第19章

In fact I was grateful, or almost so, and I believe I half liked him at the moment, notwithstanding his proviso that what he had done was not out of regard for me.But human nature is perverse.Impossible to answer his blunt question in the affirmative, so I disclaimed all tendency to gratitude, and advised him if he expected any reward for his championship, to look for it in a better world, as he was not likely to meet with it here.In reply he termed me “a dry-hearted aristocratic scamp,” whereupon I again charged him with having taken the bread out of my mouth.

“Your bread was dirty, man!” cried Hunsden—“dirty and unwholesome! It came through the hands of a tyrant, for I tell you Crimsworth is a tyrant,—a tyrant to his workpeople, a tyrant to his clerks, and will some day be a tyrant to his wife.”

“Nonsense! bread is bread, and a salary is a salary.I’ve lostmine, and through your means.”

“There’s sense in what you say, after all,” rejoined Hunsden.“I must say I am rather agreeably surprised to hear you make so practical an observation as that last.I had imagined now, from my previous observation of your character, that the sentimental delight you would have taken in your newly regained liberty would, for a while at least, have effaced all ideas of forethought and prudence.I think better of you for looking steadily to the needful.”

“Looking steadily to the needful! How can I do otherwise? I must live, and to live I must have what you call ‘the needful,’ which I can only get by working.I repeat it, you have taken my work from me.”

“What do you mean to do?” pursued Hunsden coolly.“Youhave influential relations; I suppose they’ll soon provide you with another place.”

“Influential relations? Who? I should like to know theirnames.”

“The Seacombes.” “Stuff! I have cut them,”

Hunsden looked at me incredulously.“I have,” said I, “and that definitively.”

“You must mean they have cut you, William.”

“As you please.They offered me their patronage on condition of my entering the Church; I declined both the terms and the recompence; I withdrew from my cold uncles, and preferred throwing myself into my elder brother’s arms, from whose affectionate embrace I am now torn by the cruel intermeddling of a stranger—of yourself, in short.”

I could not repress a half-smile as I said this; a similar demi-manifestation of feeling appeared at the same moment on Hunsden’s lips.

“Oh, I see!” said he, looking into my eyes, and it was evident he did see right down into my heart.Having sat a minute or two with his chin resting on his hand, diligently occupied in the continued perusal of my countenance, he went on:-“Seriously, have you then nothing to expect fromtheSeacombes?”

“Yes, rejection and repulsion.Why do you ask me twice? How can hands stained with the ink of a counting-house, soiled with the grease of a wool-warehouse, ever again be permitted to come into contact with aristocratic palms?”

“There would be a difficulty, no doubt; still you are such acomplete Seacombe in appearance, feature, language, almost manner, I wonder they should disown you.”

“They have disowned me; so talk no more about it.”

“Do you regret it, William?” “No.”

“Why not, lad?”

“Because they are not people with whom I could ever have had any sympathy.”

“I say you are one of them.”

“That merely proves that you know nothing at all about it; I am my mother’s son, but not my uncles’ nephew.”

“Still—one of your uncles is a lord, though rather an obscureand not a very wealthy one, and the other a right honourable: you should consider worldly interest.”

“Nonsense, Mr.Hunsden.You know or may know that evenhad I desired to be submissive to my uncles, I could not havestooped with a good enough grace ever to have won their favour.I should have sacrificed my own comfort and not have gained their patronage in return.”

“Very likely—so you calculated your wisest plan was to followyour own devices at once?”

“Exactly.I must follow my own devices—I must, till the day of my death; because I can neither comprehend, adopt, nor work out those of other people.”