“No one has any authority; there is no such thing nowadays: call it influence if you like, I don’t mind names—but take him away. He is doing no good with me. Never did after the first week. Dilettante fellow, fond of classical reading; that’s not the sort of thing I care for, Mr. Durant. When a man comes to me he comes to work, whether he likes it or not. I am not half sure that I don’t prefer them when they dislike it, triumph of principle then. Curtis is worse than doing no good, as I told you, he is doing himself harm. What do you mean to do about this business? Is he to be allowed to make a fool of himself and destroy all his prospects?”
“I must repeat that I have no authority over Arthur Curtis,” said Durant, “I am only his friend and school-fellow. You know how little a man will allow his friend to interfere in such a matter.”
“On the contrary, I know they are the only people who can interfere. Parents might as well—whistle. I scarcely wonder at that: if one may say so broadly of so large a class, there is not a greater nuisance than parents; and in this sort of business they’re hopeless. But a man like himself, knowing all the consequences—why, no one could speak with so much authority.”
“What would you advise me to say to him?” said Durant, with a kind of half hope that this sharp and energetic intelligence might strike out some new suggestion, tempered by an inclination to laugh and flout at any solution he might offer of the difficulty. “For myself I am at my wits’ end.”
“Say to him!” said the little pedagogue with a snort and puff of fiery resolution. “I’d take him away, I should not waste words. I’d have him out of the place before the day was over. There’s nothing like isolation in any bad disease.”
“There are difficulties,” said Durant, “to make him go in the first place is not easy; and there is perhaps a claim of honour—I don’t know how to advise him to cancel his word.”
“Honour! word!” said Mr. Eagles, in successive snorts, “I can see how well qualified you are for the business. Fiddlesticks! a little money afterwards would salve all that. Is he to ruin himself for the sake of his word—to Bates the tax-collector’s daughter!” The force of ridicule seemed incapable of going further. “I will not resort to your advice, Mr. Durant, no offence, when any of my men are in trouble.”
“Thanks, I hope you will not,” said Durant, nettled; and so rushed to his train in considerable indignation and excitement. His word to Bates’s daughter! was not that as good as his word to a Duchess? the young man asked himself. He was near becoming Arthur’s advocate instead of his adversary. And if Lady Curtis assailed him as Mr. Eagles had done, what should he say to her? Must he lose all hopes of pleasing the family in consequence of this moral dilemma? Durant had no hope that any pleasure he could do to the family would ever really influence them towards the granting of his own private wishes which had never been breathed in any ear. He knew, in short, as well as a man can know by conviction of the understanding, that these wishes were absolutely hopeless, and that nothing he could do to propitiate the family would really tell upon them. But nevertheless he clung to the hope of proving himself useful, of doing something which would conciliate and dispose them towards him. Foolish young man! and what if Nancy Bates with her impetuous indignation, her self-confidence, her strong satisfaction in Arthur’s poverty, which would prove her disinterestedness, should spoil it all?
CHAPTER VIII.
“HE has gone; he will never trouble you any more, and I hope you will forgive him, dear, for my sake. Poor old Durant, he has always looked after me, and bullied me. When I was at Eton first, I was his fag. I don’t think he can forget that.”