A telegram found by Mr. Thacker on his arrival at business the next morning announced that Mr. Guyon and Mr. Streightley would lunch with him that day; and at two o'clock the meal was on the table and the convives were assembled. In addition to Guyon, Streightley, and the host, there were Lord Bollindar, a pleasant old nobleman, younger brother of a deceased and uncle to a live duke, who had a limited income of two hundred a-year and lived at the rate of two thousand--never owing a penny--on the strength of the handles to his name and a perennial flow of small talk; Sir Harvey Falmer, a lieutenant in the 2d Life Guards, who had dealings with Mr. Thacker, and who was kept to lunch on the strength of a recently negotiated bill; Mr. Wuff of the Theatre Royal, Hatton Garden; and Mr. Tocsin, Q.C., the celebrated Old Bailey barrister. The lunch was admirable in itself and admirably served; and after the champagne had circulated freely, the conversation, which at first had been rather slow, improved considerably.
"Doosid good champagne!" said Sir Harvey Falmer, tossing off his glassful; "that's what I always say about you, Thacker; when you give a man a drink, it's a good drink, and you give it him; don't stick it in--swipes and gooseberry, you know--as part of your balance."
Mr. Thacker smiled somewhat ghastlily at this witticism; but Lord Bollindar came to the rescue by saying, "Good, good! devilish smart, Falmer! but you fellas are in clover now. Why, I reckleckt the Dook--you reckleckt the Dook, Mr. Streightley?"
"I--I beg your pardon--the Duke?"
"Dook of Wellington I mean. He used to say, 'Hang your still champagne!'--only his Grace used a stronger term--'Hang your still champagne! Champagne without froth is like man without woman!' Said so indeed, begad!"
"Did he indeed?" said Mr. Tocsin in his strident voice: "I should have liked to have had his Grace under cross-examination to prove that."
"I don't think you'd have made much of him, Tocsin," said Mr. Thacker, "What do you think, Mr. Streightley?"
"I? I can't say, of course, so far as my knowledge of his Grace was concerned; but I'm sure--that--the presence of ladies elevates--and refines--and----"
"Of course it does," cried Mr. Wuff. "Put on a fellow--I mean a male fellow--to dance, and see where you are. Patron of mine--noble lord who shall be nameless--said to me the other night, 'Never again, Wuff; never again. Many petticoats as you like; but if ever I see again a fellow in a low-necked dress with grapes in his hair dancing at your theatre, damme, I leave the house.'"
"The sentiment did him honour, whoever he was," said Mr. Tocsin. "I don't want to pry into your secrets, Wuff, but the man was right, and spoke like--a man. What is it nerves to our best efforts? What is it makes us exert ourselves? Not the thought of the jury--I speak for myself--not the thought that we are--are--bending the minds of a few stupid men in--in a box; but the feeling that we are looked up to and gaining renown in the eyes of--of--those bright eyes which we wish to shine in delight upon our labours."
"Bravo!" cried Sir Harvey Falmer, who was rapidly falling into a maudlin state.
"Look at our friend here," said Lord Bollindar, pointing to Streightley; "one of--as I'm given to understand; never had the pleasure of meeting him before--pillars of British commerce. Ask him what prompts his men--Jack Tars and all that kind of thing--to brave storms and billows and typhoons, and whatever they're called, and carry British commerce from pole to pole. Is it the mere paltry gain, wages, advance-rate, whatever it is? No; the poet, what's his name?--Dibdin--has told us different: Jack's delight is lovely Nan,--And the wind that blows,--And mill that goes,--And lass that loves a sailor--and all that."
"There can, I think," said Streightley, "be little doubt that the influence of a--a wife--can scarcely be overrated. I--I think," he added in a lower tone to Mr. Guyon, who was his next neighbour, "that I've not sufficiently appreciated feminine influence; but that is a fault which can be remedied, eh?" And he said this rather nervously.
"To a man with your advantages, my dear boy," said Guyon, "delay, instead of being dangerous, has been, I may say, a safeguard. I was making this very remark--for, curiously enough, I've taken a strong interest in you--to my daughter this morning, and she perfectly agreed with me."
This for a sample of the conversation. When his guests had gone, Mr. Thacker stood looking at but not seeing the débris of the banquet. He was calmly feeling his chin with his hand, and saying to himself, "So far so good. The man is weak as water, and seems inclined to mould himself as old Guyon pleases. But I must have a look at the girl before I throw myself into the scales."
"No one but Miss Hester Gould," the old nurse had answered, in reply to Robert Streightley's question; and he had never bestowed a thought upon the answer. What was Hester Gould to him, or he to Hester Gould? To the first section of this inquiry the present chapter will furnish a reply; to the second, time only; time, just then busy with the beginning of many complications in the life of a man whose career had been singularly even, uneventful, and interesting only so far as it had developed his abilities and the results of their employment.
