Stories with a Vengeance — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

6 THE STORY OF JACK THE PAINTER. that it was difficult to be very stern with him. Yet the reckless manner in which he lavished his pocket-money was positively awful to contemplate. It was his great misfortune to have a great deal too much pocket-money. His father had been a line engraver in the days when that branch of the chalcographic art was a very lucrative one; and at his death he left his only son Jack a sum of no less than five thousand pounds invested in the Three per Cents. His guardian, who was a partner in a great firm of copper-founders, applied the divi- dends accruing from the capital left by the defunct Mr. Halstead to the education and maintenance of Jack; and being besides a wealthy and liberal copper-founder, he “tipped” the boy liberally whenever he came to see him: and the disastrous con- sequence was that at the commencement of every “half” Jack, in addition to his weekly allowance, could usually show as many half-sovereigns as the great bulk of his school-fellows could show half-crowns. These financial differences were, however, as a rule, very swiftly adjusted; since, ere the “half” was a fortnight old, the boys with the half-crowns could usually show shillings, whereas spendthrift Jack could show no cash at all. Whether the money burned holes in his pockets, or whether the pockets themselves had been made from wire-sleves or fishermen’s nets with very wide meshes, it would be immaterial to in- quire. The}fact remained that almost so soon as the money entered Jack’s pocket it disappeared therefrom. In every school there is usually an incipient usurer. When he is a boy of twelve he lends on Saturday sixpence, for which he is to receive nine- mce on the ensuing Wednesday. When e is forty he will lend money at a hundred and twenty per cent., or as much more as he can conveniently extort from his dupes. Jack was continually borrowing from the Trapbois of Betula House, a tall, gawky, sandy-haired lout, who kept his “ lending- out money” in a tin cannister that had been used to keep fish-bait in. But he might have said of his pelf, with Vespasian, Non olet. As for Jack, he never lent money. When he had any he gave it away with both hands, so to speak. There were at Doctor Brushmore’s the normal per cent- age of indigent or absolutely impecunious boys, whose parents were behindhand with their payments, or who were unable to allow their sons any pocket-money at all. There were gluttonous boys, and parsi- monious boys, and boys who were toadies and parasites; and of these unfortunates and these bloodsuckers Jack was the lavish patron and the careless victim. Silver, (Go gle halfpence, apples, oranges, toffy, cakes, slate-pencils, tops, battledores, hoops, mar- bles, and balls of string he scattered around him in wild profusion. All the fruitwomen and all the beggars between Hammersmith Broadway and Chiswick Green were aware of him, and waited for him on half-holiday afternoons. He was in debt all round the neighbourhood for almond rock and ginger beer, for tarts and Scotch buns, for toys and illustrated periodicals, penknives, cricket-balls, kaleidoscopes, boxes of paints, and fireworks. Now and again the embar- rassed state of his affairs would be dis- covered, and an explosion would take place. The Doctor would be indignant and talk of all kinds of high-handed measures. Master Jack was to be placed under stoppages till his outdoor creditors were satisfied; but Jack’s guardian, on being written to, usually paid all demands in full with a five-pound note, and sent Jack a letter containing much good advice against wasteful extra- vagance and an invitation to spend the Christmas holidays at Tubalcain Hall, Ham- mershire. The copperfounder was not quite so fond of Jack Halstead when the schoolboy deve- loped into the young man and attained his majority. His guardian had three charm. ingly eligible daughters, not one of whom looked with positively unfavourable eyes on the handsome scapegrace, who was tall, ruddy, auburn-haired, blue-eyed, and gene- rally well-favoured; and their papa, who really wished well to the lad, entertained an opinion that he could scarcely make a better start in life than by placing his five thousand pounds at five per cent. mte- rest in the firm, and taking a post at a fair salary in the counting-house, with the prospect of becoming eventually a partner, and espousing one of the youthful and eligible young copperfoundresses. But Jack had other views. He had always had a turn for drawing. When, at sixteen years of age, he quitted Doctor Brushmore’s hos- pitable roof—his preceptor, as he shook hands with him, mentally predicting that his departing pupil would never do any good for himself, but would, the rather, travel to the dogs at express speed—he entered himself as a pupil at Scauper’s well-known academy in Newman Street; and really for a couple of years worked laboriously at drawing from the ‘‘ round” and the“ life.” Indeed, idleness was not at any time one of Jack’s failings, and he was endowed with that most disastrous faculty of being at once very dissipated and very industrious. He had made up his mind that painting should be his profession and historic genre his especial branch; and CORniclooo S CO)