When he had gone, slamming the door behind him, Harry smiled sweetly.
"I know," he said, "that he has done 'something,' as they call it. Bunker is afraid. And I—yes—I shall find it out and terrify him still more. But, in order to find it out, I must stay. And if I stay, I must be a workman. And wear an apron! And a brown-paper cap! No. I draw the line above aprons. No consideration shall induce me to wear an apron. Not even—no—not if she were to make the apron a condition of marriage."
CHAPTER XVI. HARRY'S DECISION.
He spent the afternoon wandering about the streets of Stepney, full of the new thought that here might be his future home. This reflection made him regard the place from quite a novel point of view. As a mere outsider, he had looked upon the place critically, with amusement, with pity, with horror (in rainy weather), with wonder (in sunshiny days). He was a spectator, while before his eyes were played as many little comedies, comediettas, or tragedies or melodramas as there were inhabitants. But no farces, he remarked, and no burlesques. The life of industry contains no elements of farce or of burlesque. But if he took this decisive step he would have to look upon the East End from an inside point of view; he would be himself one of the actors; he would play his own little comedy. Therefore he must introduce the emotion of sympathy, and suppress the critical attitude altogether.
There was once an earl who went away and became a sailor before the mast; he seems to have enjoyed sailoring better than legislating, but was, by accident, ingloriously drowned while so engaged. There was also the Honorable Timothy Clitheroe Davenant, who was also supposed to be drowned, but in reality exercised until his death, and apparently with happiness, the craft of wheelwright. There was another unfortunate nobleman, well known to fame, who became a butcher in a colony, and liked it. Precedents enough of voluntary descent and eclipse, to say nothing of the involuntary obscurations, as when an émigré had to teach dancing, or the son of a royal duke was fain to become a village schoolmaster. These historical parallels pleased Harry's fancy until he recollected that he was himself only a son of the people, and not of noble descent, so that they really did not bear upon his case, and he could find not one single precedent in the whole history parallel with himself. "Mine," he said, formulating the thing, "is a very remarkable and unusual case. Here is a man brought up to believe himself of gentle birth and educated as a gentleman, so that there is nothing in the most liberal training of a gentleman that he has not learned, and no accomplishment which becomes a gentleman that he has not acquired. Then he learns that he is not a gentleman by birth, and that he is a pauper; wherefore, why not honest work? Work is noble, to be sure, especially if you get the kind of work you like, and please yourself about the time of doing it; nothing could be a more noble spectacle than that of myself working at the lathe for nothing, in the old days; would it be quite as noble at the brewery, doing piece-work?"
These reflections, this putting of the case to himself, this grand dubiety, occupied the whole afternoon. When the evening came, and it was time for him to present himself in the drawing-room, he was no further advanced toward a decision.
The room looked bright and restful; wherever Angela went, she was accompanied and surrounded by an atmosphere of refinement. Those who conversed with her became infected with her culture; therefore, the place was like any drawing-room at the West End, save for the furniture, which was simple. Ladies would have noticed, even in such little things, in the way in which the girls sat and carried themselves, a note of difference. To Harry these minutiæ were unknown, and he saw only a room full of girls quietly happy and apparently well-bred; some were reading; some were talking, one or two were "making" something for themselves, though their busy fingers had been at work all day. Nelly and Miss Kennedy were listening to the captain, who was telling a yarn of his old East Indiaman. The three made a pretty group, Miss Kennedy seated on a low stool at the captain's knee, while the old man leaned forward in his arm-chair, his daughter beside him watching, in her affectionate and pretty way, the face of her patron.
The quiet, peaceful air of the room, the happy and contented faces which before had been so harassed and worn, struck the young man's heart. Part of this had been his doing; could he go away and leave the brave girl who headed the little enterprise to the tender mercies of a Bunker? The thought of what he was throwing up—the club-life, the art-life, the literary life, the holiday-time, the delightful roving in foreign lands, which he should enjoy no more—all seemed insignificant considered beside this haven of rest and peace in the troubled waters of the East End. He was no philanthropist; the cant of platforms was intolerable to him; yet he was thinking of a step which meant giving up his own happiness for that of others; with, of course, the constant society of the woman he loved. Without that compensation the sacrifice would be impossible. Miss Kennedy looked up and nodded to him kindly, motioning him not to interrupt the story, which the captain presently finished.
Then they had a little music and a little playing, and there was a little dancing—all just as usual; a quiet, pleasant evening; and they went away.