A Charming Fellow Volume Ii Part 8

"Of course, you know, I should hardly have ventured to aspire to such an idea quite una.s.sisted. And I believe I said something or other to my lady--very stumblingly, I have no doubt, for I remember feeling very much bewildered. I said some word about my being a poor devil with nothing in the world to offer to a lady in Miss Kilfinane's position--except, of course, my undying devotion. Only one cannot live altogether on that. But Lady Seely was very sanguine, and saw no difficulties. She said it could be managed. And she was right, you see.

Where there's a will, there's a way. And I am really to be married to Castalia to-morrow. It seems too good to be true!"

Lord Seely rose and faced the young man; and as he did so, his lordship looked really dignified; for the sincere feeling within him had for once obliterated his habitual uneasy self-consciousness.

"Ancram," he said, "I am afraid, from what Castalia tells me, that you are greatly dissatisfied with the position I have been able to procure for you."

"Oh, my lord, Castalia ought not to have said so! If she can content herself in it for a time, how can I venture to complain?"

"I am sorry to find," continued Lord Seely, "that your circ.u.mstances are more seriously embarra.s.sed than I thought."

"Are they, my lord? I profess I don't know how to disembarra.s.s them!"

"You are in debt----"

"I had the honour of avowing as much to your lordship when my marriage was first discussed; as you, doubtless, remember?"

"Yes; and you named a sum which I----"

"Which your lordship was kind enough to pay. Certainly."

"But it now appears that that sum did not cover the whole of your liabilities, Ancram. Castalia tells me that you have been annoyed by applications for money quite recently."

Algernon smiled, and put his head on one side, as if trying to recall a half-forgotten fact. "Well," said he at length, "upon my word I have forgotten the exact sum which I did name to your lordship, but I have no doubt it was correct at the time. The worst of it is, that my debts have this unfortunate peculiarity--they won't stay paid!"

"It is a great pity, Ancram, for a young man to get into the habit of thinking lightly of debt. It is, in fact," continued his lordship, growing graver and graver as he spoke, "a fatal habit of mind."

"My dear lord, I don't think lightly of it by any means! But, really--is it not best to accept the inevitable with some cheerfulness?"

"'The inevitable,' Ancram?"

"Yes, my lord; in my position, debt was inevitable. I could not be a member of your family circle, a frequent inmate of your house, doing the things you did, going where you went, without incurring some expense."

It was no want of tact which made Algernon speak thus plainly and coa.r.s.ely. He did not fail (as his mother might have done) to perceive that his words pained and mortified his hearer. He would by no means have aimed such a shaft at Lady Seely, knowing that nature had protected her feelings with a hide of some toughness; and knowing, moreover, that my lady would unhesitatingly have flung back some verbal missile, at least equally rough and heavy. But my lord was at once more vulnerable and more scrupulous. And although Algernon was the last person in the world to be guilty of gratuitous cruelty, yet, if one is to fight, one had best use the most effective weapons, and take advantage of any c.h.i.n.k in the enemy's armour to drive one's javelin home!

"I regret," said Lord Seely, with a little catching of the breath, like a man who has received a cold douche, "I deplore that your intimacy with my family should have led you into a false position."

"Not at all, my lord! My position in your family has been a very pleasant one."

"I ought, perhaps--it was my duty--to have inquired more particularly into your means, and to have ascertained whether they sufficed for the life you were leading in London. You were very young, and without experience. I--I reproach myself, Ancram."

"Don't do that, my lord! There is really no need. I'm sure n.o.body is the worse for the few pounds I owe at this moment: not even my tailor, who has cheated me handsomely, doing me the honour to treat me as one of your lordship's own cla.s.s!"

Lord Seely bent down his grey head and meditated with a pained and anxious face. Then he looked up, and said:

"You know, Ancram, that I am not a rich man for one in my station."

Algernon bowed gracefully.

"Had I been so, I should have made a settlement upon Castalia; but, although I have no daughters of my own to provide for," (with a little sigh) "yet my property is very strictly tied up. There are claims on it, too, of various sorts----" ("Lady Seely screws all she can out of him for that nephew of hers," was Algy's mental comment.) "And, in brief, I am not in a position to command any large sums of ready money. I believe I said as much to you before?"

Algernon bowed again and smiled.

