He'd only just managed to scrape through and make "some sort of a footing" for himself in the world as it was. His father, a hard-up Civil engineer, and his mother (who had been looked askance at by her people, the Swaynes, for marrying the penniless and undistinguished Paul Dampier, senior)—they'd only just managed to give their boy "some kind of an education" before they pegged out. Lessons at home when he'd been a little fellow. Afterwards one of the (much) smaller public-schools. For friends and pleasures and holidays he had been dependent on what he could "pick up" for himself. Old Hugo had been decent enough. He'd asked his cousin to fish with him in Wales, twice, and he hadn't allowed Paul to feel that he was—the poor relation.
Only Paul remembered the day that Hugo was going back to Harrow for the last time. He, Paul, had then been a year in the shops, to the day. He remembered the sudden resentment of that. It was not snobbery, not envy. It was Youth in him crying out, "I will be served! I won't be put off, and stopped doing things, and shoved out of things for ever, just because I'm poor. If being poor means being 'out of it,' having no Power of any kind, I'm dashed if I stay poor. I'll show that I can make good——"
And, gradually, step by step, the young mechanic, pilot, aero-racer and inventor had been "making good."
He'd made friends, too. People had been decent. He'd been made to feel that they felt he was going to be a useful sort of chap. He'd quailed a bit under the eyes of butlers in these houses where he'd stayed, but he'd been asked again. That Mrs. What's-her-name (the woman in the pink frock at the Smiths) had been awfully kind. Introducing him to her brothers with capital; asking him down to the New Forest to meet some other influential person; and knowing that he couldn't entertain in return. (He'd just sent her some flowers and some tickets for Brooklands.) Then there was Colonel Conyers. He'd asked whether he (Dampier) were engaged. And, at his answer, had replied, "Good. Much easier for a bachelor, these days."
And now! Supposing he got married?
On his screw? Paul Dampier laughed bitterly.
Well, but supposing he got engaged; got some wretched girl to wait for——
Years of it! Thanks!
Then, quite apart from the money-question, what about all his work?
Everything he wanted to do! Everything he was really in earnest about.