“I came for advice--if you have any to give. I came because this misfortune has fallen upon me, and you are reputed to be wise beyond your years.”
“The fact of your occupation is misfortune enough.”
“Well? You have nothing more to say? Then I must go.”
He looked so miserable that Leonard forgot his indignation, and inclined his heart to pity.
“You are afraid of exposure,” he said, “on account of your wife and children.”
“On their account alone. For my own part, I have done no wrong, and I fear no exposure.”
They were brave words, but he was as the donkey in the lion’s skin. He spoke valiantly, but his knees trembled.
“I should think,” Leonard replied, “that this young man, for his own sake, would be careful not to spread abroad his experience, because he would expose himself as well as you. He proposed deliberately to impose upon the audience, as his own, an oration prepared by another man and bought by himself. That is a position, if it were known and published, even less dignified than your own. I think that Algernon should put this side of the case to him strongly and plainly.”
“He may leave himself out and whisper rumours abroad.”
“Algernon should warn him against such things. If, however, the man persists in his unholy ambition to obtain a false reputation, he will probably have to come to you again, since there is no other practitioner.”
“That’s the point. You’ve hit it. That’s the real point. I’m glad I came here. He’s not only got his ambition still, but he’s got his failure to get over. He must come to me. There is no other practitioner. He must come. I never thought of that.” He rubbed his hands joyously.
“He may not be clever enough to see this point. Therefore Algernon had better put it to him. If Algernon fails, you must make a clean breast to your wife and daughter, and send it round openly among your personal friends that you are willing to supply speeches confidentially. That seems the only way out of it.”
“The only way--the only way, Leonard. There will be no clean breast at all, and that venomous beast will have to come to me again. I am so glad that I came here. You have got more sense than all the rest of us put together.”
When he was gone Leonard threw himself into the nearest chair, and looked around him. He gazed with bewildered face, not upon the study full of books, the papers which showed the man of learning, the reports which spoke of the man of affairs, the engravings on the wall which spoke of the man of culture. These are accidental: anyone may show them. The artist sprung from the gutter, the self-made scholar, the mere mushroom, might possess and exhibit all these things. He saw strewn around him the wreck and ruin of all that he had hitherto considered the essential, namely, the family honour.