‘I’ve always known him as Douglas of Trinity,’ said the host.
‘Trinity, Trinity,’ answered the other, who was a local personage, thinking of nothing but territorial designation, ‘I never heard of any Douglasses of Trinity. Do you mean the place near Edinburgh where all the seaside villas are?’
‘He means Cambridge,’ said another, laughing.
‘Douglas is the best fellow in the world, but he is—nobody: at least so I’ve always heard.’
Cosmo did not overhear this conversation, but he knew that it had taken place as well as if he had heard it; not that it did him the least harm with his comrades of the moment, to whom he was a very nice fellow, a capital companion, thoroughly acquainted with all the habits and customs of their kind, and though no great shot, yet good enough for all that was necessary, good enough to enjoy the sport, which nobody who is awkward and really ignorant can do. But he knew that one time or other this little conversation would take place, and though he felt that he might do himself the credit to say that he had no false shame, nor attached any exaggerated importance to the subject, still it was no doubt of more importance to him than it was to those with whom it was only one out of many subjects of a casual conversation. All the same, however, even these casual talkers did not forget it. Strange superstition, strangest folly, he might well say to himself with such a smile as was possible in the circumstances. Douglas of Trinity—Douglas of Lincoln’s Inn meant something—but to be one of the Douglasses of some dilapidated old house, what did that mean? This question, however, had nothing to do with the matter, and the smile had not much pleasantness in it, as may easily be perceived.
The fruit of Cosmo’s cogitations, however, was that he wrote to Anne, as has been seen, and sent his letter to Charley Ashley to be delivered. This was partly policy and partly uncertainty, a sort of half measure to feel his way; but, on the whole, was most of all the necessity he felt to say something to her, to seize upon her, not to let this beautiful dream escape from him.
‘We said nothing about writing, and I don’t know, my dearest, what you wish in this respect. Silence seems impossible, but if you wish it, if you ask this sacrifice, I will be content with my perfect trust in my Anne, and do whatever she would have me do. I know that it would be against your pride and your delicacy, my darling, to keep up any correspondence which the severest parent could call clandestine, and if I take advantage of a good fellow who is devoted to us both, for once, it is not with the least idea that you will like it, or will allow me to continue it. But what can I do? I must know what is your will in this matter, and I must allow myself the luxury once, if only once, of telling you on paper what I have tried to tell you so often in words—how I love you, my love, and what it is to me to love you—a new creation, an opening up both of earth and heaven.’ (We need not continue what Cosmo said on this point because, to be sure, it has all been said over and over again, sometimes no doubt worse, and sometimes unquestionably a great deal better, than he said it: and there is no advantage that we know of to be got from making young persons prematurely acquainted with every possible manner in which this sentiment can be expressed.) At the end he resumed, with generous sentiment, which was perfectly genuine, and yet not any more free of calculation and the idea of personal advantage than all the rest was:—
‘Charley Ashley is the truest friend that ever man had; he has loved you all his life (that is nothing wonderful), and yet, though, at such a cost as I do not like to try to estimate, he still loves me, though he knows that I have come between him and any possibility there was that he should ever win any return from you. To do him full justice, I do not think he ever looked for any return, but was content to love you as in itself a happiness and an elevation for which a man might well be grateful; but still it is hard upon him to see a man no better than himself, nay, less worthy in a hundred ways, winning the unimaginable reward for which he, poor Charley, had not so much as ventured to hope. Yet with a generosity—how can I express it, how could I ever have emulated it?—which is beyond words, he has neither withdrawn his brotherly kindness from me, nor refused to stand by me in my struggle towards you and happiness. What can we say to a friend like this? Trust him, my dearest, as I do. I do not mean that he should be the medium of communication between us, but there are ways in which he may be of help and comfort to us both; and, in the meantime, you will at your dear pleasure tell me yourself what you wish to do, or let me know by him: if I may write, if I must be silent, if you will make me a happy man now and then by a word from your hand, or if I am to wait for that hand till I dare claim it as mine. Nay, but my Anne, my darling, for once, if for once only, you must send two or three words, a line or two, to give me patience and hope.’
As he folded this up his whole heart longed for the ‘word or two’ he had asked for. Without that it almost seemed to him that all that had passed before might mean nothing, might roll away like the mists, like the fabric of a vision. But at the same time Cosmo felt in his heart that if Anne would send him the consolation of this one letter through Charley Ashley, and after that bid him be silent and wait for chance opportunities or modes of communication, that she would do well. It was what he would have advised her to do had he been free to tell her exactly what he thought. But he was not free to advise such a proceeding. It was not in his rôle; nor could he have proposed any clandestine correspondence, though he would have liked it. It was impossible. Anne would most probably have thrown him off as altogether unworthy had he proposed anything of the kind to her, or at least would have regarded him with very different eyes from those with which she looked upon him now. And even independent of this he could not have done it: the words would have failed him to make such a proposal. It was contrary to all tradition, and to the spirit of his class and time.
When he had despatched this letter Cosmo’s bosom’s lord sat more lightly upon his throne. He went out next morning very early and made a respectable, a very respectable, bag. Nobody could say that he was a cockney sportsman not knowing how to aim or hold a gun. In this as in everything else he had succeeded in mastering the rules of every fashion, and lived as a man who was to the manner born. He was indeed to the manner born, with nothing in him, so far as he was aware, that went against the traditions of a gentleman: and yet similar conversations to that one which occurred in the smoking-room, occurred occasionally on the hills among the heather. ‘Of what Douglasses is your friend?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know that he is of any Douglasses,’ the master of the moor would say with impatience. ‘He is a capital fellow, and a rising man in the law—that’s all I know about him;’ or else, ‘He is a college friend, a man who took a very good degree, as clever a fellow as you will meet with, and getting on like a house on fire.’ But all these recommendations, as they all knew, were quite beside the question. He was of nowhere in particular—he was nobody. It was a mysterious dispensation, altogether unexplainable, that such a man should have come into the world without suitable ancestors who could have responded for him. But he had done so. And he could not even produce that fabulous house which, as he had invented it, was a far prettier and more truly gentle and creditable family than half the families who would have satisfied every question. Thus the very best quality of his age was against him as well as its superstitions. Had he been an enriched grocer to whom it could have done no possible good, he might easily have invented a pedigree; but being himself he could not do it. And thus the injury he had sustained at the hands of Providence was beyond all remedy or hope of amendment.