All Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story. Walter Besant
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."
CHAPTER I.
NEWS FOR HIS LORDSHIP
"I have news for your lordship," said Mrs. Bormalack, at the breakfast-table, "something that will cheer you up a bit. We are to have an addition to our family."
His lordship nodded his head, meaning that he would receive her news without more delay than was necessary, but that at present his mind was wholly occupied with a contest between one of his teeth and a crust. The tooth was an outlying one, all its lovely companions having withered and gone, and it was undefended; the crust was unyielding. For the moment no one could tell what might be the result.
Her ladyship replied for him.
Lady Davenant was a small woman, if you go by inches; her exalted rank gave her, however, a dignity designed for very much larger persons; yet she carried it with ease. She was by no means young, and her hair was thin as well as gray; her face, which was oval and delicately curved, might formerly have been beautiful; the eyes were bright and eager, and constantly in motion, as is often the case with restless and nervous persons; her lips were thin and as full of independent action as her eyes; she had thin hands, so small that they might have belonged to a child of eight, when inclined for vaunting, the narrowest and most sloping shoulders that ever were seen, so sloping that people unaccustomed to her were wont to tremble lest the whole of her dress should suddenly slide straight down those shoulders, as down a slope of ice; and strange ladies, impelled by this apprehension, had been known to ask her in a friendly whisper if she could thoroughly depend upon the pins at her throat. As Mrs. Bormalack often said, speaking of her noble boarders among her friends, those shoulders of her ladyship were "quite a feature." Next to the pride of having at her table such guests – who, however, did not give in to the good old English custom of paying double prices for having a title – was the distinction of pointing to those unique shoulders and of talking about them.
Her ladyship had a shrill, reedy voice, and spoke loudly. It was remarked by the most superficial observer, moreover, that she possessed a very strong American accent.
"At our first boarding-house," she said, replying indirectly to the landlady's remark, "at our first boarding-house, which was in Wellclose Square, next to the Board Schools, there was a man who once actually slapped his lordship on the back. And then he laughed! To be sure, he was only a Dane, but the disrespect was just the same."
"My dear," said his lordship, who now spoke, having compromised matters with the crust, "the ignominy of being slapped on the back by a powerful sea-captain is hardly to be weighed in comparison with the physical pain it causes."
"We are quite sure, however, Mrs. Bormalack," the lady went on, "that you will admit none under your roof but those prepared to respect rank; we want no levellers or mischievous Radicals for our companions."
"It is to be a young lady," said Mrs. Bormalack.
"Young ladies, at all events, do not slap gentlemen on the back, whether they are noblemen or not," said his lordship kindly. "We shall be happy to welcome her, ma'am."
This ornament of the Upper House was a big, fat man, with a face like a full moon. His features were not distinctly aristocratic; his cheeks were flabby and his nose broad; also he had a double chin. His long hair was a soft, creamy white, the kind of white which in old age follows a manhood of red hair. He sat in an arm-chair at the end of the table, with his elbows on the arms, as if he desired to get as much rest out of the chair as possible. His eyes were very soft and dreamy; his expression was that of a man who has been accustomed to live in the quieter parts of the world. He, too, spoke with a marked American accent and with slowness, as if measuring his words, and appreciating himself their importance. The dignity of his manner was not wholly due to his position, but in great measure to his former profession. For his lordship had not always rejoiced in his present dignity, nor, in fact, had he been brought up to it. Persons intending to become peers of Great Britain do not, as a rule, first spend more than forty years as schoolmasters in their native town. And just as clergymen, and especially young clergymen, love to talk loud, because it makes