“Well, my boy,” he said with a kindly greeting, “I’m glad to see you. You’ll not remember me for you were but a little fellow when I was last here. Let me see, they call you Raphe, don’t they?”
“Not Raphe, but Ralph,” said the boy, and into his mind there darted the recollection of a scene that had once been funny but now seemed pathetic, of a discussion upon his name between his father and two old antiquaries, and of how one of them had patted him on the head with the gruff-voiced injunction, “If any one calls you ‘Raphe’ tell him he’s a fool.”
It was impossible to call such a man as Sir Matthew a fool, and the boy turned to greet the lawyer, and was surprised to find that unlike the typical solicitor of fiction he was a very noble looking man of the old school, gentle and courtly in manner, and evidently understanding how embarrassing the interview must be to a lad of thirteen.
“Sit down, Ralph,” said Sir Matthew, motioning him to a chair, “there are several things I must talk to you about.”
Ralph obeyed, not without a curious sensation at being ordered about in his own home by a perfect stranger. “Mr. Marriott and I,” resumed his godfather, “have been looking into your father’s affairs on our way from London, and as a matter of fact they were pretty well known to me before. I grieve to say, my boy, that he has left you quite unprovided for.”
“I—I knew,” said Ralph, “that father had lost a great deal of money lately—it was through some company that failed: he told me he never would have speculated, but he wanted very much to make money and send me to Winchester and then to Oxford; he couldn’t do that, you know, only out of the living. But he blamed himself for having done it; he said it was no better than gambling.”
Sir Matthew had paced up and down the room restlessly during this speech, he seemed to be moved by it, and it was the lawyer who first broke the silence. “You are happy,” he said to Ralph, “in having the memory of a father who was just enough to recognise his own mistakes, and noble enough to confess them. Be warned, my boy, and never in the future dabble in speculation.”
Sir Matthew returned to his former position on the hearthrug. “In the meantime,” he said with displeasure in his tone, “his more useful study will be how to live in the present.”
“That,” said Mr. Marriott gravely, “is a matter which you, Sir Matthew, will no doubt help him to consider.”
Ralph, with a child’s quick consciousness that something lay beneath these words which he did not altogether understand, glanced from one to the other in some perplexity. He saw that Sir Matthew was angry with the lawyer, and that the lawyer disapproved somehow of Sir Matthew.