Part 79 (1/2)

Harley slightly shrugged his shoulders, kissed his mother's hand; whistled to Nero, who started up from a doze by the window, and went his way.

”Does he really go abroad next week?” said the earl. ”So he says.”

”I am afraid there is no chance for Lady Mary,” resumed Lord Lansmere, with a slight but melancholy smile.

”She has not intellect enough to charm him. She is not worthy of Harley,” said the proud mother.

”Between you and me,” rejoined the earl, rather timidly, ”I don't see what good his intellect does him. He could not be more unsettled and useless if he were the merest dunce in the three kingdoms. And so ambitious as he was when a boy! Katherine, I sometimes fancy that you know what changed him.”

”I! Nay, my dear Lord, it is a common change enough with the young, when of such fortunes, who find, when they enter life, that there is really little left for them to strive for. Had Harley been a poor man's son, it might have been different.”

”I was born to the same fortunes as Harley,” said the earl, shrewdly, ”and yet I flatter myself I am of some use to old England.”

The countess seized upon the occasion, complimented her Lord, and turned the subject.

CHAPTER XVII.

Harley spent his day in his usual desultory, lounging manner,--dined in his quiet corner at his favourite club. Nero, not admitted into the club, patiently waited for him outside the door. The dinner over, dog and man, equally indifferent to the crowd, sauntered down that thoroughfare which, to the few who can comprehend the Poetry of London, has a.s.sociations of glory and of woe sublime as any that the ruins of the dead elder world can furnish,--thoroughfare that traverses what was once the courtyard of Whitehall, having to its left the site of the palace that lodged the royalty of Scotland; gains, through a narrow strait, that old isle of Thorney, in which Edward the Confessor received the ominous visit of the Conqueror; and, widening once more by the Abbey and the Hall of Westminster, then loses itself, like all memories of earthly grandeur, amidst humble pa.s.sages and mean defiles.

Thus thought Harley L'Estrange--ever less amidst the actual world around him than the images invoked by his own solitary soul-as he gained the bridge, and saw the dull, lifeless craft sleeping on the ”Silent Way,”

once loud and glittering with the gilded barks of the antique Seignorie of England.

It was on that bridge that Audley Egerton had appointed to meet L'Estrange, at an hour when he calculated he could best steal a respite from debate. For Harley, with his fastidious dislike to all the resorts of his equals, had declined to seek his friend in the crowded regions of Bellamy's.

Harley's eye, as he pa.s.sed along the bridge, was attracted by a still form, seated on the stones in one of the nooks, with its face covered by its hands. ”If I were a sculptor,” said he to himself, ”I should remember that image whenever I wished to convey the idea of Despondency!” He lifted his looks and saw, a little before him in the midst of the causeway, the firm, erect figure of Audley Egerton. The moonlight was full on the bronzed countenance of the strong public man, with its lines of thought and care, and its vigorous but cold expression of intense self-control.

”And looking yonder,” continued Harley's soliloquy, ”I should remember that form, when I wished to hew out from the granite the idea of Endurance.”

”So you are come, and punctually,” said Egerton, linking his arm in Harley's.

HARLEY--”Punctually, of course, for I respect your time, and I will not detain you long. I presume you will speak to-night?”

EGERTON.--”I have spoken.”

HARLEY (with interest).--”And well, I hope?”

EGERTON.--”With effect, I suppose, for I have been loudly cheered, which does not always happen to me.”

HARLEY.--”And that gave you pleasure?”

EGERTON (after a moment's thought).--”No, not the least.”

HARLEY.--”What, then, attaches you so much to this life,--constant drudgery, constant warfare, the more pleasurable faculties dormant, all the harsher ones aroused, if even its rewards (and I take the best of those to be applause) do not please you?”

EGERTON.--”What? Custom.”

HARLEY.--”Martyr.”