A START IN LIFE.
For some days after he left Brackenhill, Percival was busy arranging his
affairs. His ruin was remarkably complete. He had been running up bills
in every direction during the last month or two, intending to pay for
everything before his marriage out of the funds which were in Mr.
Lisle's hands. He had plenty there, he knew, for his method of saving
had been to live principally on his grandfather's supplies, and to leave
his own to accumulate under his guardian's care--a plan which had always
seemed to him admirably simple, as indeed it had proved to be. Lately he
had not received much from the squire, because the old man so fully
intended to provide for his favorite once and for all on the approaching
wedding-day. Percival got some of the tradesmen to take back their
goods, and sold off everything he had to meet the rest of the claims
against him. Even the watch his grandfather had given him went, on
Bombastes Furioso's theory that
Watches were made to go.
Hammond was urgent that he should accept a loan. "It isn't friendly to
be so infernally proud," said Godfrey.
"What do you call being 'infernally proud'?" Percival retorted. "I've
been living on you for the last fortnight; and I bought myself a silver
watch this morning, and I've got two pounds seventeen shillings and
sevenpence and a big portmanteau full of clothes. I don't _want_ your
money."
It was after dinner. Hammond filled his glass and pushed the bottle to
his guest. "What do you mean to do?" he asked.
"Ah, that's the question," answered Percival. "Do you happen to know if
one has to pass much of an examination to qualify one for breaking
stones on the roads now-a-days? Not that I should like that much;" and
he sipped his claret reflectively. "It would be rather monotonous,
wouldn't it? And I can't help thinking that bits would get into one's
eyes."
"I think so too," said Godfrey. "Emigrate."
"That advice would be good in some cases. But addressed to any one who
is notoriously helpless its meaning is obvious."
"Are you notoriously helpless?"
"Am I not?"
"Well, perhaps. What does it mean, then?"
"It is a civil way of saying, 'Ruin is inevitably before you--gradual
descent in the social scale, ending in misery and starvation. _Would_
you be so kind as to go through the process a few thousand miles away,
instead of just outside my front door?' I don't say you mean that--"
"I'm sure I won't say I don't," Hammond interrupted him. "Very likely I
do: I don't pretend to be any better than my neighbors. But that doesn't
matter. If you are so clear-sighted that there's no sending you off
under a happy delusion, it would be mere brutality to urge you to
undergo sea-sickness in the search for such a fate. As you say, it is
attainable here. Will you turn tutor?"
Percival winced: "That sort of thing isn't easy to get into, is it? I
doubt if I've the least aptitude for teaching, and I never went to
college. I should be a very inferior article--not hall-marked."
"Then write," said Godfrey.
"Cudgel my lazy brains to produce trash, and hate my worthless work,
which probably wouldn't sell. I haven't it in me, Godfrey." There was a
pause.--"By Jove, though, I _will_ write!" said Percival suddenly.
"What will you write?"
"Anything. I'll be a lawyer's clerk."
"But, my good fellow, you'll have to pay to be articled. I fear you
won't make a living for years."
"Articled? nonsense! I'll be a copying-clerk--one of those fellows who
sit perched up on high stools at a desk all day. I _can_ write, at any
rate, so that will be an honest way of getting my living--the only one I
can see."
Hammond was startled, and expostulated, but in vain. The relief of a
decision was so great that Percival clung to it. Hammond talked of a
situation in a bank, but Percival hated figures. His scheme gave him a
chance of cutting himself loose from all former associations and
beginning a new, unknown and lonely life. "No one will take any notice
of a lawyer's clerk," he said. "I want to get away and hide myself. I
don't want to go into anything where I shall be noticed and encouraged,
and expected to rise--don't let any one ever expect me to rise, for I
certainly sha'n't--nor where any one can say, 'That is Thorne of
Brackenhill's grandson.' I'm shipwrecked, and I've no heart for new
ventures."
"Not just at present," said Godfrey.
"Never," said the other. "I'm not the stuff a successful man is made of,
and what I want isn't likely to be gained in business. I might earn
millions, I fancy, if I set them steadily before my eyes and loved the
means for the end's sake, easier than I could get what I covet--three or
four hundred a year, plenty of leisure, and brain and habits unspoilt by
money-making. There's no chance for the man who not only hasn't the
necessary keenness, but wouldn't like to have it. If you want to say,
'More fool you!' you may."
