CHAPTER XVI.
A Pair of Philanthropists.
I NEED not describe the many struggles of feeling which Edgar went through on that memorable Sunday, before he finally made up his mind to accept Mr. Tottenham’s proposal, and do the only thing which remained possible for him, his only alternative between work of some sort and idleness—between spending his last little remnant of money and beginning to earn some more—a thing which he had never yet done in his life. It was very strange to the young man, after so long an interval of a very different life, to return vicariously, as it were, not in his own right, to the habits and surroundings of luxury. He felt a whimsical inclination at first to explain to everybody he encountered that he was, so to speak, an impostor, having no right to all the good things about him, but being only Mr. Tottenham’s upper servant, existing in the atmosphere of the drawing-room only on sufferance and by courtesy. People in such circumstances are generally, I believe, very differently affected, or so at least one reads in story. They are generally pictured as standing perpetually on the defensive, looking out for offence, anticipating injury, and in a sore state of compulsory humility or rather humiliation. I do not know whether Edgar’s humorous character could ever have been driven by ill-usage to feel in this way, but as he had no ill-usage to put up with, but much the reverse, he took a totally different view. After the first conflict with himself was over, which we have already indicated, he came to consider his tutorship a good joke, as indeed, I am sorry to say, everybody else did—even Phil, who was in high glee over his new instructor.
“I don’t know what I am to teach him,” Edgar had said to the boy’s parents when he came down to the conservatory on the memorable Sunday I have already described, and joined the anxious pair.
“Teach him whatever you know,” Lady Mary had answered; but Edgar’s half mirthful, half dismayed sense of unfitness for the post they thrust upon him was not much altered by this impulsive speech.
“What do I know?” he said to himself next morning when, coming down early before any one else, he found himself alone in the library, with all the materials for instruction round him. Edgar had not himself been educated in England, and he did not know whether such knowledge as he possessed might not suffer from being transmitted in an unusual way without the orthodox form. “My Latin and Greek may be good enough, though I doubt it,” he said, when Mr. Tottenham joined him, “but how if they are found to be quite out of the Eton shape, and therefore no good to Phil?”
“Never mind the Eton shape, or any other shape,” said Mr. Tottenham, “you heard what Mary said, and her opinion may be relied upon. Teach him what you know. Why, he is only twelve, he has time enough for mere shape, I hope.”
And thus Edgar was again silenced. He was, however, a tolerably good scholar, and as it happened, in pure idleness had lately betaken himself again to those classical studies which so many men lay aside with their youth. And in the library at Tottenham’s there was a crowd of books bearing upon all possible theories of education, which Edgar, with a private smile at himself, carried to his room with him in detachments, and pored over with great impartiality, reading the most opposite systems one after another. When he told Lady Mary about his studies, she afforded immediate advice and information. She knew a great deal more about them than he did. She had tried various systems, each antagonistic to the other, in her own pet schools in the village, and she was far from having made up her mind on the subject.
“I confess to you frankly, Mr. Earnshaw,” said Lady Mary, “sometimes I think we have nothing in the world to trust to but education, which is the rational view; and sometimes I feel that I put no faith in it at all.”
“That is something like my own opinion,” said Earnshaw, “though I have permitted you to do yourselves the injustice of appointing me tutor to Phil.”
“Education, like everything else, depends so much on one’s theory of life,” said Lady Mary, “Mr. Tottenham and I think differently on the subject, which is a great pity, though I don’t see that it does us much harm. My husband is content to take things as they are, which is by much the more comfortable way; but that too is a matter of temperament. Phil will be sure to get on if you will bring him into real correspondence with your own mind. Molly gives me a great deal more trouble; a man can get himself educated one way or another, a woman can’t.”
“Is it so?” said Edgar, “pardon my ignorance. I thought most ladies were terribly well educated.”
“Ah, I know what you mean!” said Lady Mary, “educated in nothings, taught to display all their little bits of superficial information. It is not only that women get no education, Mr. Earnshaw, but how are we to get it for them? Of course an effort may be made for a girl in Molly’s position, with parents who fully appreciate the difficulties of the matter; but for girls of the middle classes for instance? they get a little very bad music, and worse French, and this is considered education. I dare say you will help me by and by in one of my pet schemes. Some of my friends in town have been so very good as to join me in a little effort I am making to raise the standard. The rector here, a well-meaning sort of man, has been persuaded to join, and to give us a nicish sort of schoolroom which happens to be unoccupied, and his countenance, which does us good with old fashioned people. I have spent a good deal of time on the scheme myself, and it is one of my chief interests. I quite reckon upon you to help.”
“What must I do?” said Edgar with a plaintive tone in his voice. Alas, worse had happened to him than falling into the hands of thieves who could only rob him—no more. He had fallen into the hands of good Samaritans who could do a great deal worse. He thought of ragged-schools and unruly infants; his thoughts went no further, and to this he resigned himself with a sigh.
