WHEN two men who have met in careless intercourse, without any possibility of obliging or being obliged, except so far as interchange of courtesy goes, come suddenly together in relations so changed, the easy question, “what are you doing?” spoken by the one whose position has not altered, to the one who has suffered downfall, has a new world of significance in it, of tacit encouragement or repulsion of kindly or adverse meaning. It means either “Can I help you?” or, “Don’t think of asking me for help.” If the downfallen one has need of aid and patronage, the faintest inflection of voice thrills him with expectation or disappointment—and even if he is independent, it is hard if he does not get a sting of mortification out of the suspected benevolence or absence of it. Edgar listened to Lord Newmarch’s questions, with a sudden rising in his mind of many sentiments quite unfamiliar to him. He was ashamed—though he had nothing to be ashamed of—angry, though no offence had been given him—and tingled with excitement for which there was no reason. How important it had become to him all at once that this other man, for whom he felt no particular respect, should be favourable to him, and how difficult to reconcile himself to the process of asking, he who had never done anything but give!
“I am doing nothing,” he said, after a momentary pause, which seemed long to him, but which Lord Newmarch did not so much as notice, “and to tell the truth, I had a great mind to come cap in hand to you, to ask for something. I want occupation—and to speak frankly, a living at the same time. Not pay without work, but yet pay.”
“To be sure,” said Lord Newmarch; but his countenance fell a little. A new applicant cannot but appear a natural enemy to every official personage noted for high-mindedness, and a sublime superiority to jobs. “I should think something might be found for you—in one department or other. The question is what would you like—or perhaps—what could you do?”
“I can do anything a man can usually do, who has never done anything in his life,” said Edgar, trying to laugh. “You know how little that is—a great deal that is absolutely useless—nothing that is much good.”
“Yes,” said Lord Newmarch, looking much more grave than his applicant did, whose levity he had always disapproved of. “It is very unfortunate that what we call the education of a gentleman should be so utterly unpractical. And, as you are aware, all our clerkships now-a-days are disposed of by competitive examination. I do not commit myself as to its satisfactory character as a test of capacity—there are very different opinions I know on that subject; but the fact is one we must bow to. Probably you would not care at your age to submit to such an ordeal?”
“I don’t care what I submit to,” said Edgar, which was totally untrue, for his blood was boiling in the most irrational way, at the thought that this man whom he had laughed at so often, should be a Minister of State, while he himself was weighing the probabilities of securing a clerkship in the great man’s office. Nothing could be more wrong or foolish, for to be sure Lord Newmarch had worked for his position, and had his father’s wealth and influence behind him; but he had not generally impressed upon his acquaintances a very profound respect for his judgment. “But I don’t think I could pass any examination,” he added with an uneasy laugh.
“Few men can, without special preparation,” said the Under Secretary, whose face grew gradually longer and longer. “Do you know I think the best thing I can do will be to give you a note to the Home Secretary, who is a very good friend of mine, Lord Millboard. You must have met him I should think—somewhere—in—”
“Better days,” said Edgar, struck by a sudden perception of the ludicrous. Yes, that was the phrase—he had seen better days; and his companion felt the appropriateness of it, though he hesitated to employ the word.
“Yes, indeed; I am sure no one was ever more regretted,” said Lord Newmarch, spreading before him a sheet of note-paper with a huge official stamp. “I don’t think Arden half fills your place. All his interest goes to the other side. You hear I suppose sometimes from your sis—I mean from Mrs. Arden? What kind of post shall I say you wish to have?”
“Say out the word you were going to say,” said Edgar, “my sister! I have not seen anyone who knew her for ages. No, I thought it best not to keep up any correspondence. It might have grown a burden to her; but it does me good to hear you say my sister. How is she looking? Is she happy? It is so long since I have heard even the name of Clare.”
“Mrs. Arden is quite well, I believe,” said Lord Newmarch doubtfully, not knowing whether “the family” might quite like inquiries to be made for her by her quondam brother. He felt almost as a man does who is caught interfering in domestic strife, and felt that Clare’s husband might possibly take it badly. “She has a couple of babies of course you know. She looked very well when I saw her last. Happy! yes, I suppose so—as everybody is happy. In the meantime, please, what must I say to Lord Millboard? Shall I recall to him your—former position? And what shall I say you would like to have? He has really a great deal of patronage; and can do much more for you if he likes than I.”
“Tell him I have seen better days,” said Edgar with forlorn gaiety, “I have met him, but I never ventured to approach so great a potentate. Tell him I am not very particular what kind of work I do, so long as it is something to live by. Tell him—but to be sure, if you introduce me to him I can do all that myself.”