The young lady, whose brief parley with Alice had simply consisted of the words reported to her master and darling by the old nurse, had known the unpretending little family at Brixton for several years, and had been, for the chief of that number, intimate with Mrs. Streightley and her daughter Ellen. This intimacy, however, was one-sided; Hester Gould was completely in the harmless and unimportant confidence of the two ladies, but they were not in hers. This was no treacherous, insidious distinction, no deliberate preference of other friends, on Hester Gould's part; for she was a woman who gave her confidence to no one; a woman of a self-sufficing nature, and the safest possible confidante, because she never felt sufficiently interested in any one person to betray another for his or her sake. No one could justly accuse Hester Gould of flattery or fawning, yet she induced her acquaintances to conceive enthusiastic friendships for her, and to tell her their most intimate concerns, to discover that she was indispensable to their comfort, and the dearest creature in the world; to declare that they did not know what they should do without her, and that her advice was always the best. How did the girl, without descending to the despicable meanness of toadyism, achieve popularity in her narrow sphere, though she was undeniably handsome, and that too after a fashion that was capable of development into downright beauty of a high type, if circumstances had been more favourable to her? She achieved it by "masterly inactivity." Whether she had thought over the life that lay before her, had formed a philosophy of her own, and decided upon a line of conduct as the result of her meditations, before she left the second-rate boarding-school at Peckham, where she had acquired all the technical education she possessed, it would be impossible to say, and the supposition that she had done so appears unnatural and far-fetched. It was probably partly by the instinct of native shrewdness, and partly by the exercise of precocious powers of observation, that Hester Gould discovered that the great art of making herself agreeable consisted in letting her friends talk to her of themselves, without claiming a reciprocal right. However that may have been, she observed as a rule strict reticence concerning her own affairs, and endured with smiling patience, paying her friends that subtlest of compliments, undivided attention; and displaying interest, which if not demonstrative was practical, in the fullest details concerning theirs. She was of a cold, silent, repressed nature, not exactly unamiable or false; but a woman who might become either under circumstances more disadvantageous than hers were at present, or might expand under favourable and fostering influences into a higher type of womanhood than she either physically or intellectually indicated now.
Hester Gould was a handsome woman at twenty, a period of life which she had reached only a few days before that on which she had made affectionate inquiries for Ellen Streightley; but she would probably be a handsomer woman at thirty, and if she then fulfilled the latent promise of beauty, would have a fair chance of retaining it long past the period at which the loveliness of women, in all but very exceptional cases, ceases to be a fact, and becomes a memory. She was tall and full-formed; but as yet she wanted gracefulness. She had handsome features and fine keen dark eyes; but her face had not sufficient colour, and her eyes had too little depth; they lacked intensity; not that they were shifty and uncertain, but that they bore the vague, absent expression which tells of discontent, not particular but general. Looking attentively at Hester Gould, one given to studying character in faces would know that there was incongruity between the actual and the potential position of the girl. Without restlessness, without impatience, always ruled by common sense, she seemed to be a person who had something in view, which if not a firm resolve, was at least a cherished purpose. The tenor of her life was even and simple enough, and there was nothing remarkable in her history. Her parents had been plain people: her father, secretary to an old-established insurance office, had patronised the concern to the extent of securing a decent sum for the maintenance of his sister and only child. Her mother, who had "disobliged her family," as the phrase is, by her marriage, had died when Hester was a baby; and the only member of the disobliged family now living was a wealthy shipowner, who had declined to take any notice of the sister who had disgraced herself by wedding a poor man. Mr. Gould came of parents quite as well-born as his wife's: they were all of the respectable tradesman class; but their standard was one of money value, and he did not come up to it. They might have helped him to approach it, without inconveniencing themselves; but they did not consider or care about that, and the breach had been complete; indeed it had soon become irremediable; for Mrs. Gould had survived her marriage only four years, and had died, taking her infant son with her away from all family quarrels and human affairs. Hester grew up, under the kindly, timid, narrow-minded charge of her aunt; a meek spinster given to the perusal and distribution of tracts, and to the frequentation of meeting-houses where the doctrine was strong and the preaching unctuous. The child became "too much" for her timid aunt and her depressed father at an early period of her existence, and even rebelled against the vicarious authority of Miss Gould's favourite "ministers;" so she was sent to school, and there also she gave no little trouble for a time. But common sense was always Hester's strong point; and it came to her assistance. School was far from pleasant, she reflected, but home was worse; and as she had no power to provide herself with a third alternative at present, she would abide by the lesser of two evils, and turn it to all the advantage she could. The result of this rational conclusion was that Hester Gould profited to the utmost by the limited quantity and mediocre quality of the education administered at Laburnum Lodge, and acquired at least a foundation on which to build afterwards according to her taste.
The discretion evinced by the schoolgirl was a clue to her character. No one was more popular among the small and far from distinguished community; but only the girls whose social position was a little higher than her own could claim Hester as an intimate friend. The gushing nonsense of school friendships had little attraction for her, and she contracted none that she did not contemplate maintaining when the association which had produced them should have ceased. Hester was not brilliantly clever, there was not the least soupçon of genius about her; but she was certainly a superior person in intellect, in manners, and in appearance, to the companions of her studies, the sharers of her school life, in that most unbearable kind of intimacy which means contact without companionship. When she went home for the holidays, things were not much better. She had been fond of her father in a quiet way, though she had taken his intellectual measure pretty accurately, and almost as as soon as she had arrived at the conclusion that their life was on a dull mean scale, had recognised his inability to elevate or enliven it.
"We should grub on like this all our lives, if it depended on him," the girl had said to herself in emphatic, if not elegant soliloquy; and there had been no wilful disrespect to the honest, humdrum, unobservant father in the remark, only Hester's unclouded perception and resolute custom of telling herself the truth. When she was a little over fifteen years old her father died, and she had to endure, in addition to her natural grief, which was unfeigned and sore, a declension in position, and a narrowing of the narrow income, which at its best she had regarded with impatience, very keen though never expressed, or permitted to escape her by so much as a gesture. Her aunt moved into a smaller house in an inferior situation, discharged one of the two female servants who had composed their modest establishment, and told Hester she hoped she had profited sufficiently by her music and singing lessons to go on without a master, for she could no longer afford to continue them.
