Cashel shook his head, but was pleased. He thought he hated flattery; had Lord Worthington told him that he was the best boxer in England — which he probably was — he would have despised him. But he wished to believe the false compliment to his manners, and was therefore perfectly convinced of its sincerity. Lord Worthington perceived this, and retired, pleased with his own tact, in search of Mrs. Hoskyn, to claim her promise of an introduction to Madame Szczymplica, which Mrs. Hoskyn had, by way of punishing him for Cashel’s misdemeanor, privately determined not to redeem.
Cashel began to think he had better go. Lydia was surrounded by men who were speaking to her in German. He felt his own inability to talk learnedly even in English; and he had, besides, a conviction that she was angry with him for upsetting her cousin, who was gravely conversing with Miss Goff. Suddenly a horrible noise caused a general start and pause. Mr. Jack, the eminent composer, had opened the pianoforte, and was illustrating some points in a musical composition under discussion by making discordant sounds with his voice, accompanied by a few chords. Cashel laughed aloud in derision as he made his way towards the door through the crowd, which was now pressing round the pianoforte at which Madame Szczymplica had just come to the assistance of Jack. Near the door, and in a corner remote from the instrument, he came upon Lydia and a middleaged gentleman, evidently neither a professor nor an artist.
“Ab’n’gas is a very clever man,” the gentleman was saying. “I am sorry I didn’t hear the lecture. But I leave all that to Mary. She receives the people who enjoy high art upstairs; and I take the sensible men down to the garden or the smoking-room, according to the weather.”
“What do the sensible women do?” said Lydia.
“They come late,” said Mr. Hoskyn, and then laughed at his repartee until he became aware of the vicinity of Cashel, whose health he immediately inquired after, shaking his hand warmly and receiving a numbing grip in return. As soon as he saw that Lydia and Cashel were acquainted, he slipped away and left them to entertain one another.
“I wonder how he knows me,” said Cashel, heartened by her gracious reception of a nervous bow. “I never saw him before in my life.”
“He does not know you,” said Lydia, with some sternness. “He is your host, and therefore concludes that he ought to know you.”
“Oh! That was it, was it?” He paused, at a loss for conversation. She did not help him. At last he added, “I haven’t seen you this long time, Miss Carew.”
“It is not very long since I saw you, Mr. Cashel Byron. I saw you yesterday at some distance from London.”
“Oh, Lord!” exclaimed Cashel, “don’t say that. You’re joking, ain’t you?”
“No. Joking, in that sense, does not amuse me.”
Cashel looked at her in consternation. “You don’t mean to say that you went to see a — a — Where — when did you see me? You might tell me.”
“Certainly. It was at Clapham Junction, at a quarter-past six.”
“Was any one with me?”
“Your friend, Mr. Mellish, Lord Worthington, and some other persons.”
“Yes. Lord Worthington was there. But where were you?”
“In a waiting-room, close to you.”
“I never saw you,” said Cashel, growing red as he recalled the scene. “We must have looked very queer. I had had an accident to my eye, and Mellish was not sober. Did you think I was in bad company?”
“That was not my business, Mr. Cashel Byron.”
“No,” said Cashel, with sudden bitterness. “What did YOU care what company I kept? You’re mad with me because I made your cousin look like a fool, I suppose. That’s what’s the matter.”
Lydia looked around to see that no one was within earshot, and, speaking in a low tone to remind him that they were not alone, said, “There is nothing the matter, except that you are a grownup boy rather than a man. I am not mad with you because of your attack upon my cousin; but he is very much annoyed, and so is Mrs. Hoskyn, whose guest you were bound to respect.”
“I knew you’d be down on me. I wouldn’t have said a word if I’d known that you were here,” said Cashel, dejectedly. “Lie down and be walked over; that’s what you think I’m fit for. Another man would have twisted his head off.”
“Is it possible that you do not know that gentlemen never twist one another’s heads off in society, no matter how great may be the provocation?”
“I know nothing,” said Cashel with plaintive sullenness. “Everything I do is wrong. There. Will that satisfy you?”
Lydia looked up at him in doubt. Then, with steady patience, she added: “Will you answer me a question on your honor?”
He hesitated, fearing that she was going to ask what he was.
“The question is this,” she said, observing the hesitation. “Are you a simpleton, or a man of science pretending to be a simpleton for the sake of mocking me and my friends?”
“I am not mocking you; honor bright! All that about science was only a joke — at least, it’s not what you call science. I’m a real simpleton in drawingroom affairs; though I’m clever enough in my own line.”
“Then try to believe that I take no pleasure in making you confess yourself in the wrong, and that you cannot have a lower opinion of me than the contrary belief implies.”
“That’s just where you’re mistaken,” said Cashel, obstinately. “I haven’t got a low opinion of you at all. There’s such a thing as being too clever.”
“You may not know that it is a low opinion. Nevertheless, it is so.”
“Well, have it your own way. I’m wrong again; and you’re right.”
“So far from being gratified by that, I had rather that we were both in the right and agreed. Can you understand that?”
“I can’t say I do. But I give in to it. What more need you care for?”
“I had rather you understood. Let me try to explain. You think that I like to be cleverer than other people. You are mistaken. I should like them all to know whatever I know.”
Cashel laughed cunningly, and shook his head. “Don’t you make any mistake about that,” he said. “You don’t want anybody to be quite as clever as yourself; it isn’t in human nature that you should. You’d like people to be just clever enough to show you off — to be worth beating. But you wouldn’t like them to be able to beat you. Just clever enough to know how much cleverer you are; that’s about the mark. Eh?”
Lydia made no further effort to enlighten him. She looked at him thoughtfully, and said, slowly, “I begin to hold the clew to your idiosyncrasy. You have attached yourself to the modern doctrine of a struggle for existence, and look on life as a perpetual combat.”
“A fight? Just so. What is life but a fight? The curs forfeit or get beaten; the rogues sell the fight and lose the confidence of their backers; the game ones and the clever ones win the stakes, and have to hand over the lion’s share of them to the loafers; and luck plays the devil with them all in turn. That’s not the way they describe life in books; but that’s what it is.”
“Oddly put, but perhaps true. Still, is there any need of a struggle? Is not the world large enough for us all to live peacefully in?”
“YOU may think so, because you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. But if you hadn’t to fight for that silver spoon, some one else had; and no doubt he thought it hard that it should be taken away from him and given to you. I was a snob myself once, and thought the world was made for me to enjoy myself and order about the poor fellows whose bread I was