“I hope I should have done exactly as you did in that Arden business,” said Mr. Tottenham; “but I can’t tell. The amount of meanness and falseness to all one’s own rules which one feels in one’s self in a great emergency is wonderful. I never put any dependence on myself. Now I will tell who, or rather what I am. The pronoun Who is inappropriate in my case. I am nobody; but when you know what I am—if, indeed, my name does not tell you—”
“No,” said Edgar, forcing himself into attention.
“It is not a bad name; there are fine people, I believe, who bear it, and who hold up their heads with the best. But if you belonged to a middle-class London family, and had a mother and sisters, you would have no difficulty in identifying me. I am not a Tottenham with a Christian name like other people. I am Tottenham’s, in the possessive case.”
“I begin to understand,” said Edgar.
What an effort it was to him! But he grew more capable of making the effort as he tried to make it, and actually looked up now with a gleam of intelligence in his eye.
“You begin to realize me,” said his companion. “I am Tottenham’s. I have been Tottenham’s all my life. My father died when I was only a small boy. I hope, though I don’t know, that he might have had sense enough to habituate me to my fate from the beginning, which would have made it much easier. But my mother, unfortunately, was a lady, or thought herself so. She brought me up as if there was not such a thing as a shop in the world. She buys everything at Howell and James’s of set purpose and malice prepense, when she could get all she wants at cost price in our own place; to be sure she can afford it, thanks to the shop. I never knew anything about this said shop till I was at Eton, when I denied the connection stoutly, and fought for it, and came off triumphant, though the other fellow was the biggest. When I went home for the holidays, I told the story. ‘You were quite right not to give in to it, my dear,’ said my mother. ‘But is it true?’ said I. Poor dear, how she prevaricated! She would not have told a lie for the world, but a tiny little bit of a fib did not seem so bad. Accordingly I found it out, and had to go back to Eton, and beg the fellow’s pardon, and tell him it wasn’t a lie he told, but the truth, only I had not known it. I don’t think any of them thought the worse of me for that.”
“I should think not,” cried Edgar, beginning to rouse up.
“No, I don’t suppose they did; but from that day I became thin-skinned, as people call it, and scented the shop afar off in everything people said. My mother’s contempt for it, and shame of it, got deep into my mind. I grew sensitive. I did not like to give my name when I went anywhere. I felt sure some one would say, ‘Oh, Tottenham’s!’ when my card was taken in. I can’t tell you the misery this gave me all through school and college. I hated the shop, and was afraid of it. I was morbidly ashamed of my name. I went and wandered about in vacation, wearing other men’s names as I might have borrowed their coats. Not without their consent, mind you,” he added, sharply. “I did nothing dishonourable; but I had a horror of being Tottenham, a horror which I cannot describe.”
“That was strange!”
“You think so? Well, so do I now; and it was very unfortunate for me. It got me into many scrapes; it almost cost me my wife. You don’t know my wife? I must take you out to see her. I was introduced to her under somebody else’s name—not a very distinguished name, it is true, Smith, or Brown, or something, and under that name she accepted me; but when I told her how things really were, her countenance flamed like that of the angel, do you remember? in Milton, when Adam says something caddish—I forget what exactly. How she did look at me! ‘Ashamed of your name!’ she said, ‘and yet ask me to share it!’ There is pride and pride,” said Mr. Tottenham to himself with musing admiration. “The poor dear mother thought she was proud; Mary is so; that makes all the difference. I got into such trouble as I never was in all my life. She sent me right away; she would have nothing to say to me; she cast me off as you might cast away that cinder with that pair of tongs. For a time I was the most miserable fellow on the face of the earth. I wandered about the place where she lived night and day; but even then, if you will believe me, it cost me a very hard struggle indeed to get to the shop. When I was desperate, I did.”
“Why is he telling me all this, I wonder?” said Edgar to himself; but he was interested, he could not tell how, and had raised his head, and for the moment shaken off something of the burden from his own back.