"Well, I repeat it now, in order to impress on you the fact, that neither you nor Castalia must look to me for pecuniary help in the future."

"Oh, my lord----"

"I do not say that Castalia might not have a right to ask such help of me; but I merely a.s.sure you that it will be out of my power to grant it.

You, perhaps, scarcely realise how poor a man may be who has a fairly large rent-roll?"

"I think I have begun to realise it, my lord."

Lord Seely looked quickly into the young man's face, but it was smiling and inscrutable.

"Well," he resumed, "I will only add, that for this once, and presuming your present debts are not heavy----"

"Oh dear no! A trifle."

"I will discharge them if you will let me have the amount accurately. I have a great repugnance to the thought of Castalia--and you--beginning your married life in debt."

"A thousand thanks. It will be better for us to start fair."

"I hope, Ancram, that you will use every endeavour to live clearly within your means, and to make the best of your circ.u.mstances. The fact is, this marriage has been hurried on----"

Algernon did not answer in words; but he gave an expressive shrug and smile, which said, as plainly as possible, "I have not hurried it on!"

Lord Seely coloured deeply, and seemed to shrink bodily, as if he had received a blow. He went on hastily, and with less than his usual self-possession: "I--I have felt, rather than perceived, a--a little touch of bitterness in your manner lately. There, there, we will not quibble about the word! If not bitter, you have not been, at all events, in the frame of mind I wished and hoped to find you in. You are young; and youth is apt to be a little unreasonable in its expectations. I own--I admit--that your worldly position will not be--a--exactly brilliant. But I a.s.sure you that in these days there are many gentlemen of good abilities, and industry, who would be glad of it."

"Oh, I am fully aware of my good fortune, my lord! Besides, you know, this is only a stepping-stone."

"Yes; we--we hope so. But, Ancram--and this is what I had in my mind to say to you frankly--don't neglect or despise the present employment, in looking forward to something better."

"By no means!"

"For your own sake--your own sake, I earnestly advise you not to give way to a feeling of discontent."

"Do I look discontented? Upon my word, your lordship is doing me singular injustice!"

"There is a smiling discontent, as well as a frowning discontent: and I don't know but that it is the worst of the two."

Algernon laughed outright.

"Well," said he, "you must own that it is a little difficult to give satisfaction!"

His light smooth tone jarred disagreeably on Lord Seely. If the latter had thought to make any impression on the young man, to draw from him any outburst of feeling, he had signally failed. Algernon's words could not be objected to, but the tone in which they were uttered was completely nonchalant. His nonchalance increased in proportion to Lord Seely's earnestness. A year ago Algernon would have brought his manner into harmony with my lord's mood. He would have been grave, attentive, eager to show his appreciation of my lord's kindness, and his value for my lord's advice. But now there was some malice in his smiling good-humour; a little cruelty in the brightness of his unruffled serenity. He was genuinely tickled at seeing the pompous little n.o.bleman embarra.s.sed in speaking to him, Algernon Errington, and he enjoyed what comedy there might be in the situation none the less because his patron suffered.

In truth, Algernon was discontented. His was not a gnawing, black sort of discontent. He neither grew lean, nor yellow, nor morose; but his irony was sometimes flavoured with acidity; and instead of being easily tolerant of such follies as zeal, enthusiasm, or fervent reverence, he was now apt to speak of them with a disdainful superiority. And he had, too, an air of having washed his hands of any concern with his own career; of laying the responsibility on Destiny, or whomsoever it might concern; of awaiting, with sarcastic patience, the next turn of the wheel--as if life were neither a battle nor a march, but a gigantic game of rouge-et-noir, with terrible odds in favour of the bank.

Lord Seely was no match for this youth of two-and-twenty. Lord Seely had intended to impress him deeply; to read him a lecture, in which Olympian severity should be tempered by mercy; to convince him, by dignified and condescending methods, of his great good fortune in having secured the hand of Castalia Kilfinane of Kauldkail; and of his great unreasonableness (not to say presumption) in not accepting that boon on bended knee, instead of grumbling at being made postmaster of Whitford.

But in order to make an impression, it does not suffice to have tools only; the surface to be impressed must also exist, and be adapted to the operation. How impress the bright, cool, shining liquid bosom of a lake, for instance? Oar and keel, pebble and arrow, wind and current, are alike powerless to make a furrow that shall last.