“That is true,” said Lord Newmarch with a little sigh of relief, and he began to write his note. When, however, he had got two or three lines written in his large hand, he resumed talking, though his pen still ran over the paper. “You have been abroad I heard. Perhaps you can tell me what is the feeling in Germany about the proposed unification? I am rather new to my post, and to tell the truth it is not the post I should have chosen; but in the service of the country one cannot always follow one’s favourite path. ‘A gentleman of high breeding and unblemished character, whose judgment could be relied upon,’ that will do, I think. Millboard should find something to suit you if any one can. But to return to what we were talking about. I should very much like to have your opinion as an impartial observer, of the attitude of Bavaria and the rest, and how they take Bismarck’s scheme?”
“Does not the principle of competitive examination exist in Lord Millboard’s department?” said Edgar.
“Not to the same extent,” said Newmarch. “He has always a great deal in his power. A word from Millboard goes a long way; he has a hand officially or non-officially in a great many things. For instance, I like to consult him myself before making an important appointment; he knows everything. He might get you some commissionership or other. Some of them are very good things; a literary man got one just the other day, by Millboard’s influence. Did you read for the bar? No? Ah, that’s a pity. But you might, perhaps, be made an inspector of schools; very high qualifications are not required for such an appointment. By-the-by, now that I think of it,” he continued, pausing after he had folded his letter, and looking up, “you were brought up abroad? You can speak all the modern languages; you don’t object to travel. I believe, after all, you are the very man I want.”
Here he paused, and Edgar waited too, attentive and trying to be amused. As what did the great man want him? As courier for a travelling party? While Lord Newmarch pondered, Edgar, puzzled and not very much delighted with his position, had hard ado to keep just as quiet and respectful as became a man seeking his living. At last the Minister spoke.
“What I was thinking of,” he said, “was the post of Queen’s Messenger. You know what that is? It is not badly paid, and the life is amusing. I cannot tell you how important it would be to me to have a man I could thoroughly trust in such a position. You would be simply invaluable to me; I could rely upon you for telling me how people were really thinking in foreign capitals. I cannot, of course, in my position, travel about as a private person can, and there are a great many things I am most anxious to get up.”
Here he paused for some reply; but what could Edgar reply? Lord Newmarch was not thinking of him, but of his own need of information. Should the applicant distract the Minister’s thoughts back from this greater channel to that of his own private case? or should he throw his own case, as it were, overboard, and give all his sympathy to the Under-Secretary’s elevated needs? The position was comical, but perhaps Edgar was not sufficiently at ease in his mind to see its comic side.
“You see how important it is,” Lord Newmarch said, very gravely, looking at Edgar for sympathy; “everything depends upon genuine information—what the people are thinking, not the on dits that fly about in diplomatic circles. My dear—eh?—Earnshaw,” he cried, with enthusiasm, and a glance at Edgar’s card, “I can’t tell you how much use you might be to me.”
Edgar could not restrain a hasty laugh, which, however, had not much enjoyment in it. “I am delighted to hear it,” he said.
“Your name shall be put upon the list directly,” said Lord Newmarch. “One of our men, I know, talks of resigning; and the very first vacancy, I think I may almost say, without further reflection, shall be yours. What are you going to do with yourself for the autumn? I leave town next week, I hope, but I shall be back before Christmas; and if you don’t hear from me by that time——”
“Before Christmas!” cried Edgar; he could not prevent his voice from expressing a little dismay. What was he to do till Christmas? Live upon his two ten-pound notes? or break into his precious little capital? or—— The situation appalled him. I suppose he thought, having once found something which he could be so very useful in, that it was in Newmarch’s power to give him an appointment at once.
“Of course,” said Newmarch, benignantly, “if you are in the country, don’t come to town on purpose. Any time in spring would probably do; but if you don’t hear from me in a few months, come and see me. When so much important business is passing through one’s hands, a little thing—and especially a personal matter—is apt to slip out of one’s head.”
“To be sure,” said Edgar, rising hastily, “and I am taking up, about a mere personal matter, your valuable time, which belongs to the nation.”
“Oh, don’t apologise. I am delighted to see you. And you can’t think of how much use you might be to me,” said the great man, earnestly, shaking hands with the small one, impressing upon him, almost with tears in his eyes, the importance he might come to, “if this man will only be so good as to resign.”
Edgar went away with a singing in his ears, which he could scarcely understand at first. In all his kindly careless life there had been so little occasion for that thrilling of the blood to the brain, in defence of the Self assailed, which now at once stimulated, and made him dizzy. He scarcely knew what it meant, neither could he realize the bitterness that came into his heart against his will, a most unusual guest. He went out from Lord Newmarch’s office, and walked long and far before he quite came to himself. Walking has often a similar effect to that which the poet tells us rhyme has, “the sad mechanic exercise, like dull narcotics numbing pain.” When he gradually emerged from the haze and heat of this first disagreeable encounter, Edgar took characteristic refuge in the serio-comic transformation which the whole matter underwent in Lord Newmarch’s hands. Instead of a simple question of employment for Edgar Earnshaw, it became the great man’s own business, a way of informing him as to the points in which his education was defective. Finding employment for Edgar interested him moderately; but finding information for himself, fired his soul;—the comical part of the whole being that he expected the other, whose personal interests were so closely concerned, to feel this superior view of the question as deeply as he himself did, and to put it quite above the vulgar preliminary of something to live by. To serve Lord Newmarch, and through him the Government, and through the Government the country, was not that, Edgar asked himself at last, feeling finally able to laugh again, a much more important matter than securing bread and butter for our thriftless man? As soon as he had laughed he was himself again, and the after processes of thought were more easy.
