Chapter One

“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!

Chapter Two

The loudly-closed door of the private office cut short Mr James Brandon’s speech, and he had passed out without looking round, or he would have seen that his nephew looked anything but a fool as he sat there with his fists clenched and his eyes flashing.

“How dare he call my dear dead father an idiot!” he said in a low fierce voice through his compressed teeth. “Oh, I can’t bear it – I won’t bear it. If I were not such a miserable coward I should go off and be a soldier, or a sailor, or anything so that I could be free, and not dependent on him. I’ll go. I must go. I cannot bear it,” he muttered; and then with a feeling of misery and despair rapidly increasing, he bent down over his book again, for a something within him seemed to whisper – “It would be far more cowardly to give up and go.”

Then came again the memory of his mother’s words, and he drew his breath through his teeth as if he were in bodily as well as mental pain; and forcing himself to read, he went on studying the dreary law-book till, in his efforts to understand the author, his allusions, quotations, footnotes, and references, he grew giddy, and at last the words grew blurred, and he had to read sentences over and over again to make sense of them, which slid out of his mind like so much quicksilver.

Lunch-time came, and Pringle crept through the place where he was seated, glanced at Mr Brandon’s door, stepped close up, and whispered —

“I’m going to get my dinner. Don’t look downhearted about a wigging, Mr Tom. It’s nothing when you’re used to it.”

“Ahem!” came from the inner office, and Pringle made a grimace like a pantomime clown, suggesting mock horror and fear, as he glided to the outer door, where he turned, looked back, and then disappeared; while, as soon as he was alone, Tom took out a paper of sandwiches, opened it, and began to eat, it being an understood thing that he should not leave the office all day.