Читать книгу All Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story - Walter Besant - Страница 3

The time was eleven in the forenoon; the season was the month of roses; the place was a room on the first floor at the Park-end of Piccadilly – a noisy room, because the windows were open, and there was a great thunder and rattle of cabs, omnibuses, and all kinds of vehicles. When this noise became, as it sometimes did, intolerable, the occupant of the room shut his double windows, and immediately there was a great calm, with a melodious roll of distant wheels, like the buzzing of bees about the marigold on a summer afternoon. With the double window a man may calmly sit down amid even the roar of Cheapside, or the never-ending cascade of noise at Charing Cross.

The room was furnished with taste; the books on the shelves were well bound, as if the owner took a proper pride in them, as indeed was the case. There were two or three good pictures; there was a girl's head in marble; there were cards and invitations lying on the mantel-shelf and in a rack beside the clock. Everybody could tell at the first look of the room that it was a bachelor's den. Also because nothing was new, and because there were none of the peacockeries, whims and fancies, absurdities, fads and fashions, gimcrackeries, the presence of which does always and infallibly proclaim the chamber of a young man; this room manifestly belonged to a bachelor who was old in the profession. In fact, the owner of the chambers, of which this was the breakfast, morning, and dining-room, whenever he dined at home, was seated in an armchair beside a breakfast-table, looking straight before him, with a face filled with anxiety. An honest, ugly, pleasing, rugged, attractive face, whose features were carved one day when Dame Nature was benevolently disposed, but had a blunt chisel.

"I always told him," he muttered, "that he should learn the whole of his family history as soon as he was three-and-twenty years of age. One must keep such promises. Yet it would have been better that he should never know. But then it might have been found out, and that would have been far worse. Yet, how could it have been found out? No: that is ridiculous."

He mused in silence. In his fingers he held a cigar which he had lit, but allowed to go out again. The morning paper was lying on the table, unopened.

"How will the boy take it?" he asked; "will he take it crying? Or will he take it laughing?"

He smiled, picturing to himself the "boy's" astonishment.

Looking at the man more closely, one became aware that he was really a very pleasant-looking person. He was about five-and-forty years of age, and he wore a full beard and mustache, after the manner of his contemporaries, with whom a beard is still considered a manly ornament to the face. The beard was brown, but it began to show, as wine-merchants say of port, the "appearance of age." In some light, there was more gray than brown. His dark-brown hair, however, retained its original thickness of thatch, and was as yet untouched by any streak of gray. Seeing that he belonged to one of the oldest and best of English families, one might have expected something of that delicacy of feature which some of us associate with birth. But, as has already been said, his face was rudely chiselled, his complexion was ruddy, and he looked as robust as a plough-boy; yet he had the air of an English gentleman, and that ought to satisfy anybody. And he was the younger son of a duke, being by courtesy Lord Jocelyn Le Breton.

While he was thus meditating, there was a quick step on the stair, and the subject of his thoughts entered the room.

This interesting young man was a much more aristocratic person to look upon than his senior. He paraded, so to speak, at every point, the thoroughbred air. His thin and delicate nose, his clear eye, his high though narrow forehead, his well-cut lip, his firm chin, his pale cheek, his oval face, the slim figure, the thin, long fingers, the spring of his walk, the poise of his head – what more could one expect even from the descendant of all the Howards? But this morning the pallor of his cheek was flushed as if with some disquieting news.

"Good-morning, Harry," said Lord Jocelyn quietly.

Harry returned the greeting. Then he threw upon the table a small packet of papers.

"There, sir, I have read them; thank you for letting me see them."

"Sit down, boy, and let us talk; will you have a cigar? No? A cigarette, then? No? You are probably a little upset by this – new – unexpected revelation?"

"A little upset!" repeated the young man, with a short laugh.

"To be sure – to be sure – one could expect nothing else; now sit down, and let us talk over the matter calmly."

The young man sat down, but he did not present the appearance of one inclined to talk over the matter calmly.

"In novels," said Lord Jocelyn, "it is always the good fortune of young gentlemen brought up in ignorance of their parentage to turn out, when they do discover their origin, the heirs to an illustrious name; I have always admired that in novels. In your case, my poor Harry, the reverse is the case; the distinction ought to console you."

"Why was I not told before?"

"Because the boyish brain is more open to prejudice than that of the adult; because, among your companions, you certainly would have felt at a disadvantage had you known yourself to be the son of a – "

"You always told me," said Harry, "that my father was in the army!"

"What do you call a sergeant in a line regiment, then?"

"Oh! of course, but among gentlemen – I mean – among the set with whom I was brought up, to be in the army means to have a commission."

