“I doubt it also,” said the lawyer, “judging, if you will pardon me for saying so, by your guidance of your own affairs.”
“But a tutor does not teach boys how to guide their own affairs,” said Edgar, recovering his sense of the joke.
“That is true too. A man may be very wise in giving good advice, and admirable on paper, and yet be fool enough in other respects. There was Goldsmith, for instance. But why shouldn’t you write? Plenty of stupid fellows write in the papers. You are not stupid—”
“Thanks,” cried Edgar, laughing.
“Of course, you have read what Thackeray says on that subject—in ‘Pendennis,’ you know—how it is all a knack that anybody can learn; and it pays very well, I have always heard. There is no sort of nonsense that people will not read. I don’t see why you should not try the newspapers; if you know any one on the staff of the Times, for instance—that is a splendid opening—or even the News or the Telegraph.”
“But, alas, I don’t know anyone.”
“Do you mean to say you never met any of those press fellows? when you were a great man, you know, when you were fashionable? At your club, for instance? You must have met some of them. Think! Why, they go everywhere, it’s their trade; they must have news. And, by the way, they have made their own of you first and last; the Arden estate, and the law-suit that was to be, and the noble behaviour of the unfortunate gentleman, &c., &c. You have figured in many a paragraph. Some of them you must know.”
“Newmarch used to dabble in literature,” said Edgar, doubtfully.
“Newmarch—Lord Newmarch! Why, that is better still. He’s in the Ministry, a rising young fellow, with the Manchester interest, and a few hundred thousands a-year behind him. He’s your very man; he’ll get you something; a school-inspectorship, or something of that sort, at the very least. What is he, by-the-bye? Education and that sort of thing is his hobby, so, of course, he’s put somewhere, like Dogberry, where there shall be no occasion for such vanities. Ah! I thought so; Foreign Office. He knows about as much of foreign politics, my dear Sir, as my office boy. That’s why he’s put in; that’s the present people’s way.”
“I don’t think I should like to ask a favour of Newmarch,” said Edgar, with hesitation; and there suddenly rose in his mind a spiritual presence which he had never before recognised nor expected to see, a something which was Pride. He himself was so unaffectedly surprised by the apparition that he did not know how to encounter it; but sat silent, wondering, and unable to understand the new dilemma in which he found himself. No; Newmarch was the last person of whom he should like to ask a favour, he said to himself.