II
He was a queer chap, was Eddie. Born of a selfish and frivolous mother and a morosely indifferent father, neglected, left in the care of servants of the sort that always collect about an extravagant and careless mistress, he had never acquired as a matter of course those ideals which the average boy of his class takes for granted. He had a perfectly natural inclination toward truth, honour, and justice, and toward clean living, but he had had to discover these virtues laboriously, all alone. In consequence, he gave them a sort of perverted importance. He became somewhat of a prig.
And having with such difficulty discovered his truths, he was inclined to be a bit domineering and intolerant about them. He was angry and disappointed at finding any one imperfect.
What is more, he was for the first time in his life finding himself a person of some importance. Always before he had been under a disadvantage, always conscious of his "queerness," of having a mother who was a laughing-stock and a father who was a scandal. He was priggish and unsociable, but he wasn’t a scholar. He had done very badly in all the various schools to which he had been sent by fits and starts; and when at last he had been somehow got into college, he had done still worse. He had hated his failure there; he had so longed to be popular and friendly, and had been so markedly neither.
So he had gone into business at nineteen, and he had found himself at once. He did amazingly well. He had a clever, sympathetic, imaginative brain, he had good judgment, he knew how to handle his people, how to deal with men; but at the same time he had not very much common sense.
He was like one of those musical infant prodigies, so shamelessly exploited by their families. He had this amazing talent for making money, and the people about him, well aware of his virtue and his innocence, had known perfectly how to make use of his ability. He was a cruelly driven slave to his exalted idea of family obligations.
Eddie wasn’t aware of it, however. He was willing to spend all his youth in acquiring money for other people to spend. He took a sort of pride in exhausting himself. He was young enough and strong enough to enjoy affronting his health. It seemed to him a noble thing to support one’s family. This was one of his pet ideas—ideas which he had got from books or from other people’s talk, none of which had developed quietly and wholesomely from childhood, or from experience. His instincts were sound and admirable. He practically never had a base impulse; but his ideas were grotesque. He was, in some respects, a fool, and he was treated as fools must always be treated by the self-seeking.
There was truth in Angelica’s fancy. There was something in this boy that was what men chose to call kingly—a generosity, a fine force, a self-forgetfulness, a profound sense of his obligations, even toward this waif, so recently brought to his attention. He believed it his duty to help her.
"Why don’t you go into business?" he asked her abruptly.
"Why?"