My Novel Part 79

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EGERTON.--"I have spoken."

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

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

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

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

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

EGERTON.--"What? Custom."

HARLEY.--"Martyr."

EGERTON.--"You say it: but turn to yourself; you have decided, then, to leave England next week?"

HARLEY (moodily).--"Yes. This life in a capital, where all are so active, myself so objectless, preys on me like a low fever. Nothing here amuses me, nothing interests, nothing comforts and consoles. But I am resolved, before it be too late, to make one great struggle out of the Past, and into the natural world of men. In a word, I have resolved to marry."

EGERTON.--"Whom?"

HARLEY (seriously).--"Upon my life, my dear fellow, you are a great philosopher. You have hit the exact question. You see I cannot marry a dream; and where, out of dreams, shall I find this 'whom'?"

EGERTON.--"You do not search for her."

HARLEY. "Do we ever search for love? Does it not flash upon us when we least expect it? Is it not like the inspiration to the muse? What poet sits down and says, 'I will write a poem'? What man looks out and says, 'I will fall in love'? No! Happiness, as the great German tells us, 'falls suddenly from the bosom of the G.o.ds;' so does love."

EGERTON.--"You remember the old line in Horace: 'The tide flows away while the boor sits on the margin and waits for the ford.'"

HARLEV.--"An idea which incidentally dropped from you some weeks ago, and which I have before half-meditated, has since haunted me. If I could but find some child with sweet dispositions and fair intellect not yet formed, and train her up according to my ideal. I am still young enough to wait a few years. And meanwhile I shall have gained what I so sadly want,--an object in life."

EGERTON.--"You are ever the child of romance. But what--"

Here the minister was interrupted by a messenger from the House of Commons, whom Audley had instructed to seek him on the bridge should his presence be required. "Sir, the Opposition are taking advantage of the thinness of the House to call for a division. Mr. ----- is put up to speak for time, but they won't hear him."

Egerton turned hastily to Lord L'Estrange. "You see, you must excuse me now. To-morrow I must go to Windsor for two days: but we shall meet on my return."

"It does not matter," answered Harley; "I stand out of the pale of your advice, O practical man of sense. And if," added Harley, with affectionate and mournful sweetness,--"if I weary you with complaints which you cannot understand, it is only because of old schoolboy habits.

I can have no trouble that I do not confide to you."

Egerton's hand trembled as it pressed his friend's, and without a word, he hurried away abruptly. Harley remained motionless for some seconds, in deep and quiet revery; then he called to his dog, and turned back towards Westminster.

He pa.s.sed the nook in which had sat the still figure of Despondency; but the figure had now risen, and was leaning against the bal.u.s.trade. The dog, who preceded his master, pa.s.sed by the solitary form and sniffed it suspiciously.

"Nero, sir, come here," said Harley.

"Nero,"--that was the name by which Helen had said that her father's friend had called his dog; and the sound startled Leonard as he leaned, sick at heart, against the stone. He lifted his head and looked wistfully, eagerly into Harley's face. Those eyes, bright, clear, yet so strangely deep and absent, which Helen had described, met his own, and chained them. For L'Estrange halted also; the boy's countenance was not unfamiliar to him. He returned the inquiring look fixed on his own, and recognized the student by the bookstall.

"The dog is quite harmless, sir," said L'Estrange, with a smile.

"And you call him 'Nero'?" said Leonard, still gazing on the stranger.

Harley mistook the drift of the question.

"Nero, sir; but he is free from the sanguinary propensities of his Roman namesake." Harley was about to pa.s.s on, when Leonard said falteringly,

"Pardon me, but can it be possible that you are one whom I have sought in vain on behalf of the child of Captain Digby?"

Harley stopped short. "Digby!" he exclaimed, "where is he? He should have found me easily. I gave him an address."

"Ah, Heaven be thanked!" cried Leonard. "Helen is saved--she will not die," and he burst into tears.