: Jilted! Or My Uncle's Scheme Volume 1 by Russell William Clark - English fiction 19th century

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JILTED!

OR,

MY UNCLE'S SCHEME.

MY UNCLE'S SCHEME.

My father was a major in the army who, at the time this story begins, had lived in Longueville-sur-mer for fifteen years, to which place he had come, after my mother's death, bringing me with him. I was then seven years old. He put me to a good school in the neighbourhood, at which I remained until I was sixteen; and was then let free. Considering myself a man, I worked hard to grow a mustache, in which I very ignominiously failed; for it was not until I was one-and-twenty that nature condescended to favour me with that very elegant and martial decoration. I also took to colouring meerschaum pipes, in which art, before I was nineteen, I was considered by my companions to excel, though I did not succeed in establishing my reputation in that line until I had dealt such an injury to my nervous system as I fear I shall never recover. I also became, before long, an expert hand at billiards, though up to the last Bob Le Marchmont could always give me twenty points and beat me comfortably. But I was his better at whist, and was indeed a match for several grave old gentlemen who were members of our English Club in the Rue des Chiens.

There can be no doubt that after I left school my father ought to have put me to one of the professions, or entered me in a house of business. He had two brothers, one of whom owned a private bank, the other was a retired stock-broker; and either of them, as they afterwards told me, would have been very glad to take me by the hand, had my father applied to them. But he was by nature a reckless man: by reckless I mean that he never troubled himself about the future . He hated trouble of any kind or description. If ever he reflected upon the future, he could scarcely, I am sure, understand that it should mean more than a perpetual succession of morning strolls, and afternoon siestas, and evening whist parties. He pursued day after day, with automatic regularity, a small round of trifling and monotonous distractions, which by degrees girdled his existence with the narrowest possible horizon, and prevented him from sympathising with any needs which, like mine, lay outside the sphere of his daily routine.

But, as my father would often say, apr?pos of nothing, "Facts, my boy, are stronger than prejudices;" and a very undeniable fact was that, though billiards, and smoking, and boating, and spooning by moonlight are highly agreeable pursuits, they could not in any fashion whatever contribute to my existence when it pleased heaven to call my father away. I wonder I never thought of this. However, when I was hard upon three-and-twenty, a change came. This is the story of it.

As the soldiers walked off, gesticulating as if at any moment they would throw their caps down and fight it out, in came my father, took up the letter, pulled out his glasses, and having read a little, called out--

"Charlie, here's news for you."

"GROVE END, UPDOWN, "May --, 18--.

"MY DEAR BROTHER,

"I was very glad to get your letter, for, guessing roughly, I should say it is not a day less than four years since I last heard from you. You hate the sea; yet you managed to cross the Channel once; can't you cross it again and spend a few weeks with us?"

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