“Then you will really help?” cried Lady Mary delighted, “I knew from the first you would be the greatest acquisition to us. My plan is to have lectures, Mr. Earnshaw, upon various subjects; they last only during the winter, and a great number of girls have begun to attend. One of my friends takes Latin, another French. Alas, our German lecturer has just failed us! if you could supply his place it would be perfect. Then we have history, mathematics, and literature; we cannot do much of course, but even a little is better than nothing. It would not take up very much of your time; an hour and a half a week, with perhaps a moment now and then to look after exercises, &c.”
“Am I expected to teach German to anybody in an hour and a half a week?” said Edgar, laughing. “It is a small expenditure for so great a result.”
“Of course you think it can only be a smattering—and that a smattering is a bad thing?” said the social reformer, “but we really do produce very good results—you shall see if you will but try.”
“And what branch, may I ask, do you take?” said the ignorant neophyte.
“I, Mr. Earnshaw! why I learn!” cried Lady Mary; “if I could I would go in for all the studies, but that is impossible. I follow as many as I can, and find it an admirable discipline for the mind, just that discipline which is denied to women. Why do you look at me so strangely? Why do you laugh? I assure you I mean what I say.”
“If I must not laugh, pray teach me some more philosophical way of expressing my feelings,” said Edgar, “I fear I should laugh still more if you did me the honour to select me as one of your instructors. A year hence when I have been well trained by Phil, I may have a little more confidence in myself.”
“If you mean,” said Lady Mary, somewhat offended, “that instructing others is the best way to confirm your own knowledge, I am sure you are quite right; but if you mean to laugh at my scheme—”
“Pray pardon me,” said Edgar, “I can’t help it. The idea of teaching you is too much for my gravity. Tell me who the other learned pundits are from whom Lady Mary Tottenham learns—”
“Lady Mary Tottenham would learn from any man who had anything to teach her,” she answered with momentary anger; then added with a short laugh, extorted from her against her will, “Mr. Earnshaw, you are very impertinent and unkind; why should you laugh at one’s endeavour to help one’s fellow-creatures to a little instruction, and one’s self—”
“Are you quarrelling?” said Mr. Tottenham, stalking in suddenly, with his glass in his eye. “What is the matter? Earnshaw, I want to interest you in a very pet scheme of mine. When my wife has done with you, let me have a hearing. I want him to drive in with me to Tottenham’s, Mary, and see what is doing there.”
“I hope Mr. Earnshaw will be kinder to you than he has been to me,” said Lady Mary; “at me he does nothing but laugh. He despises women, I suppose, like so many other men, and thinks us beneath the range of intellectual beings.”
“What a cruel judgment,” said Edgar, “because I am tickled beyond measure at the thought of having anything to teach you, and at the suggestion that you can improve your mind by attending lectures, and are undergoing mental discipline by means of mathematics and history—”
“Oh, then it is only that you think me too old,” said Lady Mary, with the not unagreeable amusement of a pretty woman who knows herself to be not old, and to look still younger and fresher than she feels; and they had an amiable laugh over this excellent joke, which entirely restored the friendly relations between them. Mr. Tottenham smiled reflectively with his glass in his eye, not looking into the matter. He was too seriously occupied with his own affairs to enter into any unnecessary merriment.
“Come along, Earnshaw,” he said, “I want you to come into Tottenham’s with me, and on the way I will tell you all about my scheme, which my wife takes a great interest in also. You will come to the next evening, Mary? It is always so much more successful when you are there.”
“Surely,” said Lady Mary with a vague smile, as she gathered up a bundle of papers which she had produced to show Edgar. She shook her head over them as she turned away. Her husband’s schemes she patronized with a gentle interest; but her own occupied her a great deal more warmly as was natural. “You have not given me half the consideration my plan deserves,” she said half pathetically, “but don’t think I mean to let you off on that account,” and with a friendly smile to both the gentlemen she went to her own concerns. The library had been the scene of the conversation, and Lady Mary now withdrew to her own special table, which was placed in front of a great bay-window overlooking the flower-garden. It was a very large room, and Mr. Tottenham’s table had a less favourable aspect, with nothing visible but dark shrubberies from the window behind him, to which he judiciously turned his back.
“Mary prefers to look out, and I to look in,” he said; “to be sure I have her to look at, which makes a difference.”
This huge room was the centre of their morning occupations, and the scene of many an amiable controversy. The two tables which belonged to the pair individually were both covered with papers, that of Lady Mary being the most orderly, but not the least crowded, while a third large table, in front of the fire, covered with books and newspapers, offered scope for any visitor who might chance to join them in their viewy and speculative seclusion. As a matter of fact, most people who came to Tottenham’s, gravitated sooner or later towards this room. It was the point of meeting in the morning, just as the palm-tree in the conservatory was the centre of interest in the afternoon.
“I am writing to Lyons to come to my next evening,” said Mr. Tottenham, taking his place at his own table, while Lady Mary with her back towards the other occupants of the room scribbled rapidly at hers.
