Toward the end of April, there came an afternoon on which Christian seemed to himself to wake up of a sudden as from a harassed sleep.
He had been in England for over six months, when all at once he became conscious of this queer sensation: the experiences of his half year put themselves together before his mental eye in the aspect of a finished volume—of something definitely over and done with.
There was warm spring in the London air, and at first the vague feeling of unrest impressed him as a part of the general vernal effect. The device of taking a stroll through the parks, to note the early flowers and the wonderful infancy of leafage among the trees, seemed at the outset to fit this new mood that was upon him. Then abruptly he wearied of nature and turned his back upon it, driving in a hansom to his club. Here there was no one whom he knew, or at least cared to speak with. He sat for a time in the billiard-room, watching with profound inattention the progress of a game he knew nothing about. From this he wandered into the library, where some fierce-faced old gentlemen slept peacefully in armchairs about the alcoves. The sound of their breathing vexed him; he pretended to himself that otherwise he would have found solace in a book. The whim seized him to go home to his chambers, and have tea there comfortably in gown and slippers, and finish a novel Lady Milly Poynes had induced him to begin weeks before.
Once in his own easy-chair, the romance lying opened beside him, he put back his head, stretched his feet and yawned. He left untasted the tea which Falkner brought in; with fingers interlaced behind his neck he stared up at the blue of the sky through his window in formless rumination.
His earlier glimpses of London were dim enough memories now. The town had been described by his cousin Lingfield as empty when he arrived, and after a few days of desultory sight-seeing, he had been carried off to the earl of Chobham’s place in Derbyshire. Here, among people who behaved like kindly kinsmen to the young new-comer, yet failed to arouse much interest in his mind, he learned to shoot well enough to escape open protests by the autocratic head gamekeeper, and to keep his seat in the saddle after a fashion of his own. These acquirements stood him in good stead at the four or five other country houses to which the amiable Lingfield in due course led him. Without them, meager as they were, he would have been in a sorry plight indeed. They provided him with a certain semblance of justification for his presence among people who seemed incapable of amusing themselves or their guests in any other way. There were always ladies, it was true, and it was generally manifest to him that he might spend his time with them if he chose, but after a few tentative experiments he fell back upon the conviction that he did not know how to talk to English ladies. He drifted somehow through these months of hospitable entertainment, feeling that he had never known before what loneliness could mean.
When, at Christmas, he went to spend another fortnight with Emanuel, he had it in his heart to confess to disappointment, and even depression. He had not thus far fitted at all into the place which had been prepared for him, and he looked forward, with wistful eagerness, as he journeyed westward, to the balm of sympathy and tender comprehension with which Kathleen and Emanuel, dear people that they were, would soothe and heal his wounded self-consciousness. Somehow, the opportunity of unburdening his troubled mind, however, did not come to him. There were other guests, including Lord Julius, and such exceptional attention was devoted on the estates to elaborating the holiday festivities of the various villages, that no individual could hope to secure consideration for his own private emotions. It was sometimes suspected that Emanuel made so much of Christmas in his System, unconsciously no doubt, because the Jewish side of him felt the need of ostentation in its disavowal of theological prejudices. For whatever reason, the festival was observed here in a remarkable spirit. The little churches were embowered in holly and mistletoe, and were the scenes of numerous ornate services. There were processions, merry-makings, midnight visitations of the “waits,” concerts and dances throughout the week, and only the strictly necessary work of the community was performed meanwhile. On New Year’s Day the rejoicings culminated in a children’s carnival from one end of the property to the other, with big trees laden with lights and gifts in the German fashion, and exhibitions of the magic lantern, and other juvenile delights. The fortnight passed, and Christian returned to London, as has been said, without having anything like the intimate talk he had expected. Both Kathleen and Emanuel had seemed pleased with him; they had noted with approving comment his progress in the use of idiomatic English, and his rapid assimilation of the manners and bearing of those about him; they had heard none but welcome reports of him from outside, and made clear to him their gratification at the fact. Their smile for him was as affectionate, their display of pleasure in his presence as marked, as ever, but he had the sense, none the less, of something altered. Lord Julius bore him company on his journey to London, and after a brief halt, took him away again for another fortnight, this time at Brighton. He was no more successful with the father, in the matter of helpful confidences, than he had been with the son. It was impossible to tell the strong, big, redoubtable old gentleman of what he felt to be his weaknesses. A kind of desponding pride possessed him, and closed his lips. He was not happy, as he had supposed he would be, and he could not bring himself to feel that at any point the fault was his. It was the position that was incongruous. Yet how could he complain, or avow his discontent, without seeming an ingrate to the benefactors whose heart had been in the work of shaping and gilding that position for him?
Parliament met this year in January, and Christian saw now a London which he had not imagined to himself—for which nothing, indeed, had prepared him. There came all at once a great many invitations, and the young man, surprised and not a little dismayed, called Lord Lingfield to his assistance. The prospect unfolded to him by this accomplished professor of the proprieties was terrifying enough. At the end of a week Christian cried out that the reality was too much. But Lingfield could see no alternative to going on. “You will get used to it soon enough, now that you have once taken the plunge,” he assured him. “There are certain things that a fellow has to do, you know, when he’s in London in the season, or even now, in what you may call the half season, unless he’s going to chuck the thing altogether.” Christian replied with excitement that this was precisely what he wished to do. In his own mind he had already reached the point of debating whether he could honorably go on using the money placed to his credit at the bank, most of which was still there, if he fled from London, and even England.
