“Not too young to know the value of nine thousand pounds and its yearly interest, I can tell you, Mr Smythe,” said the other, with a laugh. And then he took his leave.
Volume One—Chapter Two.
The Legatee.
If there is one quality in this world which its fortunate possessor is to be envied the enjoyment of, it is that of absolute insouciance. I don’t mean the spurious article known as “putting a bold face on things,” though this is a gift by no means to be despised; but that downright, thorough, devil-may-care way of taking the vicissitudes of life, in such wise as these interfere neither with the appetite, sleep, nor temper, which is well-nigh as rare—at any rate among us Englishmen—as the Little Bustard.
When Claverton entered Mr Smythe’s office, he owned barely enough sovereigns in the world to make a creditable jingle in his breeches pocket; when he left the lawyer he walked out into the street a man of independent means. Yet the change, welcome and wholly unexpected as it was, in no wise disturbed his mental equilibrium. He was conscious of an increased feeling of complacency as he contemplated the world at large by the light of his own improved prospects; but he would permit himself no elation. While going through the hardest times he had known—and he had known some very hard ones indeed—he had cultivated the severest philosophy; and now it had become second nature to him. “Bad luck—no use growling, won’t last; good luck—no use crowing, may not last,” was his self-invented and favourite maxim.
At the time when we first make his acquaintance, Arthur Claverton stood absolutely alone in the world. I don’t mean to say that he had no relatives, but they cold-shouldered him. A few of them were near relatives, others very distant; but the nearer they were, the more they cold-shouldered him. He was an only child and an orphan; his mother having died at his birth, and his father being killed in a railway accident sortie four years later, leaving him to the care of a guardian, one of the near relatives aforesaid. Near, too, in another sense of the word; for, though very comfortably off, and indeed wealthy, this conscientious and benevolent guardian impounded the scanty substance left for the orphan’s start in life, on the ground that his family was a large one, and he could not afford the addition of his dead brother’s child.
His family certainly was a large one, which is to say that it was a supremely disagreeable and discordant one. The boys, rough and unruly, worried the girls and their father. The girls, underhand and spiteful, tormented the boys and their mother. Wrangling and mischief-making was the order of the day. After this it will not be surprising to learn that it was a pious family, which is to say, that much attention was given to morning and evening prayers; and that Sunday, jocosely termed the day of rest, was to be employed getting up epistles and gospels by heart, with a slice of catechism or so thrown in, what time the whole master was not pent up in a square box undergoing edification at the lips of a prolix and Geneva-clad Boanerges, who seldom said “And now to” within an hour and a quarter from the enunciation of his text. By an odd coincidence, the day on which this exemplary piety had its full scope—notably in the tabooing of all secular literature or any approach to levity of demeanour—the reign of strife, squabble, and jar seemed to reach its acme.
Such was the amiable family circle among which young Arthur’s earlier lot was cast. But somehow he never assimilated. He was a species of Ishmael when “at home,” which, by the way, was not often, for he spent most of his holidays at school. All things considered, a good thing for him? No. For it was not a nice school where his educational lines were cast. It was a very cheap and a very nasty school; one in which he learnt nothing but the art of getting into serious scrapes, and—perhaps the only useful thing he did learn—the art of getting out of them. A bringing up of this kind would have been the ruin of most boys; but it was not so with Arthur. He came of a splendid stock, and the wretched associations of his boyhood and youth, instead of destroying his character, had the effect of forming it. They hardened him. True, they rendered him cynical at an age when one looks for impulsiveness and generosity, and if they had inspired him with a disgust for religion, his mind was absolutely clear of cant. They had taught him utterly to despise sentiment, while leaving him capabilities of generosity and even geniality. And if any one showed him a kindness, he never forgot it.