“Then why conceal it?” said the Vice-Consul. “I cannot act for you unless I have full information; but if you will trust me with your story----”
“I would trust you sooner than anyone I know; but I have promised that I will never say a word on the subject,” said Harry, with all the obstinacy of all the Joscelyns in his face, “until--I am independent, as I have said.” He rose up a second time, all flushed and excited. “I am going to try my luck at Leghorn,” he said. “I am much obliged to you, Sir, for your kindness. I have felt myself again since I have been here; but now I will not trouble you any more.” He held out his hand. He was a handsome young fellow, tall and strong, with the sunburnt countenance and well-developed limbs, and curling, fair locks, which are everywhere identified with a young Englishman. He was not at all like a mere clerk in an office; he was like a son of the fields and woods, one of those whose training has been of the kind most prized and appreciated by all Englishmen--an open-air youth; a rider, rower, swimmer, cricketer--brought up in that way which involves leisure and space, and all the appliances of country-life. Mr. Bonamy saw all this in Harry’s vigorous form and movements. He felt sure that he could not be a nobody. And after all, except that of being a nobody, there is in youth no unpardonable sin.
“Don’t be in such a hurry. Sit down again, the office does not open for another half-hour: and let me hear what there is to be done for you,” he said.
This was a question more embarrassing than the Vice-Consul supposed, for after all there did not seem much that Harry could do. He confessed that he had almost forgotten what he knew at school, and he had never learned any modern languages, and could speak no tongue but his own. He had a little experience in business, he said; but this was the only knowledge he could lay claim to. The Vice-Counsel did not know what to make of him; but as he had started with the distinct hypothesis that Harry was a squire’s son, it was not very difficult to fit in the facts to his foregone conclusion. Many a young gentleman forgot all his school learning by the time he was twenty. The difficult thing was that knowledge of business which at first Harry had been strongly disposed to put forward as the only faculty which he knew himself to be possessed of. How had he acquired that? Mr. Bonamy ended by deciding that he must have quarrelled with his family some time before, and that his acquaintance with business had been the fruit of some attempt made in England to maintain himself before he came here. Thus, without any intention on Harry’s part, he managed to deceive his first influential friend. He neither meant to do it, nor was he aware he had done it; but still this was how things fell out. The conclusion of the interview was that Mr. Bonamy engaged Harry to come back to him next day, when he would have thought the whole matter over, and know what to say. They parted with great friendship and cordiality, Mr. Bonamy having entirely come round again to his own theory in respect to the young man who had been so serviceable to his daughter. Everything seemed to prove this, Harry’s very ignorance among the rest. “In these days every poor lad is more or less educated; a gentleman’s son, who has something else to look to than competitive examination, he is the only one that escapes that sort of thing,” the Vice-Consul wisely said. Harry, on his part, went off to his hotel with greatly exhilarated feelings. He had done nothing, he said to himself, but make friends since ever he came to Leghorn. To be sure in the light of the Vice-Consul’s friendship he felt that Paolo was (as he had always felt) somewhat beneath his pretensions. But still the poor fellow had been very kind. As he came out by the private door of the Consul’s house, he saw Paolo at a little distance waiting till the public door of the Consulate should be open. He saw Harry and rushed at him, beckoning violently.