“Quite true,” said Lady Mary, “they never do; one doesn’t in one’s own experience. One finds out all the little incidents afterwards, and pieces them into their places.”
“Only it is Earnshaw who is to find out the little incidents, and Newmarch who is to piece them into their places,” said her husband; “hard work for the one, great fun, and great glory besides, for the other. I don’t think I should care to be jackal to Newmarch; especially as he means all this to be done, not by a Secretary of Legation, but by a Queen’s Messenger. Do you know what kind of life that is?”
Edgar shook his head. He knew nothing about it, and at this moment he did not care very much. The buzzing and persecution of those thoughts which were none of his, which had a separate existence of their own, and tortured him for admission into his mind, had recommenced. What had he been brought here for? Why did they attempt to disgust him with the only career open before him? What did they intend to do with him? The father and his boy might be ordinary beings enough, with whom hecould have kept up an ordinary intercourse; but Lady Mary and her little daughter had the strangest effect upon the young man. One of them was full grown, motherly, on the border of middle age—the other was but a child; yet the tone of their voices, the turn of their heads, all suggested to him some one else who was not there. Even little Molly had the family gestures, the throwing back of the light locks, the sweet brightness of the eyes, which were so playful and soft, yet so full of vivacious spirit and life. Poor Edgar was kept in a kind of confused rapture between the mother and the child; both of them reflected another face, and echoed another voice to him; between them they seemed to be stealing all the strength out of him, the very heart from his bosom. He had been absent three years and had it all come to this, that the soft strain of enchantment which had charmed him so softly, so lightly, never to any height of passion, had grown stronger with time, and moved him now more deeply than at first? These persecuting thoughts made a swoop upon him like a flight of birds, sweeping down through the air and surrounding him, as he sat there helpless. Why had he been brought to this magician’s palace? What did they mean to do with him now? The child had seen his portrait, the father had been sent to watch him, the mother asked had anything been said. What was about to be said? What were they going to do with him? Poor Edgar looked out as from a mist, gradually overwhelmed by his own excitement, and finally left the doors of his helpless heart open, as it were,making it a highway through which any kind of futile supposition might flit and dance. He sat helpless, excited and wondering. What were they going to do with him? He did not know.
Thefrost hardened again in the night, and Tottenham’s was all white and shining when Edgar looked out from his window in the morning. The house was square and somewhat ugly, but the great semi-circle of trees which swept round it was made into something magical by the feathery silvering of the rime which coated every branch and every twig. He made an exclamation of pleasure when he looked out. The grass, the trees, the glistening pinnacles of the great conservatory which stretched to the south, just catching a glimpse of frosty and wavering sunlight upon their metallic tops, were all virgin white, though here and there it began to melt in the sun. Edgar had been far from thinking himself happy when he fell asleep on the previous night; he was still confused and harassed by his thoughts, keeping up a hopeless struggle against them; but he woke up in a state of causeless exhilaration, he did not know why. The hoar frost and the red sunshine went to his head. His heart beat more lightly than usual, the blood coursed pleasantly through his veins. He was like most imaginative people, often glad, and sorry he did not know why, and a certain unreasonable capricious confidence in his fate cameover him to-day. Something good was coming to him he felt sure.
The breakfast table at Tottenham’s was lively enough. Lady Mary and her husband were in full and animated discussion about something or other, with a shoal of opened letters lying before them, and all the newspapers that could be had, when Edgar made his appearance somewhat late. The children who were present on the previous night were flanked by another small pair, too small to be restrained by mamma, who chattered and crowed, and made themselves very happy. A bright fire was burning, and the red sunshine shone in, glinting over the white covered table and its shining dishes.
“Mr. Earnshaw will agree with me,” Lady Mary cried as he went in, appealing to him.
“Come along, Earnshaw, you will take my side,” said Mr. Tottenham.
They were both eager to claim his help, and the elder children looked up at him with the freedom of perfect ease and intimacy.
“Nobody can ever call Molly the late one, now Mr. Earnshaw is here,” cried Phil exulting. They all received him as one of themselves, and in everything they said there was a silent suggestion that he belonged to them, that he was to remain with them, which bewildered him beyond words. The letters on the table were about every subject under heaven. They had their domestic correspondence, I suppose, and family affairs of their own; but these epistles were all about “schemes” of one kind and another,plans for the reformation of heaven knows how many classes of society, and for the improvement of the world altogether, which indeed has great need of improvement. I cannot tell what the special question might be that morning; there were so many of them that it was difficult for a stranger to discriminate; and as Lady Mary had told him, she and her husband very seldom agreed. They were both intensely in earnest, and both threw themselves with all their might into everything they did. Edgar, however, was not in a mood to utter any oracles, or to associate himself with one scheme or another. He was disposed to enjoy the strange holiday which had come to him, he could not tell how. He left the father and mother to themselves, and addressed himself to the children.
