"Eighty pounds a year!" My reader can imagine that this was no great
fortune. I had little or nothing to spend in kid gloves or cigars;
indeed, to speak plain, prosaic English, I went without a good dinner
far oftener than I had one. Yet, withal, I was passing rich on eighty
pounds a year.
My father, Captain Trevelyan, a brave and deserving officer, died when I
was a child. My mother, a meek, fragile invalid, never recovered his
loss, but died some years after him, leaving me alone in the world with
my sister Clare.
When I was young I had great dreams of fame and glory. I was to be a
brave soldier like my dear, dead father, or a great writer or a
statesman. I dreamed of everything except falling into the common
grooves of life--which was my fate in after years. My mother, believing
in my dreams, contrived to send me to college--we both considered a
college education the only preliminary to a golden future. How she
managed it out of her slender means I cannot tell, but she kept me at
college for three years. I was just trying to decide what profession to
adopt, when a letter came summoning me suddenly home.
My mother was ill, not expected to live.
When I did reach home I found another source of trouble. My sister
Clare, whom I had left a beautiful, blooming girl of eighteen, had been
ill for the past year. The doctors declared it to be a spinal complaint,
from which she was not likely to recover, although she might live for
years.
She was unable to move, but lay always on a couch or sofa. The first
glimpse of her altered face, so sweet, so sad and colorless, made my
heart ache.
All the youth and bloom had died out of it.
My mother did not live many days; at her death her income ceased, and I
found myself, at twenty, obliged to begin the world as best I could, the
sole protector of my invalid sister. The first step was to sell our
little home, a pretty cottage at Hempstead, then to take lodgings nearer
the city; after that I set vigorously to work to look for a situation.
Ah, me, that weary task! I wonder if any of my readers ever went quite
alone, friendless, almost helpless, into the great, modern Babylon, to
look for a situation; if so, they will know how to pity me. I spent many
pounds in advertisements; I haunted the agency offices; I answered every
advertisement I read--it seemed all in vain.
My father's regiment was then in India, but I wrote to several of the
officers, who had known and valued him. Then, as a last resource, I
looked up the few friends my mother had.
If there is one thing more dreary than looking for a situation, it is
what is commonly called "hunting up one's friends." I found many, but
some were old and indifferent, others too much engrossed in their own
affairs to have any time to devote to mine. Some shook hands, wished me
well, promised to do all they could to help me, and before I had passed
from their sight forgot my existence.
I gave up my friends. Their help in the hour of need is a beautiful
theory, but very seldom put into practice.
Just as I was growing dull and dispirited, a friend upon whom I had not
called, and whose aid I had not solicited, wrote to me and offered me a
situation as clerk in his office, with a salary of eighty pounds per
annum, to be afterward increased. God send to every weary heart the
comfort this news brought to mine. I ran to Clare with the letter in my
hands.
"Eighty pounds a year, darling!" I cried; "there is a fortune."
We had neither of us ever had much to do with money; we were quite
ignorant of its value, how far it would go, what it would purchase, etc.
It seemed an inexhaustible sum. We had cheap, comfortable apartments in
Holloway--a room for my sister and two smaller rooms for myself. When I
think of her patience, her resignation, her unvarying sweetness, her
constant cheerfulness, my heart does homage to the virtue and goodness
of women.
One fine morning in September I went for the first time to work. The
office of Lawson Brothers was in Lincoln's Inn. The elder brother seldom
if ever appeared; the younger was always there. He gave me a very kindly
welcome, said he hoped I should not find my work tiresome, showed me
what I had to do, and, altogether, set me at my ease.
I sighed many times that morning to find of how little use was my
college education to me now and I sighed to think how all my dreams, all
my hopes and aspirations, had ended behind a clerk's desk, with eighty
pounds per annum in lieu of the fortune of which I had dreamed.
After a few days I became used to the novelty and did my best to
discharge my duties well.
Hundreds of young men in London lead lives similar to mine, with very
little variety; the only way in which I differed from them was that I
had my sister Clare to provide for. Alas! how soon I found out what a
small sum eighty pounds a year was! When we had paid the rent of our
three rooms, set aside a small sum for clothes and a small sum for food,
there was nothing left. Clare, whose appetite was dainty and delicate,
suffered greatly. I could not manage to provide even a bunch of grapes
for her; the trifling coppers I spent in flowers, that cheered her as
nothing else ever did, were sorely missed.