“I made up my mind to it, and went at last,” said this odd man, puffing at his cigar with a vehemence that made it evident he felt it still. “I found that nobody wanted me there; that everybody preferred not to be interfered with; that the managers had fallen each into his own way, and had no desire for me to meddle. But I am not the sort of man that can stand and look on with his hands in his pockets. You will wonder, and perhaps you will despise me, when I tell you that I found Tottenham’s on the whole a very interesting place.”
“I neither wonder nor despise,” said Edgar. “What did you do?”
“What didn’t I do?” said Mr. Tottenham, with rueful humour. “I did all the mischief possible. I turned the whole place upside down. I diminished the profits for that year by a third part. I changed the well-known good order of Tottenham’s into confusion worse confounded. The old managers resigned in a body. By-the-way, they stayed on all but one afterwards, when I asked them. As for the assistants, there was civil war in the place, and more than one free fight between the different sides; for some sided with me, perhaps because they approved of me, perhaps because I was the master, and could do what I liked; but the end was that I stayed there three months, worked there, and then wrote to Mary; and she took me back.”
“I am very glad to hear it,” said Edgar; and he smiled and sighed with natural sympathy.
He had become quite interested in the story by this time, and totally forgotten all about his own miseries. He came out of his cloud finally just at this point, and took, at last, the cigar which his new friend had from time to time offered him.
“Ah! come now, this is comfortable,” said Tottenham. “Up to that moment mine had been a very hard case, don’t you think so? I don’t pretend to have anything more to grumble about. But, having had a hard case myself, I sympathize with other people. Yours was a horribly hard case. Tell me now, that other fellow, that Arden scamp! I know him—as proud as Lucifer, and as wicked as all the rest of the evil spirits put together—do you mean to say he allowed you to go away, and give him up all that fine property, and save him thousands of pounds in a lawsuit, without making some provision for you? Such a thing was never heard of.”
“No,” said Edgar; “don’t be unjust to him. It was a bitter pill for me to take a penny from him; but I did, because they made me.”
“And you’ve spent it all!”
Edgar laughed; he could not help it. His elastic nature had mounted up again; he began to feel sure that he could not be ruined so completely after all; he must be able to do something. He looked up at his questioner with eyes full of humour. Mr. Tottenham, who was standing in front as grave as a judge, looked at him, and did not laugh.
“I don’t see the fun,” he said. “You shouldn’t have done it. You have let yourself drop half out of recollection before you asked for anything, whereas you should have got provided for at once. Hang it all! I suppose there are some places yet where a man in office may place a friend—and some opportunities left to put a good man in by means of a job, instead of putting in a bad man by competition, or seniority, or some other humbug. You should have done that at first.”
“Possibly,” said Edgar, who had been amused, not by the idea of having spent all his money, but by that of making a clean breast to this man, whom he had never spoken to before, of the most private particulars of his life.
Mr. Tottenham made a few turns about the room, where there was for the moment nobody but themselves. He said then suddenly,
“I take an interest in you. I should like to help you if I could. Tottenham’s is no end of a good property, and I can do what I like——”
“I am sure I am very much obliged,” said Edgar, laughing. “I should thank you still more warmly if it were not so funny. Why should you take an interest in me?”
“It is odd, perhaps,” said the other; but he did not laugh. A smile ran over his face, that was all, and passed again like a momentary light. Then he added, “It is not so odd as you think. If I could conceal from you who my wife was, I might be tempted to do so; but I can’t, for though I’m only Tottenham’s, she’s in the peerage. My Mary is sister to Augusta Thornleigh, who—well, who knew you, my dear fellow. Look here! She’s fashionable and all that; she would not let you see her daughters, at present, if she could help it; but she’s a good woman, mind. I have heard her tell your story. If ever there was a hard case, that was one; and when I heard of it, I resolved, if I ever had the chance, to stand by you. You behaved like a gentleman. Since we have been made acquainted, Earnshaw, we have not shaken hands yet!”