Hester bore the alteration with apparent equanimity, but she took a resolution and acted upon it. She was a musician by nature, and music was the one branch of study to which she had taken with avidity, and which she had pursued with unrelaxed industry. She went to the schoolmistress (the establishment had not yet attained to the distinction of possessing a "lady principal"), and asked her to put her in the immediately-to-be-vacated place of a pupil-teacher, allowing her to continue her own music and singing lessons as an equivalent for her services. The proposition took Miss Nickson by surprise; but she knew Hester Gould's abilities and popularity, and though she did not like the girl particularly, she trusted her fully. It never occurred to the schoolmistress--a simple woman, and a favourable specimen of a generally disagreeable class--that Hester had not made the proposition at her aunt's suggestion, while that young lady contented herself with informing Miss Lavinia Gould by letter of what she had done. "I don't lose caste by it here, where they all know me and I have been on equal terms with them," thought Hester; "and my only chance of getting out of our odious mean existence is by making all I can of such education as I can get. I shall have to teach anyhow, and I can fit myself for teaching a better class of people here." It was not a stupid calculation for so young a head, and it turned out perfectly correct. Hester did not lose caste when her schoolfellows became her pupils, and her teachers in their turn took additional pains with her when they knew the object with which she was learning.
Among Hester's intimates for several of her school years was Ellen Streightley, a girl who loved and worshipped one who was in most respects her opposite with a kind of enthusiasm not rare among unworldly natures, in which the intellect is much less powerful than the feelings. The boarding-school at Peckham was not altogether such an establishment as Miss Streightley should have been kept at beyond the period of primary instruction; but her mother was a shy, gentle, unworldly woman, who did not understand any thing about social ambition, and provided she found her daughter brought up in sound morals and good manners would not have considered for a moment whether her associates were of a higher class than her own, or came of richer or poorer people. Mrs. Streightley had never changed her mode of life in accordance with her increased means; she had but a narrow circle, which was, however, quite satisfactory to her, and she regarded the commercial and financial magnates with whom her son associated on the rare occasions of his "going into society," as completely out of the sphere of herself and her daughter. This daughter was very dear to her; a tranquil, gentle, congenial companion, a child who had never given her an hour's true anxiety in her life, and had even had the measles and the whooping-cough much more lightly and favourably than other children. Ellen Streightley was short, slight, and extremely fair. She was not exactly pretty, but the calm sweetness of her face was very winning, and the perfect candour and gentleness which sat upon her smooth forehead and looked out of her full blue eyes had an unwearying charm for those who knew how true these indications were of the mind and heart within. Ellen Streightley loved her mother and her brother Robert with all the devotion and dutifulness of her nature; but Hester Gould she loved with enthusiasm in addition. From the first Hester's strong mind had charmed and swayed her, and the imagination of the girl, not very vivid and but rarely awakened, had surrounded her with a halo of its weaving. Had Hester's moral nature been much or openly defective, she never would have won this tribute of love and worship from Ellen Streightley, who had good sense to come in aid of her high principle, and her perfect purity of heart, but who succumbed to the superiority of Hester with a delighted submission. When they were children together, Hester's word had been the other's law, and had any thing been needed to perfect her love and admiration, Hester's conduct in voluntarily assuming the position of pupil-teacher in order that her aunt might suffer as little as possible from their narrow circumstances would have supplied their complement. There was no falsehood in this statement, made by Hester to her friend. It was quite true, only it was not the whole of her motive, but a part, and not the chief part of it.
And Hester--what was her share in this strict and loving alliance? Decidedly she liked Ellen Streightley very much, and she prized highly, without comprehending it altogether, the enthusiastic affection of which she was the object, the unreserved confidence of which she was the recipient. She liked the Saturdays and Sundays which she passed at Mrs. Streightley's house at Brixton, when Ellen's schooldays had come to a conclusion, and her friend coaxed Miss Lavinia Gould to spare Hester to her; a request that lady did not hesitate to grant, as she had very little need of her niece's society; her "Sabbaths," as she punctiliously called them, being passed in hot untiring chase of popular preachers, according to her notions of popularity and estimate of preachers. She declined to join the family party on Sundays, firstly on Sabbatarian principles, secondly because the Streightleys were "Church of England," and she hated that persuasion only a little less than the Roman Communion, and the opposition chapel which set itself against the ministrations of her own particular pastor and saint, the Rev. Malachy Farrell, a powerful controversialist, and a convert from the Romish heresy and abomination of desolation. Ellen had enjoined her mother to exert herself to "make a connection" for Hester, when her days of pupil-teachership came to a conclusion; that lady had obediently exerted herself; Miss Nickson had done as much for the girl, with whom she had never had occasion to find a fault, but who, she rather remorsefully admitted to herself, had never "gained on her" in all the years of their association; and Hester, at twenty years old, when we meet her first, was established as a teacher of music, with a respectable connection, and occupied with her aunt a pretty small house near the Brixton Villa, which, in elegance and habitableness was a considerable improvement on that in which her father had lived and died.
