Samuel Edward Wilkinson duly left school, and became, of his own express
will, an apprentice to a highly respectable grocer who enlarged upon his
respectability by styling himself a tea merchant and an Italian
warehouseman. The people who visited the shop (which was situate in a
principal street in an important sea-port town) were invariably
impressed by the powder-blueness of the sign and by the red-goldness of
the letters which stood out so plainly from the powder-blue. It had a
cachet of its own, and the proprietor had two daughters. But Samuel
Edward was then scarcely over fourteen years of age, and as his parents
and the proprietor were of a distinctly Dissenting nature, his time was
passed much more in stealing sugar-candy out of newly-opened boxes, and
in attending prayer-meetings at the nearest chapel, than in following
the good example of London 'prentices of the other centuries. In fact,
by the time Samuel Edward Wilkinson was nineteen years of age, he was
not merely a money-grubber, but that worst of all things--a tradesman
who looks upon God Almighty and the Bible as useful weights to put under
an illegal scale. And as Samuel Edward gained more of his experience in
the knowledge of his fellow make-weighters, the more he began to believe
less in his fellow-men--with the natural result that certain women who
were not his fellows suffered.
As he grew up, Samuel Edward, naturally, had to live somewhere else.
His master had no room in his house for apprentices who had approached
to maturity. But, like all masters of that early-Victorian age, he knew
where accommodation in a highly Christian family was to be had, and
Samuel Edward found himself _en famille_ with a middle-aged dressmaker
and a pretty child whose sweet sixteenity was much more appealing than
the maturer charms of his master's daughters. Samuel Edward was not
without good looks, and the child fell in love with him, and remained so
for longer years than she had counted upon. But Samuel Edward was as
philandering in love as he was pertinacious in business, and the idea of
marriage was not within his immediate purview.
"At what age do you think, a man ought to marry, Poskitt?" he said to me
during one of his periodical visits to the old village, he being then
about two-and-twenty.
"When he feels inclined, and means it," said I.
"Of course, Poskitt, a man should never marry unless he marries money,"
he continued. "For a young man in my position, now, what would you say
the young woman ought to be able to bring?"
I had sufficient common sense even at that age to make no reply to this
question. I let him go on, silent under his sublime selfishness.
"Don't you think, Poskitt, that it's only right that when a man marries
a woman he should expect her to make a certain amount of compensation?"
he said. "It's a very serious thing, is marriage, you know, Poskitt.
Anybody with my ambition--which is to be a man and not a mouse, or, in
other words, to pay twenty shillings in the pound, and keep myself out
of the workhouse--has to look forward a good deal. Now there's a young
lady that I know of--where I lodge, in fact--that's very sweet on me,
but I don't think her mother could give her more than a couple of
hundred, and, of course, that's next to nothing. You see, Poskitt, I
want to have a business of my own, and you can't get a business without
capital. And money's very hard to make, Poskitt. I think--I really
think--I shall put off the idea of getting married."
"That's the very wisest thing you can do," I said. "But you'd better
tell the young lady so."
"Well, you see, Poskitt," he answered, stroking his chin, "the fact
is--there are two young ladies. The other one is--my cousin Keziah.
Now, of course, I know Keziah will have money when her father dies, but
then I don't know when he will die. If I could tell exactly when he'll
die, and how much Keziah will have, I should make up my mind--as it is,
I think I shall have to wait. After all, it really doesn't make such a
great deal of difference--one woman is about as good as another so far
as marriage is concerned, Poskitt, isn't she? The money's the main
thing."
"Why don't you go and find a rich heiress, then?" I asked.
"Ah!" he replied. "I only wish I could, Poskitt! But you must remember
that I've no advantages. My father's only a butcher, and trade is
trade, after all. You've great advantages over me--your people own
their land--you're nobs compared to what I am. But I shall make myself
a man, Poskitt. There's only one thing in the world that's worth
anything, and that's money. I'm going to make money."