“I have known very good men, Harry, who were clerks all their lives.”
“Yes, yes,” cried Harry, impatiently, “one knows that. There’s an excellent fellow now in our office: but I don’t suppose, Uncle Henry, that was what you intended for me.”
“Well, my boy: I intended that you should earn your living and be off the hands of your family. I am not aware that I went much further. Of course, if your own talents and industry pushed you on, one would have been very glad to hear of it; otherwise, in your circumstances, the fifth son, I should not be disposed to turn up my nose at the position of a mere clerk.”
Harry gazed at his uncle while he spoke with an impatient reluctance and protest against every word. He could scarcely bear to hear him out; he had his mouth open to reply before Uncle Henry was half done: but when the old gentleman ended his speech, Harry, with a gasp as of baffled utterance, remained silent. He did not know what reply to make, he felt the ground cut from under his feet; how was he to ask his uncle to place himself in the breach, to do what his father would not do, when this was how his representation was received? He gazed at him with a hard breath and said nothing; for the moment his very utterance was taken away.
And then there was a pause. Mr. Joscelyn sat quietly with his gold spectacles between his fingers and thumb, looking at his nephew. The lines were gone from his forehead, he was quite bland and amiable, but demonstratively indifferent, with an air of having nothing whatever to do with the question, which, to Harry, was exasperating beyond description. He kept his other hand upon the Club papers, which were his business. The young fellow who had so suddenly come down upon him in vehement wrath and offence, yet expectation, was manifestly nothing but an interruption to Uncle Henry. He was thinking of his waste-paper, not of the future prospects of any foolish young man. After a pause he spoke again.
“And when are you going back to business, Harry? I hope, now that you are here, that you will stay a day or two and renew your acquaintance with your old friends. Mrs. Eadie will make you very comfortable. I am sorry to say I am dining out both to-day and to-morrow, but if you like to have young Pilgrim, or Gus Grey, or any of your former acquaintances, my housekeeper is really equal to a very nice little dinner, as you know. I think I heard there was a dance getting up somewhere. Stay till the end of the week, if your leave lasts so long.”
“Uncle Henry,” said Harry, with an air of tragedy, which he was quite unconscious of, “you may suppose that a man who has been turned out of his father’s house, and has thrown off all connection with his native soil——”
“No, no, my boy, no, no,” said Mr. Joscelyn, with a half laugh, “not so bad as that.”
“I say,” continued Harry, with increasing solemnity, “who has parted from his family for ever, and cut off all connection with his native soil—you may suppose that he hasn’t much heart to pay visits or take up old acquaintances. What is there likely to be between me and Jack Pilgrim, who is stepping into his father’s business, and as settled as the Fells? or Gus Grey, who is kept up and set forward at the Bar, though he is not earning a penny, by relations that think all the world of him? what can there be in common, I should like to know, between them and me? I’m only the fifth son, as you say, to start with, therefore I’m of no consequence; and, by Jove!” cried Harry, striking the table with his clenched fist, “if ever I enter that house while Ralph Joscelyn’s the master of it—if ever I go back to knock at the door that was locked upon me, locked upon me in the middle of the night——”
Uncle Henry’s brow contracted when that blow came down upon his neat writing-table; it shook the inkstand, which perhaps was overfull, and spilt a drop or two of ink, which of all things in the world was the thing which annoyed him most. He mopped it up hurriedly with his blotting-paper, but his brow became dark, and his mouth drew up at the corners in a way that meant mischief.