Ellen Streightley had never cooled or wavered in her love for Hester; and her mother liked the girl very much, though she sometimes had an uncomfortable sort of feeling that she did not understand her perfectly, that Hester might perhaps be "too much" for her and Ellen, if she should think it worth her while to be so. But the kind lady was little given to mental exercises of any troublesome description, and never thought of analysing her sensations. That she was an exceptional person, singularly unsuspicious, and unlike mothers in general, may surely be conceded, when it is stated that it never occurred to her to think that Hester might possibly be a dangerous intimate for Robert, her beloved and precious son, or could cherish any design or idea whereof he made part. Mrs. Streightley loved her son better than she loved Ellen; a preference which the girl accepted as a matter of course, and believed to be perfectly just and well founded. He was Robert, their Robert, the most important, the most beloved of men, and of course it was all right; and the two women did but follow the example of thousands of their sex, whose perceptions and ideas are confined within a small circle, and whose social sphere and enjoyments resemble a mill, and the going round therein performed by patient and tolerably well-fed beasts. Robert was an amiable man on the whole; he gave no more trouble in the household than was inseparable from the circumstance that he was a man and "didn't understand things," as the household phrase has it, and he loved his mother devotedly, and Ellen very much indeed. It had never occurred to him that her life was a dull one, and that he was rich enough to make it a very different life, if he would but waken up and look away from his counting-house, learn sympathy, and consider what was the real meaning and worth of money. He had never thought of the light and colour, the stir and healthful pleasure he might diffuse through the decorous, comfortable, neutral-tinted existence of the Brixton Villa; he had never noticed their absence; and as he had no notion of the life led by other girls, on whom money was lavishly expended, and for whose delectation whole household systems were organised, there was no standard of comparison in his mind. He was so much older than his sister, so much nearer his mother's age than hers, that while perfect affection had always subsisted between them, it had not been accompanied with much intimacy, and his confidences, which were wholly confined to business matters, had been restricted to his mother, on whose mind it had never dawned that any improvement in their household affairs could be desirable, who had never looked or desired to look outside the circle in which she moved, and who would have received any suggestion of an increase of Ellen's social opportunities and enjoyments with entire incredulity. To her Ellen was as yet little more than a child; and though if he had been asked what was her age, and had paused to think the matter over, Robert would have perceived the absurdity of so regarding a girl of nineteen, by no means childish of her years, though simple and unworldly as few children are in these progressive days, he practically shared her delusion.
Robert was almost as much accustomed to see Hester Gould as he was to see Ellen. The girls were together as much as possible, due consideration being had to Hester's occupations, and the social duties and privileges of her "connection," which she never neglected. She led an infinitely pleasanter life than did Ellen; for she was very popular among her pupils, and many of their number contrived to extend to her their own amusements and pleasures. She had not much leisure, but she was under no painful necessity to overwork herself; her occupation need never degenerate into slavery, and such hours as she could devote to recreation she could always find recreation to fill. She possessed perfect health and an even temper; not according to the cynical saying, "A good digestion and a bad heart,"--not yet, at least. Up to the present time nothing in Hester's conduct had indicated badness of heart; a little coldness perhaps, but unperceived, and resolution whose inflexibility might have been suspected, but that her resolves had all been in the direction of right and duty. If any body had asked Robert Streightley whether he was acquainted with Miss Hester Gould, he would have unhesitatingly replied that he knew her most intimately--as well as his own sister; and he would have made such an answer in perfectly good faith. It would not have been true, nevertheless. If any one had asked Hester Gould whether she knew Robert Streightley, she would have replied that he was an acquaintance of hers, being the brother of one of her dearest friends--(Hester would not have said her "dearest friend," for such a sweeping phrase might have been repeated to her detriment); and she would have said it in a tone calculated to convince the questioner that her acquaintance with Mr. Streightley was of the most formal and conventional kind. In this instance the reply would only have had the exterior of truth, for no one in the world--certainly not the man himself--knew Robert Streightley as well, as thoroughly as Hester Gould knew him. Not his sister, who would talk cheerily about her brother, and extol his genius, his temper, and his personal appearance; not his mother, who would tell Hester a dozen times in a week that he had never caused her an hour's anxiety, and who never admitted that he had a fault, except his tiresome-objection to sitting for his photograph; not the old nurse, who would scold Robert freely enough herself, but in whose hearing no one would have had the boldness to declare him subject to the faults, the misfortunes, or the maladies of humanity. It was a fortunate circumstance that Hester Gould had perfectly read Robert Streightley's character, and had, without any thing like impertinent inquisitiveness, acquired a thorough knowledge of the family history and his personal antecedents; for, some time before the period of her friend's visit to Yorkshire, Hester Gould had made up her mind that she would marry Robert Streightley if possible, and Ellen's last letter had induced her to think of doing so at an earlier period than she had previously contemplated.
"I don't know that Ellen's marriage will not be the best thing that could possibly happen for me," said Hester to herself as she walked briskly away from Robert Streightley's house, after her parley with old Alice. "Of course her brother won't oppose it,--though the girl is a greater fool than I thought her, to marry a man with no greater ambition than to spend his life among filthy savages, teaching them a religion entirely unsuitable to their condition of life and status in creation. I hope they won't eat him--at least I hope they won't eat her; but she will be better away--I should never succeed in curing her of Brixton ways, and she has really no tastes to be developed. It will be a good opportunity, when she will be divided between love for her Decimus--what a name to be in love with!--and distress at leaving her mother, to furnish her with a suggestion concerning a substitute: it must come entirely from her, of course."
