"Just now I am triumphant," Harry Annesley had said to his hostess as he left Mrs. Armitage\'s house in the Paragon, at Cheltenham. He was absolutely triumphant, throwing his hat up into the air in the abandonment of his joy. For he was not a man to have conceived so well of his own parts as to have flattered himself that the girl must certainly be his.
There are at present a number of young men about who think that few girls are worth the winning, but that any girl is to be had, not by asking,—which would be troublesome,—but simply by looking at her. You can see the feeling in their faces. They are for the most part small in stature, well made little men, who are aware that they have something to be proud of, wearing close-packed, shining little hats, by which they seem to add more than a cubit to their stature; men endowed with certain gifts of personal—dignity I may perhaps call it, though the word rises somewhat too high. They look as though they would be able to say a clever thing; but their spoken thoughts seldom rise above a small, acrid sharpness. They respect no one; above all, not their elders. To such a one his horse comes first, if he have a horse; then a dog; and then a stick; and after that the mistress of his affections. But their fault is not altogether of their own making. It is the girls themselves who spoil them and endure their inanity, because of that assumed look of superiority which to the eyes of the outside world would be a little offensive were it not a little foolish. But they do not marry often. Whether it be that the girls know better at last, or that they themselves do not see sufficiently clearly their future dinners, who can say? They are for the most part younger brothers, and perhaps have discovered the best way of getting out of the world whatever scraps the world can afford them. Harry Annesley\'s faults were altogether of another kind. In regard to this young woman, the Florence whom he had loved, he had been over-modest. Now his feeling of glory was altogether redundant. Having been told by Florence that she was devoted to him, he walked with his head among the heavens. The first instinct with such a young man as those of whom I have spoken teaches him, the moment he has committed himself, to begin to consider how he can get out of the scrape. It is not much of a scrape, for when an older man comes this way, a man verging toward baldness, with a good professional income, our little friend is forgotten and he is passed by without a word. But Harry had now a conviction,—on that one special night,—that he never would be forgotten and never would forget. He was filled at once with an unwonted pride. All the world was now at his feet, and all the stars were open to him. He had begun to have a glimmering of what it was that Augustus Scarborough intended to do; but the intentions of Augustus Scarborough were now of no moment to him. He was clothed in a panoply of armor which would be true against all weapons. At any rate, on that night and during the next day this feeling remained the same with him.
Then he received a summons from his mother at Buston. His mother pressed him to come at once down to the parsonage. "Your uncle has been with your father, and has said terrible things about you. As you know, my brother is not very strong-minded, and I should not care so much for what he says were it not that so much is in his hands. I cannot understand what it is all about, but your father says that he does nothing but threaten. He talks of putting the entail on one side. Entails used to be fixed things, I thought; but since what old Mr. Scarborough did nobody seems to regard them now. But even suppose the entail does remain, what are you to do about the income? Your father thinks you had better come down and have a little talk about the matter."
This was the first blow received since the moment of his exaltation. Harry knew very well that the entail was fixed, and could not be put aside by Mr. Prosper, though Mr. Scarborough might have succeeded with his entail; but yet he was aware that his present income was chiefly dependent on his uncle\'s good-will. To be reduced to live on his fellowship would be very dreadful. And that income, such as it was, depended entirely on his celibacy. And he had, too, as he was well aware, engendered habits of idleness during the last two years. The mind of a young man so circumstanced turns always first to the Bar, and then to literature. At the Bar he did not think that there could be any opening for him. In the first place, it was late to begin; and then he was humble enough to believe of himself that he had none of the peculiar gifts necessary for a judge or for an advocate. Perhaps the knowledge that six or seven years of preliminary labor would be necessary was somewhat of a deterrent.
The rewards of literature might be achieved immediately. Such was his idea. But he had another idea,—perhaps as erroneous,—that this career would not become a gentleman who intended to be Squire of Buston. He had seen two or three men, decidedly Bohemian in their modes of life, to whom he did not wish to assimilate himself. There was Quaverdale, whom he had known intimately at St. John\'s, and who was on the Press. Quaverdale had quarrelled absolutely with his father, who was also a clergyman, and having been thrown altogether on his own resources, had come out as a writer for The Coming Hour. He made his five or six hundred a year in a rattling, loose, uncertain sort of fashion, and was,—so thought Harry Annesley,—the dirtiest man of his acquaintance. He did not believe in the six hundred a year, or Quaverdale would certainly have changed his shirt more frequently, and would sometimes have had a new pair of trousers. He was very amusing, very happy, very thoughtless, and as a rule altogether impecunious. Annesley had never known him without the means of getting a good dinner, but those means did not rise to the purchase of a new hat. Putting Quaverdale before him as an example, Annesley could not bring himself to choose literature as a profession. Thinking of all this when he received his mother\'s letter, he assured himself that Florence would not like professional literature.
He wrote to say that he would be down at Buston in five days\' time. It does not become a son who is a fellow of a college and the heir to a property to obey his parents too quickly. But he gave up the intermediate days to thinking over the condition which bound him to his uncle, and to discussing his prospects with Quaverdale, who, as usual, was remaining in town doing the editor\'s work for The Coming Hour. "If he interfered with me I should tell him to go to bed," said Quaverdale. The allusion was, of course, made to Mr. Prosper.
"I am not on those sort of terms with him."
"I should make my own terms, and then let him do his worst. What can he do? If he means to withdraw his beggarly two hundred and fifty pounds, of course he\'ll do it."
"I suppose I do owe him something, in the way of respect."
"Not if he threatens you in regard to money. What does it come to? That you are to cringe at his heels for a beggarly allowance which he has been pleased to bestow upon you without your asking. \'Very well, my dear fellow,\' I should say to him, \'you can stop it the moment you please. For certain objects of your own,—that your heir might live in the world after a certain fashion,—you have bestowed it. It has been mine since I was a child. If you can reconcile it to your conscience to discontinue it, do so.\' You would find that he would have to think twice about it."
"He will stop it, and what am I to do then? Can I get an opening on any of these papers?" Quaverdale whistled,—a mode of receiving the overture which was not pleasing to Annesley. "I don\'t suppose that anything so very super-human in the way of intellect is required." Annesley had got a fellowship, whereas Quaverdale had done nothing at the university.
"Couldn\'t you make a pair of shoes? Shoemakers do get good wages."
"What do you mean? A fellow never can get you to be serious for two minutes together.
"I never was more serious in my life."
"That I am to make shoes?"
"No, I don\'t quite think that. I don\'t suppose you can make them. You\'d have first to learn the trade and show that you were an adept."
"And I must show that I am an adept before I can write for The Coming Hour." There was a tone of sarcasm in this which was not lost on Quaverdale.
"Certainly you must; and that you are a better ade............