“Oh, he don’t beat her or that sort of thing,” said Thornleigh. “She’s safe enough. I wouldn’t excite myself, if I were you; Mrs. Arden can take care of herself; she’ll give as good as she gets. Well, you needn’t look so fierce. I don’t think, as far as I’ve heard, that she stood up like that for you.”
“She was very good to me,” said Edgar, “better than I deserved, for I was always a trouble to her, with my different ways of thinking; and the children,” he added, softly, with an ineffable melting of his heart over Clare’s babies, which took him by surprise. “Tell me all you can, Harry. Think how you should feel if you had not heard of your own people for so many years.”
“I don’t know that I should mind much,” said honest Harry; “there are such heaps of them, for one thing; and children ain’t much in my way. There’s two little things, I believe—little girls, which riles Arden. Helena’s got a baby, by the way—did you know?—the rummiest little customer, bald, like its father. Nell was as mad as could be when I said so. By Jove! what fun it was! with a sort of spectacled look about the eyes. If that child don’t take to lecturing as soon as it can speak, I’ll never trust my judgment again.”
Edgar did not feel in a humour to make any response to young Thornleigh’s laughter. He felt himself like an instrument which was being played upon, struck by one rude touch after another, able to do nothing but give out sounds of pain or excitement. He could do nothing to help Clare, nothing to liberate Gussy; and yet Providence had thrust him into the midst of them without any doing of his, and surrounded him once more with at least the reflection of their lives. He let Harry laugh and stop laughing without taking any notice. He began to be impatient of his own position, and to feel a longing to plunge again into the unknown, it did not matter where, and get rid of those dear visions. Excitement brought its natural reaction in a sudden fit of despondency. If he could do nothing—and it was evident he could do nothing—would it not be better to save himself the needless pain, the mingled humiliation and anguish of helplessness? So long as he was here, he could not but ask, he could not but know. Though the ink was scarcely dry upon the letters he had been writing, the cry for aid to establish himself somehow, in an independent position which he had sent forth to all who could help—a sudden revulsion of feeling struck him, brought out by his despair and sense of impotence. Far better to go away to Australia, to New Zealand, to the end of the world, and at least escape hearing of the troubles he could do nothing to relieve, than to stay here and know all, and be able to do nothing. An instrument upon which now one strain of emotion, now another, was beaten out—that was the true image. Lady Mary had played upon him the other day, eliciting all sorts of confused sounds, wound up by a sudden strain of rapture; and now Harry struck the passive cords, and brought forth vaguer murmurs of fury, groans of impotence, and pain. It would not do. He was not a reed to be thus piped upon, but a man suffering, crying out in his pain, and he must make an end of it. Thus he thought, musing moodily, while Harry laughed over his sister’s bald baby. Harry himself was a dumb Memnon, whom no one had ever woke into sound, and he did not understand anything about his companion’s state of mind.
“Have you come to an end of your questions?” he said. “You ain’t so curious as I expected. Now here goes on my side? First and foremost, in the name of all that’s wonderful, how did you come here?”
Edgar shrugged his shoulders. “You will do me a better service if you will tell me how to get out of here,” he said. “I was a fool to stay. To tell the truth, I had not woke up to any particular interest in what became of me. I had only myself to think of; but I can’t bear to remember them all, and have nothing to do with them—that’s the truth.”
“You must make up your mind to that, old fellow,” said Harry, the philosopher; “few people get just all they want. But you can’t go and run away for that. You shouldn’t have run away at the first. It’s the coming back that does it. I know. You thought it was all over and done with, and that you could begin straight off, without coming across old things and old faces. I’ve turned over about as many new leaves, and made about as many fresh starts as most people, and I can feel for you. It ain’t no manner of use; you can’t get done with one set of people and take up with another; the old ones are always cropping up again,” said Harry, oracularly. “You’ve got to make up your mind to it. But I must say,” he added, changing his tone, “that of all places in the world for getting shut of the past, to come here!”
“I was a fool,” said Edgar, with his head between his hands. Up to this moment he had thought of Harry Thornleigh as a somewhat stupid boy. Now the young man of the world had the better of him. For the first time he fully realised that he had been foolish in coming here, and had placed himself in an exceptionally difficult position by his own act, and not by the action of powers beyond his control, as he thought. In short, he had allowed himself to be passive, to drift where the current led him, to do what was suggested, to follow any one that took it upon him to lead. I suppose it is consistent with the curious vagaries of human nature that this sudden sense of his impotence to direct his fate should come just after the warm flush of self-assertion and self-confidence which had made him feel his own fate to be once more worth thinking of. Harry, elevated on his calm height of matter-of-fact philosophy, had never in his life experienced so delightful a sense of capacity to lecture another, and he did not lose the opportunity.
“Don’t be down about it,” he said, condescendingly. “Most fellows make some mistake or other when they come to again after a bad fall. The brain gets muzzy, you know; and between a stark staring madman like old Tottenham, and a mature Syren like Aunt Mary, what were you to do? I don’t blame you. And now you’ve done it, you’ll have to stick to it. As for Clare Arden, I shouldn’t vex myself about her. She knew the kind of fellow she was marrying. Besides, if a man was to put himself out for all his sisters, good Lord! what a life he’d have. I don’t know that Helena’s happy with that professor fellow. If she ain’t, it’s her own business; she would have him. And I don’t say Clare’s unhappy. She’s not the sort of person to go in for domestic bliss, and make a show of herself. Cheer up, old fellow; things might be a deal worse. And ain’t old Tottenham a joke? But, by-the-way, take my advice; don’t do too much for that little cub of his. He’ll make a slave of you, if you don’t mind. Indeed,” said Harry, lighting a fresh cigar, “they’ll all make a slave of you. Don’t you let my lady get the upper hand. You can always manage a woman if you take a little trouble, but you must never let her get the upper hand.”
“And how do you manage a woman, oh, Solomon?” said Edgar, laughing, in spite of himself.