"Yes: that was my pardonable deception. I thought that you would respect yourself more if you felt that your father, like the fathers of your friends, belonged to the upper class. Now, my dear boy, you will respect yourself just as much, although you know that he was but a sergeant, and a brave fellow who fell at my side in the Indian Mutiny."

"And my mother?"

"I did not know her; she was dead before I found you out, and took you from your Uncle Bunker."

"Uncle Bunker!" Harry laughed, with a little bitterness. "Uncle Bunker! Fancy asking one's Uncle Bunker to dine at the club! What is he by trade?"

"He is something near a big brewery, a brewery boom, as the Americans say. What he actually is, I do not quite know. He lives, if I remember rightly, at a place an immense distance from here, called Stepney."

"Do you know anything more about my father's family?"

"No! The sergeant was a tall, handsome, well set-up man; but I know nothing about his connections. His name, if that is any help to you, was, was – in fact" – here Lord Jocelyn assumed an air of ingratiating sweetness – "was – Goslett – Goslett; not a bad name, I think, pronounced with perhaps a leaning to an accent on the last syllable. Don't you agree with me, Harry?"

"Oh! yes, it will do. Better than Bunker, and not so good as Le Breton. As for my Christian name, now?"

"There I ventured on one small variation."

"Am I not, then, even Harry?"

"Yes, yes, yes, you are – now; formerly you were Harry without the H. It is the custom of the neighborhood in which you were born."

"I see! If I go back among my own people, I shall be, then, once more 'Arry?"

"Yes; and shout on penny steamers, and brandish pint bottles of stout, and sing along the streets, in simple abandonment to Arcadian joy; and trample on flowers; and break pretty things for wantonness; and exercise a rude but effective wit, known among the ancients as Fescennine, upon passing ladies; and get drunk o' nights; and walk the streets with a pipe in your mouth. That is what you would be, if you went back, my dear child."

Harry laughed.

"After all," he said, "this is a very difficult position. I can no longer go about pretending anything; I must tell people."

"Is that absolutely necessary?"

"Quite necessary. It will be a deuce of a business, explaining."

"Shall we tell it to one person, and let him be the town-crier?"

"That, I suppose, would be the best plan; meantime, I could retire, while I made some plans for the future."

"Perhaps, if you really must tell the truth, it would be well to go out of town for a bit."

"As for myself," Harry continued, "I suppose I shall get over the wrench after a bit. Just for the moment I feel knocked out of time."

"Keep the secret, then; let it be one between you and me only, Harry; let no one know."

But he shook his head.

"Everybody must know. Those who refuse to keep up the acquaintance of a private soldier's son – well, then, a non-commissioned officer's son – will probably let me know their decision, some way or other. Those who do not – " He paused.

"Nonsense, boy; who cares nowadays what a man is by birth? Is not this great city full of people who go anywhere, and are nobody's sons? Look here, and here" – he tossed half a dozen cards of invitation across the table – "can you tell me who these people were twenty years ago – or these – or these?"

"No: I do not care in the least who they were. I care only that they shall know who I am; I will not, for my part, pretend to be what I am not."

"I believe you are right, boy. Let the world laugh if they please, and have done with it."

Harry began to walk up and down the room; he certainly did not look the kind of a man to give in; to try hiding things away. Quite the contrary. And he laughed – he took to laughing.

"I suppose it will sound comic at first," he said, "until people get used to it. Do you know what he turns out to be? That kind of thing: after all, we think too much about what people say – what does it matter what they say or how they say it? If they like to laugh, they can. Who shall be the town-crier?"

"I was thinking," said Lord Jocelyn slowly, "of calling to-day upon Lady Wimbledon."

The young man laughed, with a little heightening of his color.

"Of course – a very good person, an excellent person, and to-morrow it will be all over London. There are one or two things," he went on after a moment, "that I do not understand from the papers which you put into my hands last night."

"What are those things?" Lord Jocelyn for a moment looked uneasy.

"Well – perhaps it is impertinent to ask. But – when Mr. Bunker, the respectable Uncle Bunker, traded me away, what did he get for me?"

"Every bargain has two sides," said Lord Jocelyn. "You know what I got, you want to know what the honorable Bunker got. Harry, on that point I must refer you to the gentleman himself."

"Very good. Then I come to the next difficulty – a staggerer. What did you do it for? One moment, sir" – for Lord Jocelyn seemed about to reply. "One moment. You were rich, you were well born, you were young. What on earth made you pick a boy out of the gutter and bring him up like a gentleman?"

