"My Novel" — Complete

CHAPTER X.

“But do come; change your dress, return and dine with me; you will have just time, Harley. You will meet the most eminent men of our party; surely they are worth your study, philosopher that you affect to be.”

Thus said Audley Egerton to Lord L’Estrange, with whom he had been riding (after the toils of his office). The two gentlemen were in Audley’s library,—Mr. Egerton, as usual, buttoned up, seated in his chair, in the erect posture of a man who scorns “inglorious ease;” Harley, as usual, thrown at length on the sofa., his long hair in careless curls, his neckcloth loose, his habiliments flowing simplex mundit is, indeed, his grace all his own; seemingly negligent, never slovenly; at ease everywhere and with every one, even with Mr. Audley Egerton, who chilled or awed the ease out of most people.

“Nay, my dear Audley, forgive me. But your eminent men are all men of one idea, and that not a diverting one, politics! politics! politics! The storm in the saucer.”

“But what is your life, Harley?—the saucer without the storm?”

“Do you know, that’s very well said, Audley? I did not think you had so much liveliness of repartee. Life! life! it is insipid, it is shallow,—no launching Argosies in the saucer. Audley, I have the oddest fancy—”

“That of course,” said Audley, dryly; “you never had any other. What is the new one?”

HARLEY (with great gravity).—“Do you believe in Mesmerism?”

AUDLEY.—“Certainly not.”

HARLEY.—“If it were in the power of an animal magnetizer to get me out of my own skin into somebody’s else! That’s my fancy! I am so tired of myself,—so tired! I have run through all my ideas,—know every one of them by heart. When some pretentious impostor of an idea perks itself up and says, ‘Look at me,—I ‘m a new acquaintance,’ I just give it a nod, and say ‘Not at all, you have only got a new coat on; you are the same old wretch that has bored me these last twenty years; get away.’ But if one could be in a new skin, if I could be for half-an-hour your tall porter, or one of your eminent matter-of-fact men, I should then really travel into a new world.’ Every man’s brain must be a world in itself, eh? If I could but make a parochial settlement even in yours, Audley,—run over all your thoughts and sensations. Upon my life, I ‘ll go and talk to that French mesmerizer about it.”

   [If, at the date in which Lord L’Estrange held this conversation
   with Mr. Egerton, Alfred de Musset had written his comedies, we
   should suspect that his lordship had plagiarized from one of them
   the whimsical idea that he here vents upon Audley. In repeating it,
   the author at least cannot escape from the charge of obligation to a
   writer whose humour is sufficiently opulent to justify the loan.]

AUDLEY (who does not seem to like the notion of having his thoughts and sensations rummaged, even by his friend, and even in fancy)—“Pooh, pooh, pooh! Do talk like a man of sense.”

HARLEY.—“Man of sense! Where shall I find a model? I don’t know a man of sense!—never met such a creature. Don’t believe it ever existed. At one time I thought Socrates must have been a man of sense: a delusion; he would stand gazing into the air, and talking to his Genius from sunrise to sunset. Is that like a man of sense? Poor Audley! how puzzled he looks! Well, I’ll try and talk sense to oblige you. And first” (here Harley raised himself on his elbow),—“first, is it true, as I have heard vaguely, that you are paying court to the sister of that infamous Italian traitor?”

“Madame di Negra? No: I am not paying court to her,” answered Audley, with a cold smile. “But she is very handsome; she is very clever; she is useful to me,—I need not say how or why; that belongs to my metier as a politician. But I think, if you will take my advice, or get your friend to take it, I could obtain from her brother, through my influence with her, some liberal concessions to your exile. She is very anxious to know where he is.”

“You have not told her?”

“No; I promised you I would keep that secret.”

“Be sure you do; it is only for some mischief, some snare, that she could desire such information. Concessions! pooh! This is no question of concessions, but of rights.”

“I think you should leave your friend to judge of that.”

“Well, I will write to him. Meanwhile, beware of this woman. I have heard much of her abroad, and she has the character of her brother for duplicity and—”

“Beauty,” interrupted Audley, turning the conversation with practised adroitness. “I am told that the count is one of the handsomest men in Europe, much handsomer than his sister still, though nearly twice her age. Tut, tut, Harley; fear not for me. I am proof against all feminine attractions. This heart is dead.”

