Part 62 (1/2)
”Perhaps so--if I work for it. Knowledge is power.” Leonard started.
”And you!” resumed Randal, looking with some curious attention at his old schoolfellow. ”You never came to Oxford. I did hear you were going into the army.”
”I am in the Guards,” said Frank, trying hard not to look too conceited as he made that acknowledgment. ”The governor pished a little, and would rather I had come to live with him in the old Hall, and take to farming.
Time enough for that, eh? By Jove, Randal, how pleasant a thing is life in London! Do you go to Almack's to-night?”
”No; Wednesday is a holiday in the House. There is a great parliamentary dinner at Mr. Egerton's. He is in the Cabinet now, you know; but you don't see much of your uncle, I think.”
”Our sets are different,” said the young gentleman, in a tone of voice worthy of Brummel. ”All those parliamentary fellows are devilish dull.
The rain's over. I don't know whether the governor would like me to call at Grosvenor Square; but pray come and see me. Here's my card to remind you; you must dine at our mess. Such capital fellows! What day will you fix?”
”I will call and let you know. Don't you find it rather expensive in the Guards? I remember that you thought the governor, as you call him, used to chafe a little when you wrote for more pocket-money; and the only time I ever saw you with tears in your eyes was when Mr. Hazeldean, in sending you L5, reminded you that his estates were not entailed,--were at his own disposal, and they should never go to an extravagant spendthrift. It was not a pleasant threat that, Frank.”
”Oh!” cried the young man, colouring deeply. ”It was not the threat that pained me; it was that my father could think so meanly of me as to fancy that--Well, well, but those were schoolboy days. And my father was always more generous than I deserved. We must see a great deal of each other, Randal. How good-natured you were at Eton, making my longs and shorts for me; I shall never forget it. Do call soon.”
Frank swung himself into his saddle, and rewarded the slim youth with half-a-crown,--a largess four times more ample than his father would have deemed sufficient. A jerk of the reins and a touch of the heel, off bounded the fiery horse and the gay young rider. Randal mused, and as the rain had now ceased, the pa.s.sengers under shelter dispersed and went their way. Only Randal, Leonard, and Helen remained behind. Then, as Randal, still musing, lifted his eyes, they fell full upon Leonard's face. He started, pa.s.sed his hand quickly over his brow, looked again, hard and piercingly; and the change in his pale cheek to a shade still paler, a quick compression and nervous gnawing of his lip, showed that he too recognized an old foe. Then his glance ran over Leonard's dress, which was somewhat dust-stained, but far above the cla.s.s amongst which the peasant was born. Randal raised his brows in surprise, and with a smile slightly supercilious--the smile stung Leonard--and with a slow step, Randal left the pa.s.sage, and took his way towards Grosvenor Square. The Entrance of Ambition was clear to him.
Then the little girl once more took Leonard by the hand, and led him through rows of humble, obscure, dreary streets. It seemed almost like an allegory personified, as the sad, silent child led on the penniless and low-born adventurer of genius by the squalid shops and through the winding lanes, which grew meaner and meaner, till both their forms vanished from the view.
CHAPTER X.
”But do come; change your dress, return and dine with me; you will have just time, Harley. You will meet the most eminent men of our party; surely they are worth your study, philosopher that you affect to be.”
Thus said Audley Egerton to Lord L'Estrange, with whom he had been riding (after the toils of his office). The two gentlemen were in Audley's library,--Mr. Egerton, as usual, b.u.t.toned up, seated in his chair, in the erect posture of a man who scorns ”inglorious ease;”
Harley, as usual, thrown at length on the sofa., his long hair in careless curls, his neckcloth loose, his habiliments flowing simplex mundit is, indeed, his grace all his own; seemingly negligent, never slovenly; at ease everywhere and with every one, even with Mr. Audley Egerton, who chilled or awed the ease out of most people.
”Nay, my dear Audley, forgive me. But your eminent men are all men of one idea, and that not a diverting one, politics! politics! politics!
The storm in the saucer.”
”But what is your life, Harley?--the saucer without the storm?”
”Do you know, that's very well said, Audley? I did not think you had so much liveliness of repartee. Life! life! it is insipid, it is shallow,--no launching Argosies in the saucer. Audley, I have the oddest fancy--”
”That of course,” said Audley, dryly; ”you never had any other. What is the new one?”
HARLEY (with great gravity).--”Do you believe in Mesmerism?”
AUDLEY.--”Certainly not.”
HARLEY.--”If it were in the power of an animal magnetizer to get me out of my own skin into somebody's else! That's my fancy! I am so tired of myself,--so tired! I have run through all my ideas,--know every one of them by heart. When some pretentious impostor of an idea perks itself up and says, 'Look at me,--I 'm a new acquaintance,' I just give it a nod, and say 'Not at all, you have only got a new coat on; you are the same old wretch that has bored me these last twenty years; get away.' But if one could be in a new skin, if I could be for half-an-hour your tall porter, or one of your eminent matter-of-fact men, I should then really travel into a new world.' Every man's brain must be a world in itself, eh? If I could but make a parochial settlement even in yours, Audley,--run over all your thoughts and sensations. Upon my life, I 'll go and talk to that French mesmerizer about it.”
[If, at the date in which Lord L'Estrange held this conversation with Mr. Egerton, Alfred de Musset had written his comedies, we should suspect that his lords.h.i.+p had plagiarized from one of them the whimsical idea that he here vents upon Audley. In repeating it, the author at least cannot escape from the charge of obligation to a writer whose humour is sufficiently opulent to justify the loan.]
AUDLEY (who does not seem to like the notion of having his thoughts and sensations rummaged, even by his friend, and even in fancy)--”Pooh, pooh, pooh! Do talk like a man of sense.”
HARLEY.--”Man of sense! Where shall I find a model? I don't know a man of sense!--never met such a creature. Don't believe it ever existed. At one time I thought Socrates must have been a man of sense: a delusion; he would stand gazing into the air, and talking to his Genius from sunrise to sunset. Is that like a man of sense? Poor Audley! how puzzled he looks! Well, I'll try and talk sense to oblige you. And first” (here Harley raised himself on his elbow),--”first, is it true, as I have heard vaguely, that you are paying court to the sister of that infamous Italian traitor?”
”Madame di Negra? No: I am not paying court to her,” answered Audley, with a cold smile. ”But she is very handsome; she is very clever; she is useful to me,--I need not say how or why; that belongs to my metier as a politician. But I think, if you will take my advice, or get your friend to take it, I could obtain from her brother, through my influence with her, some liberal concessions to your exile. She is very anxious to know where he is.”