“Phil,” he said, “you and I are ignoramuses, we don’t know about these deep matters. Talk to me of something within my capacity; or Molly, if Phil will not talk, do you.”
The reply to this was that both children talked together.
“Mr. Earnshaw, the ice is bearing; what an awful pity it’s Sunday!” said the boy, “I wanted to tell you whenever you came in—” and “Oh, Mr. Earnshaw, come to church with us, and I’ll show you the village and my pet old woman who tells us stories,” said the little girl.
Edgar was delighted. He asked about the ice, what it was, an ornamental piece of water, or the village pond; and told Molly he would go and see her village, and try whether he or she could remember most of the sermon. Phil interfered when he heard this bargain. He shook his head over the rashness of his new friend.
“She has an awful good memory,” he said, “I wouldn’t try against her, Mr. Earnshaw, if I was you. She remembers what people said ages and ages ago, and comes down upon you after you have forgotten all about it. I wouldn’t go in against Moll.”
“But I haven’t such an awfully good memory for sermons,” said Molly, with modest deprecation of the excessive praise, “though I do remember most things pretty well.”
“Molly will win of course; but I shall try my best,” said Edgar. The children suited him best on this day of exhilaration when his heart was so foolishly free. He caught the father and mother looking at him, with significant glances to each other, while this conversation was going on, and was bewildered to think what they could mean. What did they mean? It was altogether bewildering and perplexing. The man who attended him that morning had informed him that he had been told off for his especial service, and had looked somewhat offended when Edgar laughed and declared he required no particular tending. “I ’ad my horders, Sir,” said the man. Everybody seemed to have their orders; and if that curious insanity of thought which had assailed him yesterday, a running riot of imagination, for which he did not feel himself to be responsible—if that came back again,tearing open the doors of his heart, and pouring through them, was it his fault?
The village lay at the park gates; but villages so near London are not like villages in the depths of the country. This was one where there was a number of smaller gentlefolks, tributaries on all great occasions of Tottenham’s; but when they had a chance, very glad to note any deficiency on the part of the man whom they called anouveau riche, and even a shopkeeper, which was the title of deepest reproach they could think of. Indeed if Mr. Tottenham had not married Lady Mary, I believe he would have had many little pricks and stings from his poor yet well-born neighbours; but a Lady Mary in English village society cannot do wrong. It was a pleasant walk to church, where they all went together, the children walking demurely in honour of Sunday, though Phil’s eye and heart were tempted by the long expanse of white which showed between two lines of green at the right side of the road.
“It is hard enough to bear the big town carriage,” he said confidentially to Edgar, “or one of the farmer’s huge carts.”
“We’ll go and see it after church,” said Edgar in the same tone; and so the little procession moved on. Perhaps Lady Mary was the one who cared for this family progress to church the least. Mr. Tottenham, though he was given over to schemes of the most philosophical description, was the simplest soul alive, doing his duty in this respect with as light a heart as his children. But Lady Mary wasvery “viewy.” She was an advanced liberal, and read the “Fortnightly,” and smiled at many things that were said out of the pulpit once a week. Sometimes even she would laugh a little at the “duty” of going to church, and hearing old Mr. Burton maunder for half an hour; but all the same she respected her husband’s prejudices, and the traditions of the superior class, which, even when it believes in natural equality, still feels it necessary to set an example to its neighbours. Lady Mary professed sentiments which were inclined towards republicanism and democracy; but nevertheless she knew that she was one of the gods, and had to conduct herself as became that regnant position among men.
“There goes the shopkeeper and his family,” said Mrs. Colonel Witherington from her window, which looked out on the village green. “Girls, it is time to put on your bonnets. A man like that is bred up to be punctual; he comes to church as he goes to the shop, as the hour strikes. There he goes—”
“As ostentatiously humble as ever,” said one of the girls.
“And he has got one of the shopmen with him, mamma,” said Myra, who was the wit of the family. “Not a bad looking draper’s assistant; they always have the shopmen out on Sundays. Poor fellows, it is their only day.”
“Poor fellows, indeed! I suppose Lady Mary thinks because she is an earl’s daughter she can do whatever she likes; introducing such people as these into the society of gentle-folks,” cried the mother.“Myra, don’t stand laughing there, but put on your things.”
“We need not go into their society unless we please,” said Myra.
“And to be sure an Earl’s daughtercando whatever she likes; no nonsense of that description will makeherlose caste,” said the eldest Miss Witherington, turning away from the window with a sigh. This poor young lady, not being an Earl’s daughter, had not been able to do as she liked, or to marry as she liked, and she felt the difference far more keenly than her mother did, who was affected only in theory. This was one of the many scraps of neighbourly talk which went on at Harbour Green when the party from Tottenham’s were seen walking through the village to church. Lady Mary was an Earl’s daughter, and shedidtake it upon her to do precisely as she liked; but her neighbours directed most of their indignation upon her husband who had no such privileges, a man who was civil to everybody, and whom they all confessed, whenever they wanted anything of him, to be the best-natured fellow in the world.