“Nay, nay; it is not for you to speak thus,—leave that to me. But even I will not say it. The heart never dies. And you; what have you lost?—a wife; true: an excellent, noble-hearted woman. But was it love that you felt for her? Enviable man, have you ever loved?”

“Perhaps not, Harley,” said Audley, with a sombre aspect and in dejected accents; “very few men ever have loved, at least as you mean by the word. But there are other passions than love that kill the heart, and reduce us to mechanism.”

While Egerton spoke, Harley turned aside, and his breast heaved. There was a short silence; Audley was the first to break it.

“Speaking of my lost wife, I am sorry that you do not approve what I have done for her young kinsman, Randal Leslie.”

HARLEY (recovering himself with an effort).—“Is it true kindness to bid him exchange manly independence for the protection of an official patron?”

AUDLEV.—“I did not bid him. I gave him his choice. At his age, I should have chosen as he has done.”

HARLEY.—“I trust not; I think better of you. But answer me one question frankly, and then I will ask another. Do you mean to make this young man your heir?”

AUDLEY (with a slight embarrassment).—“Heir, pooh! I am young still. I may live as long as he—time enough to think of that.”

HARLEY.—“Then now to my second question. Have you told this youth plainly that he may look to you for influence, but not for wealth?”

AUDLEY (firmly).—“I think I have; but I shall repeat it more emphatically.”

HARLEY.—“Then I am satisfied as to your conduct, but not as to his. For he has too acute an intellect not to know what it is to forfeit independence; and, depend on it, he has made his calculations, and would throw you into the bargain in any balance that he could strike in his favour. You go by your experience in judging men; I by my instincts. Nature warns us as it does the inferior animals,—only we are too conceited, we bipeds, to heed her. My instincts of soldier and gentleman recoil from that old young man. He has the soul of the Jesuit. I see it in his eye, I hear it in the tread of his foot; volto sciolto he has not; i pensieri stretti he has. Hist! I hear now his step in the hall. I should know it from a thousand. That’s his very touch on the handle of the door.”

Randal Leslie entered. Harley—who, despite his disregard for forms, and his dislike to Randal, was too high-bred not to be polite to his junior in age or inferior in rank-rose and bowed. But his bright piercing eyes did not soften as they caught and bore down the deeper and more latent fire in Randal’s. Harley did not resume his seat, but moved to the mantelpiece, and leaned against it.

RANDAL.—“I have fulfilled your commissions, Mr. Egerton. I went first to Maida Hill, and saw Mr. Burley. I gave him the check, but he said it was too much, and he should return half to the banker; he will write the article as you suggested. I then—”

AUDLEY.—“Enough, Randal! we will not fatigue Lord L’Estrange with these little details of a life that displeases him,—the life political.”

HARLEY.—“But these details do not displease me; they reconcile me to my own life. Go on, pray, Mr. Leslie.”

Randal had too much tact to need the cautioning glance of Mr. Egerton. He did not continue, but said with a soft voice, “Do you think, Lord L’Estrange, that the contemplation of the mode of life pursued by others can reconcile a man to his own, if he had before thought it needed a reconciler?” Harley looked pleased, for the question was ironical; and if there was a thing in the world be abhorred, it was flattery.

“Recollect your Lucretius, Mr. Leslie, the Suave mare, etc., ‘pleasant from the cliff to see the mariners tossed on the ocean.’ Faith, I think that sight reconciles one to the cliff, though, before, one might have been teased by the splash from the spray, and deafened by the scream of the sea-gulls. But I leave you, Audley. Strange that I have heard no more of my soldier! Remember I have your promise when I come to claim it. Good-by, Mr. Leslie, I hope that Burley’s article will be worth the check.”

Lord L’Estrange mounted his horse, which was still at the door, and rode through the Park. But he was no longer now unknown by sight. Bows and nods saluted him on every side.

“Alas, I am found out, then,” said he to himself. “That terrible Duchess of Knaresborough, too—I must fly my country.” He pushed his horse into a canter, and was soon out of the Park. As he dismounted at his father’s sequestered house, you would have hardly supposed him the same whimsical, fantastic, but deep and subtle humourist that delighted in perplexing the material Audley, for his expressive face was unutterably serious. But the moment he came into the presence of his parents, the countenance was again lighted and cheerful. It brightened the whole room like sunshine.