"Base, bold, bad boys are cheap to-day"?
NARR. The White Witch.
SONOGUN scarcely knew what to do. He had been up all day, wandering about the lanes which surrounded the family mansion. A fitful light blazed in his magnificent eyes, his brow contracted until it assumed that peculiarly battered expression which is at once characteristic of a bent penny and consistent with the most sublime beauty. To be properly appreciated he must be adequately described. Imagine then a young man of twenty, who was filled with the bitterest hatred of the world, which he had forsworn two years ago, on being expelled from school for gambling. There was about him an air of haughty reserve and of indifference which was equally haughty. This it was his habit to assume in order to meet any neighbours who happened to meet him, and the result naturally was that he was not so popular as some inferior beings who were less haughty. In fact he had a very short way with his relations, for whose benefit he kept a shell into which he frequently retired. He was dangerously handsome, in the Italian style, and often played five bars of music over and over again, with one finger, to please his mother. Some women thought he was an Apollo, others described him as an Adonis, but everybody invariably ended or began by calling him an ancient Roman. He was sarcastic, satiric, and very strong. Indeed, on one occasion, he absolutely broke the feathers on a hand-screen, and on another he cracked three walnuts in succession without looking up. But, oh, the sufferings that young heart had undergone. Slapped by his nurse, reproved by his mother, expelled by his schoolmaster, and shunned by the society of the country-side, it was small wonder that the brave soul revolted against its fellow-men, and set its jaws in a proud resolve to lash the unfeeling world with the contempt of a spirit bruised beyond the power of such lotions as the worldly-wise recommended for the occasion. He whistled to his dog Stray, and clenched his fists in impotent anger. An expression of gentleness stole over his features. The idea was suggestive. He, too, the proud, the honourable, the upright would steal, and thus punish the world. He looked into his make-up box. It contained bitter defiance, angry scorn, and a card-sharper's pack of cards. He took them out; and thus SONOGUN, the expelled atheist, made up his mind.
CHAPTER II.
On the green table of life the cards fall in many ways, and the proud king often has to bow his head before the meek and unassuming ace.—BINNS.
AND now began for SONOGUN a time of moral stress and torture such as he had never anticipated. It is an old saying, and perhaps (who knows?) a truism, that virtue is its own reward, not, perhaps, the reward that ambitious people look for, but the easy consciousness of superiority which comes to those who feel themselves to be on a higher level than the rest of the world, which struggles on a lower level. Another philosopher, nameless, but illustrious, has declared, in burning words, that "Honesty is the best policy," best in some form, perhaps hardly understood now, but no less real because we are unable to appraise it in the current coin of the realm over which Her Most Gracious Majesty, whom may Heaven preserve, holds sway. But SONOGUN had never thought of Heaven. To him, young, proud, gloomy, and moody, Heaven had seemed only—(Several chapters of theological disquisition omitted.—ED.) The click of the billiard-balls maddened him, the sight of a cue made him rave like a maniac. One evening he was walking homeward to Drury Lane. He had given his coat to a hot-potato-man, deeming it, in his impulsive way, a bitter satire on the world's neglect, that the senseless tubers should have jackets, while their purveyor lacked a coat. The rain was pouring down, but it mattered little to him. He had wrapped himself in that impenetrable mantle of cold scorn, and thus he watched with a moody air the crowd of umbrella-carrying respectabilities, who hurried on their way without a thought of him. Suddenly some one slapped him on the back, and, as he turned round, he found himself face to face with a couple of seedy-looking gentlemen.
"I perceive," began SONOGUN, "that you hate the world, having suffered much injustice from it."
"We do; we have!" was the cordial reply.
"I, too," continued SONOGUN, "have many grievances. But tell me who and what are you?"