The service in the little church was not so well-conducted as it might have been, had Lady Mary taken more interest in it; but still the lesser authorities had done something for the training of the choir, and a gentle Ritualism, not too pronounced as yet, kept everything in a certain good order. Lady Mary herself did not take the same honest and simple part in the devotions as her husband and children did; various parts of the service wentagainst her views; she smiled a little as she listened to the sermon. A close observer might have noticed that, though she behaved with the most perfect decorum, as a great lady ought, she yet felt herself somewhat superior to all that was going on. I cannot say that Edgar noticed this on his first Sunday at Harbour Green, though he may have remarked it afterwards; but Edgar’s mind was not at the present moment sufficiently free to remark upon individual peculiarity. The sense of novelty or something else more exciting still worked in him, and left him in a state of vague agitation; and when the service being over, Lady Mary hurried on with the children, on pretence of calling on some one, and left Mr. Tottenham with Edgar, the young man felt his heart beat higher, and knew that the moment at last had come.
“Well, Earnshaw! you have not had much time to judge, it is true; but how do you think you like us?” said Mr. Tottenham. The question was odd, but the questioner’s face was as grave as that of a judge. “We are hasty people, and you are hasty,” he added, “so it is not so absurd as it might be; how do you think you shall like us? Now speak out, never mind our feelings. I am not asking you sentimentally, but from a purely business point of view.”
“I am so hasty a man,” said Edgar, laughing, with a much stronger sense of the comic character of the position than the other had, “that I made up my mind at sight, as one generally does; but since then you have so bribed me by kindness—”
“Then you do like us!” said Mr. Tottenham, holding out his hand, “I thought you would. Of course if you had not liked us our whole scheme would have come to nothing, and Mary had rather set her heart on it. You will be sure not to take offence, or to think us impertinent if I tell you what we thought?”
“One word,” said Edgar with nervous haste. “Tell me first what it has been that has made you take such a warm interest in me?”
Mr. Tottenham winced and twisted his slim long person as a man in an embarrassing position is apt to do. “Well,” he said, “Earnshaw, I don’t know that we can enter into it so closely as that. We have always taken an interest in you, since the time when you were a great friend of the Thornleigh’s and we were always hearing of you; and when you behaved so well in that bad business. And then some months ago we heard that you had been seen coming up from Scotland—travelling,” Mr. Tottenham added, with hesitation, “in the cheap way.”
“Who told you that?” Edgar’s curiosity gave a sharpness which he had not intended to his voice.
“Come, come,” said Mr. Tottenham good-humouredly; “that is just the point which I cannot enter into. But you may permit us to be interested, though we can’t describe in full detail how it came about. Earnshaw, Mary and I are fanciful sort of people, as you perceive; we don’t always keep to the beaten path; and we want you to do us a favour. What I am going to ask may be a littleirregular; it may sound a little obtrusive; you may take it amiss; though I hope not—”
“I shall not take it amiss in any case,” Edgar managed to say; but his heart was beating very loudly, and an agitation for which he could not account had got possession of his whole being. His mind went wildly over a whole world of conjecture, and I need not add that he was utterly astray in everything he thought of, and did not reach to the faintest notion of what his companion meant to be at.
“In the first place,” said Mr. Tottenham nervously, “it is evident that you must wait till there is an opening in that business with Newmarch. I don’t doubt in the least that he wants to have you, and that he’ll give you the first vacancy; but he can’t kill off a man on purpose, though I dare say he would if he could. I don’t go on to say in the second place, as I might perhaps, that a Queen’s Messenger has a very wearisome life, and not much to make amends for it—”
Here he paused to take breath, while Edgar watched and wondered, getting more and more bewildered every moment in the maze of conjecture through which he could not find his way.
“Of course,” said Mr. Tottenham, himself displaying a certain amount of rising excitement, “I don’t mean to say that you ought not to accept such an appointment if it was offered. But in the meantime, what are you to do? Live in London, and waste your resources, and break your spirit with continual waiting? I say no, no, by no means; and this is what put it into my head to say what Iam going to say to you, and to insist upon your coming here.”
What was he going to say? Still Edgar, subdued by his own excitement, could make no reply. Mr. Tottenham paused also, as if half fearing to take the plunge.
“What we meant, Earnshaw,” he said abruptly, at last, “what Mary and I want, if you will do it, is—that you should stay with us and take charge of our boy.”
