Halliday was both gloomy and angry when he left home, full of that sense of unappreciated merit which cuts with peculiar keenness into the minds of those who entertain no doubt as to their own superiority over the ordinary level; but the influence of external things and the distraction of travel soon succeeded in clearing to a great degree his mental firmament. The bustle of the great station at Edinburgh, the care of selecting a comfortable corner for his journey, the hurrying and rush of less fortunate persons hampered by luggage and children, amused his mind and distracted his thoughts. He travelled, as a matter of course, in the third-class; and, equally as a matter of course, he regarded with a dignified derision the stalwart young men in deer-stalking coats, and with every superfluity imaginable in the way of wraps and sticks and dressing-cases, who indulged themselves in the luxury of sleeping-carriages. Sybarites he called them in his mind, with a half-contemptuous, half-indulgent smile—frivolous creatures, altogether unaware that in a corner of a third-class carriage a man so much their superior in everything was calmly regarding them, making the inevitable comparison between folly and its comfortable cushions, and wisdom, which, if it did not trudge afoot, yet used only such conveniences as dignified necessity required. The deer-stalking young men, who never thought of the matter, would indeed have been highly surprised had they known how they were set down at their proper value by their travelling companion. The comparison did Andrew good: it made him feel his own dignity, his superiority to the external, yet made his breast swell with a pathetic wonder. Was it perhaps possible that Joyce, after three months’ experience of luxury, should prefer these brainless ones, so much lower in the intellectual scale? Surely, surely that could not be possible. He saw with a smile that they took copies of the Field and the Sporting News into their luxurious carriages with
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 them. He himself had the Saturday Review. There is nothing so sustaining as this sense of being better than one’s neighbours. It comforted poor Andrew, and kept him warm during his journey. The gentlemen in the sleeping-carriages might rest better, but they did not, nay could not, feel half the moral elevation of the schoolmaster in his corner of the third-class.
London, too, veiled in a grey-and-yellow fog, through which the lamps, not yet extinguished, and a line of dusky sunrise among the clouds, looked red, brought an excitement to his mind which few perhaps of the companions of his journey shared. Andrew greeted the great city as people greet it in books,—as adventurers in the days of Dr. Johnson saluted that centre of the world. He thought with a tingle of strange emotion in his breast that the great roar of humanity might become familiar to his ears ere long. He rose to the sound and commotion with a sense of predestined greatness. The people in the sleeping-carriages tumbled out drowsily, rubbing their eyes in the midst of a dream. But Andrew stepped forth inspired by the recollection of many a great man who had arrived like himself, not knowing what might befall him. His hopes, his courage rose more and more as he felt where he was—in a great place where he was sure to be understood, and where the human mind was in a perpetual progress, not stagnant as in the country. He felt, indeed, not as he had done when he left home, as if his mission were a forlorn hope, but rather as if he were coming like a conqueror to see and to vanquish. It wanted only, he said to himself, that touch of reality to chase all the chimeras away. He would, he must, find Joyce faithful as ever, keeping silence only because her plans were not yet ripened for his advancement. He would find her father full of that respect which the man of action feels for the man of mind. He would be received as an honoured guest; he would be admitted into their confidence, and made acquainted with their hopes. Visions of a noble old house in some sort of cloistered dignified centre of learning rose again before his eyes—A. Halliday, Headmaster. He did not definitely fix upon Eton or Harrow, having no actual knowledge of either of those places; but something exhilarating, sweet, a strong yet soft delusion, stole into his being. He was so entirely inexperienced and full of the ignorance of his class (although a man so well instructed), that he was not aware of any restriction upon such appointments that could not be got over by sufficiently powerful influence. Influence could do everything, Halliday thought.
He got a bath and breakfast at the nearest hotel, undiscouraged even by its grim and chill nakedness, and feeling a wonderful free
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dom and elation in the consciousness of thus doing what the best people did, and being waited upon, served by a man-servant (if you liked to put it in that way) like the best. It cost a good deal, but it was worth the expenditure. The fog cleared off as the morning advanced, and it was in the sunshine of a bright hazy morning that he set off on the final stage of his journey. He had dressed himself with the utmost care and all the resources of his wardrobe. His tie was blue, his coat a frock-coat of extreme solemnity, which he usually wore at funerals. He thought, as he was a traveller, that it was the right thing to wear with this a round hat such as he wore in the country. He had a pair of lavender gloves, his umbrella was very neatly rolled up—in short, at half a mile off you recognised his unquestionable character and doubtful gentility with as much ease as if he had written Andrew Halliday, schoolmaster at Comely Green, upon his manly breast; but he had not the least idea of that. His clear and ruddy complexion was a little paled by the night’s journey, and by the mixture of agitation and excitement which he could not but feel as the moment of meeting approached. He looked a most respectable young man, very respectable, honest as the day. You would scarcely have suspected, however, to see him, how superior he felt to the people in the sleeping-carriages, and how, when they got the Field and the Sporting Times at the bookstalls, he had bought the Saturday Review.
He went by the railway from Waterloo, admiring the river which ran glistening grey, like a great worm, under the shining of the wintry sun—and got out with a great heartbeat at the station. How near he was now! He felt inclined to take a walk, to see the place and look at the view, pushing off the decision for a time, the certainty—for he had so little doubt by this time that it was a certainty—of the happy meeting. To see Joyce in perhaps a few minutes; to hear her cry of astonishment and delight; to have her come up to him in her shy way, never demonstrative, unless perhaps the long separation might have made her more so. ‘Oh, Andrew! and I was just going to write to tell you——’ He would not wait till she said ‘about the headmastership.’ He would take her in his arms, whoever was there (for had he not the right?), and say, &ls............