“But Harry does not hate it,” said Edgar, turning his eyes once more upon the eldest son. Harry was not at all a bad fellow. He tossed the book he had been reading away from him, and twisted his moustache, and pulled his snow-white cuffs. “I think it’s a confounded bore,” said Harry, and then he got up and strolled away.
This conversation took place in a house which had shuddered from garret to basement at the thought of not being able to get cards for Lady Bodmiller’s ball. Harry had roused himself up for that occasion, and had shown an energy which was almost superhuman. He had rushed about London as if his mission had been to stop a war or save a kingdom. His scheme of operations was as elaborate and careful as if it had been a campaign. And even Helena had forgotten all about the injuries of women, and had rushed to meet her brother at the door and to ask “What news?” with as much eagerness as if she thought dancing the real employment of life. Such relapses into levity may be pardoned to a young philosopher; but they were very strange to Edgar who, with the wondering clear mystified eyes of a semi-savage, was looking on.
It was not, however, Edgar Arden’s intention to preach any crusade. On the contrary, the first impulse of his friendly and neighbour-loving soul was to find out some reason for the existence which seemed so strange to him. He tried to approach, in a great many different ways, and evoke out of it, as it were, or surprise out of it, its secrets. It could not exist, he said to himself, without a meaning. Edgar was not very profound in his philosophy, but still he had a way of thinking of what he saw, and his amused interest in everything led him into a world of questions. Besides, he was not merely conversant with Harry Thornleigh and his class, but also with various other divisions of society. He saw a good deal of Lord Newmarch, for instance, who was entirely a different kind of man; and he renewed his acquaintance with some men whom he had met abroad in his earlier days, one of whom was a great cricketer, and another who was of the Alpine Club, and whose soul dwelt habitually in the sacred recesses of the Matterhorn or Jungfrau. Except Lord Newmarch and his set, these men were all utterly disinterested, pursuing their favourite amusements, not for any purpose to be gained, but for the mere sake of the pursuit itself. The Alpine Club man had no curiosity about the view from the mountain-head, and cared nothing for the formation of the glaciers, or any other subject connected with his mountains: all his object was to get to the top; and he did get to a great many tops, and distinguished himself, and acquired various bits of practical knowledge, which, having no connection of purpose or interest in his mind, were of little use to himself, and none to others. And so likewise the men who devoted themselves to society did not expect to be amused, or instructed, or to meet people they liked, or to find in it any of those solaces which theorists pretend. They went because everybody went--because it was the right thing to do--just for the sake of going, and no other reason. This disinterestedness was the great thing that struck Edgar. He himself was aware that he did not at all possess it. He was continually desiring some result--pleasure or advantage of some description, which, when you come to think of it (he reflected), is a mean way of treating existence after all. Whereas, society was grand in its indifference to any issue. It lived, it assembled, it talked, it went to and fro, and gave itself a great deal of trouble; and from all this exertion it expected nothing to come. This was the first discovery Edgar made, or thought he made; and it staggered him much in the contempt for society which he had been settling into. Was not this in reality a higher principle than his own? It bewildered him, and he could not make it out; and Lord Newmarch, though he was a social philosopher of much greater experience than Edgar, did not seem capable of giving him any aid.