"Only to say, sir, that you promised—that is, I mean—"
"Say what you mean—can't you?—and don't stand there wasting my time and your own."
The young fellow's features twitched nervously. He was of good birth and breeding, though so poor as to accept, and accept thankfully, the miserable pittance of a lawyer's clerk.
"I have been with you three years, sir," he said with some dignity; "you promised my mother that if I gave you satisfaction you would give me my articles. My mother has requested me to ask you whether this promise is to be fulfilled. My poor father—"
The young man spoke easily now; he was warming to his theme. His poor father had made Mr. Robinson's fortunes.
As a man of the world he had taken him up, introduced him to his circle, a large one and influential, and by his recommendations gained for him clients innumerable.
He was dead, and before his death, by an unfortunate series of speculations, had ruined his family. His sons had been trained at school and college, they were at home in the hunting-field, they excelled in all kinds of manly sports, their pleasant accomplishments and gentlemanly ease made them welcome in every society, but as men of business they were practically useless.
Mr. Robinson had been accustomed, only when their father's back was turned, to sneer at them for fine gentlemen. Nothing aroused his jealous ire so much as the sight of what he was pleased to call a fine gentleman, for Mr. Robinson had a certain innate consciousness which more of his class possess than we generally imagine. It was this: he knew that in the world he might do his own will, coin money by the handful (for in his temperament and constitution were all the elements of success), become rich, powerful, sought out: one distinction he could never reach. The quiet ease, the graceful nonchalance, the tone of high breeding which a fine gentleman possesses, as it were, by instinct, was and would always remain beyond him. And therefore he professed to despise the class.
"Tush! tush!" he said, breaking short the young man's allusion to him who had been his friend in those days when he, the great Mr. Robinson, had been climbing painfully; "don't you attempt to bring home tales to me or I'll make short work with you. There shall be no snivelling here. Mind you, it is only respect for your father's memory that induces me to keep you at all. You're not worth your salt. As to giving you your articles, what good do you suppose that would do you? Be off! mind your work, and let me have no more of such whining."
James Robinson was enjoying himself. His blue-gray eyes flashed and a smile curled his lips. To put down a fine gentleman was the finest piece of fun in the world, but this time he had gone too far. Suddenly the boy changed; manhood and manly purposes seemed to look out from his eyes, the obsequious attitude had gone, he approached his master, and dared to look him fully and fearlessly in the face: "Then, Mr. Robinson, hear me. I will sit down no more to your desk; I will bear your insolence no longer. My mother and I believed you had offered me a situation out of kindness and gratitude; yes—glare at me if you will; I repeat it—gratitude to my father's memory. We thought your intentions honest, and the peculiar ungentlemanliness of your conduct to be attributed only to your want of good breeding. I may tell you that yesterday I was offered, and offered pressingly, what you refuse so insultingly to-day, and by a far better and older firm than yours. I thought I owed you a certain duty, and would not accept it until I had put you in mind of your promise. Now I have heard you, and once and for ever I shake myself free of you, only humiliated that for three long years I should have associated daily with so base and low a nature."