"You are twenty-three, Harry, and yet you ask for motives. My dear boy, have you not learned the golden rule? In all human actions look for the basest motive, and attribute that. If you see any reason for stopping short of quite the lowest spurs to action, such as revenge, hatred, malice, and envy, suppose the next lowest, and you will be quite safe. That next lowest is —son altesse, ma vanité."

"Oh!" replied Harry, "yet I fail to see how a child of the lowest classes could supply any satisfaction for even the next lowest of human motives."

"It was partly in this way. Mind, I do not for one moment pretend to answer the whole of your question. Men's motives, thank Heaven, are so mixed up, that no one can be quite a saint, while no one is altogether a sinner. Nature is a leveller, which is a comfort to us who are born in levelling times. In those days I was by way of being a kind of Radical. Not a Radical such as those who delight mankind in these happier days. But I had Liberal leanings, and thought I had ideas. When I was a boy of twelve or so, there were the '48 theories floating about the air; some of them got into my brain and stuck there. Men used to believe that a great time was coming – perhaps I heard a whisper of it; perhaps I was endowed with a greater faculty for credulity than my neighbors, and believed in humanity. However, I do not seek to explain. It may have occurred to me – I do not say it did – but I have a kind of recollection as if it did – one day after I had seen you, then in the custody of the respectable Bunker, that it would be an instructive and humorous thing to take a boy of the multitude and bring him up in all the culture, the tastes, the ideas of ourselves – you and me, for instance, Harry. This idea may have seized upon me, so that the more I thought of it, the better pleased I was with it. I may have pictured such a boy so taught, so brought up, with such tastes, returning to his own people. Disgust, I may have said, will make him a prophet; and such a prophet as the world has never yet seen. He would be like the follower of the Old Man of the Mountain. He would never cease to dream of the paradise he had seen: he would never cease to tell of it; he would be always leading his friends upward to the same levels on which he had once stood."

"Humph!" said Harry.

"Yes, I know," Lord Jocelyn went on. "I ought to have foretold that the education I prepared for you would have unfitted you for the rôle of prophet. I am not disappointed in you, Harry – quite the reverse. I now see that what has happened has been only what I should have expected. By some remarkable accident, you possess an appearance such as is generally believed to belong to persons of long-continued gentle descent. By a still more remarkable accident, all your tastes prove to be those of the cultured classes; the blood of the Bunkers has, in yourself, assumed the most azure hue."

"That is very odd," said Harry.

"It is a very remarkable thing, indeed," continued Lord Jocelyn gravely. "I have never ceased to wonder at this phenomenon. However, I was unable to send you to a public school on account of the necessity, as I thought, of concealing your parentage. But I gave you instruction of the best, and found for you companions – as you know, among the – "

"Yes," said Harry. "My companions were gentlemen, I suppose; I learned from them."

"Perhaps. Still, the earthenware pot cannot become a brass pot, whatever he may pretend. You were good metal from the beginning."

"You are now, Harry," he went on, "three-and-twenty. You are master of three foreign languages; you have travelled on the Continent and in America; you are a good rider, a good shot, a good fencer, a good dancer. You can paint a little, fiddle a little, dance a great deal, act pretty well, speak pretty well; you can, I dare say, make love as becomes a gentleman; you can write very fair verses; you are good-looking, you have the air noble; you are not a prig; you are not an æsthete; you possess your share of common sense."

"One thing you have omitted which, at the present juncture, may be more useful than any of these things."

"What is that?"

"You were good enough to give me a lathe, and to have me instructed in the mysteries of turning. I am a practical cabinet-maker, if need be."

"But why should this be of use to you?"

"Because, Lord Jocelyn" – Harry ran and leaned over the table with a sweet smile of determination on his face – "because I am going back to my own people for a while, and it may be that the trade of cabinet-making may prove a very backbone of strength to me among them – "

"Harry – you would not – indeed, you could not go back to Bunker?" Lord Jocelyn asked this question with every outward appearance of genuine alarm.

"I certainly would. My very kind guardian and patron, would you stand in my way? I want to see those people from where I am sprung: I want to learn how they differ from you and your kin. I must compare myself with them – I must prove the brotherhood of humanity."

"You will go? Yes – I see you will – it is in your eyes. Go, then, Harry. But return to me soon. The slender fortune of a younger son shall be shared with you so long as I live, and given to you when I die. Do not stay among them. There are, indeed – at least, I suppose so – all sorts and conditions of men. But to me, and to men brought up like you and me, I do not understand how there can be any but one sort and one condition. Come back soon, boy. Believe me – no – do not believe me – prove it yourself: in the social pyramid, the greatest happiness, Harry, lies near the top."