The last words he uttered hastily, and almost sharply, as if throwing something out that burned him while he held it. And oh! dear reader, how can I express to you the way in which poor Edgar fell, fell, low down, and lower down, as into some echoing depth, when these words fell upon his dismayed and astonished ears! Take charge of their boy! God help him! what had he been thinking about? He could not himself tell; nothing, a chimera, the foolishest of dreams, some wild fancy which involved the future in a vain haze of brightness with the image of the veiled maiden in the railway carriage, and of Gussy, who was never veiled. Oh, Heaven and earth! what a fool, what a fool he was! She had nothing to do with it; he himself had nothing to do with it. It was but a benevolent scheme of people with a great many benevolent schemes about them, for the relief of a poor young fellow whom they knew to be in trouble. That was all. Edgar went on walking as in a dream, feeling himself spin round and round and go down, as to the bottom of some well. He could hear that Mr. Tottenham went on speaking, and the hum of his voice made,as it were, a running accompaniment to his own hubbub of inarticulate thoughts; Edgar heard it, yet heard it not. When he woke up from this confusion, it was quite suddenly, by reason of a pause in the accompanying voice. The last words his bewildered intelligence caught up were these:
“You will think it over, and tell me your decision later. You will understand that we both beg you to forgive us, if we have said or done anything which is disagreeable to you, Earnshaw. You promise me to remember that?”
“Disagreeable!” Edgar murmured half consciously. “Why should it be disagreeable?” but even his own voice seemed to be changed in his own ear as he said it. He was all changed, and everything about him. “I must go across to the pond before I go in,” he added, somewhat abruptly. “I promised Philip to look at the ice;” and with scarcely any further excuse, set off across the grass, from which the whiteness and crispness of the morning frosts had been stolen away by the sun. He could not get free of the physical sensation of having fallen. He seemed to himself to be bruised and shaken; he could do nothing with his mind but realize and identify his state; he could not discuss it with himself. It did not seem to him even that he knew what he had been thinking of, what he had been hoping; he knew only that he had fallen from some strange height, and lay at the bottom somewhere, aching and broken in heart and strength, stunned by the fall, and so confused that he did not know what had happened to him,or what he must do next. In this state of mind he walked mechanically across the grass, and gazed at the frozen pond, without knowing what he was doing, and then strode mechanically away from it, and went home. (How soon we begin to call any kind of a place home, when we have occasion to use it as such!). He went home, back to his room, the room which surely, he thought to himself, was too good for Mr. Tottenham’s tutor, which was the post he had been asked to occupy. Mr. Tottenham’s boy’s tutor, that was the phrase.
It was his own repetition of these words which roused him a little; the tutor in the house; the handy man who was made to do everything; the one individual among the gentlemen of the house whom it was possible to order about; who was an equal, and yet no equal. No, Edgar said to himself, with a generous swelling of his heart, it was not thus that a dependent would be treated in Mr. Tottenham’s house; but the very idea of being a dependent struck him with such sharp poignancy of surprise, as well as pain, that he could not calm himself down, or make the best of it. He had never tasted what this was like yet. When he had made his application to Lord Newmarch, the experience had not been a pleasant one; but it was short at least, and the position he had hoped for had been independent at least. In it, he would have been no man’s servant, but the Queen’s, whom all men delight to serve. Mr. Tottenham’s tutor was a very different thing.
He sat at his window, and heard without knowing the great luncheon-bell peal out through all the echoes. He felt that he could not go downstairs to confront them all, while still in the confusion and stupor of his downfall; for he had sustained a downfall more terrible than anyone knew, more bewildering than he could even realize himself; from vague, strange, delicious suspicions of something coming which might change all his life, down to a sickening certainty of something come, which would indeed change everything in every way, in the estimation of the world and of himself.
Mr. Tottenham walked home very seriously on his side, after this interview. He had some sort of comprehension that the proposal he had just made was one which, at the first hearing, would not delight his new friend; and he was sufficiently friendly and large-minded to permit the young man a little moment of ruffled pride, a little misery, even a little offence, before he could make up his mind to it, notwithstanding that it was, on the part of the Tottenhams, an impulse of almost pure and unmixed charity and kindness which had suggested it. They were impulsive people both, and fond of making themselves the Providence of poorer people; and the very best thing that can be said of them, better even than their universal and crotchety willingness to serve everybody who came in their way, was their composure when the intended recipients of their bounty hesitated, or, as sometimes happened, kicked at it altogether. Their kindnesses, their bounties, their crotchets, and their theories were all mixed up together, and might occasionally be less good, anddo less good than they were meant to do; but the toleration which permitted a prospectiveprotégéto weigh the benefit offered, without any angry consciousness of his want of gratitude, was admirable, and much more unusual in this world than even the kindness itself. Mr. Tottenham hurried off to his wife, and told her all about it; and the two together waited for Edgar’s decision with sympathetic excitement, almost as much disturbed in their minds as he was, and with no indignant feeling that their good intentions were having scanty justice. On the contrary, they discussed the matter as they might have done something in which theiramour proprewas not at all engaged.