Thus thinking, Hester Gould reached home. She greeted aunt Lavinia kindly; she was scrupulously dutiful and attentive to her wishes, except in respect to meetings and ministers;--sat down cheerfully to her tea, during which meal she quite enlivened the pensive spinster by her gaiety, and then went to her piano for what she called a "real good practice." Hour after hour she sat there, filling the room and the house with music; and at length she sang, at her aunt's request, the very same song--of a trifling kind, which Hester rather despised, but sang because it was popular--with which Katherine Guyon was at the selfsame hour achieving the "final pulverisation" of Robert Streightley's heart.
The summer sun, bright, warm, and cheering, only just past the zenith of his annual glory, illumined the Temple Gardens; still further withering the turf, which had been worn by the promenaders of the season into a very bald and ragged state; gladdening the hearts of country-bred nursemaids with reminiscences of their earlier days, when their virgin hearts were yet untouched by the charms of deceivers in military or police uniforms; loved and cherished by the valetudinarians, poor and old, to whom this city garden was the nearest imitation of God's country which they were able to afford, and who, secluded during the winter in Strand side-street lodging-houses, ventured thither for their daily meed of light and air; glancing merrily on the turbid Thames; and even throwing enlivening glances into the topmost story of the house in Crown-Office Row, which Robert Streightley had visited one memorable night, and wherein one of its joint tenants now sat hard at work.
And indeed, let him come when he might, in his spring weakness, in his summer glory, in his autumn grandeur, in the feeble struggles which he made during winter, the sun would never have found Charles Yeldham in any other condition. Work was his life, his idol. As a very young man, when he first quitted Oxford, he had prayed to be successful in the profession which he had chosen, and which he had gone into heart and soul. He had vowed that if his labours were only rewarded with success, there should be scarcely any end to them; and now, when he had no rival as a conveyancing barrister among his coevals and very few superiors among his seniors, he still kept grinding on. Not intended by nature for such slavery, as you can tell in one glance at his physique, at his broad chest, long sinewy arms and legs, and big white hands; not destitute of an appreciation of fun, as you can see in his bright blue eyes, his large happy mouth, and the deep dimples of his cheeks; what would be generally called a "jolly man," with thick brown curling hair, and a clear skin, and a great hearty laugh, breaking out whenever it had the chance.
Which was not very often. There is nothing very humorous in conveyancing, and in conveyancing Charles Yeldham's life was passed. Gordon Frere, returning from a ball, a supper, or one of his "outings," would hear the roar of Yeldham's shower-bath as he came up the stairs, or would see him, bright and rosy, deep in his books or scratching away with his pen, as he, Frere, with his gibus hat on one side, his collars danced down into a state of limp despondency, and with a faded camellia in his button-hole, peered into the common sitting-room before he crawled to bed. Five in the summer, six in the winter,--these were Charles Yeldham's hours of rising. Then, after his cold bath and his hurried toilette, what he called "treadmill" till eight. A sharp run five times round the Temple Gardens, no matter what the weather, a hurried breakfast--chop, bacon, eggs, what-not, and at it again, "treadmill" till two. Bread-and-cheese, a pint-bottle of Allsopp, a pipe--generally smoked as he leaned out of the window looking on to the river--and "treadmill" till half-past six. Old shooting-coat changed for more presentable garment, hands washed, and Mr. Yeldham walked to the Oxford and Cambridge Club, where he would eat a light dinner, take a very small quantity of wine, and walk back to the Temple to have a final turn of "treadmill" until half-past eleven, when he would turn into bed. He had reduced sleep to a minimum, ascertained that five and a half hours were exactly sufficient for a man, and never wasted a wink.
There was no absolute occasion for Charles Yeldham to slave in this manner; but when he commenced his work he had had a powerful incentive to industry, and he had found the work grow on him until he absolutely took delight in it. He was the only son of the Honourable and Reverend Stratford Yeldham, a cadet of the Aylmer family, who had been content to marry the daughter of the clergyman with whom he read during one long vacation, and afterwards to go into orders and take up the family living in Norfolk. The living was not a very rich one, and Charley, who loved his father after a fashion not very common now amongst young men, and who knew that the old gentleman had somewhat pinched and straitened himself to send his son to college with a proper allowance, had made up his mind not only that all that had been spent on him should be repaid, but that his sister Constance--his own dear little sister--should have such a dowry as would enable her to decline any offer whose advantages were merely pecuniary, and at the same time to bring an adequate income to the man of whom her heart should approve. The hope of accomplishing this end lightened Charles Yeldham's labour, mid kept him at his desk and among his law-books without an idea of repining, generally indeed with a sense of positive pleasure.
He was at his desk that pleasant summer afternoon, when all nature outside was so bright and gay, so deeply engaged, that he paid not the slightest attention to the sound of the key in the outer door, and only looked up when he felt a hand on his shoulder and saw Gordon Frere standing beside him.
"Grinding away, Charley," said that young gentleman; "hard at it as usual."
"Just the same as ever, old boy," replied Yeldham; "but just as ready as ever to knock off for five minutes--exactly five minutes, mind--and have a chat with you. So there!"--laying down his pen--"now then, let's begin. Where have you been all the morning? I say, you're rather a greater swell than usual, are you not, Gordon?"
