Part 11 (1/2)
”Now, sir, have the goodness to tell me what you mean to do.”
Harry Vine looked at his father, thrust his hands low down into his pockets, leaned back against the mantelpiece, and was silent.
Vine senior leaned over a shallow gla.s.s jar, with a thin splinter of wood in his hand, upon which he had just impaled a small fragment of raw, minced periwinkle, and this he thrust down to where a gorgeous sea-anemone sat spread open upon a piece of rock--chipped from out of one of the caverns on the coast.
The anemone's tentacles bristled all around, giving the creature the aspect of a great flower; and down among these the sc.r.a.p of food was thrust till it touched them, when the tentacles began to curve over, and draw the sc.r.a.p of sh.e.l.l-fish down toward the large central mouth, in which it soon began to disappear.
Vine senior looked up.
”I have done everything I could for you in the way of education. I have, I am sure, been a most kind and indulgent father. You have had a liberal supply of money, and by the exercise of my own and the personal interest of friends, I have obtained for you posts among our people, any one of which was the beginning of prosperity and position, such as a youth should have been proud to win.”
”But they were so unsuitable, father. All connected with trade.”
”Shame, Harry! As if there was anything undignified in trade. No matter whether it be trade or profession by which a man honestly earns his subsistence, it is an honourable career. And yet five times over you have been thrown back on my hands in disgrace.”
”Well, I can't help it, father; I've done my best.”
”Your best!” cried Vine senior, taking up a gla.s.s rod, and stirring the water in another gla.s.s jar. ”It is not true.”
”But it's so absurd. You're a rich man.”
”If I were ten times as well off, I would not have you waste your life in idleness. You are not twenty-four, and I am determined that you shall take some post. I have seen too much of what follows when a restless, idle young man sits down to wait for his father's money.
There, I am busy now. Go and think over what I have said. You must and shall do something. It is now a month since I received that letter.
What is Mr Pradelle doing down here again?”
”Come for a change, as any other gentleman would.”
”Gentleman?”
”Well, he has a little income of his own, I suppose. If I've been unlucky that's no reason why I should throw over my friends.”
The father looked at the son in a perplexed way, and then fed another sea-anemone, Harry looking on contemptuously.
”Well, sir, you have heard what I said. Go and think it over.”
”Yes, father.”
The young man left the business-like study, and encountered his sister in the hall.
”Well, Harry?”
”Well, Lou.”
”What does papa say?”
”The old story. I'm to go back to drudgery. I think I shall enlist.”
”For shame! and you professing to care as you do for Madelaine.”