“I hope he will see it is the best thing for him,” said Mr. Tottenham.
“Of course it is the best thing for him, and he must see it,” said the more impetuous Lady Mary; but neither one nor the other declared that he would be a fool or ungrateful if he neglected this opening, as so many intending benefactors would. They discussed it all the afternoon, taking their Sunday stroll together through the greenhouses, which were splendid, and talking of nothing but Edgar.
“He must do it; we must insist upon it, Tom,” Lady Mary cried, growing more and more eager.
“I cannot make him, dear, if he don’t see it,” said the husband, shaking his head.
Thus both upstairs and downstairs there was but one subject of consideration. The ugly things about dependence, about domestic slavery, aboutthe equal who would not be an equal, which Edgar was saying to himself, found no echo in the talk of the good people, full of wealth and power to benefit others, who puckered their brows on the subject downstairs. In this respect the thoughts of the poor man whom they wanted to befriend, were much less generous than theirs who wanted to befriend him. He judged them harshly, and they judged him kindly. He attributed intentions and motives to them which they were guiltless of, and thought of himself as degraded in their eyes by the kindness they had offered; while, in fact, he had become a most important person to them, solely on that account—a person occupying a superior position, with power to decide against or for them, to honour or discredit their judgment. Indeed, I am bound to allow that Edgar was not generous at all at this moment of his career, and that his hosts were. But ah me! it is so much easier to be generous, to be tolerant, to think the best, when you are rich and can confer favours; so difficult to keep up your optimist views, and to see the best side of everything, when you are poor!
“He will either come down and tell us that he accepts, or he will pack his things and go off to-night,” said Lady Mary as they waited. They were seated in the conservatory, in the centre circle under the glittering glass dome, which had been built to give room for the great feathery branches of a palm tree. This was the favourite spot in which all the pretty luxury of these conservatories culminated. Some bright-coloured Persian rugs were laid on thefloor, here and there, upon which were some half-dozen chairs, half rustic and wholly luxurious. All the flowers that art can extract or force from nature in the depth of Winter were grouped about, great moon-discs of white camellias, heaths covered with fairy bells, spotless primulas rising from out the rough velvet of their leaves. The atmosphere was soft as a moderate gentle Summer, and the great palm leaves stirred now and then against the high dome of glass. Mr. Tottenham lounged on a rustic sofa, with a cloud of anxiety on his face, and Lady Mary, too anxious to lounge, sat bolt upright and listened. Why were those good people anxious? I cannot tell; they wanted, I suppose, to succeed in this good action which they had set their hearts on doing; they did not want to be foiled; and they had set their hearts upon delivering Edgar from his difficulties, and making him comfortable. Along with their other sentiments there was mixed a certain generous fear lest they should have been precipitate, lest they should have hurt the feelings and wounded the pride of their friend whom they wished to serve. I wish there were more of such people, and more of such susceptibilities in the world.
They sat thus, until the twilight grew so deep and shadowy that they could scarcely see each other. It was very cold outside, where everything began again to congeal and whiten, and all the world resigned itself with a groan to the long, long interval of dead darkness, hopelessness, and cold which must deepen before day. At the end of a vista of shrubs and great evergreen plants, the redglow of the drawing-room fire shone out, shining there like a ruddy star in the distance. Lady Mary drew her shawl round her with a little shiver, and her husband got up and yawned in the weariness of suspense. Had he gone away without giving an answer? Had they done nothing but harm, though they had wished so much to do good. They both started like a couple of guilty conspirators when at length a step was heard approaching, and Edgar appeared, half hesitating, half eager, against the glow of the distant fire.
I neednot 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 somuch 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 thescheme 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 youto 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 notthe 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, whatdoes 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 asher 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 howshe 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 afterthem 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.”
