'It is easy for me to leave all judgment in the matter to yourself, Miss--I beg your pardon; I know we have met; but for the moment Icannot recall your name.'
'Lady Georgina Betterton,' drawled the visitor carelessly, hiding whatever annoyance she may have felt.
Falconer bowed.Lady Georgina resumed.
'Of course it only affects myself; and I am willing to take the risk, notwithstanding the natural desire to stand well in the opinion of any one with whom even my boldness could venture such a step.'
A smile, intended to be playful, covered the retreat of the sentence.Falconer bowed again.Lady Georgina had yet again to resume.
'From the little I have seen, and the much I have heard of you--excuse me, Mr.Falconer--I cannot help thinking that you know more of the secret of life than other people--if indeed it has any secret.'
'Life certainly is no burden to me,' returned Falconer.'If that implies the possession of any secret which is not common property, Ifear it also involves a natural doubt whether such secret be communicable.'
'Of course I mean only some secret everybody ought to know.'
'I do not misunderstand you.'
'I want to live.You know the world, Mr.Falconer.I need not tell you what kind of life a girl like myself leads.I am not old, but the gilding is worn off.Life looks bare, ugly, uninteresting.Iask you to tell me whether there is any reality in it or not;whether its past glow was only gilt; whether the best that can be done is to get through with it as fast as possible?'
'Surely your ladyship must know some persons whose very countenances prove that they have found a reality at the heart of life.'
'Yes.But none whose judgment I could trust.I cannot tell how soon they may find reason to change their minds on the subject.Their satisfaction may only be that they have not tried to rub the varnish off the gilding so much as I, and therefore the gilding itself still shines a little in their eyes.'
'If it be only gilding, it is better it should be rubbed off.'
'But I am unwilling to think it is.I am not willing to sign a bond of farewell to hope.Life seemed good once.It is bad enough that it seems such no longer, without consenting that it must and shall be so.Allow me to add, for my own sake, that I speak from the bitterness of no chagrin.I have had all I ever cared--or condescended to wish for.I never had anything worth the name of a disappointment in my life.'
'I cannot congratulate you upon that,' said Falconer, seriously.
'But if there be a truth or a heart in life, assurance of the fact can only spring from harmony with that truth.It is not to be known save by absolute contact with it; and the sole guide in the direction of it must be duty: I can imagine no other possible conductor.We must do before we can know.'
'Yes, yes,' replied Lady Georgina, hastily, in a tone that implied, 'Of course, of course: we know all about that.' But aware at once, with the fine instinct belonging to her mental organization, that she was thus shutting the door against all further communication, she added instantly: 'But what is one's duty? There is the question.'
'The thing that lies next you, of course.You are, and must remain, the sole judge of that.Another cannot help you.'
'But that is just what I do not know.'
I interrupt Lady Georgina to remark--for I too have been a pupil of Falconer--that I believe she must have suspected what her duty was, and would not look firmly at her own suspicion.She added:
'I want direction.'
But the same moment she proceeded to indicate the direction in which she wanted to be directed; for she went on:
'You know that now-a-days there are so many modes in which to employ one's time and money that one does not know which to choose.The lower strata of society, you know, Mr.Falconer--so many channels!
I want the advice of a man of experience, as to the best investment, if I may use the expression: I do not mean of money only, but of time as well.'
'I am not fitted to give advice in such a matter.'
'Mr.Falconer!'
'I assure you I am not.I subscribe to no society myself--not one.'
'Excuse me, but I can hardly believe the rumours I hear of you--people will talk, you know--are all inventions.They say you are for ever burrowing amongst the poor.Excuse the phrase.'
'I excuse or accept it, whichever you please.Whatever I do, I am my own steward.'
'Then you are just the person to help me! I have a fortune, not very limited, at my own disposal: a gentleman who is his own steward, would find his labours merely facilitated by administering for another as well--such labours, I mean.'
'I must beg to be excused, Lady Georgina.I am accountable only for my own, and of that I have quite as much as I can properly manage.
It is far more difficult to use money for others than to spend it for yourself.'
'Ah!' said Lady Georgina, thoughtfully, and cast an involuntary glance round the untidy room, with its horse-hair furniture, its ragged array of books on the wall, its side-table littered with pamphlets he never read, with papers he never printed, with pipes he smoked by chance turns.He saw the glance and understood it.
'I am accustomed,' he said, 'to be in such sad places for human beings to live in, that I sometimes think even this dingy old room an absolute palace of comfort.--But,' he added, checking himself, as it were, 'I do not see in the least how your proposal would facilitate an answer to your question.'
'You seem hardly inclined to do me justice,' said Lady Georgina, with, for the first time, a perceptible, though slight shadow crossing the disc of her resolution.'I only meant it,' she went on, 'as a step towards a further proposal, which I think you will allow looks at least in the direction you have been indicating.'
She paused.
'May I beg of you to state the proposal?' said Falconer.
But Lady Georgina was apparently in some little difficulty as to the proper form in which to express her object.At last it appeared in the cloak of a question.
'Do you require no assistance in your efforts for the elevation of the lower classes?' she asked.