The Minor Canon looked at him with that gaze of baffled inquiry which is never so effectually foiled as by the candid youth who has no intentions of his own and no mind to open. Law stood before him, stretching out his useless strength, with his useless book again under his arm—a human being thoroughly wasted; no place for him in the Civil Service, no good use in any of the offices. Why shouldn’t he ’list if he wished it? It was the very best thing for him to do. But when Mr. Ashford thought of Lottie this straightforward conclusion died on his lips.
“Why couldn’t you live on your pay?” he said hurriedly. “It is only to exercise a little self-denial. You would have a life you liked and were fit for, and a young subaltern has just as much pay as any clerkship you could get. Why not make an effort, and determine to live on your pay? If you have the resolution you could do it. It would be better certainly than sitting behind a desk all day long.”
“Wouldn’t it!” said Law, with a deep breath. “Ah! but you wouldn’t require to keep a horse, sitting behind your desk; you wouldn’t have your mess to pay. A fellow must think of all that. I suppose you’ve had enough of me?” he added, looking up with a doubtful smile. “I may go away?”
“Don’t go yet.” There sprang up in the Minor Canon’s mind a kindness for this impracticable yet thoroughly practical-minded boy, who was not wise enough to be good for anything, yet who was too wise to plunge into rash expenses and the arduous exertion of living on an officer’s pay—curious instance of folly and wisdom, for even an officer’s pay was surely better than no pay at all. Mr. Ashford did not want to throw Law off, and yet he could not tell what to do with him. “Will you stay and try how much you can follow of young Uxbridge’s work?” he said. “I daresay you have not for the moment anything much better to do.”
Law gave a glance of semi-despair from the window upon the landscape, and the distance, and the morning sunshine. No! he had nothing better to do. It was not that he had any pleasures in hand, for pleasures cost money, and he had no money to spend; and he knew by long experience that lounging about in the morning without even a companion is not very lively. Still he yielded and sat down, with a sigh. Mere freedom was something, and the sensation of being obliged to keep in one place for an hour or two, and give himself up to occupation, was disagreeable; a fellow might as well be in an office at once. But he submitted. “Young Uxbridge?” he said. “What is he going in for? The Guards, I suppose.” Law sighed; ah! that was the life. But he was aware that for himself he might just as easily aspire to be a prince as a Guardsman. He took his seat at the table resignedly, and pulled the books towards him, and looked at them with a dislike that was almost pathetic. Hateful tools! but nothing was to be done without them. If he could only manage to get in somewhere by means of the little he knew of them, Law vowed in his soul he would never look at the rubbish again.
Young Uxbridge, when he came in spick and span, in the freshest of morning coats and fashionable ties—for which things Law had a keen eye, though he could not indulge in them—looked somewhat askance at the slouching figure of the new pupil. But, though he was the son of a canon and in the best society, young Uxbridge was not more studious, and he was by nature even less gifted, than Law. Of two stupid young men, one may have all the advantage over another which talent can give, without having any talent to brag of. Law was very dense with respect to books, but he understood a great deal more quickly what was said to him, and had a play of humour and meaning in his face, and sense of the amusing and absurd, if nothing more, which distinguished him from his companion, who was steadily level and obtuse all round, and never saw what anything meant. Thus, though one knew more than the other, the greater ignoramus was the more agreeable pupil of the two; and the Minor Canon began to take an amused interest in Law as Law. He kept him to luncheon after the other was gone, and encouraged the boy to talk, giving him such a meal as Law had only dreamt of. He encouraged him to talk, which perhaps was not quite right of Mr. Ashford, and heard a great deal about his family, and found out that, though Lottie was right, Law was not perhaps so utterly wrong as he thought. Law was very wrong; yet when he thus heard both sides of the question, the Minor Canon perceived that it was possible to sympathise with Lottie in her forlorn and sometimes impatient struggle against the vis inertiæ of this big brother, and yet on the other hand to have an amused pity for the big brother, too, who was not brutal but only dense, gaping with wonder at the finer spirit that longed and struggled to stimulate him into something above himself. So stimulated Law never would be. He did not understand even what she wanted, what she would have; but he was not without some good in him. No doubt he would make an excellent settler in the back-woods, working hard there though he would not work here, and ready to defend himself against any tribe of savages; and he would not make a bad soldier. But to be stimulated into a first-class man in an examination, or an any-class man, to be made into a male Lottie of fine perceptions and high ambition, that was what Law would never be.
“But she is quite right,” said Law; “something must be done. I suppose you have heard, Mr. Ashford, as everybody seems to have heard, that the governor is going to marry again?”
“I did hear it. Will that make a great difference to your sister and you?”
“Difference? I should think it would make a difference. As it happens, I know P——, the woman he is going to marry. She makes no secret of it that grown-up sons and daughters shouldn’t live at home. I shall have to leave, whatever happens; and Lottie—well, in one way Lottie has more need to leave than I have: I shouldn’t mind her manners and that sort of thing—but Lottie does mind.”
“Very naturally,” said the Minor Canon.