Percy listened in silence till Mr. Slowkopf had talked himself out of breath, which it took him some time to accomplish, for, in every sense of the term, he was awfully long-winded; when at length he was silent, the boy fixed his large eyes earnestly upon his face as he replied, “I understand, sir, we are so poor that it is not possible to send me to a public school, or to college as—as—my dear father wished; but I do not see why I am necessarily obliged to become a merchant’s clerk, a position which I shall never be fit for, and which I hate the idea of; the Colvilles have always been gentlemen.”
“A man may work for his living in some honest occupation without forfeiting that title,” returned Mr. Slowkopf, sententiously.
“Not as a merchant’s clerk,” was the haughty reply: “No; let me be an artist, if I cannot receive a gentleman’s education in England. I know I have some talent for drawing, let me study that, and then go to Italy, beautiful Italy, for a few years; people can live very cheaply abroad, and I will be very careful. When I become famous I shall grow rich, and be able to support mamma, and send Hugh to college, and then I shall care less for not having been there myself.”
“Without attempting to regard your scheme in its many complicated bearings, or to argue the matter in its entire completeness, for which time, unfortunately, is wanting,” remarked Mr. Slowkopf, deliberately; “I will place before you, in limine, certain objections to it which render the commercial career proposed by your excellent uncle, if not in every point a more advantageous arrangement, at all events one more suited to the present position of affairs. Your uncle proposes to take upon himself all immediate expense connected with your education; while, as a clerk in his counting-house, you will be in the receipt of a gradually increasing salary. Your scheme would demand a constant outlay of capital, for certainly the next five years; nay, it would be no matter of surprise to me if ten years should elapse, ere, by the precarious earnings of an artist’s career, you were enabled to render yourself independent. In one case you will be an assistance to your excellent mother, in the other a burden upon her.”
Percy walked to the window; the burning tears of disappointed ambition and mortified pride rushed to his eyes, but he brushed them hurriedly away, as he said in a firm, steady voice, “Thank you for telling me the truth, Mr. Slowkopf; we will accept my uncle’s offer.”
Thus it came about that Percy and Hugh Colville were entered, as boarders, at Doctor Donkiestir’s excellent proprietary establishment.
CHAPTER III.—A ROMANTIC ADVENTURE.
The Rosebud of Ashburn possessed a female friend. Caroline Selby was the daughter of Sir Thomas Crawley’s agent. Sir Thomas Crawley was the rich man of the neighbourhood, lord of the manor, patron of the living, and owner of a splendid place about a mile from the village; but although Ashburn Priory was an old family seat, the present owner of the property had by no means always been the great man he was at present; indeed, it may be doubted whether, in justice, he had any right to be so at all; though, unfortunately, in law he possessed a very sufficient one. The former possessor of Ashburn Priory, an irritable, perverse old man, had, in a moment of passion, disinherited an only son (who had committed the unpardonable crime of consulting his heart, rather than his pocket, in the choice of a wife), making a will in favour of a relative whom he had never seen, and of whom the little he had heard was unfavourable. It is true, he never intended this will to take effect; meaning, when he had sufficiently consulted his dignity, and marked his disapproval of the sin against Mammon which his son had committed, graciously to receive him into favour again; but Death, who has no more respect for ill-temper than for many more amiable qualities, did not allow him time to repair the injustice he had committed, cutting him off with an attack of bronchitis, and his son with a shilling, at one fell stroke. The son, an amiable man, with a large family (a conjunction so often to be observed, that, to a speculative mind, it almost assumes the relation of cause and effect), soon spent his shilling, and, overtasking his strength to replace it, ere long followed his unjust father, though we can scarcely imagine that he travelled by the same road. Before this latter event took place, however, Mr. Thomas Crawley made his first appearance as lord of the manor of Ashburn, and master of the Priory; and everybody was so well aware what he was, that they carefully abstained from inquiring what he had been. To those capable of judging, however, one thing was unmistakably apparent; namely, that neither in the past nor in the present could his manners and appearance entitle him to the designation of a gentleman. That he himself entertained an uncomfortable suspicion of this fact, might be gathered from the indefatigable perseverance with which he pursued the object of attaining to the rank of knighthood. Up the rounds of a ladder of gold he climbed into Parliament; once there, if he voted according to his conscience, that inward monitor must have been of a decidedly versatile temperament; for the way in which he wheeled about, and turned about, on every occasion, conceivable and inconceivable, was without precedent, save in the cases of Jim Crow of giddy memory, and of Weathercock versus Boreas and Co. At last a crisis arrived; votes were worth more than the men who gave them: a minister stayed in who should have gone out; and Mr. Crawley became Sir Thomas. And this was the man who, with a rent-roll of £15,000 a-year, was about to avail himself of a legal quibble, in order to extort from a widow and orphans a share of the little pittance that remained to them. His agent Mr. Selby, was a better man than his master; and might have been better still, if “his poverty, and not his will,” had not led him to consent to be the instrument wherewith Sir Thomas Crawley, M.P., transacted much dirty work in Ashburn and its vicinity. At the time we treat of the will had so often yielded that it had quite lost the habit of asserting itself; and the poverty, profiting by this inertness, had gradually disappeared, till Mr. Selby was generally looked upon as a man well to do in the world, and respected accordingly.