The Eton Man
Jim Silver grew up neither his father's son nor his mother's.
"He's a throw-back--to his grandfather," said old Sir Evelyn.
And in fact from the first the lad's soul hankered after the broad lands
of Leicestershire rather than the counting-house in Threadneedle Street.
His happiest days were spent as a child on his grand-dad's farm, amid
the great horses, and sweet-breathed kine, and golden stacks.
"Back to the land," as his grandfather was fond of saying, was the
child's unspoken motto.
The old man and his sturdy grandchild were rare intimates, and never so
happy as when wandering together about the yards and farm-buildings and
pastures, the child, silent and absorbed, as he clutched his grand-dad's
big brown finger.
The pair did not talk much: they were too content. But there was one
often-repeated conversation which took place between them as they
strolled.
"What goin' to be when you grows up, Jim?"
"Farmer."
"What shall ye breed?"
"Shire-'osses."
The child came back always from those prolonged visits with the sun on
his cheeks, the strength in his limbs, and Leicestershire broad upon his
tongue; and he never understood why his mother cut his visits short on
every imaginable pretext.
At Eton the lad's friends were almost all drawn from the families in
whose blood, after generations of possession, the land and its
belongings had become a real if somewhat perverted passion. They would
sit on into the twilight in each other's studies and ramble on
interminably and with the exaggerated wisdom of seventeen about the
subject nearest to their youthful hearts.
Sometimes Mr. Bromhead would look in, grim and gray behind his
spectacles.
"Talking horses as usual, Jim, I suppose," he would say.
"And dog, sir," corrected young Amersham.
"With an occasional shorthorn chucked in to tip the scale," added old
Sir Evelyn's fair grandson.
* * * * *
When Brazil Silver died, the year his son was the heavy-weight in the
Oxford boat, he left a will which was in accordance with his life.
Every penny he had--and he had a good many, as the Chancellor of the
Exchequer remarked in the House of Commons--was tied up in the Bank, and
to remain there.
It was all left to his son. "I can trust him to see to his mother," ran
the will, written on half a sheet of paper, "and to any dependents.
Charities I loathe."
The son was free to save anything he liked from his vast income, but the
capital must stay in the Bank.
The old man made no condition that Jim should enter the Bank, and
expressed no wish to that effect. His friends, therefore, speculated
what Jim would do.
They might have spared themselves the trouble. He left Oxford, in spite
of the protests of the Captain of the boat, who spent a vain but hectic
week pointing out to the apostate the path of duty, which was also the
path of glory, and went into the Bank.
His reasoning, as always, was simple and to the point.
"The Bank was my father's show," he said. "He made it, and left it to me
to carry on. And I shall--to the best of my ability."
With that capacity for dogged grind which distinguished him, he tried to
render himself efficient, working early and late like any clerk.
It was a well-nigh hopeless task. Jim Silver's head was sound if slow;
but he had no aptitude for figures.
"I'm worth two pound a week in the open market," he told his old
house-master. "And I'm supposed to be bossing--that." And he brandished
the latest report of the Bank of which he was nominal chairman.
Notwithstanding obvious differences in many ways, Jim inherited some of
his father's characteristics.
Brazil Silver, in spite of his success, had always remained in his
personal life the simple farmer's son. Indeed, it was said in the City
that he never owned a dress-suit, and that when he had to attend City
banquets he hired his butler's.
When he died he left behind him none of the usual encumbrances. Original
in his private life as in finance, he had steadfastly refused to go the
way of the world. He had never bought a great place in the country or a
big house in town. He had never taken a Scotch moor or a river in
Norway. In London he had a plain but perfectly appointed flat; and
sometimes in the summer he took a house on the river or at St. Helen's.
In these respects Jim followed faithfully in the steps of his father.
He kept on the flat in town, worked in the City all the day, and spent
much time of evenings at the Eton Mission in Hackney Wick.
One small extravagance he attempted: he tried to buy from old Sir Evelyn
the farm on which his fathers had lived and died for generations.
The old gentleman, who would sooner have parted from his soul than from
an acre of his inheritance, refused to sell.
"I suppose the boy'll cut up rough now," grumbled the old baronet, who
was fond of Jim.
"Oh, no, he won't, grandfather," replied his grandson. "He's awfully
decent."
"We shall see," mumbled the old man; but he had shortly to admit that
Billy was right.
Jim Silver, thwarted in his desire to acquire his grandfather's farm,
rented a little hunting-box near by instead. There he kept his
weight-carriers, and there during the hunting season he spent his
week-ends and occasional holidays.
Since the days when he walked his grand-dad's farm as a child, his
ambitions had changed in degree but not in kind. Then he had proposed to
devote his life to breeding shire-horses. Now he meant, when once he had
mastered his job, to devote his leisure to owning and breeding 'chasers.
Some time elapsed after his father's death before he let himself go in
this respect. His sensitive conscience and high sense of duty gave him
an uneasy mind in the matter. His father had disapproved of horses, or
rather had been afraid of the Turf and its consequences.
It was a while before the son could assuage his qualms and feel himself
free to go forward in the prosecution of his desire.
His old house-master, still his father-confessor in spiritual
distresses, finally dispelled the young man's doubts and launched him on
his destined way.
"Be yourself," he said, "as your father was before you. He wouldn't
farm--because he hadn't got it in him. What he had in him was banking.
So like a wise man he banked. You've got it in you to breed steeplechase
horses. So breed them. Only--breed them better than any man ever bred
them before."
The young man's mind once finally resolved, nothing could stop him. And
it was in the pursuit of his desire that he first came across Mat
Woodburn.
The old man and the young took to each other from the first. Indeed,
there was much in common between the two. Both were simple of heart,
children of nature, caring little for the world, and both believed with
passionate conviction that an English thoroughbred was the crown and
glory of God's creatures.
"_HE_ didn't make no mistake _that_ time," the old man was fond of
saying with emphasis, to the amusement of Mr. Haggard and the annoyance
of his wife.