Hester · Chapter 37 (2/3)

Hester could find no words in which to console this victim of the times. She listened indeed somewhat sternly, refusing compassion. “To be sure, there was poor Reginald, it was not his fault,” Emma sobbed. “If I should live to be a hundred I never should believe it was his fault. But, after all, he was very young, and he could have had no money to speak of, and what should I have done with him? So perhaps that was for the best. But then there was Dr. Morris, whom I could have got on with; that was his mother’s doing:⁠—ladies are always jealous, don’t you think?⁠—and I should not have minded that Captain Sedgely, that volunteer captain. But it is of no use talking, for this is my last Thursday. Oh, you don’t mind; you have a good home, and a mother, and everything you can desire. There is no hurry about you.”

Hester made no reply. It seemed to her that she would be willing to change lives even with Emma, to fall to her petty level, and estimate the chances of being settled, and count the men whom she could have managed to get on with, rather than carry on such an existence as hers. It was no glance of triumph, but one of humiliation, that she had cast, as they passed, upon the shuttered windows and close-drawn white draperies at the Grange. In her imagination she stole into the very bedchamber where Catherine had smiled to think of her disappointment, and delivered her soul of her secret. “I am not ashamed that we love each other: but I am ashamed that we have concealed it,” she imagined herself saying. She was very unhappy; there seemed no consolation for her anywhere. Edward had warned her in a hurried note that he was called to town. “I think it is coming at last,” he said. “I think we have made the grand coup at last.” He had said it so often that she had no faith in him; and how long was it to go on like this⁠—how long?

Meanwhile the house of the young Merridews was still ringing with mirth and music. There was no restraint, or reserve, or prudence or care-taking, from garret to basement. Algernon, the young husband who was now a father as well, had perhaps taken a little more champagne than usual in honour of his wife’s first reappearance after that arrival. She was so brave, so “plucky,” they all said, so unconventional, that she had insisted on the Thés Dansantes going on all the same, though she was unable to preside over them, and was still up, a little pale but radiant with smiles, at the last supper-table when everyone was gone. Harry had been looking very grave all the evening. He had even attempted a little lecture over that final family supper. “If I were you, Algy and Nell,” he said, “I’d draw in a little now. You’ve got your baby to think of⁠—save up something for that little beggar, don’t spend it all on a pack of fools that eat you up.”

“Oh, you old Truepenny,” Ellen said, without knowing what she meant, “you are always preaching. Hold your tongue, Algy, you have had too much wine; you ought to go to bed. If I can’t stand up for myself it’s strange to me. Who are you calling a pack of fools, Harry? It’s the only thing I call society in Redborough. All the other houses are as stiff as Spaniards. There is nobody but me to put a little life into them. They were all dead-alive before. If there’s a little going on now I think it’s all owing to me.”

“She is a wonderful little person is Nell,” cried her husband, putting a half-tipsy arm round her. “She has pluck for anything. To think she should carry on just the same, to let the rest have their pleasure when she was upstairs. I am proud of her, that is what I am. I am proud⁠—”

“Oh, go to bed, Algy! If you ever do this again I will divorce you. I won’t put up with you. Harry, shut up,” said the young mistress of the house, who was fond of slang. “I can look after my own affairs.”

“And as for the money,” said Algy, with a jovial laugh, “I don’t care a ⸻ for the money. Ned’s put me up to a good thing or two. Ned’s not very much on the outside, but he’s a famous good fellow. He’s put me up,” he said, with a nod and broad smile of good humour, “to two⁠—three capital things.”

“Ned!” cried Harry, almost with a roar of terror and annoyance, like the cry of a lion. “Do you mean to say you’ve put yourself in Ned’s hands?”

Upon which Ellen jumped up, red with anger, and pushed her husband away. “Oh, go to bed, you stupid!” she cried.

Harry had lost all his colour; his fair hair and large light moustache looked like shadows upon his whiteness. “For God’s sake, Ellen!” he said; “did you know of this?”

“Know of what?⁠—it’s nothing,” she cried. “Yes, of course I know about it. I pushed him into it⁠—he knows I did. What have you got to do with where we place our money? You may be sure we shan’t want you to pay anything for us,” she said.

Harry had never resented her little impertinences; he had always been submissive to her. He shook his head now more in sorrow than in anger. “Let’s hope you won’t want anybody to pay for you,” he said, and kissed his sister and went away.

