Harry Joscelyn; vol. 1 of 3

by Mrs. Oliphant

“And how are you to tell that, Sir, that canna see the two together? You are far more clever than me in most things; but my eyesight I must trust to.” Mrs. Eadie made a little curtsey when she opposed her master. She had a conviction that it gave him a secret pleasure, though he would never confess it, to hear that Harry was like him; and perhaps she was right.

“Have your own way,” he said; “but that makes no difference to the question. What’s wrong? has he said nothing to you? You used to be great friends.”

“I’m his true friend; and stiddy well-wisher, as much good as I could do him; and Mr. Harry has always been very kind,” said the housekeeper, putting her master’s sentiment in her own softest words; “but he has said nothing to me. I did not look for it. He would not, being one of the proud Joscelyns, saving your presence, Sir, take a servant into his confidence. Though he’s aye been very kind.”

“We are proud, are we?” said her master, with a half smile; “well, perhaps that is a fault of the Joscelyns, Mrs. Eadie. You can send him to me when he wakes. Of course now that he is here I must listen to what he has to say.”

But Mr. Henry sighed. He ate that delicious kidney with an internal sense of annoyance which took half the savour out of it. He said to himself that it was always the case: when he came down in the morning with any unusual sentiment of comfort and well-being, something always happened to put him out. As sure as that light-heartedness came, something would follow to pull him down, something would go wrong in the Club, or his conduct in some petty session case would be aspersed in the “Wyburgh Gazette,” or some old friend of his boyhood would send him a begging letter, or—still more annoying, something about the White House family would interfere with his digestion. “I might have known,” he said to himself. He had got up at peace with all men; with absolutely no care which he could think of when he woke and swept the mental horizon for causes of inconvenience, as it is one of the privileges of humanity to do—absolutely nothing to bring him any vexation or annoyance. He had believed that he was going to have a comfortable day. A little uneasiness which he had felt in his foot (he did not say, even to himself, in his toe), had gone off; a stiffness which he had been conscious of had disappeared; the wind had changed, going round to the southward, and the morning was quite warm for the time of the year. He had not been buffeted about by the night wind, as Harry had, and at six in the morning, when poor Harry was so cold, he had been as warm as he could desire in bed. When he came down stairs the fire was just as he liked it, the newspaper with the chill taken off it, neatly cut, and folded, and a letter from the Duke, with a seal as big as a penny, was lying by his plate. It was an invitation, and Mr. Henry was much pleased. Never had a day begun more auspiciously. He had sat down, opened his napkin, poured out for himself an aromatic cup of coffee, laid the newspaper before him conveniently, so as to be able to glance his eye over the news, while he addressed himself to the more solid part of the meal. And it was while he was thus beginning the day, in peace with himself and all about him, that “the woman,” as he called his housekeeper when anything went wrong, appeared with that kidney, and the cloud which was to overshadow the whole day. Of course it must be something wrong. Why could not the woman have recommended that boy to go back again, and make it up with his father, and not bother another person with his troubles? Had not every man troubles enough of his own? But he had been too comfortable. It was just as it always happened—whenever he felt particularly at his ease, something, some annoyance or other, was certain to come. He sighed impatiently as Mrs. Eadie withdrew. But then he felt it to be his duty to himself to put all anxiety out of his thoughts, and to address himself seriously, if not with such a sensation of comfort, to his breakfast; it would do no good to himself or anyone if he put his digestion out of order for the rest of the day.

He had finished his breakfast and read his paper, and done some trifling businesses such as were of importance in his easy life, before Harry appeared. When a man or woman lives at perfect ease, with nothing to do, there are always some solemnities of supposed duty which they go through for their own comfort, to give a semblance of serious occupation to their day. With some people it is their correspondence, with others the rain-gauge and the thermometer, which they register with as grave a countenance as if the comfort of the country depended upon it. Mr. Henry’s duty was the Club. He was looking over the accounts of the last half year with serious devotion. He spread this over a long time, doing a little every day, comparing all the items with their respective vouchers, and with the expenditure of the previous half year. All had been perfectly satisfactory till this morning; but to-day he discovered that the sale of the waste-paper was not entered in the previous month, which made a difference of some seven shillings and sixpence, or thereabouts, in the half year’s accounts, a difference such as ought not to have occurred. He could scarcely help feeling that this would not have happened had it not been for the very inopportune arrival of Harry, and introduction of the troubles of a family, things he had systematically kept clear of, into his comfortable and self-sufficing life.

He had just made this discovery—which obliged him to refer to the expenditure in the corresponding quarters of last year, and several years before, and make close investigation into what had then become of the waste-paper, and who had bought it, and what price it had brought; and had made a careful note in his pocket-book of various questions to be put to the butler at the Club, who had the practical management of affairs—when the door opened and Harry appeared. Mr. Joscelyn looked up and made an instant mental estimate of his nephew, whom he had not seen for some time, on not very just grounds. Harry had been immensely refreshed and restored by his breakfast, and the consciousness of having a roof over his head, and a legitimate right to be here; but his sleep perhaps had not done him so much good. At five-and-twenty a man can do without a night’s rest with no very great inconvenience; but to have a snatch of insufficient sleep is of little advantage to him. It had made his eyes red, and given him an inclination to yawn, and confused his head. He had the look of a man who has been sleeping illegitimately, sleeping in daytime when other men are awake; and he was unshaven, and he had on a shirt of his uncle’s, which was too tight at the throat, and otherwise of a fashion not adapted to a young man. His dusty coat had been brushed, and he was not really travel-soiled or slovenly, much the reverse indeed, for his appearance had been the cause of much more searchings of the heart both to himself and kind Mrs. Eadie than was at all usual in respect to Harry’s simple toilette; but that air of suppressed fatigue and premature awakening, and altogether wrong-sidedness, was strong upon him. And he was deeply conscious of it. He knew exactly how he looked, with his eyes rather red, and that blueness on his chin, and Uncle Henry’s collar cutting his throat; and a great many doubts as to his reception by Uncle Henry—doubts which had not entered his mind before, arose within him in that first moment when, opening the door, he met the startled eyes of Mr. Joscelyn over the top of his spectacles, lifted to him with an alarmed and inquiring look. Harry saw that in a moment he was weighed in the balance and found wanting. This did not give him more ease in his manner, or a less painful sense of being on his trial.

“Good morning, Harry. I hear that you were a surprisingly early visitor this morning; but you keep early hours in the country. I hope there is nothing amiss at the White House.”

Mr. Joscelyn held out a hand, of which he was rather proud to be shaken by his grand-nephew. It was, he flattered himself, a hand that was in itself a guarantee of blue blood. Harry embraced it in the grasp of a powerful member with none of these qualities, and gave it a squeeze much more energetic than he had intended.

“There is a good deal amiss with me,” he said. Harry had been debating the point with himself for the last half-hour, whether he should fully confide in his uncle or not. He could not but feel that it would be wiser to deal lightly with the fact of his exclusion from his father’s house; but he was so angry that he could not be prudent, and the moment that he had an opportunity of speech his temper broke out.