"Possible enough," muttered Harley; "but there have been great writers who observed none of your maxims."
"Great writers, probably, but very unenviable men. My Lord, my Lord, don't corrupt the pupil you bring to me." Harley smiled and took his departure, and left Genius at school with Common Sense and Experience.
CHAPTER XX.
While Leonard Fairfield had been obscurely wrestling against poverty, neglect, hunger, and dread temptations, bright had been the opening day, and smooth the upward path, of Randal Leslie. Certainly no young man, able and ambitious, could enter life under fairer auspices; the connection and avowed favorite of a popular and energetic statesman, the brilliant writer of a political work, that had lifted him at once into a station of his own—received and courted in those highest circles, to which neither rank nor fortune alone suffices for a familiar passport—the circles above fashion itself—the circles of power—with every facility of augmenting information, and learning the world betimes through the talk of its acknowledged masters—Randal had but to move straight onward, and success was sure. But his tortuous spirit delighted in scheme and intrigue for their own sake. In scheme and intrigue he saw shorter paths to fortune, if not to fame. His besetting sin was also his besetting weakness. He did not aspire—he coveted. Though in a far higher social position than Frank Hazeldean, despite the worldly prospects of his old school-fellow, he coveted the very things that kept Frank Hazeldean below him—coveted his idle gayeties, his careless pleasures, his very waste of youth. Thus, also, Randal less aspired to Audley Egerton's repute than he coveted Audley Egerton's wealth and pomp, his princely expenditure, and his Castle Rackrent in Grosvenor-square. It was the misfortune of his birth to be so near to both these fortunes—near to that of Leslie, as the future head of that fallen house—near even to that of Hazeldean, since as we have seen before, if the Squire had had no son, Randal's descent from the Hazeldeans suggested himself as the one on whom these broad lands should devolve. Most young men, brought into intimate contact with Audley Egerton, would have felt for that personage a certain loyal and admiring, if not very affectionate, respect. For there was something grand in Egerton—something that commands and fascinates the young. His determined courage, his energetic will, his almost regal liberality, contrasting a simplicity in personal tastes and habits that was almost austere—his rare and seemingly unconscious power of charming even the women most wearied of homage, and persuading even the men most obdurate to counsel—all served to invest the practical man with those spells which are usually confined to the ideal one. But indeed, Audley Egerton was an Ideal—the ideal of the Practical. Not the mere vulgar, plodding, red-tape machine of petty business, but the man of strong sense, inspired by inflexible energy, and guided to definite earthly objects. In a dissolute and corrupt form of government, under a decrepit monarchy, or a vitiated republic, Audley Egerton might have been a most dangerous citizen; for his ambition was so resolute, and his sight to its ends was so clear. But there is something in public life in England which compels the really ambitious man to honor, unless his eyes are jaundiced and oblique like Randal Leslie's. It is so necessary in England to be a gentleman. And thus Egerton was emphatically considered a gentleman. Without the least pride in other matters, with little apparent sensitiveness, touch him on the point of gentleman, and no one so sensitive and so proud. As Randal saw more of him, and watched his moods with the lynx eyes of the household spy, he could perceive that this hard mechanical man was subject to fits of melancholy, even of gloom, and though they did not last long, there was even in his habitual coldness an evidence of something compressed, latent, painful, lying deep within his memory. This would have interested the kindly feelings of a grateful heart. But Randal detected and watched it only as a clew to some secret it might profit him to gain. For Randal Leslie hated Egerton; and hated him the more because with all his book-knowledge and his conceit in his own talents, he could not despise his patron—because he had not yet succeeded in making his patron the mere tool or stepping-stone—because he thought that Egerton's keen eye saw through his wily heart, even while, as if in profound disdain, the minister helped the protégé. But this last suspicion was unsound. Egerton had not detected Leslie's corrupt and treacherous nature. He might have other reasons for keeping him at a certain distance, but he inquired too little into Randal's feelings toward himself to question the attachment, or doubt the sincerity of one who owed to him so much. But that which more than all embittered