All Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story. Walter Besant
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