“I have sent a little circular to the printers,” said Lady Mary, “saying when the German lectures would be resumed. You said Tuesday, I think, Mr. Earnshaw? That is the day that suits us best. Several people have been here this afternoon, and a great deal of interest has been excited about it; several, indeed, have sent me their names already. Oh, I told them you were working half against your will, without thinking very much of the greatness of the object; indeed, with just a little contempt—forgive me, Mr. Earnshaw—for this foolish fancy of women trying to improve their minds.”
“No, only for the infinitely odd fancy of thinking I can help in the process,” said Edgar, dragging himself, as it were, within this new circle of fantastic light. His own miseries and excitements, heaven help him, were fantastic enough; but how real they looked by the side of this theoretical distress! or so at least the young man thought. I cannot tell with what half-laughing surprise, when his mind was at ease—but half-irritated dismay when he was troubled—he looked at this lady, infinitely more experienced in men and society and serious life than himself, who proposed to improve her mind by means of his German lessons. Was she laughing at him and the world? or was it a mere fashion of the time which she had taken up? or, most wonderful of all, was she sincere and believing in all this? He really thought she was, and so did she, not perceiving the curious misapprehension of things and words involved. It is common to say that a sense of humour saves us from exposing ourselves in many ways, yet it is amazing how little even our sense of humour helps us to see our own graver absurdities, though it may throw the most unclouded illumination upon those of other people.
“That is a polite way of concealing your sentiments,” said Lady Mary; “but never mind, I am not angry. I am so sure of the rightness of the work, and of its eventual success, that I don’t mind being laughed at. To enlarge the sphere of ideas ever so little is an advantage worth fighting for.”
“Very well,” said Edgar, “I am proud to be thought capable of enlarging somebody’s sphere. What do lectures on German mean? Before I begin you must tell me what I have to do.”
“You must teach them the language, Mr. Earnshaw.”
“Yes, but where shall we begin? with the alphabet? Must I have a gigantic black board to write the letters on?”
“Oh, not so rudimentary as that; most of the ladies, in fact, know a little German,” said Lady Mary. “I do myself, just enough to talk.”
“Enough to talk! I don’t know any more of English, my native tongue,” said Edgar, “than just enough to talk.”
“Don’t laugh at me, Mr. Earnshaw. I know nothing of the grammar, for instance. We are never taught grammar. We get a kind of knowledge of a language, just to use it, like a tool; but what is the principle of the tool, or how it is put together, or in what way it is related to other tools of the same description, I know no more than Adam did.”
“She knows a great deal more than I do,” said Mr. Tottenham, admiringly. “I never could use that sort of tool, as you call it, in my life. A wonderfully convenient thing though when you can do it. I never was much of a hand at languages; you should learn all that when you are quite young, in the nursery, when it’s no trouble—not leave it till you have to struggle with verbs, and all that sort of thing; not to say that you never can learn a foreign language by book.”