"Eh--swell? no, I don't think so. Emerged just a little bit from the chrysalis state perhaps, but not much. But the least bit of colour lights up tremendously and looks radiant beside your old blacks and grays. What a fellow you are, Charley! I wish you'd go in for another style of toggery, and just go to Poole."
"Go to Poole? God forbid!" said Yeldham with ludicrous energy. "Why, my dear fellow, if I were to be seen in a coat of that sort"--touching the silk-lined skirts of Frere's frock--"or in a pair of trousers that fitted me like those, there's not an attorney in London would give me any more employment. No, sir! In Store Street, Tottenham-Court Road, resides the artificer who for years has built my garments on what he assures me are sound mathematical principles, and I shall continue to employ him until one of us is removed to a sphere where clothes are unnecessary. And now, once more, where have you been all this morning?"
"Ah! that's exactly what I came home to talk to you about. I've been calling on a deuced pretty girl, Master Charley, and I want to tell you all about it."
"A very pretty girl, eh?" said Yeldham in rather a hard tone of voice. "A very pretty girl! All right, my boy; tell away."
"I think I've mentioned her before, Charley," said Frere; "Miss Guyon--Kate Guyon, daughter of old Guyon, whom you've heard me speak of; a member of the club, you know; fellow who plays a deuced good game of whist, and that kind of thing. And the girl's really wonderful; very handsome, and with a regular well-bred look about her. None of your dumpy, dowdy, slummakin women--I hate that style--but tall and elegant; carries herself well, and has plenty to say for herself--when she chooses."
"When she chooses, eh!" said Yeldham, with a slight smile; "and I suppose she does choose--to you."
"Well, you know, that's not for a fellow to say. She's always been very civil; and I rode with her yesterday in the Park, and was in her box at the Opera last night--when I say her box I mean Lady Henmarsh's, the old cat who is her principal chaperone--and we got on capitally together, and I think it was all right. I should have told you of it when I got home, but I looked into your room, and you were sound as a top; or this morning, but you were closeted in the office with some fellow on business. So I went off to call on her--there was a kind of tacit arrangement that I should do so--and, by George, I really think I'm hit this time, and that I mean more than ever I did before."
"Mean more! In what way, Gordon?"
"In the way of marriage, of course, you old idiot. Mean that if I were to ask her, I think she'd have me. And she'd be a deuced creditable wife to have about with one; and the governor must just stir himself, and use his influence and get me a consulship, or a commissionership, or something where there's a decent income, and not very much to do for it. There are such things, of course."
"I don't know, Gordon. Recollect these are the days when every thing is won by merit, and not won without a competitive examination."
"O yes; competitive examination be hanged! I'm not going in for any thing of that sort. If a man who's sat for the same borough for five-and-twenty-years, and never voted against his party except once, by mistake, when he'd been dining out and strolled into the wrong lobby--if such a patriot as this can't get a decent berth for his son without any bother about examination and all that kind of thing, where are our privileges as citizens? O no; that'll come all square, of course. But what do you advise me about the girl?"
"It's difficult to give such advice off-hand, Gordon, more especially as I have never seen the young lady, and have scarcely heard of her. But though you're not particularly learned, young un, you've plenty of knowledge of the world, and are one of the last men likely to be entrapped into a silly marriage, or to let yourself be made miserable for life by giving in to a mere passing fancy. So if you and the young lady are really fond of each other, and if your father can be persuaded to give himself the trouble to get some tolerably decent Government appointment for you, I should say, 'Propose to her like an honourable man; and God speed you!' I--I think I should see my father first, Gordon, and make sure of what he would do; for, from all I've heard, I don't think Mr. Guyon is a man of resources--I mean pecuniary resources."
"N-no," said Frere; "I should not think he was. He's a remarkably chirpy old boy, tells very good stories, and is always well got-up; but I shouldn't think his balance at his banker's was very satisfactory. However, Kate's simply charming; stands out from all the ruck of girls one knows, and is in the habit of meeting and dancing with, like a star. I'll write down to the governor and sound him about what he'd be inclined to do; and I'll just go round before dinner to Queen Anne Street; not to go in, you know,--of course not; but there's the last Botanical Fête to-morrow in the Regent's Park, and Kate asked me if I was going, and I said I'd go if she went, and she said she'd try and get some one to take her. I suppose the old woman who's always about with her doesn't care for dissipation by daylight. I say, Charley, fancy if it comes off all straight! Fancy me a married man!"
Yeldham smiled, but said nothing. There was scarcely any occasion for him to speak; for Frere was full of his subject, and rattled on.
"How astonished your people will be! I can see the Vicar reading your letter announcing the news through his double eyeglass, and then handing it over to little Constance and exclaiming, 'Won-derful!' And Constance with her large solemn gray eyes, and her pert nose, and her fresh little mouth; Constance, whom I used to call 'my little wife' when I was grinding away with the Vicar in those jolly days--ah what a glorious old fellow he is!--won't she be surprised when she finds I've got a real wife! And you,--you'll be left alone in chambers, Charley, old boy; all alone!--though you don't see much of me as it is, do you, old fellow?"
"No, Gordon; not much," said Yeldham rising; "not so much as I should wish. But it's pleasant to me to look forward to your coming, to bring a little of the outside world's life and light into these dreary old rooms, and to prove to me that I am not actually part and parcel of these musty old books and parchments, as I'm sometimes half inclined to believe. However, I could not expect to have you always with me, any more than I could expect it to be always summer; and indeed, if you were always here, I should not know what to do with you. Come, my five minutes' rest has been prolonged into a perfect idleness. Out with you, and let me get to work again!"