Tottenham’sis situated in one of the great thoroughfares which lead out of the heart of London, towards one of its huge suburbs. It consists of an immense square pile of building, facing to four different streets, with frontage of plate-glass windows, and masses of costly shawls and silks appearing through. To many people, but these were mostly ladies, Tottenham’s was a kind of fairyland. It represented everything, from substantial domestic linen to fairy webs of lace, which money could buy. In the latter particular, it is true, Tottenham’s was limited; it possessed only the productions of modern fingers, the filmy fabrics of Flanders and France; but its silks, its velvets, its magnificences of shawl and drapery, its untold wealth in the homelier shape of linen and cambric, were unsurpassed anywhere, and the fame of them had spread throughout London, nay, throughout England. The name of this great establishment caused a flutter of feeling through all the Home Counties, and up even to the Northern borders. People sent their orders to Tottenham’s from every direction of the compass. The mass of its clients were, perhaps, not highly fashionable, though even thecrême de la crêmesometimes madea raid into the vast place, which was reported cheap, and where fashionable mothers were apt to assure each other that people, who knew what was what, might often pick up very nice things indeed at half the price which Élise would ask, not to speak of Worth. Persons who know what Worth has last invented, and how Élise works, have an immense advantage in this way over their humble neighbours. But the humble neighbours themselves were very good customers, and bought more largely, if with less discrimination. And the middle class, like one man, or rather like one woman, patronized Tottenham’s. It bought its gowns there, and its carpets and its thread and needles, everything that is wanted, in a house. It provided its daughters’trousseaux, and furnished its sons’ houses out of this universal emporium; not the chairs and tables, it is true, but everything else. The arrangements of the interior were so vast and bewildering as to drive a stranger wild, though thehabituésglided about from counter to counter with smiling readiness. There were as many departments as in the Home Office, but everybody looked after his own department, which is not generally the case in the Imperial shop; and the hum of voices, the gliding about of many feet, the rustle of many garments, the vague sound and sentiment of a multitude pervaded the alleys of counters, the crowded passages between, where group was jostled by group, and not an inch of space left unoccupied.
Edgar’s entrance into this curious unexplored world, which he had been brought here expresslyto “take an interest” in, was made through a private way, through the counting-house, where many clerks sat at their desks, and where all was quiet and still as in a well-ordered merchant’s office. Mr. Tottenham had a large room, furnished with the morocco-covered chairs and writing-tables consecrated to such places, but with more luxury than usual; with Turkey carpets on the floor, and rich crimson curtains framing the great window, which looked into a small court-yard surrounded with blank walls. Here Mr. Tottenham paused to look over a bundle of business letters, and to hear some reports that were brought to him by the heads of departments. These were not entirely about business. Though the communications were made in a low voice, Edgar could not help hearing that Mr. So-and-So was in question here, and Miss Somebody there.
“If something is not done, I don’t think the other young ladies will stand it, Sir,” said a grave elderly gentleman, whom Edgar, eyeing him curiously, felt that he would have taken at least for a Member of Parliament.
“I will look into it, Robinson. You may make your mind quite easy. I will certainly look into it,” said Mr. Tottenham, with such a look as the Chancellor of the Exchequer may put on when he anticipates a failure in the revenue.
“You see, Sir,” added Mr. Robinson, “a piece of scandal about any of the young ladies is bad enough; but when it comes to be the head of a department, or at least, one of the heads—and you remember it was all our opinions that Miss Lockwood was just the fit person for the place. I had a little difficulty myself on the point, for Miss Innes had been longer in the establishment; but as for being ladylike-looking, and a good figure, and a good manner, there could, of course, be no comparison.”
“I will look into it, I will look into it,” said Mr. Tottenham, hurriedly.
The head of a State has to bear many worries, in small things as well as in great; and the head of Tottenham’s was less a constitutional than a despotic ruler. Limited Monarchies do not answer, it must be allowed, on a small scale. The respectable Mr. Robinson withdrew to one side, while other heads of departments approached the Sultan of the Shop. Edgar looked on with some amusement and a good deal of interest. Mr. Tottenham was no longer speculative and viewy. He went into all the business details with a precision which surprised his companion, and talked of the rise in silks, and the vicissitudes in shirtings, with very much more apparent perception of the seriousness of the matter than he had ever evidenced in the other Tottenham’s, the wealthy house in which the shopkeeper lived as princes live. Edgar would have retired when these business discussions, or rather reports and audiences, began; but Mr. Tottenham restrained him with a quick look and gesture, motioning him to a seat close to his own.
“I want you to see what I have to do,” he said in a rapid interjection between one conference and another.
The last of all was a young man, studiously elegant in appearance, and in reality, as Edgar found out afterwards, the fine gentleman of the establishment, who had charge of the recreations of “the assistants,” or rather theemployés, which was the word Mr. Watson preferred. Mr. Tottenham’s face lighted up when this functionary approached him with a piece of paper, written in irregular lines, like a programme, in his hand—and it was the programme of the next evening entertainment, to be given in the shop and for the shop. Mr. Watson used no such vulgar phraseology.
“Perhaps, Sir, you will kindly look over this, and favour us with any hint you may think necessary?” he said. “Music is always popular, and as we have at present a good deal of vocal talent among us, I thought it best to utilize it. The part-songs please the young ladies, Sir. It is the only portion of the entertainment in which they can take any active share.”
“Then by all means let us please the ladies,” said Mr. Tottenham. “Look, Earnshaw; this is an entertainment which we have once a month. Ah, Watson, you are down, I see, for a solo on your instrument?”