Harry had never been in so solemn a mood before. The foolish young couple were a little awed by it, but at last Ellen found an explanation. “It’s ever since he was godfather to baby. He thinks he will have to leave all his money to him,” she said; and the incident ended in one of Algy’s usual bursts of laughter over his wife’s bons mots.

Harry, however, took the matter a great deal more seriously; he got little or no sleep that night. In the morning he examined the letters with an alarmed interest. Edward was to be back that evening, it was expected, and there was a mass of his letters on his desk with which his cousin did not venture to interfere. Edward had a confidential clerk, who guarded them closely. “Mr. Edward did not think there would be anything urgent, anything to trouble you about,” he said, following Harry into the room with unnecessary anxiety. “I can find that out for myself,” Harry said, sharply, turning upon this furtive personage. But he did not meddle with any of the heap, though it was his right to do so. They frightened him, as though there had been infernal machines inside, as indeed he felt sure enough there were⁠—not of the kind which tear the flesh and fibre, but the mind and soul. When he went back to his room he received a visit very unexpectedly from the old clerk, Mr. Rule, with whom Hester had held so long a conversation on the night of the Christmas party. It was his habit to come now and then, to patronise everybody, from the youngest clerks to the young principals, shaking his white head and describing how things used to be “in John Vernon’s time.” Usually nobody could be more genial and approving than old Rule. He liked to tell his story of the great crisis, and to assure them that, thanks to Miss Catherine, such dangers were no longer possible. “A woman in the business just once in a way, in five or six generations,” he thought an admirable institution. “She looks after all the little things that you young gentlemen don’t think worth your while,” he said. But today Mr. Rule was not in this easy way of thinking. He wanted to know how long Edward had been gone, and where he was, and when he was expected back? He told Harry that things were being said that he could not bear to hear. “What is he doing away so often? Is it pleasure? is it horse-racing, or that sort of thing? Forgive me, Mr. Harry, but I’m so anxious I don’t know what I’m saying. You have always taken it easy, I know, and left the chief management to Mr. Edward. But you must act, sir, you must act,” the old clerk said.

Harry’s face had a sort of tragic helplessness in it. “He’s coming back tonight⁠—one day can’t matter so much. Oh, no, it’s not horse-racing, it’s business. Edward isn’t the sort of fellow⁠—”

“One day may make all the difference,” cried the old man, but the more fussy and restless he was, the more profound became Harry’s passive solemnity. When he had got rid of the old clerk he sat for a long time doing nothing, leaning his head in his hands: and at last he jumped up and got his hat, and declared that he was going out for an hour. “Several gentlemen have been here asking for Mr. Edward,” he was told as he passed through the outer office. “Mr. Merridew, sir, the old gentleman: Mr. Pounceby: and Mr. Fish has just been to know for certain when he will be back.” Harry answered impatiently what they all knew, that his cousin would be at the bank tomorrow morning, and that he himself would return within the hour. There were some anxious looks cast after him as he went away, the elder clerks making their comments. “If Mr. Edward’s headpiece, sir, could be put on Mr. Harry’s shoulders,” one of them said. They had no fear that he would be absent when there was any need for him, but then, when he was present, what could he do?

Harry went on with long strides past the Grange to the Heronry; it was a curious place to go for counsel. He passed Catherine sitting at her window, she who once had been appealed to in a crisis and had saved the bank. He did not suppose that things were so urgent now, but had they been so he would not have gone to Catherine. He thought it would break her heart. She had never been very kind to him, beyond the mere fact of having selected him from among his kindred for advancement; but Harry had a tender regard for Catherine, a sort of stolid immovable force of gratitude. His heart melted as he saw her seated in the tranquillity of the summer morning in the window, looking out upon everything with, he thought, a peaceful interest, the contemplative pleasure of age. It was not so, but he thought so⁠—and it seemed to him that if he could but preserve her from annoyance and disturbance, from all invasion of rumour or possibility of doubt as to the stability of Vernon’s, that there was nothing he would not endure. He made himself as small as he could, and got under the shadow of the trees that she might not observe him as he passed, and wonder what brought him that way, and possibly divine the anxiety that was in him. He might have spared himself the trouble. Catherine saw him very well, and the feeling that sprang up in her mind was bitter derision, mixed with a kind of unkindly pleasure. “If you think that you will get a look from her, when she has him at her feet?” Catherine said to herself, and though the idea that Hester had him at her feet was bitter to her, there was a pleasure in the contempt with which she felt Harry’s chances to be hopeless indeed. She was very ungrateful for his kindness, thinking of other things, quite unsuspicious of his real object. She smiled contemptuously to see him pass in full midday when he ought to have been at his work, but laughed, with a little aside, thinking, poor Harry, he would never set the Thames on fire, it did not matter very much after all whether he was there or not. The master head was absent, too often absent, but Edward had everything so well in hand that it mattered the less. “When he is settled he will not go away so often,” she said to herself. What a change it would have made in all her thoughts had she known the gloomy doubts and terrors in Harry’s mind, his alarmed sense that he must step into a breach which he knew not how to fill, his bewildered questionings with himself. If Edward did not turn up that night there would be nothing else for it, and what was he to do? He understood the common course of business, and how to judge in certain easy cases, but what to do in an emergency he did not know. He went on to the Heronry at a great rate, making more noise than anyone else would with the gate, and catching full in his face the gaze of those watchful observers who belonged to the place, Mr. Mildmay Vernon in the summerhouse with his newspaper, and the Miss Vernon-Ridgways at their open window. He thought they all rose at him like so many serpent-heads erecting themselves with a dart and hiss. Harry was so little fanciful that only an excited imagination could have brought him to this.