Randal's feelings toward Egerton, was the careful and deliberate frankness with which the latter had, more than once, repeated and enforced the odious announcement, that Randal had nothing to expect from the minister's—WILL, nothing to expect from that wealth which glared in the hungry eyes of the pauper heir to the Leslies of Rood. To whom, then, could Egerton mean to devise his fortune? To whom but Frank Hazeldean. Yet Audley took so little notice of his nephew—seemed so indifferent to him, that that supposition, however natural, seemed exposed to doubt. The astuteness of Randal was perplexed. Meanwhile, however, the less he himself could rely upon Egerton for fortune, the more he revolved the possible chances of ousting Frank from the inheritance of Hazeldean—in part, at least, if not wholly. To one less scheming, crafty, and remorseless than Randal Leslie with every day became more and more, such a project would have seemed the wildest delusion. But there was something fearful in the manner in which this young man sought to turn knowledge into power, and make the study of all weakness in others subservient to his own ends. He wormed himself thoroughly into Frank's confidence. He learned through Frank all the Squire's peculiarities of thought and temper, and thoroughly pondered over each word in the father's letters, which the son gradually got into the habit of showing to the perfidious eyes of his friend. Randal saw that the Squire had two characteristics which are very common among proprietors, and which might be invoked as antagonists to his warm fatherly love. First, the Squire was as fond of his estate as if it were a living thing, and part of his own flesh and blood; and in his lectures to Frank upon the sin of extravagance, the Squire always let out this foible:—"What was to become of the estate if it fell into the hands of a spendthrift? No man should make ducks and drakes of Hazeldean; let Frank beware of that," &c. Secondly, the Squire was not only fond of his lands, but he was jealous of them—that jealousy which even the tenderest fathers sometimes entertain toward their natural heirs. He could not bear the notion that Frank should count on his death; and he seldom closed an admonitory letter without repeating the information that Hazeldean was not entailed; that it was his to do with as he pleased through life and in death. Indirect menace of this nature rather wounded and galled than intimidated Frank; for the young man was extremely generous and high-spirited by nature, and was always more disposed to some indiscretion after such warnings to his self-interest, as if to show that those were the last kinds of appeal likely to influence him. By the help of such insights into the character of father and son, Randal thought he saw gleams of daylight illumining his own chance of the lands of Hazeldean. Meanwhile it appeared to him obvious that, come what might of it, his own interests could not lose, and might most probably gain, by whatever could alienate the Squire from his natural heir. Accordingly, though with consummate tact, he instigated Frank toward the very excesses most calculated to irritate the Squire, all the while appearing rather to give the counter advice, and never sharing in any of the follies to which he conducted his thoughtless friend. In this he worked chiefly through others, introducing Frank to every acquaintance most dangerous to youth, either from the wit that laughs at prudence, or the spurious magnificence that subsists so handsomely upon bills endorsed by friends of "great expectations."
The minister and his protégé were seated at breakfast, the first reading the newspaper, the last glancing over his letters; for Randal had arrived to the dignity of receiving many letters—ay, and notes too, three-cornered, and fantastically embossed. Egerton uttered an exclamation, and laid down the paper. Randal looked up from his correspondence. The minister had sunk into one of his absent reveries.
After a long silence, observing that Egerton did not return to the newspaper, Randal said, "Ehem—sir, I have a note from Frank Hazeldean, who wants much to see me; his father has arrived in town unexpectedly."
"What brings him here?" asked Egerton, still abstractedly.
"Why, it seems that he has heard some vague reports of poor Frank's extravagance, and Frank is rather afraid or ashamed to meet him."
"Ay—a very great fault extravagance in the young!—destroys independence; ruins or enslaves the future. Great fault—very! And what does youth want that it should be extravagant? Has it not every thing in itself, merely because it is? Youth is youth—what needs it more?"
Egerton rose as he said this, and retired to his writing-table, and in his turn opened his correspondence. Randal took up the newspaper, and endeavored, but in vain, to conjecture what had excited the minister's exclamation, and the reverie that succeeded it.