CHAPTER II
HENRY LEAVES HOME
It had been ever the habit of Edward John Charles that when he made up his mind to do a thing, that thing was as good as done. How else would it have been possible for a man to rise to the onerous and honoured position of postmaster at Hampton Bagot? For some time he had been tending to the conclusion that Henry would soon require to make a move if he was ever to rise in the world. Not that the postmaster was influenced by the opinions of the village gossips, brutally frank and straightforward though these were. He prided himself on being above such trifles, though, if the truth be told, the Post Office was the veritable centre of the local gossip-mongering.
But the last encounter with Mr. Needham, and Henry's shyly audacious offer to stand an examination at the hands of the vicar, confirmed the portly Mr. Charles in the opinion that his youthful prodigy had outgrown all the possibilities of Hampton Bagot. Had not Mr. Page confessed there was really nothing more he could teach the studious Henry? Did he not admit that after a few lessons in Latin Henry shot ahead so fast he soon outstripped the learning of his tutor? Surely, then, further delay in starting him upon the battle of life were only wasting his sweetness on the desert air of Hampton Bagot, as Mr. Charles, in one of his literary moods, would say. Besides, the supposed laziness of the youth was a growing scandal to the community; and after all, even the postmaster could not afford altogether to ignore public opinion.
It will have been gathered by now that although to every outward appearance an intensely commonplace, podgy personality, Edward John Charles possessed within his ample bosom the qualities which made him curiously different from the ruck of village humanity. It would be a fair assumption that in all the countless hamlets of sweet Ardenshire there lived not another parent who could contemplate with equanimity a bookish strain in the blood of any of his offspring.
The literary taste has ever been discouraged in these parts of the green Midlands, and such stray books as the postmaster sold to the village folk were bought chiefly for the gilt on their covers, which rendered them eyeable objects for the parlour table. He himself had not read a dozen books in all his prosperous life, and perhaps his loud interest in literature was nothing better than affectation, springing from the accident of his becoming the most convenient agent for supplying the "county people" in the neighbourhood with their literary goods. Beginning in affectation, his pretended admiration of books and bookmen had fostered a serious love for them in his son, and Edward John was just the man to boldly face the consequences.
When his mind was made up on the necessity of translating Henry to a new field in which his dazzling qualities could radiate with ampler freedom than in the narrow confines of Hampton Bagot, his thoughts turned to his friend, Mr. Ephraim Griggs, who represented literature in the very stronghold of its greatest captain, and already he saw Henry a busy assistant in the well-known second-hand book-shop at Stratford-on-Avon. A word from him to Mr. Griggs, and the golden gates of Bookland would swing wide open to the glittering Henry!
So, without a hint of his mission and its weighty issues, the carrier's waggon creaked with the added weight of Edward John Charles a few mornings later, on its way to Stratford.
For all who are willing to work without monetary reward there is no lack of opportunity, and Mr. Griggs readily consented to receive Henry into his business as a second assistant. The die was cast, and in the evening the postmaster returned mysteriously happy. Although an inveterate gossip, he could be tantalisingly silent when it suited his mood, and as he surveyed the village street from his accustomed post that evening, there was nothing but the usual serenity of his face and the satisfactory cock of his coat-tails to give a clue to the sweet thoughts dancing in his brain.