“I find it popular, Sir,” said Mr. Watson, with a smirk. “The taste for music is spreading. The young ladies, Sir, are anxious to know whether, as you once were good enough to promise, her Ladyship is likely this time to do us the honour—”
“Oh, yes, Watson; you may consider that settled; my wife is coming,” said Mr. Tottenham.“Trial Scene in Pickwick? Yes; very well, very well. Duet, Mr. Watson and Miss Lockwood. Ah! I have been just hearing something about Miss Lockwood—”
“She has enemies, Sir,” said Mr. Watson, flushing all over. He was a fair young man, and the colour showed at once in his somewhat pallid complexion. “In an establishment like this, Sir—a little world—where there are so manyemployés, of course, she has her enemies.”
“That may be,” said Mr. Tottenham, musing. “I have not inquired into it yet; but in the meantime, if there is any latent scandal, wouldn’t it be better that she took no public part?”
“Oh, of course, Sir!” cried Watson, bundling up his papers; “if she is to be condemned unheard—”
Robinson, the respectable Member of Parliament, approached anxiously at this.
“I assure you, Mr. Tottenham,” he cried, with a warmth of sincerity which appeared to come from the bottom of his heart, “I don’t want to judge Miss Lockwood, or any other young lady in the establishment; but when things come to my ears, I can’t but take notice of them. The other young ladies have a right to be considered.”
“It is jealousy, Sir; nothing but jealousy!” cried Watson; “because she’s a deal more attractive than any of ’em, and gets more attention—”
“Softly, softly,” said Mr. Tottenham. “This grows serious. I don’t think I am apt to be moved by jealousy of Miss Lockwood, eh, Watson? Youmay go now, and if you know anything about the subject, I’ll see you afterwards.”
“I know as she’s the best saleswoman, and the most ladylike-looking young lady in the house,” cried Watson; and then he perceived his slip of grammar, and blushed hotter than ever; for he was an ambitious young man, and had been instructed up to the point of knowing that his native English stood in need of improvement, and that bad grammar was against his rising in life.
“That will do then; you can go,” said Mr. Tottenham. “Opinion is not evidence. Come, Robinson, if it’s making a feud in the house, I had better, I suppose, go into it at once.”
“And I, perhaps, had better withdraw too,” said Edgar, whom this strange and sudden revelation of human tumults going on in the great house of business had interested in spite of himself.
“Stay; you are impartial, and have an unbiassed judgment,” said Mr. Tottenham. “Now, Robinson, let us hear what you have got to say.”
Robinson approached with a world of care upon his face. Edgar having allowed his fancy to be taken possession of by the Member-of-Parliament theory, could not help the notion that this good worried man had risen to call for a Committee upon some subject involving peril to the nation, some mysterious eruption of Jesuits or Internationalists, or Foreign Office squabble. He was only the head of the shawl and cloak department in Tottenham’s; but it is quite marvellous how muchhumanity resembles itself, though the circumstances were so unlike.
Mr. Robinson had not much more than begun his story. He was in the preamble, discoursing, as his prototype in the House of Commons would have done, upon the general danger to society which was involved in carelessness and negligence of one such matter as that he was about to bring before the House—when a tap was heard at the door, a little sharp tap, half defiant, half coquettish, sounding as if the applicant, while impatient for admittance, might turn away capriciously, when the door was opened. Both the judge and the prosecutor evidently divined at once who it was.
“Come in,” said Mr. Tottenham; “Come in!” for the summons was not immediately obeyed.
Then there entered a—person, to use the safe yet not very respectful word which Mr. J. S. Mill rescued from the hands of flunkeys and policemen—a female figure, to speak more romantically, clad in elegant black silken robes, very well made, with dark hair elaborately dressed; tall, slight, graceful, one of those beings to be met with everywhere in the inner recesses of great shops like Tottenham’s, bearing all the outward aspect of ladies, moving about all day long upon rich carpets, in a warm luxurious atmosphere, “trying on” one beautiful garment after another, and surveying themselves in great mirrors as they pass and repass. The best of feminine society ebbs and flows around these soft-voiced and elegant creatures—duchesses, princesses, who look like washerwomen beside them, and younggirls often not more pretty or graceful. They are the Helots of the female fashionable world, and, at the same time, to some degree, its despots; for does not many a dumpy woman appear ridiculous in the elegant garb which was proved before her eyes so beautiful and becoming upon the slim straight form of the “young person” who exhibited and sold if?
