CHAPTER I.
Tom Thorne was a bachelor, who lived in one of the best houses, had the best horses, and gave the best dinners and suppers, of any merchant in Buenos Ayres. The head of the “house,” or firm, he was his own master; and this privilege he used to the utmost. Wherever a ball was to be held in that dancing city, there be sure you find Tom; and few dinner parties, pic-nics, or country excursions, were complete without him. Little mattered it to him, whether he were invited or not—he knew every body, and everybody knew him; and his jovial good humour, his hearty laugh and frank address, won him the good graces of any party upon which the whim of the moment induced him to intrude. Tom was a restless, rattling blade, and delighted in excitement of every kind. He could no more have sat still on a chair for half an hour than he could have passed over an entire day without drinking champagne, where it was to be had, or brandy and water where it was not.
Courteous and gallant to the ladies, he was noisy and jovial with the men; and although he was well known to boast of his liberty as a bachelor, yet this probably only made him more of a favourite with the fair. There could be no harm in flirting and coquetting with one who openly defied their attractions. The shy and timid could be pert and playful with Tom Thorne the bachelor, without any feelings of indelicacy; while those who were less reserved, considered it fair play to entangle him in the nets of their raillery—probably not without a distant hope that the gay flutterer might yet singe his wings in making his circuit round the flame of their attractions.
It will be thought surprising how our hero, with such roving and unsteady habits, could transact business as the head of a mercantile house. But in South America, business is not conducted in the same systematic way that it is in London or Liverpool; and probably more hides or bullocks, gin or ginghams, are bought and sold at the dinner or billiard table than at the desk or exchange.
For such irregular kind of trade, Tom was peculiarly adapted. His was not the character to plod at a desk over intricate speculations, nor was it necessary in a trade confined within narrow compass and certain seasons. Trade would sometimes be brisk, vessels would require to be loaded and discharged; then Tom would write night and day, with desperate energy, and then, as if he had earned a holiday, he would idle away for weeks. What was the use of clerks if not to write? or, according to an old proverb, what is the use of keeping a dog, and barking yourself?
Tom Thorne, when sent out to South America, in the first instance, came under great advantages. He was the son of the head of one of the richest firms in Europe, and with an ill-judged liberality was allowed lots of pocket-money; and more consideration was paid to him than to other clerks by the managers of the house in Buenos Ayres. Thus he had both more time and money to spend than other “young men” with more limited prospects. Tom was not one to throw away these advantages; and so his horse was the swiftest, his coat the tippiest, his cigar the longest, his gloves were ever the whitest, and his bouquet the richest of all the riding, smoking, flower-giving youths of Buenos Ayres; and it may be conceived, that with all “these appliances, and means to boot,” he was more an adept in the ways of gallantry than scriveny. In the course of time Mr Thorne, in spite of all his failings, arrived at the dignity of representative in Buenos Ayres of the rich firm of Thorne, Flower, & Co.
Once established as his own master, Tom’s natural levity of character was not long of displaying itself, pleasure was his business, and business his pastime. The lute or the piano (he was a splendid musician) occupied him more than the pen; he was more in the camp or in the streets, than in his house—and more in other people’s houses than his own. And yet with all this, his business went on most swimmingly—he was an indulgent master, paid his clerks well, and fed them like princes: this they requited by paying more attention to his business than he did himself, and thus Tom, almost in spite of himself, was, as we have formerly said, one of the richest merchants in the city.
Some of our fair readers may say—This is all very well, but why does he not marry? and then he might rest happy at home, instead of being so dependent on others for enjoyment. But it was this very dependence on others for excitement and the means of enjoyment, that made Tom shirk marriage. It would have been a thraldom to him. Was it, could it be possible for him to stop all night at home, reading a book, and looking at his wife? Oh no! Could you drink brandy and water, and smoke cigars in a parlour? Oh no! Tea and toast at seven, was tame work in comparison with toddy and devilled kidneys at eleven. It was very agreeable, certainly, to see ladies dressed out in smiles and silks; but he had heard or read that husbands might sometimes see them in sulks and slippers. It was more pleasant for Tom to be knight-errant to the fair in general. There could be little romance about a husband, little poetry about a wife, and very little Jollity about a nursery. So thought Tom; but as we shall see, The best laid schemes of mice and men
Gang aft a-gley.