Sir Henry Harcourt had walked forth first from that room in which the will had been read, and he had walked forth with a threat in his mouth. But he knew when making it that that threat was an empty bravado. The will was as valid as care and law could make it, and the ex-solicitor-general knew very well that it was valid.
He knew, moreover, that the assistance of no ordinary policeman would suffice to enable him to obtain possession of his wife\'s person; and he knew also that if he had such possession, it would avail him nothing. He could not pay his debts with her, nor could he make his home happy with her, nor could he compel her to be in any way of service to him. It had all been bravado. But when men are driven into corners—when they are hemmed in on all sides, so that they have no escape, to what else than bravado can they have recourse? With Sir Henry the game was up; and no one knew this better than himself.
He was walking up and down the platform, with his hat over his brows, and his hands in his trousers-pockets, when Mr. Stickatit came up. "We shall have a little rain this afternoon," said Mr. Stickatit, anxious to show that he had dropped the shop, and that having done so, he was ready for any of the world\'s ordinary converse.
Sir Henry scowled at him from under the penthouse lid of his hat, and passed on in his walk, without answering a word. The thing had gone too far with him for affectation. He did not care to make sacrifice now to any of the world\'s graces. His inner mind was hostile to that attorney of Bucklersbury, and he could dare to show that it was so. After that, Mr. Stickatit made no further remark to him.
Yes; he could afford now to be forgetful of the world\'s graces, for the world\'s heaviest cares were pressing very heavily on him. When a man finds himself compelled to wade through miles of mud, in which he sinks at every step up to his knees, he becomes forgetful of the blacking on his boots. Whether or no his very skin will hold out, is then his thought. And so it was now with Sir Henry. Or we may perhaps say that he had advanced a step beyond that. He was pretty well convinced now that his skin would not hold out.
He still owned his fine house in Eaton Square, and still kept his seat for the Battersea Hamlets. But Baron Brawl, and such like men, no longer came willingly to his call; and his voice was no longer musical to the occupants of the Treasury bench. His reign had been sweet, but it had been very short. Prosperity he had known how to enjoy, but adversity had been too much for him.
Since the day when he had hesitated to resign his high office, his popularity had gone down like a leaden plummet in the salt water. He had become cross-grained, ill-tempered, and morose. The world had spoken evil of him regarding his wife; and he had given the world the lie in a manner that had been petulant and injudicious. The world had rejoined, and Sir Henry had in every sense got the worst of it. Attorneys did not worship him as they had done, nor did vice-chancellors and lords-justices listen to him with such bland attention. No legal luminary in the memory of man had risen so quickly and fallen so suddenly. It had not been given to him to preserve an even mind when adversity came upon him.
But the worst of his immediate troubles were his debts. He had boldly resolved to take a high position in London; and he had taken it. It now remained that the piper should be paid, and the piper required payment not in the softest language. While that old man was still living, or rather still dying, he had had an answer to give to all pipers. But that answer would suffice him no longer. Every clause in that will would be in the "Daily Jupiter" of the day after to-morrow—the "Daily Jupiter" which had already given a wonderfully correct biography of the deceased great man.
As soon as he reached the London station, he jumped into a cab, and was quickly whirled to Eaton Square. The house felt dull, and cold, and wretched to him. It was still the London season, and Parliament was sitting. After walking up and down his own dining-room for half an hour, he got into another cab, and was whirled down to the House of Commons. But there it seemed as though all the men round him already knew of his disappointment—as though Mr. Bertram\'s will had been read in a Committee of the whole House. Men spoke coldly to him, and looked coldly at him; or at any rate, he thought that they did so. Some debate was going on about the Ballot, at which members were repeating their last year\'s speeches with new emphasis. Sir Henry twice attempted to get upon his legs, but the Speaker would not have his eye caught. Men right and left of him, who were minnows to him in success, found opportunities for delivering themselves; but the world of Parliament did not wish at present to hear anything further from Sir Henry. So he returned to his house in Eaton Square.
As soon as he found himself again in his own dining-room, he called for brandy, and drank off a brimming glass; he drank off one, and then another. The world and solitude together were too much for him, and he could not bear them without aid. Then, having done this, he threw himself into his arm-chair, and stared at the fireplace. How tenfold sorrowful are our sorrows when borne in solitude! Some one has said that grief is half removed when it is shared. How little that some one knew about it! Half removed! When it is duly shared between two loving hearts, does not love fly off with eight-tenths of it? There is but a small remainder left for the two to bear between them.
But there was no loving heart here. All alone he had to endure the crushing weight of his misfortunes. How often has a man said, when evil times have come upon him, that he could have borne it all without complaint, but for his wife and children? The truth, however, has been that, but for them, he could not have borne it at all. Why does any man suffer with patience "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," or put up with "the whips and scorns of time," but that he does so for others, not for himself? It is not that we should all be ready, each to make his own quietus with a bare bodkin; but that we should run from wretchedness when it comes in our path. Who fights for himself alone? Who would not be a coward, if none but himself saw the battle—if none others were concerned in it?
With Sir Henry, there was none other to see the battle, none to take concern in it. If solitude be bad in times of misery, what shall we say of unoccupied solitude? of solitude, too, without employment for the man who has been used to labour?
Such was the case with him. His whole mind was out of tune. There was nothing now that he could do; no work to which he could turn himself. He sat there gazing at the empty fireplace till the moments became unendurably long to him. At last his chief suffering arose, not from his shattered hopes and lost fortunes, but from the leaden weight of the existing hour.
What could he do to shake this off? How could he conquer the depression that was upon him? He reached his hand to the paper that was lying near him, and tried to read; but his mind would not answer to the call. He could not think of the right honourable gentleman\'s speech, or of the very able leading article in which it was discussed. Though the words were before his eyes, he still was harping back on the injustice of that will, or the iniquity of his wife; on the imperturbable serenity of George Bertram, or the false, fleeting friends who had fawned on him in his prosperity, and now threw him over, as a Jonah, with so little remorse.
He dropped the paper on the ground, and then again the feeling of solitude and of motionless time oppressed him with a weight as of tons of lead. He jumped from his chair, and paced up and down the room; but the room was too confined. He took his hat, and pressing it on his brow, walked out into the open air. It was a beautiful spring evening in May, and the twilight still lingered, though the hour was late. He paced three times round the square, regardless of the noise of carriages and the lights which flashed forth from the revelries of his neighbours. He went on and on, not thinking how he would stem the current that was running against him so strongly; hardly trying to think; but thinking that it would be well for him if he could make the endeavour. Alas! he could not make it!
And then again he returned to the house, and once more sat himself down in the same arm-chair. Was it come to this, that the world was hopeless for him? One would have said not. He was in debt, it is true; had fallen somewhat from a high position; had lo............