"No, no; not yet, Charley. It's so seldom I have the chance of getting you to take your nose off the paper, and to open your ears to any thing that is not law-jargon, that I'm not going to give in so soon. Besides, I've been talking all this time, and now it's your turn. I want your advice, and you're going to give it me; and that's all about it."
"It's a great pity you don't stick to your profession, Gordon," said Yeldham, half laughingly, half in earnest; "you would have made a great success at the Old Bailey. You've all the characteristics of that style of practice charmingly developed; plenty of cheek, plenty of volubility, and supreme self-reliance. If you had done me the honour of listening to me instead of thinking what you were going to say next, you would have heard me advise you half an hour ago."
"Stuff! I heard you fast enough. Propose to the girl, and all that; very honourable and straightforward, you know, Charley, but a little old-fashioned, you know,--at least you don't know; how should you, shut up in this old hole? But what I mean to say is, fellows don't propose to girls nowadays, old fellow, except in books and on the stage, and that sort of thing. You understand each other, you know, without going on your knees, or 'plighting troth,' or any rubbish of that kind. But what I want to know is, what is my line towards the old party--Guyon père?"
"Hold on a minute, Gordon," said Charles Yeldham rising from his chair, plunging his hands into his trousers' pockets, and taking up his position of vantage on the hearthrug. "Granted all you say about my being old-fashioned, you yet seem to think that there is a phase of courtship sufficiently unchanged--I was going to say sufficiently natural--for me to be able to advise you upon."
"He-ar, he-ar!" said Mr. Frere, knocking the table on which he was seated.
"But before I attempt to give you any advice, I must know whether you are really in earnest in this business. Yes; I know you say you're 'hard hit,' and 'serious this time,' and a lot of stuff that I've heard you say a dozen times before about a dozen different girls. What I want to know is, do you really think seriously of marrying Miss Guyon? Has it entered your mind to regard it from any other point than the mere calf-love view, what you in your slang call 'being spooney' upon her? I mean, Gordon, old fellow,--I'm a solemn old fogey, you know; but it's in the fogey light that such a solemn thing should be looked at--are you prepared to take Miss Guyon as your wife?"
"On my sacred honour, Charley, there's nothing would make me so happy."
"Then the honourable way to go to work is to see Mr. Guyon at once and speak to him. Tell him your feelings and----"
"And my prospects, eh, Charley? He's safe to ask about them."
"Well, you can tell him what you've just said of your father's position, and what you intend to ask him to do for you. And then----"
"Yes; and then?"
"Well, then you'll hear what he's got to say to that."
"Ye-es; it won't take me very long to listen to an exposition of Mr. Guyon's views on my financial position, I take it. However, I'm almost certain--quite certain, I may say--of Kate; and as you think it's due to her to speak to her father----"
"I'm sure of it, Gordon. It's the only honourable course."
"Well, then, I'll do it at once, though I don't much like it, I can tell you."
"Whatever may be the result, it's best you should know it soon, Gordon. Nothing unfits a man for every thing so much as being in a state of doubt."
"I'll end mine at once, Charley. No; not at once. I must first see if that Botanical-Fête arrangement is coming off, and after that I'll speak to her father. Devilish solemn phrase that, eh, Charley!"
"It won't be so dreadful in carrying out as it sounds, my boy. Clear out now; you shan't have another instant!"
Gordon Frere nodded laughingly at his friend; and after making a hurried toilet in his own room started off for Queen Anne Street, while Charles Yeldham seated himself at his desk.
But not to work; his mind was too full for that. The short light conversation just recorded had given Charles Yeldham matter for much deliberation. When a man's life is thoroughly engrossed by mental work, the few humanising influences which he allows to operate on him are infinitely more absorbing than the thousand fleeting affections of the light-hearted and the thoughtless. When Charles Yeldham gave his thoughts a holiday from his conveyancing, and turned them from the attorneys who employed him and the work which they brought him to do, his mind reverted generally to the loved ones in the vicarage at home or to the two men whose friendship he had time and opportunity to cultivate. Never was younger brother better loved than was Gordon Frere by the large-hearted, large-brained philosopher whose chambers he shared. It was indeed from the elder-brother point of view that Yeldham regarded Frere. As a boy Gordon had been the one private pupil whom the old vicar had admitted into his house; and later in life he had passed two long vacations reading at the seaside with his old tutor and the members of his family. Charley loved the young man with all the large capacity of his loving nature, looked with the most lenient eye on his boyish frivolities and dissipations, and had hitherto never feared for his future, hoping that he would settle down into some useful career before he thought of settling himself for life. But the conversation just held had entirely changed his ideas. Gordon, unstable, unsettled, without any means or resources, had announced his intention of taking a wife. And what a wife! Of the young lady herself Yeldham knew nothing; but certain pleadings which he had drawn some twelve months beforehand in a case which never came into court, and which had been settled by mutual arrangement, had given him a very clear insight into the character of Mr. Edward Scrope Guyon, and into that worthy gentleman's resources and manner of life. With such a man Yeldham felt perfectly certain that an impecunious scion of a good family like Gordon Frere coming as a pretender for his daughter's hand would not have the smallest chance of success; and it was with a heavy heart that he sat idly sketching figures on his blotting-pad, and turning over all that he had recently heard in his mind.
