When his father died, Humphrey was first brought face to face with the stern things of life. It was a chance remark of his aunt that gave him the first glimpse. "You'll have to do something for yourself, Humphrey," she said one day. "That father of yours did nothing for you." She always spoke bitterly of his father.
Humphrey had never thought of it before. It had seemed to him that things came naturally to people from father to son: that, in some mysterious, unthought-of way, when he was about twenty or so, he would find himself with an income of sorts, or some settled employment.
"You must Get On," said his aunt, looking at him through her spectacles. "Young men Get On quickly to-day. You must grasp your opportunities."
So here came a new and delightful interest into Humphrey's existence. He perceived something fine in it all. From that day he had one creed in life: the creed of Getting On. This determination swamped every other interest in life. It was as if his aunt had suddenly touched upon some internal button that had started off a driving-wheel within him, and set all the machinery of energy into movement. How did one "Get On" in the world? He began to take an enormous interest in everything, to follow the doings of men and cities outside Easterham; his knowledge widened slowly, for he had no brothers and was singularly innocent in the everyday sense of the word.
And all the time, during those Easterham days, he was beginning to understand things. He saw that Beaver and Worthing, with their small salaries and narrow capacities, had not "Got On"—would never "Get On." He realized too, that his father, well through life, had been little better than a man in the beginning of it. On the other hand, Bilson, with his large, shining shop, might be said to have "Got On," and just when he was half deciding that Bilson held the secret, Bilson suddenly went bankrupt, owing to the failure of some coffee plantations in Ceylon. It seemed a perplexing business, this getting on. Easier to talk about than to do. And, after all, the getting on-ness of Bilson had been circumscribed by the narrow area of Easterham. The real success meant power, and the ability to use it: wide power over the affairs of other people.
These were not the thoughts of a moment: they were lingering thoughts that spread over three years, from seventeen to twenty, those three years when he was at the Easterham Gazette office, with only Beaver and Worthing for his models in life.
They were thoughts in the intervals of writing "notes" on local subjects—indeed, the notes were the outcome of the thoughts—of reading, and of cycling, and going to the theatre. And then one day a most amazing thing happened.
Beaver Got On!
Yes, it was really incredible, but the fact was there indisputable and glaring. Beaver, shaggy and unkempt, who seemed to have settled down for ever to the meetings and the calls and the police-courts ("Harriet Higgins, 30, no fixed abode, charged with being drunk and disorderly, etc."), broke through the cobwebs that had settled on him, in an unexpected and definite manner.