All these philosophisings were wonderfully true, but they did not take away the uncomfortable, desolate, profitless sensation of living alone in London without friends, doing nothing except live, which, when you live for the mere sake of living, and because you can’t help it, is, perhaps, the dreariest occupation on earth. And in November—when London is at its worst, and the year at its worst, when the gloomy daylight is short, and the weary nights are long, and when everything that bears the guise of amusement palls upon the man who has nothing to do but amuse himself.
Sometimes Edgar, in momentary desperation, thought of rushing off to his former haunts abroad, sometimes of turning back to Loch Arroch, helping in whatever might be doing, getting some share in human life, and some place among his fellows; but then the remembrance would strike him that, now-a-days, he could not do what he pleased, that he had no money but that hundred pounds in the bank, and no way of getting any now till the appointment came.
By-and-by, however, his opinion began to change about the hundred pounds in the bank. It changed by slow degrees after he had changed his second ten-pound note, and saw those last precious sovereigns slipping out of his grasp, which they did with a strange noiseless celerity inconceivable to him. How did they go? When he counted up all he had spent, every sixpence seemed so modest, so natural! and yet they were gone, he knew not how; vanished even, he thought, while he was looking at them. Then the thought arose in his mind, why keep a hundred pounds in the bank? It was a waste of capital, money which brought in no return; and for that matter, if it was merely to secure something to “fall back upon,” fifty pounds were just as good as a hundred. The income of a Queen’s Messenger was good, he said to himself (he had not, in reality, the least idea what it was!), and when he got his appointment it would be very easy to put back the other fifty pounds if he found it expedient. But the more he thought of it the less he saw any need for keeping so much money lying useless. He never could get any income from so small a sum, and the fifty pounds was quite enough for any sudden emergency. Or supposing, he said, seventy-five? Seventy-five pounds was magnificent as a fund to fall back upon; and it was with a feeling that twenty-five pounds had been somehow added, not taken from his capital, that he went to the bank one day in December and drew out the quarter, not the half, of his little stock of money. With twenty-five pounds in his pocket and seventy-five in the bank, he felt much richer than with the poor little undivided hundred. And somehow every day as he grew poorer, he became more convinced that it would be the most short-sighted economy to remove from his Piccadilly lodgings, or to relinquish his dinners at the club. Why, they were cheap, absolutely cheap, both the one and the other, in comparison with the nasty meals and wretched lodgings for which, no doubt, he might pay a little less money. He even became slightly extravagant and disposed to buy little knick-knacks, and to consume little delicacies as his means grew smaller and smaller.
I cannot tell what produced this curious state of feeling in Edgar’s mind. There is a kind of giddiness and desperation of poverty which seizes a man when he is in the act of spending his last parcel of coin. It must all go so soon that it seems worse than useless to ménager the little remnant, and a kind of vertige, a rage to get it all over, comes upon the mind. Perhaps it is the same feeling which makes men in a sinking ship leap wildly into the water to meet their fate instead of waiting for it; and as time went on the impulse grew stronger and stronger. The seventy-five pounds of capital seemed magnificent in December; but after Christmas it seemed to Edgar that even his fifty pounds was too much to be lying useless; and he had a little bottle of champagne with his dinner, and resolved that, as soon as the bank was open, he would draw, say ten pounds. After all, what was the use of being so particular about “something to fall back upon?” Probably he would never want it. If he fell ill, being a Queen’s Messenger, it was much more likely that he should fall ill in Berlin or Vienna, or Rome or Naples, than at home—and then it would be some one’s duty to mind him and take care of him. And if it should be his fate to die, there would be an end of the matter. Why should he save even forty pounds?—he had no heir.
Poor Edgar! it was a kind of intoxication that had seized him, an intoxication caused by idleness, loneliness, and the separation of his life from that of every one else around him. Somehow, though Christmas came and passed and he heard nothing, he could not pluck up courage to go to Downing Street again. Of course the appointment would come some day, most likely to-morrow. He was not going to worry Newmarch to death by going to him every day. He could wait till to-morrow. And so things went on till it ran very hard with the solitary young man. It occurred to him one day that his clothes were getting shabby. To be sure he had unlimited credit with his tailor, having just paid a large bill without inquiry or question; but the fact of feeling yourself shabby when you have very little money is painful and startling, and gives the imagination a shock. After this his mind lost the strange ease which it had possessed up to this moment, and he grew troubled and restless. “I must go to Newmarch again,” he acknowledged at last to himself, and all at once wondered with a sudden pang whether his Messengership was as certain as he had hoped. “I must go to Newmarch to-morrow,” he said over and over again as, somewhat dazed and giddy with this sudden thought, he went along the pavement thoughtfully towards the club, which had become a second home to him. It was the end of January by this time, and a few more people were beginning to appear again in these regions. He went in to his dinner, saying the words to himself mechanically and half aloud.
CHAPTER XII.
Disappointment.
It is very curious how often the unintentional movements of other men concur in making a crisis in an individual life. When Edgar went to his club that evening he knew no reason why anything unusual should happen to him. His mind had been roused by sudden anxiety, that anxiety which, seizing a man all at once upon one particular point, throws a veil over everything by so doing, and showed yellowness or blackness into the common light; but he had no reason to suspect that any new light would come to him, or any new interest into his life, when he went dully and with a headache to his habitual seat at his habitual table and ate his dinner, which was not of a very elaborate character. There were more men than usual in the club that evening, and when Edgar had finished his dinner he went into the library, not feeling disposed for the long walk through the lighted streets with which he so often ended his evening. He took a book, but he was not in the mood to read. Several men nodded to him as they came and went; one, newly arrived, who had not seen him since his downfall, came up eagerly and talked for ten minutes before he went out. The man was nobody in particular, yet his friendliness was consolatory, and restored to Edgar some confidence in his own identity, which had seemed to be dropping from him. He put up his book before him when he was left again alone, and behind this shield looked at his companions, of whom he knew nothing or next to nothing.
