“I’ve had a deal of experience,” said Harry, gravely; “it all depends on whether you choose to take the trouble. The regular dodge about young men having their fling, and that sort of thing, does for my mother; she’s simple, poor dear soul. Aunt Mary wants a finer hand. Now you have the ball at your feet, if you choose to play it; only make a stand upon your mind, and that sort of thing, and she’ll believe you. She wouldn’t believe me if I were to set up for a genius, ’cause why? that’s not my line. Be difficile,” said Harry, imposingly, very proud of his French word; “that’s the great thing; and the more high and mighty you are, the more she’ll respect you. That’s my advice to you. As for dear old Tottenham, you can take your choice, anything will do for him; he’s the best old fellow, and the greatest joke in the world.”
With this Harry lit his candle and marched off to bed, very well pleased with himself. He had done all that Lady Augusta had hoped for. So far as his own family were concerned, he had comported himself like a precocious Macchiavelli. He had named no names, he had made no allusions, he had renewed his old friendship as frankly as possible, without however indulging Edgar in a single excursion into the past. He had mentioned Helena, who was perfectly safe and proper to be mentioned, a sign that he talked to his old friend with perfect freedom; but with the judgment of a Solomon he had gone no further. Not in vain did Harry flatter himself on being a man of the world. He was fond of Edgar, but he would have considered his sister’s choice of him, in present circumstances, as too ludicrous to be thought of. And there can be little doubt that Harry’s demeanour had an influence upon Edgar far more satisfactory for Lady Augusta than her sister’s intervention had been. All the visionary possibilities that had revealed themselves in Lady Mary’s warning, disappeared before the blank suavity of Harry. In that friendly matter-of-fact discussion of his friend’s difficulties, he had so entirely left out the chief difficulty, so taken it for granted that nothing of the kind existed, that Edgar felt like a man before whom a blank wall has suddenly risen, where a moment before there were trees and gardens. Harry’s was the man’s point of view, not the woman’s. Those regrets and longings for what might have been, which Lady Mary could not prevent from influencing her, even when she sincerely wished that the might have been should never be, were summarily extinguished in Harry’s treatment. Of course the old must crop up, and confront the new, and of course the complication must be faced and put up with, not run away from. Such was the young man of the world’s philosophy. Edgar sat long after he was gone, once more feeling himself the instrument on which every one played, rather than a conscious actor in the imbroglio. The image got possession of his fanciful brain. Like the thrill of the chords after the hand that struck them had been withdrawn, he seemed to himself to keep on vibrating with long thrills of after sensation, even when the primary excitement was over. But words are helpless to describe the thousand successive changes of feeling of which the mind is capable at a great crisis, especially without immediate power to act one way or another. Edgar, in despair, went and shut himself into the library and read, without knowing well what he read. The passage of those long processions of words before his eyes, gave him a certain occupation, even if they conveyed but little meaning. How easy it would be to do anything; how difficult it was to bear, and go on, and wait!
All this, perhaps, might be easier to support if life were not so cruelly ironical. That morning Edgar, who felt his own position untenable, and whose future seemed to be cut off under his feet—who felt himself to be standing muffled and invisible between two suffering women, each with the strongest claim upon him, for whom he could do nothing—was carried off to assist in getting up an entertainment at Mr. Tottenham’s shop. Entertainments, in the evening—duets, pieces on the cornet, Trial Scene from Pickwick; and in the morning, lectures, the improvement of Lady Mary Tottenham’s mind, and the grand office of teaching the young ladies of Harbour Green to think! What a farce it all seemed! And what an insignificant farce all the lighter external circumstances of life always seem to the compulsory actors in them, who have, simultaneously, the tragedy or even genteel comedy of their own lives going on, and all its most critical threads running through the larger lighter foolish web which concerns only the outside of man. The actor who has to act, and the singer who has to sing, and the romancist who has to go on weaving his romance through all the personal miseries of their existence, is scarcely more to be pitied than those unprofessional sufferers who do much the same thing, without making any claim, or supposing themselves to have any right to our sympathy. Edgar was even half glad to go, to get himself out of the quiet, and out of hearing of the broken bits of talk which went on around him; but I do not think that he was disposed to look with a very favourable eye on the entertainment at Tottenham’s, or even on the benevolent whimsey of the owner of that enormous shop.
CHAPTER III.
Harry.
Harry Thornleigh was anything but content to be left alone at Tottenham’s. He proposed that he should accompany Edgar and Mr. Tottenham, but the latter personage, benevolent as he was, had the faculty of saying No, and declined his nephew’s company. Then he wandered all about the place, looked at the house, inspected the dogs, strolled about the plantations, everything a poor young man could do to abridge the time till luncheon. He took Phil with him, and Phil chattered eternally of Mr. Earnshaw.
“I wish you wouldn’t call him by that objectionable name,” said Harry.
“It’s a capital good name,” cried Phil. “I wish you could see their blazon, in Gwillim. Earnshaw says it ain’t his family; but everybody says he’s a great swell in disguise, and I feel sure he is.”
“Hallo!” said Harry, idly, “what put that into your head? It’s all the other way, my fine fellow.”
“I don’t know what you mean by the other way. His name wasn’t always Earnshaw,” said Phil, triumphantly. “They’ve got about half a hundred quarterings, real old gentry, not upstarts like us.”
“That’s admirable,” said Harry. “I suppose that’s what you study all the time you are shut up together, eh?”