“I am not a demigod from the sixth form,” said Lady Mary.
“Pardon me, but you are. You have been among the regnant class all your life, which of itself is an enormous cultivation. You have lived familiarly with people who guide the nation; you have spoken with most of those who are known to be worth speaking to, in England at least; and you have had a good share of the problems of life submitted to you. Mr. Tottenham’s whole career, for instance, which he says you decided—”
“What is that?” said Mr. Tottenham, looking up. “Whatever it is, what you say is quite true. I don’t know if it’s anything much worth calling a career; but, such as it is, it’s all her doing. You’re right there.”
“I am backed up by indisputable testimony,” said Edgar, laughing; “and in the face of all this, you can come and tell me that you want to educate your mind by means of the feeblest of lectures! Lady Mary, are you laughing at us? or are the dry lessons of grammar and such like scaffolding, really of more use in educating the mind than the far higher lessons of life?”
“How you set yourself to discourage me,” cried Lady Mary, half angry, half laughing. “That is not what you mean, Mr. Earnshaw. You mean that it is hopeless to train women to the accuracy, the exactness of thought which men are trained to. I understand you, though you put it so much more prettily.”
“I am afraid I don’t know what accuracy means,” said Edgar, “and exactness of thought suggests only Lord Newmarch to me; and Heaven deliver us from prigs, male and female! If you find, however, that the mass of young university men are so accurate, so exact, so accomplished, so trained to think well and clearly, then I envy you your eyes and perceptions—for to me they have a very different appearance; many of them, I should say, never think at all, and know a good deal less than Phil does, of whom I am the unworthy instructor—save the mark!” he added, with a laugh. “On the whole, honours have showered on my head; I have had greatness thrust upon me like Malvolio; not only to instruct Phil, but to help to educate Lady Mary Tottenham! What a frightful impostor I should feel myself if all this was my doing, and not yours.”
Lady Mary laughed too, but not without a little flush of offence. It even crossed her mind to wonder whether the young man had taken more wine than usual? for there was an exhilaration, a boldness, an élan about him which she had never perceived before. She looked at him with mingled suspicion and indignation—but caught such a glance from his eyes, which were full of a new warmth, life, and meaning, that Lady Mary dropped hers, confused and confounded, not knowing what to make of it. Had the porter, and the footman, and the under-gardener, who had seen Edgar kiss Lady Mary’s hand, been present at that moment, they would certainly have drawn conclusions very unfavourable to Mr. Tottenham’s peace of mind. But that unsuspecting personage sat engaged in his own occupation, and took no notice. He was turning over some papers which he had brought back with him from Tottenham’s that very day.
“When you two have done sparring,” he said—“Time will wait for no man, and here we are within a few days of the entertainment at the shop. Earnshaw, I wish you would go in with me on Wednesday, and help me to help them in their arrangements. I have asked a few people for the first time, and it will be amusing to see the fine ladies, our customers, making themselves agreeable to my ‘assistants.’ By-the-way, that affair of Miss Lockwood gives me a great deal of uneasiness. I don’t like to send her away. She seemed disposed to confide in you, my dear fellow—”
“I will go and secure her confidence,” said Edgar, with that gay readiness for everything which Lady Mary, with such amaze, had remarked already in his tone. Up to this moment he had wanted confidence in himself, and carried into everything the insouciance of a man who takes up with friendliness the interests of others, but has none of his own. All this was changed. He was another man, liberated somehow from chains which she had never realised until now, when she saw they were broken. Could her conversation with him to-day have anything to do with it? Lady Mary was a very clever woman, but she groped in vain in the dark for some insight into the mind of this young man, who had seemed to her so simple. And the less she understood him, the more she respected Edgar; nay, her respect for him began to increase, from the moment when she found out that he was not so absolutely virtuous as she had taken him to be.
Next day, as soon as Phil’s lessons were over, Edgar shut himself up, and, with a flush upon his face, and a certain tremor, which seemed to him to make his hand and his writing, by some curious paradox, more firm than usual, began to write letters. He wrote to Lord Newmarch, he wrote to one or two others whom he had known in his moment of prosperity, with a boldness and freedom at which he was himself astonished. He recalled to his old acquaintances, without feeling the least hesitation in doing so, the story of his past life, about which he had been, up to this moment, so proudly silent, and appealed to them to find him something to do. He wrote, not as a humble suitor does, but as one conscious of no humiliation in asking. The last time he had asked he had been conscious of humiliation; but every shadow of that self-consciousness had blown away from him now. He wondered at himself even, while he looked at those letters closed and directed on his writing-table. What was it that had taken away from him all sense of dislike to this proceeding, all his old inclination to let things go as they would? With that curious tremor which was so full of firmness and force still vibrating through him, he went out, avoiding Phil, who was lying in wait for him, and who moaned his absence like a sheep deprived of its lamb—which, I think, was something like the parental feeling Phil experienced for his tutor—and set out for a long solitary walk across country, leaping ditches and stumbling across ploughed fields, by way of exhausting a little his own superabundant force and energy. Only a day or two since how dreary was the feeling with which he had left the house, where perhaps, for aught he knew, Gussy was at the moment thinking, with a sickening at his heart which seemed to make all nature dim, how he must never see her again, how he had pledged himself to keep out of the way, never to put himself consciously where he might have even the dreary satisfaction of a look at her. The same pledge was upon him still, and Edgar was ready to keep it to the last letter of his promise; but now it had become a simple dead letter. There was no more force, no more vital power in it, to keep the two apart, who had but one strong wish between them. He could keep it now gaily, knowing that he was in heart emancipated from it. There was nothing he could not have done on that brilliant wintry afternoon, when the sun shone upon him as if he had wanted cheering, and every pool glittered, and the sky warmed and flushed under his gaze with all the delightful sycophancy of nature for the happy. The dullest afternoon would have been just the same to Edgar. He was liberated, he was inspired, he felt himself a strong man, and with his life before him. Cold winds and dreary skies would have had no effect upon his spirits, and for this reason, I suppose, everything shone on him and flattered. To him that hath, shall be given.