They did it now very heartily; and in those restless grey eyes, which were worn by sheer use and perpetual motion, there glimmered some moisture. Edgar’s eyes were dry, but his whole heart was melted. There was a pause for a minute or more, and the ashes fell softly on the hearth, and the clock ticked on the mantel-piece. Then Edgar asked, “How are they all?” with that sound in his utterance which the French in their delicate discrimination call tears in the voice.
“Quite well, quite well!” said Tottenham hurriedly; and then he added, “We didn’t come here to speak of them. Earnshaw, I want you to come to my house.”
“It is very kind of you,” said Edgar. “I think I have seen Lady Mary. She is very sweet and lively, like—some one else; with fair hair——”
“Isn’t she?” cried Lady Mary’s admiring husband; and his eyes glowed again. “I want you to come and stay with us while this business with Newmarch gets settled.”
“Why?” said Edgar, with genuine surprise; and then he added, “You are a great deal too good. I should like to go for a day or two. I haven’t spoken to a lady for months.”
“Poor fellow!” said Mr. Tottenham, taking no notice of the “Why?” “We live only a little way out of town, on account of the shop. I have never neglected the shop since the time I told you about. She would not let me for that matter. Nobody, you see, can snub her, in consequence of her rank; and partly for her sake, partly because I’m rich, I suppose, nobody tries to snub me. There are many of my plans in which you could help me very much—for a time, you know, till Newmarch comes off.”
“You are very kind,” said Edgar; but his attention wandered after this, and other thoughts came into his mind, thoughts of himself and his forlorn condition, and of the profound uncertainty into which he and all his ways had been plunged. He scarcely paid any attention to the arrangements Mr. Tottenham immediately made, though he remembered that he promised to go out with him next day to Tottenham’s, as his house was called. “The same as the shop,” he said, with a twinkle in the corner of his grey eye. Edgar consented to these arrangements passively; but his patience was worn out, and he was very anxious to get away.
And so this strange evening came to an end, and the morning after it. The new day arose, a smoky, foggy, wintry morning, through which so many people went to work; but not Edgar. He looked out upon the world from his window with a failing heart. Even from Kensington and Brompton, though these are not mercantile suburbs, crowds of men were jolting along on all the omnibuses, crowds pouring down on either side of the street—to work. The shop people went along the road getting and delivering orders; the maid-servants bustled about the doors in the foggy, uncertain light; the omnibuses rushed on, on, in a continuous stream; and everybody was busy. Those who had no work to do, pretended at least to be busy too; the idlers had not come out yet, had not stirred, and the active portion of the world were having everything their own way. Edgar had revived from his depression, but he had not regained his insouciance and trust in the future. On the contrary, he was full of the heaviest uncertainty and care. He could not wait longer for this appointment, which might keep him hanging on half his life, which was just as near now as when he began to calculate on having it “about Christmas;” probably the next Christmas would see it just as uncertain still. He must, he felt, attempt something else, and change his tactics altogether. He must leave his expensive lodgings at once; but alas! he had a big bill for them, which he had meant to pay off his first quarter’s salary. He had meant to pay it the moment that blessed money for which he should have worked came; and now there was no appearance, no hope of it ever coming—at least, only as much hope as there had always been, no more.
Poor Edgar! he might have rushed out of doors and taken to the first manual work he could find as his heart bade him; but to go and solicit somebody once more, and hang on and wait, dependent upon the recollection or the caprice of some one or other who could give employment, but might, out of mere wantonness, withhold it—this was harder than any kind of work. He could dig, he felt, and would dig willingly, or do any other thing that was hard and simple and straightforward; but to beg for means of working he was ashamed; and there seemed something so miserable, so full of the spirit of dependence in having to wait on day by day doing nothing, waiting till something might fall into his hands. How infinitely better off working men were, he said to himself; not thinking that even the blessed working man, who is free from the restraints and punctilios which bind gentlemen, has yet to stand and wait, and ask for work too, with the best.