One of the people whom he thus unconsciously watched was a man whom he had already noted on several evenings lately, and as to whose condition he was in some perplexity. The first evening Edgar had half stumbled over him with the idea that he was one of the servants, and in the glance of identification with which he begged pardon, decided that, though not one of the servants, he must be a shopkeeper, perhaps well off and retired, whom somebody had introduced, or who had been admitted by one of those chances which permit the rich to enter everywhere. Next evening when he saw the same man again, he rubbed out as it were with his finger the word shopkeeper, which he had, so to speak, written across him, and wrote “city-man” instead. A city-man may be anything; he may be what penny-a-liners call a merchant prince, without losing the characteristic features of his class. This man was about forty-five, he had a long face, with good but commonplace features, hair getting scanty on the top, and brown whiskers growing long into two points, after the fashion of the day. The first time he was in evening dress, having come in after dinner, which was the reason why Edgar took him for one of the attendants. The next time he was in less elaborate costume, and looked better; for evening dress is trying to a man who has not the air noble which christianizes those hideous garments. The third night again, Edgar, in imagination, drew a pen through the word “city-man,” and wondered whether the stranger could be a successful artist, a great portrait-painter, something of that description, a prosperous man to whom art had become the most facile and most lucrative of trades. On this particular night he again changed his opinion, crossed the word artist and put man about town, indefinitest of designations, yet infinitely separated from all the others. Thus blurred and overwritten by so many attempts at definition, the new-comer attracted his attention, he could scarcely tell why. There was nothing remarkable about the man; he had grey eyes, a nose without much character, loose lips disposed to talk, an amiable sort of commonness, eagerness, universal curiosity in his aspect. He knew most people in the room, and went and talked to them, to each a little; he looked at all the papers without choice of politics; he took down a great many books, looked at them and put them back again. Edgar grew a little interested in him on this special evening. He had a long conversation with one of the servants, and talked to him sympathetically, almost anxiously, ending by giving him an address, which the man received with great appearance of gratitude. Might he be a physician perhaps? But his bearing and his looks were alike against this hypothesis. “Benevolent,” Edgar said to himself.
His attention, however, was quite drawn away from this stranger by the sudden entrance of Lord Newmarch, who like himself was a member of the club, and who came in hurriedly, accompanied by some one less dignified but more eager than himself, with whom he was discussing some subject which required frequent reference to books. Edgar felt his heart stir as he perceived the great man enter. Was it possible that his fate depended, absolutely depended, upon the pleasure of this man—that two words from him might make his fortune secure, or plunge him into a deeper and sickening uncertainty which could mean only ruin? Good heaven, was it possible? A kind of inertness, moral cowardice, he did not know what to call it—perhaps the shrinking a doomed man feels from actual hearing of his fate—had kept him from going to the office to put the arbiter of his destinies in mind of his promise. Now he could not let this opportunity slip; he must go to him, he must ask him what was to be the result. Up to this morning he had felt himself sure of his post, now he felt just as sure of rejection. Both impressions no doubt were equally unreasonable; but who can defend himself against such impressions? Gradually Edgar grew breathless as he watched that discussion which looked as if it would never end. What could it be about? Some vague philanthropico-political question, some bit of doctrinarianism of importance to nobody—while his was a matter of death and life. To be sure this was his own fault, for he might, as you will perceive, dear reader, have gone to Lord Newmarch any day, and found him at his office, where probably, amid all the sublime business there, Edgar’s affairs had gone entirely out of his head. But if you think the suggestion that it was his own fault made the suspense now a straw-weight more easy to him, this is a point on which I do not agree with you. The consequences of our own faults are in all circumstances the most difficult to bear.
Oddly enough, the stranger whom Edgar had been watching, seemed anxious to speak to Lord Newmarch too. Edgar’s eyes met his in their mutual watch upon the Minister, who went on disputing with his companion, referring to book after book. It was some military question of which I suppose Lord Newmarch knew as much as his grandmother did, and the other was a hapless soldier endeavouring in vain to convey a lucid description and understanding of some important technical matter to the head of the Secretary of State. In vain; Lord Newmarch did not try to understand—he explained; to many people this method of treating information is so much the most natural. And the stranger watched him on one side, and Edgar on the other. Their eyes met more than once, and after a while the humour of the situation struck Edgar, even in his trouble, and he smiled; upon which a great revolution made itself apparent in the other’s countenance. He smiled too; not with the sense of humour which moved Edgar, but with a gleam of kindness in his face, which threw a certain beauty over it. Edgar was struck with a strange surprise: he was taken aback at the same time, he felt as if somehow he must have appealed to the kindness, the almost pity in the other’s face. What had he done to call forth such an expression? His newborn pride jumped up in arms; and yet there was no possibility of offence meant, and nothing to warrant offence being taken. Edgar, however, averted his eyes hastily, and watched Lord Newmarch no more. And then he took himself to task, and asked himself, Was it an offence to look at him kindly? Was he offended by a friendly glance? Good heavens! what was he coming to, if it was so.