Weighed and Wanting | Page 5

you think it fair that I should have to look
after the whole family as if they were my own?"
This was by no means his real cause of complaint, but he chose to use it
as his grievance for the present.
"You will have the other trustees to advise with," said his mother. "It
need not weigh on you very heavily."
"Well, of course, I could do better with it than anybody out of the
family."
"If you have your father's love of fair play, Cornelius, you will. What
you can do to that end now is to make yourself thoroughly acquainted
with business."
"A bank's not the place to get the knowledge of business necessary for
that sort of thing."
"Your father has reasons for preferring a general to any special
knowledge. The fitness resulting will depend upon yourself. And when
you marry you will, as you know, be rid of the responsibility. So far
your father and you are of one mind; he does not think it fair that a

married man should be burdened with any family but his own."
"What if I should marry before my father's death?"
"I hope, indeed, you will, Cornelius. The arrangements your father has
made is one of provision against the unlikely. When you are married, I
don't doubt he will make another, to meet the new circumstances."
"Now," said Cornelius to himself, "I do believe if I was to marry
money--as why shouldn't I?--my father would divide my share amongst
the rest, and not give me a farthing!"
Full of the injury of the idea, he rose and left the room. His mother,
poor woman, wept as he vanished. She dared not allow herself to ask
why she wept--dared not allow to herself that her first-born was not a
lovely thought to her--dared not ask where he could have got such a
mean nature--so mean that he did not know he was mean.
Although the ill-humor in which he had been ever since he came was
by himself attributed to the weather, and had been expended on the
cooking, on the couches, on the beds, and twenty different things that
displeased him, he had nevertheless brought it with him; and her
experience gave her the sad doubt that the cause of it might lie in his
own conduct--for the consciousness may be rendered uneasy without
much rousing of the conscience proper.
He had always been fitful and wayward, but had never before behaved
so unpleasantly. Certainly his world had not improved him for his
home. Yet amongst his companions he bore the character of the
best-natured fellow in the world. To them he never showed any of the
peevishness arising from mental discomfort, but kept it for those who
loved him a thousand times better, and would have cheerfully parted
with their own happiness for his. He was but one of a large herd of
youths, possessing no will of their own, yet enjoying the reputation of a
strong one; for moved by liking or any foolish notion, his pettiness
made a principle of, he would be obstinate; and the common
philosophy always takes obstinacy for strength of will, even when it
springs from utter inability to will against liking.
Mr. Raymount knew little of the real nature of his son. The youth was
afraid of his father--none the less that he spoke of him with so little
respect. Before him he dared not show his true nature. He knew and
dreaded the scorn which the least disclosure of his feeling about the
intended division of his father's money would rouse in him. He knew

also that his mother would not betray him--he would have counted it
betrayal--to his father; nor would any one who had ever heard Mr.
Raymount give vent to his judgment of any conduct he despised, have
wondered at the reticence of either of them.
Whether in his youth he would have done as well in a position like his
son's as his worshipping wife believed, may be doubtful; but that he
would have done better than his son must seem more than probable.

CHAPTER II
.
FATHER, MOTHER, AND SON.
Gerald Raymount was a man of an unusual combination of qualities.
There were such contradictions in his character as to give ground for
the suspicion, in which he certainly himself indulged, that there must
be in him at least one strain not far removed from the savage, while on
the other hand there were mental conditions apparently presupposing
ages of culture. At the university he had indulged in large reading
outside the hedge of his required studies, and gained thus an
acquaintance with and developed a faculty in literature destined to
stand him in good stead.
Inheriting earthly life and a history--nothing more--from a long