He went back to Mr. Parchemin that morning.
“I have been waiting for Lord Newmarch,” he said; “he promised me a post about Christmas, and now he tells me there is just as much hope as ever, but no more. I must do something else. Could you not take me in as clerk in your own office? I should not mind a small salary to start with; anything would do.”
Mr. Parchemin laughed, a dry and echoing “Ha, ha!” which was as dusty and dry as his office.
“A strange clerk you would make,” he said, looking over his shoulder to conceal his amusement. “Can you engross?”
“Of course not. How should I? But if a man were to try—”
“Do you know anything about the law? Of what possible use could you be to us? No; you are a fancy article, entirely a fancy article. Government,” said the old lawyer, “Government is the thing for you.”
“Government does not seem to see it in that light,” said Edgar. “I have waited since October.”
“My dear Sir! October is but three months off. You can’t expect, like a child, to have your wants supplied the moment you ask for anything. A slice of cake may be given in that way, but not an appointment. You must have patience, Mr. Earnshaw, you must have patience,” said the old man.
“But I have spent the half of my hundred pounds,” Edgar was about to say; but something withheld him; he could not do it. Should he not furnish the old lawyer by so doing with an unquestionable argument against himself? Should he not expose his own foolishness, the foolishness of the man who thought himself able to give up everything for others, and then could do nothing but run into debt and ruin on his own account? Edgar could not do it; he resolved rather to struggle on upon nothing, rather to starve, though that was a figure of speech, than to put himself so much in anyone’s power; which was pride, no doubt, but a useful kind of pride, which sometimes keeps an erring man out of further trouble. He went back at once, and paid his landlord a portion of what he owed him, and removed his goods to a small upstairs room which he found he could have cheap, and might have had all the time had he been wise enough to ask. It was the room in which his own servant had slept when he travelled with such an appendage; but the new-born pride which had struggled into existence in Edgar’s mind had no such ignoble part in it as to afflict him on this account. He was quite happy to go up to his man’s room, where everything was clean and homely, and felt no derogation of his personal dignity. Thank Heaven, this was one thing done at least—a step taken, though nothing could be gained by it, only something spared.
In the afternoon Mr. Tottenham met him at his club, driving a pair of handsome horses in a smart phaeton, such a turnout as only a rich man’s can be, everything about it perfect. Edgar had not indulged in any luxurious tastes during his own brief reign; it had been perhaps too short to develop them; but he recognised the perfect appointments of the vehicle with a half sigh of satisfaction and reminiscence. He did not say, why should this man be lucky enough to have all this when I have nothing? as so many people do. He was not given to such comparisons, to that ceaseless contrast of self with the rest of the world, which is so common. He half smiled at himself for half sighing over the day when he too might have had everything that heart could desire, and smiled more than half at the whimsical thought that he had not taken the good of his wealth half so much then as he would have done now, had he the chance. He seemed to himself—knowing how short Edgar Arden’s tenure was—to be aware of a hundred things which Edgar might have done to amuse and delight him, which indeed Edgar Arden, knowing nothing of his own short tenure, and believing life to be very long and much delight awaiting him, never dreamt of making any haste to procure. A curious sense of well-being seemed to take hold of him as he bowled along the suburban roads by Mr. Tottenham’s side, wrapped in one of the fur coats which the chill and foggy evening made comfortable, watching the long lines of lamps that twinkled and stretched out like a golden thread, and then were left behind as in the twinkling of an eye. To hear of Lady Mary Tottenham, who was Lady Augusta’s sister, and aunt to all the young Thornleighs, seemed somehow like being wafted back to the old atmosphere, to the state of affairs which lasted so short a time and ended so suddenly; but which was, notwithstanding its brevity, the most important and influential moment of his life.