“That will we, Harry. This is the fourth time in my life I’ve had to begin all over again, and I’m as fresh for it as on the first day.”
They went on now to talk of the future and all their plans like men who felt the struggle with life a fair stand up fight, that none with a stout heart ought ever to think of declining. The skipper had not only been in every corner of the globe, but had brought back from each spot some memories of gain, or pleasure, or peril—sensations pretty much alike to his appreciation—and whether he commanded a whale-boat at Behring’s Straits, or took in his ship store of cocoa-nuts and yams at the Spice Islands, adventure ever tracked his steps. Dashed with the love of danger was the love of gain, and in his narrative one never could say whether there prevailed more the spirit of enterprise or the temper of the trader.
“We’ll want that loan from Vyner yet, I see, Harry,” said he, at the end of a long calculation of necessary outgoings; “and I see no reason against taking it.”
“I do, though,” said the other, gravely.
“Mayhap some sentimental reason that I’d not give a red cent for, boy. What is it?”
“I’ll not trouble you with the sentimental reasons,” said Luttrell, smiling, “though perhaps I’m not without some of them. What I’ll give you will suffice. While I was one morning with Sir Gervais, going over all about my father and his affairs, of which he knew far more than I did, he opened his writing-desk, and took out a great mass of letters. ‘These,’ said he, ‘are in your father’s hand; read them, and you’ll be better acquainted with him than you have yet been.’ They were on all manner of themes—of society, field sports, books, and much about politics—and interested me vastly, till at last I came upon one which certainly Sir Gervais would not have suffered me to see had he been aware it was amongst them. It was the last letter my father had ever written to him, and was almost entirely about myself. He spoke of the semi-barbarism I had been reared in, and the humble prospects before me, and he told about my disposition, and my faults of temper—the old family faults, he called them—that made us all ‘intractable to our friends, and intolerable to all who were not friends.’ At the end he asked Vyner to become my guardian, and he added these words: ‘Be a friend to my boy in all ways that your kindness, your sympathy, your counsel can dictate. Guide, direct, encourage, or, if need be, reprove him, but never, whatever you do, aid him with your purse. It is on this condition I commit him to you. Remember.’”
“Well, I’d be noways obliged to my father if he had made any such condition about me. I’ve never been much the better for all the good advice I’ve got, but I’ve found the man that lent me a thousand dollars uncommon useful.”
“I am telling you of what my father wished and asked for,” said Harry, proudly, “not of anything else.”
“And that’s just what I’m objectin’ to, youngster. It was his pride to take no help, and it brought him to live and die on a barren rock in the ocean; but I don’t intend to do that, nor to let you do it. We’ve got to say to the world, ‘Sheer off there, I’m a comin’, and I mean comin’ when I say it. There’s maybe room enough for us all, but I’ll be smashed and chawed up but I’ll have room for me!”
Whether it was the fierce energy with which he spoke this, or the fact that in a few rough words he had embodied his whole theory of life, but certainly Harry looked at him with a sort of wonder blended with amusement.