“Is there any one else whom you would like better?” said Mr. Parchemin, somewhat satirically. “So far as we have got, Lord Newmarch’s is much the most practicable aid you could get. Would you prefer to ask your favour from anyone else?”
“You are quite right,” said Edgar, rousing himself. “The fact is, I don’t like asking favours at all. I suppose I expected the world to come to me and offer me a living, hat in hand. Of course, it is absurd.”
“Lord Newmarch is probably too high and mighty to prefer a friend unless he is sure it will be for the public interest, etc.,” said Mr. Parchemin. “He will say as much, at least, you may be sure of that. And I advise you to be prepared for a great deal of this sort of lofty rubbish; but don’t pay any attention to it. Don’t take offence.”
Edgar laughed; but the laugh was unexplainable to anyone but himself. He had not been in the habit of taking offence; he had never borne anybody a grudge, so far as he knew, in his life; but along with the new-born pride which had arisen in him, was the faculty of offence coming too? These were the first fruits of poverty, spectres which had never crossed his sunny pathway before. And though he laughed, not with amusement, but in a kind of dazed acknowledgment of the incongruity of things, the sense of the joke began to fail in Edgar’s mind. The whimsical, pleasant fun of the whole proceeding disappeared before those apparitions of Anger and Pride. Alas, was it possible that such a vulgar material change as the loss of money could bring such evil things into being? His friendly, gentle soul was appalled. He laughed with pain, not with amusement, because of the strange unlikeness of this new state of mind to anything he had known before.
“Newmarch, I suppose, is not in town; he can’t be in town at this time of the year,” he said, with a momentary hope of postponing his sufferings at least.
“Ah, my dear Sir,” said the lawyer, “he is one of the new brooms that sweep clean. Besides, there is something going on between Russia and Prussia that wants watching, and it’s Lord Newmarch’s business to be on the spot. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll see him at once. Before the season begins he can’t have so many applicants. Go, if you’ll take my advice, at once.”
Edgar winced, as a man cannot but wince who is thrown into the class of “applicants” at a blow. Why shouldn’t he be an applicant? he said to himself as he went out. Better men than he had been obliged to kick their heels in great men’s anterooms; but fortunately the reign of patrons was so far over now. Was it over? While human nature continued could it ever be over? or would it not be necessary as long as the world lasted that there should be some men holding out the hand to ask, and others to give? Not so very long ago Lord Newmarch had come to him, Edgar, hat in hand, so to speak, wanting not place or living, but the good graces of a rich and fair young lady with whom her brother might advance him. Her brother! There gleamed up before Edgar, as he walked through the dusty October streets, the sudden glimpse he had seen at the roadside station of Margaret waiting for her brother. Alas, yes! Most people had sisters, if not something still dearer, to greet them, to hear the account of all they had done, and consult what remained to do. I do not know how it was that at this moment something brought into Edgar’s mind the two ladies who had travelled with him from Scotland. Probably the mere word Sister was enough; or perhaps it was because one of them, the elder, was just turning the corner of the street, and met him two minutes after. She smiled with a momentary hesitation (she was forty at the least), and then stopped to speak.
“I had not a chance to thank you for getting our cab and looking after our luggage. It was very kind; but my young friend was in a great hurry.”
“She was, I suppose, of your sisterhood, too,” said Edgar, with a curiosity which was quite unjustifiable, and for which he could not account.