“Do you think they will care for Lyons?” asked Lady Mary without turning round, “you forget always that amusement and not information is what they want—”
“Amusement is what we all want, my dear,” said her husband, with apologetic mildness. “We approach the subject in different ways. You call in the same man to instruct as I do to amuse. We agree as to the man, but we don’t agree as to the object; and yet it comes to the very same thing at last.”
“You think so,” said Lady Mary, still with her back turned; “but we shall see by the results.”
“Yes, Lyons is coming,” said Mr. Tottenham. “I don’t know if you have heard him, Earnshaw. He has been in Africa, and all over the world. My own opinion is that he is rather a stupid fellow; but, so long as other people don’t think so, what does that matter? He is coming; and, my dear fellow, if you would listen to what I am going to tell you, and take an interest in my people—”
“What would happen?” said Edgar, as the other paused. He was half amused and half alarmed by the turn that things were taking, and did not know what strange use he might be put to next.
“Ah, I don’t know what might not happen,” said Mr. Tottenham, yielding for a moment to the influence of Edgar’s distressed but humorous countenance. “However, don’t be frightened. You shall not be forced to do anything. I don’t approve of over-persuasion. But supposing that you should be interested, as I expect, a great deal more than you think—”
This he said in a deprecatory, propitiatory way, looking up suddenly from the letter he was writing. Edgar stood in front of the fire, contemplating both parties, and he was half touched as well as more than half amused by this look. He did not even know what it was he was called upon to interest himself in; but the eagerness of his companions, about their several plans, went to his heart.
“You may be sure, if there is anything I can do—” he said, impulsively.
“You should not allow Mr. Earnshaw to commit himself till he has seen what it is,” said Lady Mary, from the opposite table; and then she, too, turned half round, pen in hand, and fixed an earnest gaze upon him. “I may write to my people and tell them the German class will be resumed next week?” she said, with much the same entreating look as her husband had put on. It was all Edgar could do to preserve his gravity, and not reply with indecorous gaiety, like that which had provoked her before; for Lady Mary, on this point at least, was less tolerant and more easily affronted than her husband.
“If you think I can be of any use,” he said, trying to look as serious as possible; and thus, before he knew, the double bargain was made.
It would be impossible to describe in words the whimsical unreality of the situation in which Edgar thus found himself when he got into Mr. Tottenham’s phaeton to be driven back to town, in order to be made acquainted with the other “Tottenham’s.” Only a few days had passed since the wintry evening when he arrived a stranger at the hospitable but unknown house. He was a stranger still according to all rules, but yet his life had suddenly become entangled with the lives which a week ago he had never heard of. He was no visitor, but a member of the family, with distinct duties in it; involved even in its eccentricities, its peculiarities, its quaint benevolences. Edgar felt his head swim as they drove from the door which he had entered for the first time so very short a while ago. Was he in a dream? or had he gone astray out of the ordinary workday world into some modern version of the Arabian Nights?
“You remember what I told you, Earnshaw, about the shop?” said his companion. “It is for the shop that I bespeak your interest now. I told you that my wife had no false pride on the subject, and how she cured me of my absurdity. I draw a great deal of money out of it, and I employ a great number of people. Of course, I have a great responsibility towards these people. If they were labourers on an estate, or miners in a coal-pit, everybody would acknowledge this responsibility; but being only shopmen and shopwomen, or, poor souls, as they prefer to have it, assistants in a house of business, the difficulty is much increased. Do I have your attention, Earnshaw?”
“I am listening,” said Edgar; “but you must excuse me if my attention seems to wander a little. Consider how short an acquaintance ours is, and that I am somewhat giddy with the strange turn my life has taken. Pure selfishness, of course; but one does rank more highly than is fit in one’s own thoughts.”
“To be sure, it is all novel and strange,” said Mr. Tottenham, in a soothing and consolatory tone. “Never mind; you will soon get used to our ways. For my own part, I think a spinning mill is nothing to my shop. Several hundreds of decently dressed human creatures, some of the young women looking wonderfully like ladies, I can tell you, is a very bewildering sort of kingdom to deal with. The Queen rules in a vague sort of way compared to me. She has nothing to do with our private morals or manners; so long as we don’t rob or steal, she leaves us to our own guidance. But, in my dominions, there is all the minuteness of despotism. My subjects live in my house, eat my bread, and have to be regulated by my pleasure. I look after them in everything, their religious sentiments, their prudential arrangements, their amusements. You don’t listen to me, Earnshaw.”
“Oh, yes, I do. But if Phil’s lessons and Lady Mary’s lectures come in to disturb my attention, you won’t mind just at first? This is the same road we drove down on Saturday. There is the same woman standing at the same door.”
“And here are the same horses, and the same man with the same sentiments driving you.”
“Thanks; you are very kind,” said Edgar, gratefully; “but my head goes round notwithstanding. I suppose so many ups and downs put one off one’s balance. I promise you to wake up when we come to the field of battle.”
“You mean the shop,” said Mr. Tottenham; “don’t be afraid of naming it. I am rather excited, to tell the truth, about the effect it may have upon you. I am like a showman, with something quite original and out of the common to show.”