By-and-by he persuaded himself that on the whole Newmarch had behaved quite naturally, and not unkindly. “As a matter of course,” he said to himself, “every man’s own affairs are more interesting to him than any other man’s.” It was quite natural that Newmarch should think of his own business as most important. It was the most important, Edgar continued, in his ingenious and peculiar style of reasoning, since it was the business of the country—whereas Edgar’s business was only his own, and of importance to nobody but himself. Equally, of course, it was more important to secure a good public servant, even in the humble capacity of a Queen’s Messenger, than to secure bread and butter for Edgar Earnshaw; and, on the whole, there was a great deal to be said for Newmarch, who was a good fellow, and had been generally friendly, and not too patronizing. The only wormwood that remained in his thoughts by the time evening approached, and he turned his steps towards his club in search of dinner, concerned the long delay which apparently must occur before this promised advancement could reach him. Before Christmas; Edgar had very little idea how much a man could live upon in London; but he did not think it very likely that he could get through two months upon twenty pounds. And even if that should be possible, with his little knowledge and careless habits, what should he do in the meantime? Should he linger about town, doing nothing, waiting for this possible appointment, which might, perhaps, never come to anything? This was a course of procedure which prudence and inclination, and so much experience as he possessed, alike condemned. Hanging on, waiting till something should turn up! Was this all he was good for? he asked himself, with a flush on his face. If only the other man would be so obliging as to resign, or to be killed in a railway accident, or swamped in a steamboat, or to take some foreign fever or other, of the well-known kinds, which haunt those places to which Queen’s Messengers are habitually sent! This was a lugubrious prayer, and I don’t think the actual Queen’s Messenger against whom the anathema was addressed would have been much the worse for Edgar’s ill-wishes.
These virulent and malignant sentiments helped him to another laugh, and this was one of the cases in which for a man of his temperament to laugh was salvation. What a good thing it is in all circumstances! and from how many troubles, angers and ridiculousnesses this blessed power of laughter saves us! Man, I suppose, among the fast narrowing list of his specialities, still preserves that of being the only animal who laughs. Dogs sometimes sneer; but the genial power of this humorous expression of one’s sense of all life’s oddities and puzzles belongs only to man.
There were few people about at the club where he dined alone, and the few acquaintances who recognised him were very shy about his name, not knowing how to address him, and asking each other in corners, as he divined, what the deuce was his real name, now it had been found out that he was not Arden? for it must be remembered that he had gone abroad immediately after his downfall, and had never been known in society under his new name, which by this time had become sufficiently familiar to himself. His dinner, poor fellow, was rather a doleful one, and accompanied by many thoughts. He went to one of the theatres afterwards, where the interregnum between one season and another still lasted, and foolishness more foolish even than that which is permitted at other periods, reigned riotous. Edgar came away wearied and disgusted before the performance was over, and had walked about aimlessly for some time before he recollected that he had travelled all night, and had a right to be tired—upon which recollection his aimless steps changed their character, and he went off briskly and thankfully through the bustling streets under the stars, which were sharp with night frost as they had been at Loch Arroch. Looking up at them as they glowed and sparkled over the dark house-tops in London, it was natural to think what was going on at Loch Arroch now. The kye would be “suppered,” and Bell would have fastened the ever open door, and little Jeanie upstairs would be reading her “chapter” to her grandmother before the old lady went to bed. He had seen that little, tender, pious scene more than once, when Granny was feeble, and he had gone to her room to say good-night. How sweet the low Scotch voice, with its soft broad vowels, had sounded, reading reverently those sacred verses, better than invocation of angels to keep the house from harm! What a peaceful, homely little house! all in it resting tranquil and untroubled beneath the twinkling stars. He went home to his rooms, through streets where very different scenes were going on, hushed by the thought of the rural calm and stillness, and half thinking the dark shadows he felt around him must be the dew-breathing shadows of the hills. And when Edgar got up to his bachelor refuge in Piccadilly, which he called home for the nonce for lack of a better, he did the very wisest thing a tired man could do, he went to bed; where he slept the moment his head touched the pillow, that sleep which does not always attend the innocent. The morn, as says our homely proverb in Scotland, would bring a new day.