"I wish I wasn't such a fool!"
Tom Blount said this to himself as he balanced that self upon a high
stool at a desk in his uncle's office in Gray's Inn. There was a big
book lying open, one which he had to study, but it did not interest him;
and though he tried very hard to keep his attention fixed upon its
learned words, invaluable to one who would some day bloom into a family
solicitor, that book would keep on forming pictures that were not
illustrations of legal practice in the courts of law. For there one
moment was the big black pond on Elleston Common, where the water lay so
still and deep under the huge elms, and the fat tench and eels every now
and then sent up bubbles of air, dislodged as they disturbed the bottom.
At another time it would be the cricket-field in summer, or the football
on the common in winter, or the ringing ice on the winding river, with
the skates flashing as they sent the white powder flying before the
wind.
Or again, as he stumbled through the opinions of the judge in
"Coopendale _versus_ Drabb's Exors.," the old house and garden would
stand out from the page like a miniature seen on the ground-glass of a
camera; and Tom Blount sighed and his eyes grew dim as he thought of the
old happy days in the pleasant home. For father and mother both had
passed away to their rest; the house was occupied by another tenant; and
he, Tom Blount, told himself that he ought to be very grateful to Uncle
James for taking him into his office, to make a man of him by promising
to have him articled if, during his year of probation, he proved himself
worthy.
"I wouldn't mind its being so dull," he thought, "or my aunt not liking
me, or Sam being so disagreeable, if I could get on--but I can't.
Uncle's right, I suppose, in what he says. He ought to know. I'm only
a fool; and it doesn't seem to matter how I try, I can't get on."
Just then a door opened, letting in a broad band of sunshine full of
dancing motes, and at the same time Samuel Brandon, a lad of about the
same age as Tom, but rather slighter of build, but all the same more
manly of aspect. He was better dressed too, and wore a white flower in
his button-hole, and a very glossy hat. One glove was off, displaying a
signet-ring, and he brought with him into the dingy office a strong
odour of scent, whose source was probably the white pocket-handkerchief
prominently displayed outside his breast-pocket.
"Hullo, bumpkin!" he cried. "How's Tidd getting on?"
"Very slowly," said Tom. "I wish you'd try and explain what this bit
means."
"Likely! Think I'm going to find you in brains. Hurry on and peg away.
Shovel it in, and think you are going to be Lord Chancellor some day.
Guv'nor in his room?"
"No; he has gone on down to the Court. Going out?"
"Yes; up the river--Maidenhead. You heard at the breakfast, didn't
you?"
Tom shook his head.
"I didn't hear," he said sadly.
"You never hear anything or see anything. I never met such a dull,
chuckle-headed chap as you are. Why don't you wake up?"
"I don't know; I do try," said Tom sadly.
"You don't know!--you don't know anything. I don't wonder at the
governor grumbling at you. You'll have to pull up your boots if you
expect to be articled here, and so I tell you. There, I'm off. I've
got to meet the mater at Paddington at twelve. I say, got any money?"
"No," said Tom sadly.
"Tchah! you never have. There, pitch into Tidd. You've got your work
cut out, young fellow. No letters for me?"
"No. Yes, there is--one."
"No!--yes! Well, you are a pretty sort of a fellow. Where is it?"
"I laid it in uncle's room."
"What! Didn't I tell you my letters were not to go into his room? Of
all the--"
Tom sighed, though he did not hear the last words, for his cousin
hurried into the room on their right, came back with a letter, hurried
out, and the door swung to again.
"It's all through being such a fool, I suppose," muttered the boy. "Why
am I not as clever and quick as Sam is? He's as sharp as uncle; but
uncle doesn't seem a bit like poor mother was."
Just then Tom Blount made an effort to drive away all thoughts of the
past by planting his elbows on the desk, doubling his fists, and resting
his puckered-up brow upon them, as he plunged once more into the study
of the legal work.
But the thoughts would come flitting by, full of sunshiny memories of
the father who died a hero's death, fighting as a doctor the fell
disease which devastated the country town; and of the mother who soon
after followed her husband, after requesting her brother to do what he
could to help and protect her son.
