Victorian England - Articles and Stories

THE RACE FOR WEALTH. CHAPTER XXV.

 BY THE AUTHOR OF "GEORGE GEITH," "MAXWELL DREWITT," &c.

CHAPTER XXV.

DISAPPOINTED.

Dinner was over, the cloth drawn, the summer fruits were placed upon the table, Olivine had left the room, and the wine stood before Mr. Sondes. Then that gentleman turned to Lawrence Barbour, and opened the conversation by asking his guest how he felt.

"Are you better?" he said. "Are you often subject to such attacks? "

" Sometimes," Lawrence answered vaguely. Like all young men, who are young men, and not old women, he hated talking about his own ailments, and was not at all inclined to be communicative on the subject of his health.

"You work too hard, "remarked Mr. Sondes; to which observation Lawrence replied not with the usual stereotyped phrase about "working and rusting," but in words more directly to the point.

" I am glad you think so," he said, " for I have often been afraid you might not consider I did enough. It is hard though," he went on speaking more rapidly, "for a person to do his duty between two places; always when I am in Distaff Yard I feel I ought to be at the Refinery, and when I am at the Refinery I feel I ought to be in Distaff Yard."

" Rather an uncomfortable sensation, I should imagine," observed Mr. Sondes, refilling his own glass, and passing the decanter on towards his guest.

" I am positive I could satisfy you and myself better if my time were not so constantly cut up," continued Lawrence; " if I were able to devote my mind to one business exclusively."

"Very well," agreed Mr. Sondes, "devote your time and energies wholly and entirely to Distaff Yard; you have made many pretty experiments lately, Mr. Perkins tells me, and have suggested and carried out some desirable improvements in the process of manufacture," and as he concluded this pleasant speech, Mr. Sondes helped himself to a peach, and became at once absorbed in its preparation. Never a peach was more slowly dissected, more deliberately eaten; but during the whole time thus occupied, Lawrence remained resolutely silent.

He was trying to swallow his mortification. Twice within a few hours Mr. Sondes had thrown hi™ back, twice he had come up to the charge, and twice he had been repulsed. The partnership he had felt so confident of at noon seemed now as hopelessly far from him as yesterday. Suddenly it occurred to him that as Mr. Sondes had done without him in past years, so he could do without him in the future years; and not Mr. Sondes merely, but every person; he was only one in the world after all, and what was one more or less among the millions?

The same feeling which had come to damp his sanguine expectation the first day he set foot in London, which had thrown a shadow for a moment over his heart, oppressed him once more. The man who sets out on foot to seek his fortune must not expect fine weather all the way; the rain pours down, and the snow boats upon his head, and the wind forces him back, and the cutting hailstones pelt in his face — it is not all sunshine, it is not all light. There come very dark hours to the mind as well as to the body of the straggler after wealth; and one of those dark hours was on Lawrence Barbour while he sat biting back his disappointment, drinking fennel with his wine, and dipping his fruit in mental vinegar.

There is nothing so bitter to any one as the sudden conviction that he is not immediately necessary to the scheme of creation; that if it pleased the Almighty to take him out of the world, the world would not miss him in the least. And an idea of this kind was doubly bitter to Lawrence, who had always hitherto considered himself rather one of the earth's props than otherwise.

Humility sitting on the ground does not receive any great shock when she is forced to lick the dust; but the height from which pride has usually to fall makes the fall painful, and Lawrence felt the jar in every nerve of his body.