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THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

NOVEMBER, 1878.

"For Percival."

CHAPTER XLVIII.

ENGAGEMENTS-HOSTILE AND OTHERWISE.

T

HE fairest season of the year, the debatable ground between spring and summer, had come round once more. There were leaves on the trees, and flowers in the grass. The sunshine was golden and full, not like the bleak brightness of March. The winds were warm, the showers soft. Percival, always keenly affected by such influences, felt as if a new life had come to him with the spring. Now that the evenings had grown long and light, he could escape into the country, breathe a purer air, and wander in fields and lanes. And as he wandered, musing, it seemed to him that he had awakened from a dream.

He looked back upon the past year, and he was more than half inclined to call himself a fool. He had taken up work for which he was not fit. He could see that now. He knew very well that his life was almost intolerable, and that it would never be more tolerable unless help came from without. 25.

VOL. XXXVIII.-NO. 227.

He could work

And even if he could aptitude for business

He could never grow accustomed to his drudgery. honestly, but he could never put his heart into it. have displayed ten times as much energy, if his had been ten times as great, if Mr. Ferguson had estimated him so highly as to take him as articled clerk, if he had passed all his examinations, and been duly admitted, if the brightest possibilities in such a life as his had become realities, and he had attained at last to a small share in the business,-what would be the end of this most improbable success? Merely that he would have to spend his whole life in Brenthill, absorbed in law. Now the law was a weariness to him, and he loathed Brenthill. Yet he had voluntarily accepted a life which could offer him no higher prize than such a fate as this, when Godfrey Hammond, or Mrs. Middleton, or even old Hardwicke, would no doubt have helped him to something better.

Certainly he had been a fool! and yet, while he realised this truth, he sincerely respected-I might almost say he admired-his own folly. He had been sick of dependence, and he had gone down at once to the bottom of everything, taken his stand on firm ground, and conquered independence for himself. He had gained the precious knowledge that he could earn his own living by the labour of his hands. He might have been a fool to reject the help that would have opened some higher and less distasteful career to him; yet, if he had accepted it, he would never have known the extent of his own powers. He would have been a hermit-crab still, fitted with another shell by the kindness of his friends. Had he clearly understood what he was doing when he went to Brenthill, it was very likely that he might never have gone. He was almost glad that he had not understood.

he go back and ask The life in which we

And now, having conquered in the race, could for the help which he had once refused? Hardly. first gain independence may be stern and ugly, the independence itself— when we gather in our harvest-may have a rough and bitter taste, yet it will spoil the palate for all other flavours. They will seem sickly sweet after its wholesome austerity. Neither did Percival feel any greater desire for a career of any kind, than he had felt a year earlier, when he talked over his future life with Godfrey Hammond. If he were asked what was his day-dream, his castle in the air, the utmost limit of his earthly wishes, he would answer now as he would have answered then, "Brackenhill," dismissing the impossible idea with a smile, even as he uttered it. Asked what would content him-since we can hardly hope to draw the highest prize in our life's lottery-he would answer now as then to have an assured income sufficient to allow him to wander on the continent, to see pictures, old towns, Alps, rivers, blue sky; wandering, to remain a foreigner all his life, so that there might always be something a little novel and curious about his food and his manner of living (things which are apt to grow so hideously commonplace in the land where one is born); to drink the wine of the country, to read many