Big Game | Page 2

of her own ability to keep them pleasant to the
end.
"Anything may happen in four months--and everything!" she cried
cheerily. "I don't say that you will have made your name by September,
but if you have drawn a reasonable amount of blood-money, father will
have to be satisfied. It is in the bond! Work away, and don't worry. You
are improving all the time, and spring is coming, when even ordinary
people like myself feel inspired. We will stick to the ordinary methods
yet awhile, but if matters get desperate, we will resort to strategy. I've
several lovely plans simmering in my brain!"
The boy looked up eagerly.
"Strategy! Plans! What plans? What can we possibly do out of the

ordinary course?"
But Margot only laughed mischievously, and refused to be drawn.
The cruel parent in the case of Ronald Vane was exemplified by an
exceedingly worthy and kind-hearted gentleman, who followed the
profession of underwriter at Lloyd's. His family had consisted of three
daughters before Ronald appeared to gratify a long ambition. Now, Mr
Vane was a widower, and his son engrossed a large share in his
affections, being at once his pride, his hope, and his despair. The lad
was a good lad; upright, honourable, and clean-living; everything, in
fact, that a father could wish, if only,--but that "if" was the mischief! It
was hard lines on a steady-going City man, who was famed for his
level-headed sobriety, to possess a son who eschewed fact in favour of
fancy, and preferred rather to roam the countryside composing rhymes
and couplets, than to step into a junior partnership in an established and
prosperous firm.
It is part of an Englishman's creed to appreciate the great singers of his
race,--Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, not to mention a dozen lesser
fry; but, strange to say, though he feels a due pride in the row of poets
on his library shelves, he yet regards a poet by his own fireside as a
humiliation and an offence. A budding painter, a sculptor, a musician,
may be the boast of a proud family circle, but to give a youth the
reputation of writing verses is at once to call down upon his head a
storm of ridicule and patronising disdain! He is credited with being
effeminate, sentimental, and feeble-minded; his failure is taken as a
preordained fact; he becomes a butt and a jest.
Mr Vane profoundly hoped that none of the underwriters at Lloyd's
would hear of Ronald's scribbling. It would handicap the boy in his
future work, and make it harder for him to get rid of his "slips"! No one
could guess from the lad's appearances that there was anything
wrong,-- that was one comfort! He kept his hair well cropped, and wore
as high and glossy collars as any fellow in his right mind.
"You don't know when you are well off!" cried the irate father. "How
many thousands would be thankful to be in your shoes, with a place

kept warm to step into, and an income assured from the start! I am not
asking you to sit mewed up at a desk all day. If you want to use your
gift of words, you couldn't have a better chance than as a writer at
Lloyd's. There's scope for imagination too,--judiciously applied! And
you would have your evenings free for scribbling, if you haven't had
enough of it in the daytime."
Ronald's reply dealt at length with the subject of environment, and his
father was given to understand that the conditions in which his life was
spent were mean, sordid, demoralising; fatal to all that was true and
beautiful. The lad also gave it as his opinion that, so far from regarding
money as a worthy object for a life's ambition, the true lover of Nature
would be cumbered by the possession of more than was absolutely
necessary for food and clothing. And as for neglecting a God-given
gift--
"What authority have you for asking me to believe that the gift exists at
all, except in your own imagination? Tell me that, if you please!" cried
the father. "You spend a small income in stamps and paper, but so far
as I know no human creature can be induced to publish your God-given
rhymes!"
At this point matters became decidedly strained, and a serious quarrel
might have developed, had it not been for the diplomatic intervention
of Margot, the youngest and fairest of Mr Vane's three daughters.
Margot pinched her father's ears and kissed him on the end of his nose,
a form of caress which he seemed to find extremely soothing.
"He is only twenty-one, darling," she said, referring to the turbulent
heir. "You ought to be thankful that he has such good tastes, instead of
drinking and gambling, like