How I longed sometimes to take home a ripe peach, a bottle of wine, an
amusing book! But every penny was rigorously needed; there was not one
to spare. How I pitied her for the long hours she spent alone in those
solitary lodgings! A bright inspiration came to me one day; I thought
how glad I should be if I could get some work to do at night, if it were
but possible to earn a few shillings. I advertised again, and after some
time succeeded in getting copying to do, for which I was not overwell
paid.
I earned a pound--positively a whole golden sovereign--and when it lay
in my hand my joy was too great for words. What should I do with one
sovereign and such a multiplicity of wants? Do not laugh at me, reader,
when I tell you what I did do, after long and anxious debate with
myself. I paid a quarter's subscription at Mudie's, so that my poor
sister should have something to while away the dreary hours of the long
day. With the few shillings left I bought her a bottle of wine and some
oranges.
That is years ago, but tears rise in my eyes now when I remember her
pretty joy, how gratefully she thanked me, how delicious she found the
wine, how she made me taste it, how she opened the books one after
another, and could hardly believe that every day she would have the same
happiness--three books, three beautiful new books! Ah, well! As one
grows older, such simple pleasures do not give the same great joy.
It was some time before I earned another. It was just as welcome to me,
and there came to me a great wonder as to whether I should spend the
whole of my life in this hard work with so small a recompense.
"Surely," I said to myself, "I shall rise in time; if I am diligent and
attentive at the office, I must make my way."
But, alas! the steps were very small, and the clerks' salaries were only
increased by five pounds a year at a time. It would be so long before I
earned two hundred a year, and at the same rate I should be an old man
before I reached three hundred.
One morning--it was the 1st of May--bright, warm, sunny day, the London
streets were more gay than usual, and as I walked along I wondered if
ever again I should breathe the perfume of the lime and the lilac in the
springtime. I saw a girl selling violets and daffodils, with crocuses
and spring flowers. I am not ashamed to say that tears came into my
eyes--flowers and sunshine and all things sweet seemed so far from me
now.
I reached the office, and there, to my intense surprise, found a letter
waiting for me.
"Here is a letter for you, Mr. Trevelyan," said the head clerk,
carelessly.
He gave me a large blue official envelope. If he had but known what it
contained!
Some minutes passed before I had time to open it; then I read as
follows:
"To Sir Edgar Trevelyan:
"Sir: We beg to inform you that by the death of Sir Barnard
Trevelyan, and his son, Mr. Miles Trevelyan, who both died of the
epidemic in Florence, you, as next of kin, will succeed. We are not
aware that the late Sir Barnard had any other relatives. Crown
Anstey, the residence of the late baronet, is ready at any time for
your reception. If you can favor us with a call today, we will
explain to you the different ways in which the late baronet's large
fortune is invested. We have managed the Crown Anstey property for
some years, and hope to have the honor of continuing our business
relations with you. We are, sir, your obedient servants,
"Moreland & Paine."
The letter fell from my hands and I looked at it in blank astonishment
too great for words.
Sir Barnard Trevelyan! Crown Anstey! Why, the last time I ever heard
those names my mother sat talking to me about this proud, stately cousin
of my father--cousin who had never noticed either him or us by word or
by look. I was curious, and asked many questions about him. She told me
he had married some great lady, the daughter of a duke, and that he had
two sons--Miles, the eldest, and Cecil. I remembered having heard of
Cecil's death, but never dreamed that it could affect me.
Moreland & Paine! I knew the firm very well; they had large offices in
Lincoln's Inn, and bore a high reputation. Suddenly my heart stood
still. Why, of course, it was a jest--a sorry jest of one of my fellow
clerks. There they were, looking at me with eager, wondering eyes--of
course it was a jest. My heart almost ceased to beat, and I caught my
breath with something like a sob.
They should not laugh at me; they should not read what was passing in my
mind.
I put the letter calmly and deliberately in my pocket and opened my
ledger. I fancied they looked disappointed. Ah! it was but a jest; I
would not think of it.
I worked hard until the dinner hour, and then asked permission to absent
myself for a time. Dinner was not in my thoughts, but I went quickly as
I could walk to the office of Moreland & Paine.