Miss Lockwood entered, with her head well up, in one of the attitudes which are considered most elegant in those pretty coloured pictures of the “Modes,” which, to her class of young ladies, are as the Louvre and the National Gallery thrown into one. She was no longer, except from a professional point of view, to be considered absolutely as a “young lady.” Her face, which was a handsome face, was slightly worn, and her age must have been a year or two over thirty; but, as her accuser admitted, and as her defender asserted, a more “ladylike-looking” person, or a better figure for showing off shawl or mantle had never been seen in Tottenham’s or any other house of business. This was her great quality. She came in with a little sweep and rustle of her long black silken train; her dress, like her figure, was her stock-in-trade.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said in an abrupt yet airy tone, angry yet sensible withal of those personal advantages which made it something of a joke that anyone should presume to find fault with her. “I hear my character is being taken awaybehind my back, and I have come, please, to defend myself.”
Edgar looked at this kind of being, which was new to him, with a mixture of feelings. She had the dress and appearance of a lady, and she was unquestionably a woman, though she would have scorned so common a name. He rose from his seat when she came in with the intention of getting a chair for her, as he would have done to any other lady, but was deterred, he could scarcely tell why, by her own air and that of the other two men who looked at her without budging.
“Sit down, sit down,” said Mr. Tottenham hastily, aside to him, “of course I know what you mean, but that sort of thing does not do. It makes them uncomfortable; sit down; she will give us trouble enough, you will see.”
Edgar, however, could not go so far as to obey. He kept standing, and he saw the new-comer look at him, and look again with a lighting up of her face as though she recognised him. So far as he was aware he had never seen her before in his life.
“Miss Lockwood, I do not think this is how you should speak,” said her employer, “you know whether I am in the habit of permitting anybody’s character to be taken away, without giving the accused full opportunity to defend themselves.”
“Oh yes, Sir, to defend themselves,” she said with a toss of her head, “after all the harm’s done, and things has been said that can’t be unsaid. You know as well as I do, Sir, it’s all up with a younglady the moment things has been spoke of publicly against her.”
“I hope not so bad as that,” said Mr. Tottenham mildly. He was a little afraid of the young lady, and so was the worthy parliamentary Robinson, who had withdrawn a step behind backs, when interrupted in his speech.
“Well, Mr. Tottenham! and what does it mean, Sir, when you put a stop to my duet, me and Mr. Watson’s duet, and say it’s best I shouldn’t take part publicly? Isn’t that judging me, Sir, before ever hearing me—and taking all the stories as is told against me for true?”
“I know none of the stories yet,” said Mr. Tottenham, “pray compose yourself. Mr. Robinson was going to explain to me; but as you are here, if it will at all save your feelings, I am quite ready to hear your story first.”
“Mr. Tottenham, Sir!” said Mr. Robinson, roused to speech.
“Well! you can have no motive, and I can have no motive, but to come to the truth. Take a seat, Miss Lockwood, I will not keep you standing; and begin—
“Begin what?” the young woman faltered. “Oh, I am not going to be the one to begin,” she said saucily, “nobody’s obliged to criminate himself. And how can I tell what my enemies are saying against me? They must speak first.”
“Then, Robinson, do you begin,” said the master; but it was easier in this case to command than to obey. Robinson shifted from one foot to the other,he cleared his throat, he rubbed his hands. “I don’t know that I can, before her,” he said hoarsely, “I have daughters of my own.”
“I knew,” said the culprit in triumphant scorn, “that you daren’t make up any of your stories before my face!”
Robinson restrained himself with an effort. He was a good man, though the fuss of the incipient scandal was not disagreeable to him. “It’s—it’s about what is past, Sir,” he said hurriedly, “there is no reflection on Miss Lockwood’s conduct now. I’d rather not bring it all up here, not before strangers.”
“You may speak before as many strangers as you please, I sha’n’t mind,” said the accused, giving Edgar a glance which bewildered him, not so much for the recognition which was in it, as for a certain confidence and support which his appearance seemed to give her. Mr. Tottenham drew him aside for a moment, whispering in his ear.
“She seems to know you, Earnshaw?”
“Yes; but I don’t know how. I never saw her before.”
“I wonder—perhaps, if I were to take Robinson away and hear his story—while you might hear what she has to say?”
“I? But indeed I don’t know her, I assure you I have never seen her before,” said Edgar in dismay.
“Never mind, she knows you. She is just the sort of person to prefer to confide in one whom she does not see every day. I’ll leave you with her,Earnshaw. Perhaps it will be best if you step this way, Robinson; I shall hear what you have to say here.”
Robinson followed his superior promptly into a smaller room. Edgar was left with the culprit; and it is scarcely possible to realize a less comfortable position. What was he to do with her? He was not acquainted either with her or her class; he did not know how to address her. She looked like a lady, but yet was not a lady, and for the present moment she was on her trial. Was he to laugh, as he felt inclined to do, at the shabby trick his friend had played him, or was he to proceed gravely with his mission? Miss Lockwood solved this question for herself.