Lord Lingfield was a fine young man, irreproachable in attire and manners, who expected to do something in politics, and who regarded his duty both to the future which he hoped to create for himself, and to the immediate present which had been created for him, with conscientious gravity. He had never thought of lightening or evading the tasks set before him; he had no perception whatever of the possibility of making such things easier for others. He assured Christian with gentle solemnity that desertion was not to be mentioned, and that even mitigation was undesirable. “It has all been arranged for you,” he urged. “Upon my word, you are very lucky. You have been to two houses already where I never get asked except to luncheon, and here is a card here which I could hardly believe my eyes to see To trifle with such chances would be simple madness. You will get to have all London at your fingers’ ends, your very first season. Such a start as you’re likely to have, I’ve never seen in my life. My dear fellow—you don’t understand what it means.”
“But I’m tired to death!” groaned Christian. “No doubt they are excellent people, but they weary me to the bone. The dinners, the calls, the receptions, the dances—I have no talent whatever for these things. It is very kind of these people—but I know I am ridiculous in it all. I give them no pleasure, and God knows I receive none. Then why must it go on? For whose benefit is it? I swear to you, I would not mind the labor and fatigue, if it was any good that I was doing. Emanuel, for example, toils like a slave, but then his work has great results. But this of mine——!”
“Ah, yes,” interposed Lingfield, smilingly. “But Emanuel could never have made much running in London. He disputes with people too much, don’t you know. They don’t like that. And I think you make much too hard work of it all. There’s no need for you to talk, you know. It isn’t expected of you. And I don’t see why you can’t move quietly along, going everywhere, being seen at the right places, and being civil to everybody, and not worry yourself at all. That’s what you need, my dear boy—repose! Let the other people do the worry. Now, of course, in a case like Dicky Westland’s it’s different. He has to be amusing and useful, or he wouldn’t get asked. But you are not on all fours with him at all. To tell the truth—no doubt it’ll sound strange to you, but it is the truth all the same—it’s better form for you not to be amusing, or brilliant, or that sort of thing. Fellows in your place don’t go in for it, you know.”
Christian sighed, and chafing at the necessity of submission, still submitted.
Now, as he lay back in his chair, the retrospect was augmented by six other weeks, in which he had passively yielded to what Lingfield had assured him was the inevitable. He had dined out almost every-night, and had made countless calls. It seemed to him that he must have met everybody in this huge metropolis who had a pair of shoulders or possessed a dress coat. He yawned at the thought of them.
Was he not himself to blame for this? At Christmas time he had been quite confident in answering “no” to this question; now he did not feel so sure about it. At one place or another he had come into contact with most of the members of the government, and with many of those distinguished statesmen on the opposite bench who, by the grace of the genial British electorate, would be ministers next time. He had talked with eminent artists, eminent scientists, eminent writers, eminent soldiers and sailors, and watched them and listened to them as they sat over their cigars, or moved about among the ladies in the drawing-rooms. Hostesses whose cordial good will toward him seemed equaled only by their capable control over others, had said to him time and time again: “If there is any one you want to know, tell me.” The phrase lingered in his mind as a symbol of his position. He had merely to mention his wish, like some lucky person of the fables who possessed a talisman. It could not be said that he had used his magic power foolishly or perversely. He had followed in dutiful, painstaking solicitude the path marked out for him by his advisers. He had done the best that was in him to do; he had gone wherever Lingfield bade him go; he had loyally kept awake late at night; he had smiled and bowed and spoken affable words; he had fulfilled punctually all the engagements imposed upon him. What was more, he could no longer pretend that he made a failure of the thing; it was known to him that he had created a pleasant impression upon London, and that people liked him.
For all that, he could not feel that in turn he liked these people. Among those of whom he had seen the most, was there any whom he profoundly desired ever to see again? He passed some random figures in mental review, and suffered them to vanish without thrusting forth any tentacle of thought to detain them. They had not entered his real life; they meant nothing to him. Positively he was as much alone in London to-day as he had been when he first set foot in it. Indeed, was he not the poorer to-day by all those lost illusions and joyous, ardent hopes now faded to nothingness? In return for these departed treasures, he had only empty hands to show—and a jaded, futilely mutinous, empty mind as well.
The soft, equable tinkle of the door-bell caught his ear, but scarcely arrested his attention. Perhaps unconsciously the sound served to polarize his thoughts, for suddenly it became apparent to him that he was in revolt. All this intolerable social labor was ended for him—definitely and irrevocably ended. He would not dine at another house; he would burn forthwith his basket of cards, and the little book with its foolish record of ladies’ days “at home.”
He sat up and sipped at his lukewarm tea, with the glow of a new resolve on his face.
Falkner—a smooth-mannered, assiduous, likable man of middle age whom Emanuel had given him from his own household—entered the room to announce a caller. A brisk, alert tread on the polished hall floor behind him cut into his words, so that Christian did not catch them. He rose, and looked inquiringly.
For an instant, he felt that he was not glad to see the person who came in. It was a young man of about his age, tall and fair, and handsome in a buoyant, bright-faced way of his own. His blue eyes sparkled cheerfully into Christian’s doubtful glance, and he held out a hand as he advanced. Everybody in the world called him Dicky Westland, and for this opening moment Christian thought of him as preeminently typical of all the vanities and artificialities he was on the point of forswearing.
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