"Go away, Charles! go away!" he said: "go and see your uncle, as you ought to have done before now. I am cross, and if you stay, you will find me as bitter as a black dose."
"Well, I shall tell my servant, at all events, to be in readiness to attend upon you in case you ring," replied Charles Marston.
"Tell him to go to the devil!" exclaimed Mr. Winkworth: "the whiskered coxcomb, with his airs and graces, would drive me mad in a minute. No, no; go away and see your uncle, and leave me to myself. You may come in about one or two o'clock; but mind how you open that door, for it makes such a villanous squeaking that one would suppose it had not moved on its hinges for half-a-century."
There was a house which Charles Marston would undoubtedly have much preferred to visit, if he had followed his own inclination; but, nevertheless, with a strong resolution, he turned his steps towards his uncle's dwelling, feeling conscious that he had certainly made no great exertions to see him since his return. He was immediately admitted, for Mr. Scriven seldom betook himself to his counting-house before eleven or twelve o'clock; and being a man of very regular habits, the ordinary process was to read three or four articles in the morning papers before he set out, partly during breakfast, and partly during the first steps of digestion afterwards. I have said three or four articles, because in reading newspapers, as in everything else, Mr. Scriven went upon a system. He was one of those men who always have a motive, and his motive was usually one and indivisible.
There was no such thing as an impulse in his nature; he did not recollect ever having had an impulse. He was Babbage's calculating machine, in flesh and blood.
His sister, Lady Fleetwood, had told her nephew, as we have seen, that Mr. Scriven had been "very angry" upon one occasion; but Lady Fleetwood made a mistake. Mr. Scriven was never very angry; it did not come within his calculations to be so. He could be exceedingly severe, bitter, caustic, and coolly regardless of other people's feelings; but he was not the least angry, all the while. He either wanted to prevent them from doing a thing he did not desire to be done, or to stop them from ever doing it again. It was still upon a motive.
Thus, in reading the newspaper, he read those articles alone which were likely to affect himself personally, either immediately or remotely. He cared nothing about politics, except as the price of the funds, the value of merchandise, the risks of speculation, or the amounts of taxation, were concerned. Highway robberies, murders, suits in chancery, police reports, trials at bar or in the Arches' Court, interested him not in the least, except as excepted. They were all about other people; and he would have considered it a want of due economy to give them the least attention. Births, deaths, and marriages, in the abstract, he cared nothing about; and the whole world might have been born, wedded, or buried, without producing one sensation in his bosom, provided he could have carried on his transactions without them.
The "Gazette," the shipping list, the money article, the commercial statement, a few trials for swindling, forgery, and breach of contract, together with reports of the budget, the estimates, and any debates in parliament referring to commercial matters, were all that he ever thought of reading; and the lucubrations of editors, in what are called leading articles, he passed over with utter contempt, saying that he trusted he could form as good an opinion himself on matters of fact as any they could give him.
The reader must pardon me for dwelling so long on Mr. Scriven's character; and I do so, not because it is at all a singular one, for it is as common as the air, under different modifications, but because there are very few men who, possessing the jewel of perfect selfishness, are bold enough to display it openly and without disguise to the eyes of all men. But Mr. Scriven was at the acme of his class. He was, as a naturalist would say, the most perfect specimen ever found; and it requires to be so before selfishness can be considered a virtue and a matter of pride.
When Charles Marston was ushered up to his uncle, he found him busily reading an account of the barque "Louisa" having been spoken with by the "Arcadia" mail-packet, in latitude so-and-so, longitude so-and-so. Neither the latitude nor longitude signifies a pin to you or me, reader, though it did to him.