Then the thought of his mother's last prayer came to him as it often
did--that he should try his best to prove himself worthy of his uncle's
kindness by studying hard.
"And I do--I do--I do," he burst out aloud, passionately, "only it is so
hard; and, as uncle says, I am such a fool."
"You call me, Blount?" said a voice, and a young old-looking man came in
from the next office.
"I!--call? No, Pringle," said Tom, colouring up.
"You said something out loud, sir, and I thought you called."
"I--I--"
"Oh, I see, sir; you was speaking a bit out of your book. Not a bad way
to get it into your head. You see you think it and hear it too."
"It's rather hard to me, I'm afraid," said Tom, with the puzzled look
intensifying in his frank, pleasant face.
"Hard, sir!" said the man, smiling, and wiping the pen he held on the
tail of his coat, though it did not require it, and then he kept on
holding it up to his eye as if there were a hair or bit of grit between
the nibs. "Yes, I should just think it is hard. Nutshells is nothing
to it. Just like bits of granite stones as they mend the roads with.
They won't fit nowhere till you wear 'em and roll 'em down. The law is
a hard road and no mistake."
"And--and I don't think I'm very clever at it, Pringle."
"Clever! You'd be a rum one, sir, if you was. Nobody ever masters it
all. They pretend to, but it would take a thousand men boiled down and
double distilled to get one as could regularly tackle it. It's an
impossibility, sir."
"What!" said Tom, with plenty of animation now. "Why, look at all the
great lawyers!"
"So I do, sir, and the judges too, and what do I see? Don't they all
think different ways about things, and upset one another? Don't you get
thinking you're not clever because you don't get on fast. As I said
before, you'd be a rum one if you did."
"But my cousin does," said Tom.
"Him? Ck!" cried the clerk, with a derisive laugh. "Why, it's my
belief that you know more law already than Mr Sam does, and what I say
to you is--Look out! the guv'nor!"
The warning came too late, for Mr James Brandon entered the outer
office suddenly, and stopped short, to look sharply from one to the
other--a keen-eyed, well-dressed man of five-and-forty; and as his brows
contracted he said sharply--
"Then you've finished the deed, Pringle?" just as the clerk was in the
act of passing through the door leading to the room where he should have
been at work.
"The deed, sir?--no, not quite, sir. Shan't be long, sir."
"You shall be long--out of work, Mr Pringle, if you indulge in the bad
habit of idling and gossiping as soon as my back's turned."
Pringle shot back to his desk, the door swung to, and Mr James Brandon
turned to his nephew, with his face looking double of aspect--that is to
say, the frown was still upon his brow, while a peculiarly tight-looking
smile appeared upon his lips, which seemed to grow thinner and longer,
and as if a parenthesis mark appeared at each end to shut off the smile
as something illegal.
"I am glad you are mastering your work so well, Tom," he said softly.
"Mastering it, uncle!" said Tom, with an uneasy feeling of doubt raised
by his relative's look. "I--I'm afraid I am getting on very slowly."
"But you can find time to idle and hinder my clerk."
"He had only just come in, uncle, and--"
"That will do, sir," said the lawyer, with the smile now gone. "I've
told you more than once, sir, that you were a fool, and now I repeat it.
You'll never make a lawyer. Your thick, dense brain has only one
thought in it, and that is how you can idle and shirk the duty that I
for your mother's sake have placed in your way. What do you expect,
sir?--that I am going to let you loaf about my office, infecting those
about you, and trying to teach your cousin your lazy ways? I don't know
what I could have been thinking about to take charge of such a great
idle, careless fellow."
"Not careless, uncle," pleaded the lad. "I do try, but it is so hard."
"Silence, sir! Try!--not you. I meant to do my duty by you, and in due
time to impoverish myself by paying for your articles--nearly a hundred
pounds, sir. But don't expect it. I'm not going to waste my
hard-earned savings upon a worthless, idle fellow. Lawyer! Pish!
You're about fit for a shoeblack, sir, or a carter. You'll grow into as
great an idiot as your father was before you. What my poor sister could
have seen in him I don't--"
_Bang_!