“Well, if not bitter, cynical—cynical—perhaps that is a better word. I have been thinking a great deal about what you said the other day, and I don’t think there is much in it. Society must be kept up—some sacrifice must be made to keep up that fine atmosphere—that air so sensitive to everything that comes into it—that brilliant, witty, refined——”
“Newmarch,” said another young man, lounging up, “where were you that one couldn’t see you at the Strathfeldsays’ dance the other night? Awful bore! Never was at anything much worse all my life—the women all frights and the men all notabilities. Ah, Arden, I never see you anywhere now. Where has the t’other Arden gone—Arthur Arden—that one used to meet about? He used to be always with the Lowestofts. Lowestoft wouldn’t stand it at the last. Deuced bore! Some men are insufferable in that way. Pull you up short, whether you mean anything or not, and spoil the whole affair. Been doing anything in the House?—Education Bill, and that sort of thing. Hang education! What is the good of it? What has it ever done for you or me?”
“What, indeed!” cried Edgar—a backing which was received with the warmth it merited.
“Eton and Christchurch are reckoned pretty well,” said their new companion; “but I don’t know what they ever did for me. And as for those confounded fellows that never wash and have votes, what do they want with it? Depend upon it, they are a great deal better without. Teaches them to be discontented; then teaches you to humbug and tell lies for them to read in the newspapers. By the way, where are you going to-night? I’ve got some men coming to dine with me. Will you make one—or, rather, will you make two, if Arden likes? Then there is that deuced affair on at the Bodmillers’ which I suppose I shall have to look in upon; and the Chromatics are giving a grand concert, with Squallini and Whiskerando. Little Squallini is worth listening to, I can tell you. There are heaps of things I never attempt, and one is, going to musical nights promiscuous, not knowing what you’re to hear. But the Chromatics know what is what. Going? I shall look out somebody, and have a rubber till five. These concerts and things are a confounded bore.”
“Is that your brilliant, witty, refined—— is that the sort of thing we should make a sacrifice to keep up?” said Edgar, as they went out together. “What an amount of trouble it has taken to produce him! And now he has to be kept up at a sacrifice. I should prefer to make a sacrifice to get rid of him, Newmarch. He is not so witty as his own groom, nor half so useful as that crossing sweeper——”
“You would find the crossing-sweeper dull, too, if you met him every day,” said Newmarch. “The fact is, it is not a very good world, but it is the best we can get; and if a man does as much as he can with it—— You must get into the House, Arden. I don’t mean to say society is enough for an energetic man, with a great deal of time on his hands: but my occupations I hope are solid enough. I have had three or four hours of committees already; and I am going down to Westminster straight. Of course, it is pleasant to sit over that little table in the corner of the Thornleighs’ drawing-room. Ah!—that sort of thing is not for me,” said the legislator, with a sigh.
And Edgar laughed—partly at his friend, partly at himself, partly at the universal vanity. Lord Newmarch was no Solomon. The country could have gone on all the same had he, too, gossiped over a tea-table as so many of the youth of England were doing at that moment with relish as great as though they had been so many washer-women, and tongues sharpened at the clubs. England would not have suffered had Lord Newmarch gossiped too. And Edgar was not much more genuine as he walked with him as far as Berkeley Square, and then dropped off “to say good-bye to the Thornleighs,” leaving the liveliest certainty on Lord Newmarch’s mind as to what were his relations with the family. Nor, perhaps, was Gussy more true, as she sat and filled out the tea, and saw, with a little thrill, the man coming in who was to fix her fate. She did not love him any more than he loved her, and yet, in all likelihood, her life was in his hands. What a strange, aimless whirl it was in which everybody moved, or seemed to move, as some blind fate required, and could not stop themselves, nor change the current which kept drifting them on! The crossing-sweeper was the braver and the more genuine personage. The mud cleared away before his broom; the road grew passable where he moved; he had it in his power to make a new passage wherever he was so minded. At least, so one supposed looking at his mystery from outside. Perhaps within, the guild of crossing-sweepers has its tyrannical limitations too.
CHAPTER XXIV.
It was a quiet hour when Edgar made his appearance in the drawing-room at Berkeley Square. Why this afternoon should have been so still and domestic and the last so noisy and full of visitors, it is difficult to say. The girls had been riding in the Park in the morning, “their last ride,” as the younger ones informed him, with voluble regret. The horses were going off that evening; the whole house was, as it were, breaking to pieces. Already half the pretty things—the stands of books and of flowers—had disappeared from the tables. The girls looked somehow as if their very dresses were plainer, which was not actually the case. The cloud upon them was only a moral cloud, consequent upon the knowledge that on Monday they were all going home.
“And fancy, the opera will go on all the same, and Patti will sing, though we are away,” said Mary, who was musical.