed I won’t, but I ought to have thought twice: I ought not to have brought poor Alice into this fix; for d—— me, if I know how we are to get on.”
“Well, you know, it’s only just a pinch, an ugly corner, and you are all right—it can’t last.”
“It may last ten years, or twenty, for that matter,” said Charlie. “I was a fool to sell out. I don’t know what we are to do; do you?”
“You’re too down in the mouth; can’t ye wait and see? there’s nothing yet, and it won’t cost ye much carrying on down here.”