“After all you said to me yesterday, and Harry! think of Harry’s grand argument coming down upon me like a sledgehammer, as potent, and alas, quite as heavy—how could you think it possible that I should persist? I am not such a determined character. Besides, don’t you know I have never been trained to act for myself?”
His laugh, his look, were not very convincing, but at all events they were conclusive. After another pause, Roland rose.
“I am interfering with your work,” he said. “I thought it my duty to come at once; but now that it’s all over, I must not waste your time. Pardon my officiousness.”
“Nothing of the sort,” said Edward, smiling cheerfully; “the kindest feeling. I know it is. Are you going to see Harry? He is in his room, I know.”
“Yes, I think I’ll just speak to him. There is some football match that Emma wants to see.”
“More pleasuring,” said Edward, and laughed again. There was in him such an air of having found his visitor out, that Roland could not divest himself of a certain embarrassment. Edward, he felt, knew as well as he did, that he was going to report his failure to Harry. It fretted him beyond description to be thus seen through, he, who had thought himself so much more than a match for any provincial fellow of them all. “But you are quite right to consult Harry about football; he is the greatest possible authority upon that subject,” Edward said.
“Oh, it is not of the slightest importance; it is merely that Emma, who does not really care a straw for football, and only wants something to do, or see—”
“That is surely reason enough,” said Edward, and his complaisance went so far that he left his papers again, and led the way to Harry’s room, where he looked in, saying, “Here’s Ashton come to inquire about that match.”
“Eh? Match?” cried Harry, in much surprise. Then his faculties kindled at the sight of Roland’s face. “Will you play for us, Ashton? I didn’t know you went in for football. I just wanted a man to be—”
“It was for Emma; your sister told her she must go and see it.”
“I’ll leave you to your explanations,” said Edward, with a laugh of triumph. And indeed the two conspirators looked at each other somewhat crestfallen, when he had gone away.
“He takes it quite lightly,” said Roland, with the sense of talking under his breath, “as if he had never thought of the matter again—does not conceal that he was vexed, but says of course there was an end when I came down upon him with my heavy guns.”
Then they looked at each other guiltily—ashamed, though there was nothing to be ashamed of, like plotters found out.
“Well, that’s something tided over,” Harry said.
“I hope so: but I must not stay, to confirm his suspicions. Tell me when the match is for Emma, for she does want to go and see it, that’s quite true.”
“I don’t care for girls about,” said Harry; “they never understand the game, and it makes fellows nervous. It’s on Saturday, if she wants to come.”
“I’ll tell her it makes fellows nervous,” said Roland, as he went away. He said it in a louder tone than usual, that he might be heard in Edward’s room, and then despised himself for doing so. Altogether he had seldom felt more small or more completely baffled and seen through than when he retired from those doors which he had entered with so kind a purpose. It is embarrassing to have the tables turned upon you, even in the smallest matters. He felt that he had been made to appear officious, intrusive, deceitful, even to himself, making up plots with one man against another, prying into that other’s purposes, attributing falsehood to him. This was how his generous intention was cast back upon his hands. He tried to smile cynically, and to point out to himself the foolishness of straining to do a good action; but he was not a cynic by nature, and the effort was not successful. In any way, however, in which it could be contemplated, it was evident that all had been done that it was possible to do. If Edward had made up his mind to the risk, he could not stand between him and ruin. The matter was taken entirely out of his hands.
Edward, for his part, returned to his room, and shut himself in with feelings much less victorious than those he made apparent. The excitement of the great decision had a little failed and gone off. He was in the chill reactionary stage, wondering what might befall, feeling the tugs of old prejudice, of all the traditions of honour in which he had been brought up, dragging at his heart. No man brought up as Edward had been could be without prejudices on the side of right. It alarmed and wounded him today to think that he had last night considered the property of the bank and its customers as a foundation upon which to start his own venture. The sophisms with which he had blinded himself in his excitement failed him now—the daylight was too clear for them. He perceived that it was other people’s goods, other people’s money, which he was risking; that even to take them out, to look at them, to think of them as in his power, was a transgression of the laws of honour. Those chill drawings back of customary virtue, of the prejudices of honour, from the quick march of passion which had hurried him past every landmark in that haste to be rich, which would see no obstacle in its way, plunged Edward into painful discouragement. He seemed to himself to have fallen down from a height, at which he had been master of his fate, to some deep-lying underground where he was its slave, and could only wait till the iron car of necessity rolled on and crushed him. He
