As for Jeanie, poor, gentle, pretty Jeanie! A slight flush came over Edgar’s face as her name occurred to him; he was no lady-killer, proud to think that he had awakened a warmer feeling than was safe for her in the girl’s heart. On the contrary, he was not only pained, but ashamed of himself for the involuntary consciousness which he never put into words, that perhaps it was better for Jeanie that he should go away. He dismissed the thought, feeling hot and ashamed. Was it some latent coxcombry on his part that brought such an idea into his head?
His business in Edinburgh was of a simple kind, to see the lawyer who had prepared the papers for the transfer of his little income, and who, knowing his history, was curious and interested in him, asked him to dinner, and would have made much of the strange young man who had descended from the very height of prosperity, and now had denuded himself of the last humble revenue upon which he could depend.
“I have ventured to express my disapproval, Mr. Earnshaw,” this good man had said; “but having done so, and cleared my conscience if—there is anything I can be of use to you in, tell me.”
“Nothing,” said Edgar; “but a thousand thanks for the goodwill, which is better than anything.”
Then he went away, declining the invitation, and walked about Edinburgh in the dreamy solitude which began to be habitual to him, friendly and social as his nature was. In the evening he dined alone in one of the Princes Street hotels, near a window which looked out upon the Castle and the old town, all glimmering with lights in the soft darkness, which was just touched with frost. The irregular twinkle of the lights scattered about upon the fine bank of towers and spires and houses opposite; the dark depth below, where dark trees rustled, and stray lights gleamed here and there; the stream of traffic always pouring through the street below, notwithstanding the picturesque landscape on the other side—all attracted Edgar with the charm which they exercise on every sensitive mind. When the bugle sounded low and sweet up in mid-air from the Castle, he started up as if that visionary note had been for him. The darkness and the lights, the new and the old, seemed to him alike a dream, and he not less a dream pursuing his way between them, not sure which was real and which fictitious in his own life; which present and which past. The bugle called him—to what? Not to the sober limits of duty, to obedience and to rest, as it called the unwilling soldiers out of their riots and amusements; but perhaps to as real a world still unknown to him, compassed—like the dark Castle, standing deep in undistinguishable, rustling trees—with mists and dream-like uncertainty. Who has ever sat at a dark window looking out upon the gleaming, darkling crest of that old Edinburgh, with the crown of St. Giles hovering over it in the blue, and the Castle half way up to heaven, without feeling something weird and mystical beyond words, in the call of the bugle, sudden, sweet, and penetrating, out of the clouds? What Edgar had to do after the call of this bugle was no deed of high emprise. He had no princess to rescue, no dragon to kill. He got up with that half-laugh at himself and his own fancies which was habitual to him, and paid his bill and collected his few properties, and went to the railway. Other people were beginning to go to bed; the shop windows were closing; the lights mounting higher from story to story. But a stream of people and carriages was pouring steadily down into the hollow, bound like himself, for the London Express. Edgar walked up naturally, mechanically to the window at which firstclass tickets were being issued. But while he waited his turn, his eye and his ear were attracted by a couple of women in the dress of an English Sisterhood, who were standing in front of him, holding a close conversation. One of them, at least, was in the nun’s costume of severe black and white; the other, a young slim figure, wore a black cloak and close bonnet, and was deeply veiled; but was not a “Sister,” though in dress closely approaching the garb. Edgar’s eyes however were not clever enough to make out this difference. The younger one seemed to him to have made some timid objection to the second class.
“Second class, my dear!” said the elder. “I understand first class, and I understand third; but second is neither one thing nor another. No, my dear. If we profess to give up forms and ceremonies and the pomps of this world, let us do it thoroughly, or not at all. If you take second class, you will be put in with your friend’s maid and footman. No, no, no; third class is the thing.”
“To be sure. What am I thinking of?” said Edgar to himself, with his habitual smile. “Of course, third class is the thing.”
It had been from pure inadvertence that he had been about to take the most expensive place, nothing else having occurred to him. I do not know whether I can make the reader understand how entirely without bitterness, and, indeed, with how much amusement Edgar contemplated himself in his downfall and penniless condition, and what a joke he found it. For the moment rather a good joke—for, indeed, he had suffered nothing, his amour propre not being any way involved, and no immediate want of a five-pound note or a shilling having yet happened to him to ruffle his composure. He kept the two Sisters in sight as he went down the long stairs to the railway with his third-class ticket. He thought it possible that they might be exposed to some annoyance, two women in so strange a garb, and in a country where Sisterhoods have not yet developed, and where the rudeness of the vulgar is doubly rude, perhaps in contrast with, perhaps in consequence of (who knows?) the general higher level of education on which we Scotch plume ourselves. They had given him his first lesson in practical contempt of the world; he would give them the protection of his presence, at least, in case of any annoyance. Not to give them any reason, however, to suppose that he was following them, he waited for some minutes before he took his seat in a corner of the same carriage in which they had established themselves. He took off his hat, foreign fashion, as he went into the railway carriage (Edgar had many foreign fashions). At sight of him there seemed a little flutter of interest between the Sisters, and when he took his seat they bent their heads together, and talked long in whispers. The result of this was that the two changed seats, the younger one taking the further corner of the same seat on which he had placed himself; while the elder, a cheerful middle-aged woman, whose comely countenance became the close white cap, and whose pleasant smile did it honour, sat opposite to her companion.
I cannot say that this arrangement pleased Edgar, for the other was young—a fact which betrayed itself rather by some subtle atmosphere about her than by any visible sign—and his curiosity was piqued and himself interested to see the veiled maiden. But, after all, the disappointment was not great, and he leaned back in the hard corner, saying to himself that the third class might be the thing, but was not very comfortable, without any particular dissatisfaction.
Two other travellers, a woman and a boy, took their places opposite to him. They were people from London, who had gone to Scotland for the boy’s holidays after some illness, and they brought a bag of sandwiches with them and a bottle of bad sherry, of which they ate and drank as soon as the train started, preparing themselves for the night. Then these two went to sleep and snored, and Edgar, too, went partially to sleep, dozing between the stations, lying back in the corner which was so hard, and seeing the dim lamp sway, and the wooden box in which he was confined, creak, and jolt, and roll about as the train rushed on, clamping and striding like a giant through the dark. What a curious, prolonged dream it was—the dim, uncertain light swaying like a light at sea, the figures dimly seen, immoveable, or turning uneasily like spectres in a fever, veiled figures, with little form visible under the swaying of the lamp; and now and then the sudden jar and pause, the unearthly and dissipated gleam from some miserable midnight station, where the porters ran about pale and yawning, and the whole sleepy, weary place did its best to thrust them on, and get rid of the intruder.