He had just finished breakfast, and the room was beginning to brighten under the influence of a good fire, between which and the Fool of Quality the Colonel felt more drowsy than he thought it creditable to be in the morning, when Horace made his appearance. The young man came in with drops of rain shining all over his rough coat, and with muddy boots, which he had taken no pains to clean before entering, and which offended the Colonel’s professional and natural fastidiousness. The rain-drops flew over into his uncle’s face as Horace threw off his coat. The Colonel looked on with a mortified displeasure, wondering over him;—he could not understand how it happened that so near a relation of his own should have so little natural grace of manner or perception of propriety. Accordingly, he looked very grave as he shook hands with Horace. He could not enter immediately on the more important subject between them; he could not help criticizing these lesser matters, and thinking how he could manage to suggest an improvement without wounding his nephew; for the Colonel, like other people, had his weaknesses, and in his opinion a disregard of the ordinary proprieties showed a dulness of heart.
As for Horace, he on his part showed no particular anxiety about the question of the day—he was more inclined a great deal to draw his uncle into conversation on general subjects connected with his past life, his former visits to England, and the intercourse he formerly had with his sister and her husband. To this conversation Horace himself contributed a little description of their dinner-table on the previous evening, which was indeed a very dismal picture, and could scarcely be exaggerated. The Colonel shook his head over the story with pain and distress, grieved for the facts, and still more grieved to know that they rather gained than lost in bitterness by his nephew’s recital. This stimulated him to introduce the real subject-matter of the present conference.
“It is natural enough, under all the circumstances, and I daresay advisable as well,” said the Colonel, “that you should wish to get away as soon as possible. Then as to what you are going to do, Horace, I come to the question under great difficulties. In the first place, when you leave me to choose for you, it almost appears as if I were the person sending you away, and not your own desire; and I have no object in sending you away, you must be aware.”
“What does it matter, uncle, how it appears, when we know exactly how it is?” said Horace, with apparent impatience and real craftiness.
“That is very true, and the most sensible thing I have heard you say,” said the unsuspecting Colonel. “Well then, Horace, my boy, there’s business. I don’t know very well how to set about it, but no doubt we could inquire; and I believe, for a man who desires to get on, there is nothing equal to that.”
“If a man has money to begin with, sir,” said Horace. “No, uncle, I detest buying and selling—that will not do for me.”
“Then you detest what many a better man than either you or I has practised, Horace,” said the Colonel, a little affronted. “And there is my own profession. I have some little influence to serve a friend; but to be a soldier—a real soldier—I don’t mean a man of parades and barracks, for at present you are not rich enough for that—requires a strong natural inclination. No—I see your answer—that will not do either; and indeed I think you’re right. Then—I speak to you frankly, Horace—I would not advise you, for instance, to think of the Church.”
“Because I am not good enough,” said Horace, feeling his pride wounded by the suggestion, yet laughing with a contempt of the goodness which could conform itself to that level; “and also, uncle, because I have no education and no influence—that of course is impossible.”
Colonel Sutherland could not help making an involuntary comparison between Roger Musgrave’s humble declaration of want of wit and want of teaching, and this confession, which sounded the same in words. But Horace made his avowal with all the egotistic confidence of a young man who knew nothing of the world; and having never met his equals, in his heart thought education a very trivial circumstance, and believed his talent to be such as should triumph over all disadvantages. The Colonel gave a little suppressed sigh in his heart, and said to himself that nothing would show the boy his mistake—nothing but life.
“Well then, Horace,” he cried, with sudden animation, remembering his own brilliant idea, “what do you think of the Law? So far as I can see, that is exactly the thing which is best suited to your genius—eh? My wonder is that it should never have occurred to yourself. What do you think of that, my boy?—the very thing for you, is it not?”