Hammond shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
"Stick to your money, Godfrey," said Thorne with a melancholy smile, "or
you'll feel some day as if the ground were cut away from under your
feet. It isn't pleasant."
"I'll take your word for it," said Hammond.
Percival mused a little. "It's hard, somehow," he said. "I didn't want
much and I wasn't reckless: upon my word, it's hard. Well, it can't be
helped. Look here: do you know a lawyer who would suit me?"
"Is that the way you mean to apply for a situation? Let us see: will
Your Highness stay in town?"
"And meet all sorts of people? My Highness will not."
"In the country, then?"
"No, a big town--the bigger the better--some great manufacturing place,
where every one has smuts on his face, money in his pocket, and is too
busy improving machinery to have time to look at his neighbor."
"Would Brenthill do?"
"Admirably."
"I know a man there: I dare say he would as soon oblige me as not. What
shall I say?"
"Say that I want employment as a clerk, and that, though I am utterly
inexperienced, I write a good hand and am fairly intelligent. Don't say
that I am active and obliging, for I'm neither. Tell him that if he can
give me a fair trial it is all that you ask, and that he may turn me out
at the end of a week if I don't do."
Godfrey nodded assent.
"I think you may as well write it _now_," said Percival. "I shall find
it difficult to live for any length of time on this private fortune of
mine without making inroads on my capital."
Hammond stretched himself and crossed the room to his writing-table.
"Are you sure you won't change your mind?" he said. "It will be a
horrible existence. Clerks receive very poor pay: I don't believe you
can live on it."
"At any rate, I can die rather more slowly on it, and that will be
convenient just now."
"Why don't you wait, and see if we can't help you to something better?"
Percival shook his head: "No. I promised Sissy that if I took help from
any one, it should be from her. I must try to stand by myself first."
Godfrey wrote, and Percival sat with bent head, poring over the little
note which Sissy had sent to entreat that the past might be forgotten.
"Let me do something for you," she wrote. "Come back to me, Percival, if
you have forgiven me; and you said you had. I was so miserable that
miserable night, and we were so hurried, I hardly know what I said or
did. It was like a bad dream: let us forget it, and wake up and begin
again. Can't we? Come and be good to me, as you were last autumn. You
remember your song that day in the garden, 'You would die ere I should
grieve;' and I have grieved so bitterly since last Wednesday night! You
will be good to me--won't you?--and I promise I will tell you everything
always. I promise, Percival, and you know I will really when I say I
promise."
He had answered her with tender and sorrowful firmness. "I knew your
letter was coming," he said. "I was as certain of it, and of what you
would say, as if I held it in my hand. But, Sissy, you wouldn't have
written so to me if I had been a rich man, as you hoped I should be; and
I can't take from your sweet pity what you couldn't give me when I asked
it for love's sake. It is impossible, dear, but I thank you from the
bottom of my heart, and I love you for it. I hardly know yet where I
shall go and what I shall do; but if I should want any help I will ask
it first of you, and I will be your friend and brother to my dying day."
Thus he closed the page of his life on which he had written that brief
story of love. Yet Sissy's letter was an inexpressible comfort to him.
It was something to know that elsewhere a little heart was beating--so
true and kind that it would have given up its own happiness--to help him
in his trouble.
A few days later Percival was going north in a slow train. On his right
sat a stout man with his luggage tied up in a dirty handkerchief. On his
left was an old woman in rusty black nursing an unpleasant grandchild,
who made hideous demonstrations of friendship to young Thorne. Opposite
was a soldier smoking vile tobacco, a clodhopping boy in corduroy, and a
big girl whose tawdry finery was a miracle of jarring and vulgar colors.
Never, I think, could a young hero have set forth to make his way
through the world with less hope than did Percival Thorne. He was
already disheartened and disgusted, and questioned within himself
whether life were worth having for those who went third-class. The slow
train and the lagging hours crawled onward through the dust and heat.
"And this," he thought, "should have been my wedding-day!"