Mrs. John was in the verandah, gardening⁠—arranging the pots in which her pelargoniums were beginning to bloom. She would have had him stay and help her, asking many questions about Ellen and her baby which Harry was unable to answer.

“Might I speak to Hester?” he said. “I have no time to stay; I would like to see her for a moment.”

“What is it?” cried Mrs. John. Harry’s embarrassment, she thought, could only mean one thing⁠—a sudden impulse to renew the suit which Hester had been so foolish as to reject. She looked at him kindly and shook her head. “She is in the parlour; but I wouldn’t if I were you,” she said, her eyes moist with sympathy. It was hard upon poor Harry to be compelled thus to take upon himself the credit of a second humiliation.

“I should like to see her, please,” he answered, looking steadfastly into Mrs. John’s kind, humid eyes, as she shook her head in warning.

“Well, my dear boy; she is in the parlour. I wish⁠—I wish⁠—But, alas! there is no change in her, and I wouldn’t if I were you.”

“Never mind, a man can but have his chance,” said magnanimous Harry. He knew that few men would have done as much, and the sense of the sacrifice he was making made his heart swell. His pride was to go too; he was to be supposed to be bringing upon himself a second rejection; but “Never mind, it is all in the day’s work,” he said to himself, as he went through the dim passages and knocked at the parlour door.

Hester was sitting alone over a little writing-desk on the table. She was writing hurriedly, and he could see her nervous movement to gather together some sheets of paper, and shut them up in her little desk, when she found herself interrupted. She gave a great start when she perceived who it was, and sprang up, saying, “Harry!” breathlessly, as if she expected something to follow. But at first Harry was scarcely master of himself to speak. The girl he loved, the one woman who had moved his dull, good, tenacious heart⁠—she whom, he thought, he should be faithful to all his life, and never care for another; but he knew that her start, her breathless look, the colour that flooded her face, coming and going, were not for him, but for someone else, and that his question would plunge her into trouble too; that he would be to her henceforth as an emissary of evil, perhaps an enemy. All this ran through his mind as he stood looking at her and kept him silent. And when he had gathered himself together his mission suddenly appeared to him so extraordinary, so presumptuous, that he did not know how to explain it.

“You must be surprised to see me,” he said, hesitating. “I don’t know what you will think. You will understand I don’t mean any impertinence, Hester⁠—or prying, or that sort of thing.”

“I am sure you will mean to be kind, Harry; but tell me quick⁠—what is it?” she cried.

He sat down opposite, looking at her across the table. “It is only from myself⁠—nobody’s idea but mine; so you need not mind. It is just this, Hester, in confidence. Do you know where Edward is? It sounds impertinent, I know, but I don’t mean it. He’s wanted so badly at the bank. If you could give me an address where I could telegraph to him? Don’t be vexed; it is only that I am so stupid about business. I can do nothing out of my own head.”

“Is anything going wrong?” she cried, her lips quivering, her whole frame vibrating, she thought, with the beating, which was almost visible, of her heart.

“Well, things are not very right, Hester. I don’t know how wrong they are. I’ve been kept out of it. Oh, I suppose that was quite natural, for I am not much good. But if I could but telegraph to him at once, and make sure of getting him back⁠—”

“I think, Harry⁠—I have heard⁠—oh, I can’t tell you how! he is coming back tonight.”

“Are you quite sure? I know he’s expected, but then⁠—So many things might happen. But if he knew how serious it was all looking⁠—”