“By no means. You’ve got the Roylands spirit, my boy, and will fight like the devil himself when needs be; but when I think of all those years of idleness in England, it makes me angry. Such a loss of good material which could be made use of, and I dare say there are hundreds of fellows of your physique and stamina, who write their lives away in offices instead of going in for an adventurous career and dying rich. What I mean is that you are made of the same stuff as I, and had I possessed you as my right hand when I started this scheme, egad, I’d have had a kingdom instead of an island!”
“You forget, I was not born forty years ago.”
“No more you were—more’s the pity! Those were glorious times, and, in spite of my years, I do not regret having been born early in the century. Life is too tame now, all bread and butter and explosive machines. Give me the good old days of hand-to-hand combat, lots of adventure, rows galore, and the devil take the hindmost.”
“I never met such a man as you, uncle.”
“Then you never met yourself. I don’t mean your doppelganger, but your inner self, for you are exactly what I was, though how the deuce your father ever came to have such a son, I do not know. He was as mild as milk, my brother Austin.”
“Was he?” said Maurice grimly, thinking of the many family rows that had taken place.
“Oh, I don’t deny he had a spice of the Roylands temper, but as to ambition and enterprise, he might as well have been born a carrot. Why, he nearly ruined you, my boy, with neglecting to put you on the right track—no wonder you got melancholia and all that rubbish. You are a worker, not a dreamer.”
“I have brains, I suppose?”
“Yes, and so has Crispin; but he uses his brains in the right way, you don’t. Crispin is born to sit down and tinkle a lute, you are born to handle a sword and lead an exciting career. Why didn’t you go into the army?”
“My father wouldn’t let me.”