Tono-Bungay, H. G. Wells [reading like a writer .TXT] 📗

I thought him over in the next few weeks, and I remember now in great detail the last talk we had together before he handed over the shop and me to his successor. For he had the good luck to sell his business, “lock, stock, and barrel”⁠—in which expression I found myself and my indentures included. The horrors of a sale by auction of the furniture even were avoided.

I remember that either coming or going on that occasion, Ruck, the butcher, stood in his doorway and regarded us with a grin that showed his long teeth.

“You half-witted hog!” said my uncle. “You grinning hyaena”; and then, “Pleasant day, Mr. Ruck.”

“Goin’ to make your fortun’ in London, then?” said Mr. Ruck, with slow enjoyment.

That last excursion took us along the causeway to Beeching, and so up the downs and round almost as far as Steadhurst, home. My moods, as we went, made a mingled web. By this time I had really grasped the fact that my uncle had, in plain English, robbed me; the little accumulations of my mother, six hundred pounds and more, that would have educated me and started me in business, had been eaten into and was mostly gone into the unexpected hollow that ought to have been a crest of the Union Pacific curve, and of the remainder he still gave no account. I was too young and inexperienced to insist on this or know how to get it, but the thought of it all made streaks of decidedly black anger in that scheme of interwoven feelings. And you know, I was also acutely sorry for him⁠—almost as sorry as I was for my aunt Susan. Even then I had quite found him out. I knew him to be weaker than myself; his incurable, irresponsible childishness was as clear to me then as it was on his deathbed, his redeeming and excusing imaginative silliness. Through some odd mental twist perhaps I was disposed to exonerate him even at the cost of blaming my poor old mother who had left things in his untrustworthy hands.

I should have forgiven him altogether, I believe, if he had been in any manner apologetic to me; but he wasn’t that. He kept reassuring me in a way I found irritating. Mostly, however, his solicitude was for Aunt Susan and himself.

“It’s these Crises, George,” he said, “try Character. Your aunt’s come out well, my boy.”

He made meditative noises for a space.

“Had her cry of course,”⁠—the thing had been only too painfully evident to me in her eyes and swollen face⁠—“who wouldn’t? But now⁠—buoyant again!⁠ ⁠… She’s a Corker.

“We’ll be sorry to leave the little house of course. It’s a bit like Adam and Eve, you know. Lord! what a chap old Milton was!

‘The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.’

“It sounds, George.⁠ ⁠… Providence their guide.⁠ ⁠… Well⁠—thank goodness there’s no imeedgit prospect of either Cain or Abel!”

“After all, it won’t be so bad up there. Not the scenery, perhaps, or the air we get here, but⁠—life! We’ve got very comfortable little rooms, very comfortable considering, and I shall rise. We’re not done yet, we’re not beaten; don’t think that, George. I shall pay twenty shillings in the pound before I’ve done⁠—you mark my words, George⁠—twenty⁠—five to you.⁠ ⁠… I got this situation within twenty-four hours⁠—others offered. It’s an important firm⁠—one of the best in London. I looked to that. I might have got four or five shillings a week more⁠—elsewhere. Quarters I could name. But I said to them plainly, wages to go on with, but opportunity’s my game⁠—development. We understood each other.”

He threw out his chest, and the little round eyes behind his glasses rested valiantly on imaginary employers.

We would go on in silence for a space while he revised and restated that encounter. Then he would break out abruptly with some banal phrase.

“The Battle of Life, George, my boy,” he would cry, or “Ups and Downs!”

He ignored or waived the poor little attempts I made to ascertain my own position. “That’s all right,” he would say; or, “Leave all that to me. I’ll look after them.” And he would drift away towards the philosophy and moral of the situation. What was I to do?

“Never put all your resources into one chance, George; that’s the lesson I draw from this. Have forces in reserve. It was a hundred to one, George, that I was right⁠—a hundred to one. I worked it out afterwards. And here we are spiked on the off-chance. If I’d have only kept back a little, I’d have had it on U.P. next day, like a shot, and come out on the rise. There you are!”

His thoughts took a graver turn.

“It’s where you’ll bump up against Chance like this, George, that you feel the need of religion. Your hard-and-fast scientific men⁠—your Spencers and Huxleys⁠—they don’t understand that. I do. I’ve thought of it a lot lately⁠—in bed and about. I was thinking of it this morning while I shaved. It’s not irreverent for me to say it, I hope⁠—but God comes in on the off-chance, George. See? Don’t you be too cocksure of anything, good or bad. That’s what I make out of it. I could have sworn. Well, do you think I⁠—particular as I am⁠—would have touched those Union Pacifics with trust money at all, if I hadn’t thought it a thoroughly good thing⁠—good without spot or blemish?⁠ ⁠… And it was bad!

“It’s a lesson to me. You start in to get a hundred percent and you come out with that. It means, in a way, a reproof for Pride. I’ve thought of that, George⁠—in the Night Watches. I was thinking this morning when I was shaving, that that’s where the good of it all comes in. At the bottom I’m a mystic in these affairs. You calculate you’re going to do this or that, but at bottom who knows at all what he’s doing? When you most