Hard Cash Part 113

"No, it is you who are our enemy with your unreasonable impatience."

"I am not so cold-blooded as you are, certainly."

"Humility and penitence would become you better than to retort on me. I love you both, and pray G.o.d on my knees to show me how to do my duty to both."

"That is it; you are not single-hearted like me. You want to please all the world, and reconcile the irreconcilable. It won't do: you will have to choose between your mother and me at last."

"Then of course I shall choose my mother."

"Why?"

"Because she claims my duty as well as my love; because she is bowed down with sorrow, and needs her daughter just now more than you do; besides, you are my other self, and we must deny ourselves."

"We have no more right to be unjust to ourselves than to anybody else; injustice is injustice."

"Alfred, you are a high-minded Heathen, and talk Morality. Morality is a snare. What I pray to be is a Christian, as your dear sister was, and to deny myself; and you make it, oh so difficult."

"So I suppose it will end in turning out your heathen and then taking your curate. Your mother would consent to that directly."

"Alfred," said Julia with dignity, "these words are harsh, and--forgive me for saying so--they are coa.r.s.e. Such words would separate us two, without my mother, if I were to hear many of them; for they take the bloom off affection, and that mutual reverence, without which no gentleman and lady could be blessed in holy wedlock."

Alfred was staggered and mortified too: they walked on in silence now.

"Alfred," said Julia at last, "do not think me behind you in affection, but wiser, for once, and our best friend. I do think we had better see less of one another for a time, my poor Alfred."

"And why for a time? Why not for ever?"

"If your heart draws no distinction, why not indeed?"

"So be it then: for I will be no woman's slave. There's my hand, Julia: let us part friends."

"Thank you for that, dear Alfred: may you find some one who can love you more--than--I do."

The words choked her. But he was stronger, because he was in a pa.s.sion.

He reproached her bitterly. "If I had been as weak and inconstant as you are, I might have been out of Drayton House long before I did escape.

But I was faithful to my one love. I have some right to sing 'Aileen Aroon,' you have none. You are an angel of beauty and goodness; you will go to Heaven, and I shall go to the devil now for want of you; but then you have no constancy nor true fidelity: so that has parted us, and now nothing is left me but to try and hate you."

He turned furiously on his heel.

"G.o.d bless you, go where you will," faltered Julia.

He replied with a fierce e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of despair, and dashed away.

Thus temper and misunderstanding triumphed, after so many strange and bitter trials had failed.

But alas! it is often so.

CHAPTER XLIX.

Both the parted lovers were wretched. Julia never complained, but drooped, and read the Psalms, and Edward detected her in tears over them. He questioned her and obtained a lame account; she being far more bent on screening Alfred than on telling the truth.

Edward called on the other; and found him disconsolate, and reading a Heathen philosopher for comfort, and finding none. Edward questioned him, and he was reserved and even sulky. Sir Imperturbable persisted quietly, and he exploded, and out came his wrongs. Edward replied that he was a pretty fellow: wanted it all his own way. "Suppose my mother, with her present feelings, was to take a leaf out of your book, and use all her power; where would you be then? Come, old fellow, I know what love is, and one of us _shall_ have the girl he loves, unless any harm should come to my poor father owing to your blunder--oh, that would put it out of the question, I feel--but let us hope better. I pulled you out of the fire, and somehow I seem to like you better than ever after that; let me pull you out of this mess too."

"Pull away," cried the impetuous youth. "I'll trust you with my life: ay, with more than my life, with my love; for you are the man for me: reason is always uppermost with you:

Give me the man that is not pa.s.sion's slave, And I will wear him in my heart's core, ay----"

"Oh bother that. If you are in earnest, don't mouth, but put on your hat and come over."

He a.s.sented; but in the middle of putting on his coat, made this little observation: "Now I see how wise the ancients were: yes, friendship is better than love; calmer, more constant, free from the heats and chills of that impetuous pa.s.sion; its pure bosom is ruffled by none of love's jealousies and irritabilities. Solem e mundo tollunt qui tollunt amicitiam."