"I don't see my way out of it," said he, throwing down his pen at length, and plunging his hands into his pockets. "I don't see my way out of it, and that's the truth. Gordon is hard hit, I believe,--harder hit than he has ever been yet, and means all fairly and honourably; but fair play and honour won't avail much, I imagine, in carrying out this connection--at least with the male portion of the family. A man with the morals of a billiard-marker and an income of a couple of thousand a-year would have a better chance with old Guyon than a Bayard or a Galahad. He's a bad lot, this Mr. Guyon, but as sharp as a ferret, and he'll read Gordon like a book. All the poor boy's talk about what his political influence and what his father must do for him, and all that, won't weigh for an instant with a man like Guyon, who is up to every move on the board, and who will require money down from any one bidding for his daughter's hand. I wonder what the girl's like, and how much of the play rests in her hands. That old rip would never be base enough to make her his instrument in advancing his own fortune? And yet how often it's done, only in a quieter and less noticeable manner! Gad! I begin to think I am a bit of a cynic, as Gordon chaffingly, calls me, when I find these ideas floating through my head; and I'm sure any one would imagine I was one, or worse, if; knowing my own convictions, they had heard me advise that poor boy to see old Guyon and lay his statement before him. But I'm convinced that that is the only way of dealing with such a matter as this. Have the tooth out at once; the wrench will do you good and prevent any chance of floating pains in the future. Guyon will handle the forceps with strength and skill, and poor Gordon will think that half his life is gone with the tug. But once over, when he begins to find that the gap is not so enormous as he at first imagined, when he sees people don't notice the alteration in his appearance, he'll begin to think it was a good job that it happened while he was yet young, and he'll settle down and get to work, and perhaps make the name and reputation which his talents, if they had any thing like fair play, entitle him to. It's wonderful the different light in which men see these things. There's my boy there just mad for this girl, raving about her beauty, going into ecstasies about her hair and eyes and figure; and here am I, his chum and intimate, who can safely say that never in the course of a life extending now to some six-and-thirty years, have I had the faintest idea of what being in love is like. Lord, Lord! what a queer world it is! and what is for the best? Perhaps, if I had had nice smooth fair hair instead of a shock-head of bristles, I should have been kneeling at ladies' feet instead of stooping over my desk, and writing sonnets for girls instead of drawing pleas for attorneys. I know which pays best, but I wonder which is the most interesting. 'Never felt the kiss of love, nor maiden's hand in mine,' eh? Well, I don't know that I'm much the worse for that. Maidens' hands seem to lead one into all sorts of scrapes; and as for the kiss of love---- Why, what time's that?"
The striking of the clock on the mantelpiece roused him from his reverie; and looking up, he discovered that his intended five-minutes' absence from work had been extended over two hours, and that the daylight of the late summer time was beginning to fade. So, with a heavy sigh, he lit his reading-lamp and settled down to his desk again. Like every other man accustomed to hard work, he found it immediate relief from thought, and soon became immersed in his writing, at which he slaved away until it was time to get some dinner. He had no heart to walk up to the club that evening. He might meet some fellows of his acquaintance there,--very possibly Gordon himself; and he was not inclined to chatter upon trivial subjects. So he put on his hat, and strode over to the Cock; the quiet solemnity of the old tavern at that hour of the evening, when the late diners had departed and the early supper-eaters had not yet arrived, being thoroughly congenial to his feelings. After his dinner he went back to his chambers; and after smoking a pipe, during which process he again fell a-thinking over Gordon's trouble, he returned to his work, and was in full swing when he heard a key in the lock, and the next minute Mr. Gordon Frere entered the room.
"Hallo, Gordon!" said Charley, looking up at the clock; "why, it's not eleven; what on earth brings you home so early, young un?"
"Happiness, Charley! jolliness, old fellow! It's all right about to-morrow; Kate's going to the fête, and---- After dinner at the Club I went up into the strangers' smoking-room, and there wasn't any one there I knew--only a couple of old fellows, who sat and smoked in silence; and so I got thinking it all over; and what a stunning girl she is, and how sure I am that she's fond of me, and how fond I am of her--regularly hit, you know; and so I thought it would be horrible somehow to go any where after,--to the theatre, you know, or to hear the fellows chaffing in the way they do about--women and every thing; and so I came home."
"Just in time to wish me good-night, my boy. I'm off to bed."
"Not until I've extracted a promise from you, Charley, old fellow."
"And that is----? Look sharp, Gordon; I'm sleepy."
"And that is, that you'll come with me to-morrow to the Botanical Fête."
"To the--to the Botanical Fête! I? Ah, I see, poor Gordon! too much Guyon has made you mad."
"No, Charley, I'm serious. You know you're my best and dearest friend, the only real friend I have in the world--for my own people are like every body else's own people, full of themselves and not caring one rap for me--and I want you to see my--to see Miss Guyon, and to give me your real opinion about her."
"By which, of course, you'll be thoroughly influenced, and if I won't approve give her up at once. No, Gordon, I'm not much experienced in these things, but I do know enough not to commit myself in the way you suggest. However, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make half holiday for once, and go with you to the fête--reserving my opinion of the young lady to myself."
"Well, it's something to have got you to leave that old desk for an hour, to get you to look at trees and flowers instead of foolscap and red-tape. And as for Miss Guyon--well, you'll say something about her, I've no doubt."