All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,
And shadowy, through the mist of passed years.”
Harrington Dalbrook, having in a manner given hostages to Fortune, entered upon his new career with a strength of purpose and a resolute industry which took his father by surprise.
“Upon my word, Harry, I did not think there was so much grit in you,” said Mr. Dalbrook. “I thought you and your sisters were too much stuffed with modern culture to be capable of old-fashioned work.”
“I hope, my dear father, you don’t think education and intellect out of place in a lawyer?”
“Far from it. We have had too many examples to the contrary, from Bacon to Brougham, from Hale to Cockburn; but I was afraid of the dilettante spirit, the talk about books which you had only half read, the smattering of subjects that need the work of a lifetime to be properly understood. I was afraid of our modern electro-plate culture—the process which throws a brilliant film of education over a foundation of ignorance. However, you have surprised me, Harry. I own that I was disappointed by your want of purpose at the University; but I begin to respect you now I find you attack your work in the right spirit.”
“I want to get on,” answered Harrington, gravely, hanging his head a little in shame at his own reticence.
From so good a father he felt it was a kind of dishonour to keep a secret; but Juliet Baldwin had insisted upon secrecy, and the name of every fiancée in the early stages of an engagement is She-who-must-be-obeyed.
Harrington said not a word, therefore, as to that mighty prime-mover which was urging him to dogged perseverance in a profession for which he had as yet no real inclination. He put aside Darwin and Spencer, Max Müller and Seeley, Schopenhauer and Hartmann, all those true or false lights which he had followed through the mazes of free thought; and he set himself to master the stern actualities of the law. He had not done well at the University; not because he was wanting in brains, but because he was wanting in concentration and doggedness. The prime-mover being supplied, and of a prodigious power, Harrington brought his intellectual forces to bear upon a given point, and made a rapid advance in legal knowledge and acumen. The old cook-housekeeper complained of the coals and candles which “Master Harry” consumed during his after-midnight studies, and wondered that the household were not all burnt in their beds by reason of the young gentleman dropping off to sleep over Coke upon Littleton. The sisters complained that they had now practically no brother, since Harrington, who had a pretty tenor voice, and had hitherto been a star at afternoon teas and evening parties, refused to go anywhere, except to those few houses—county—where Miss Baldwin might be met.
Scarcely had the New Year begun when Miss Baldwin went off upon a visit to one of the largest houses in Wiltshire, and one of the smartest, a house under the dominion of a childless widow, gifted with a large income and a sympathetic temperament, a lady who allowed her life to be influenced and directed by a family of nephews and nieces, and whose house was declared by the advanced section of society to be “quite the most perfect house to stay in, don’t you know.”