"Oh bother quoting; come and shake hands with Julia." They went over; Mrs. Dodd was in the city. Edward ushered in Alfred, saying, "Here is the other Impetuosity;" and sagely retired for a few minutes. When he came back they were sitting hand in hand, he gazing on her, she inspecting the carpet. "That is all right," said Edward drily: "now the next thing is, you must go back to Oxford directly, and read for your first cla.s.s."

The proposal fell like a blight upon the reconciled lovers. But Edward gave potent reasons. The delays of law were endless: Alfred's defendant had already obtained one postponement of the trial on frivolous grounds.

Now the Oxford examination and Doncaster races come on at a fixed date, by a Law of Nature, and admit of no "postponement swindle." "You mark my words, you will get your cla.s.s before you will get your trial, and it won't hurt you to go into court a first-cla.s.s man: will it? And then you won't quarrel by letter, you two; I know. Come, will you do what I tell you: or is friendship but a name? eh, Mr. Bombast?" He ended with great though quiet force: "Come, you two, which is better, to part like the scissors, or part like the thread?"

Similes are no arguments; that is why they convince people so: Alfred capitulated to the scissors and thread; and only asked with abnormal humility to be allowed to taste the joys of reconciliation for two days.

The third found him at Oxford; he called on the head of his college to explain what had prevented his return to Exeter in the October term twelve months ago, and asked for rooms. Instead of siding with a man of his own college so cruelly injured, the dignitary was alarmed by the bare accusation, and said he must consider: insanity was a terrible thing.

"So is false accusation, and so is false imprisonment," said Hardie bitterly.

"Unquestionably. But I have at present no means of deciding how far those words apply." In short, he could give no answer; must consult the other officers, and would convey the result by letter.

Alfred's pride was deeply mortified, not less by a certain cold repugnant manner than by the words. And there came over his heart a sickening feeling that he was now in the eyes of men an intellectual leper.

He went to another college directly, and applied to the vice-president, the vice-president sent him with a letter to the dean; the dean looked frightened; and told him hesitatingly the college was full; he might put his name down, and perhaps get in next year. Alfred retired, and learned from the porter that the college was not full. He sighed deeply, and the sickening feeling grew on him; an ineradicable stigma seemed upon him, and Mrs. Dodd was no worse than the rest of the world then; every mother in England would approve her resolutions. He wandered about the scenes of his intellectual triumphs: he stood in the great square of the schools, a place ugly to unprejudiced eyes, but withal somewhat grand and inspiring, especially to scholars who have fought their keen and bloodless battles there. He looked at the windows and gilt inscription of the Schola Metaphysices, in which he had met the scholars of his day and defeated them for the Ireland. He wandered into the theatre, and eyed the rostrum, whence he had not mumbled, but recited, his Latin prize poem with more than one thunder of academic applause: thunder compared with which Drury Lane's us a mere cracker. These places were unchanged; but he, sad scholar, wandered among them as if he was a ghost, and all these were stony phantoms of an intellectual past, never, never to return.

He telegraphed Sampson and Edward to furnish him with certificates that he had never been insane, but the victim of a foul conspiracy; and, when he received them, he went with them to St. Margaret's Hall; for he had bethought him that the new princ.i.p.al was a first-rate man, and had openly vowed he would raise that "refuge for the oft-times phoughed" to a place of learning.

Hardie called, sent in his card, and was admitted to the princ.i.p.al's study. He was about to explain who he was, when the doctor interrupted him, and told him politely he knew him by reputation. "Tell me rather,"

said he shrewdly, "to what I owe this application from an undergraduate so distinguished as Mr. Hardie?"

Then Alfred began to quake, and, instead of replying, put a hand suddenly before his face, and lost courage for one moment.

"Come, Mr. Hardie," said the princ.i.p.al, "don't be disconcerted: a fault regretted is half atoned; and I am not disposed to be hard on the errors of youth; I mean where there is merit to balance them."

"Sir," said Alfred sadly, "it is not a fault I have to acknowledge, but a misfortune."

"Tell me all about it," said Dr. Alder guardedly.

He told it, omitting nothing essential that could touch the heart or excite the ironical humour of an academician.

"Well, 'truth is more wonderful than fiction,'" said the doctor. And I conclude the readers of this tale are all of the doctor's opinion; so sweet to the mind is cant.