Chapter XII.

       The Explosion.

       Table of Contents

      There are some boys so naturally passionate and vicious, in whose dispositions the evil so strongly predominates over the good, that we are obliged to own that under no conceivable course of training could they have turned out otherwise than bad. Some faults might have been checked by early firmness, some vices eradicated by judicious kindness and care, yet nothing could ever have altered the radical nature; nothing could ever have made a fair, straight tree out of that crooked and distorted sapling. Such a character was that of Robert Gregory, and in his case there was no countervailing force, either of judicious kindness or of proper severity, to check the strong tendency to evil in his disposition. His mother had died when he was an infant, and his father—who had married late in life, and who had no other children,—indulged his every whim, and neither thwarted him in any desire, nor punished him for any fault; and so he grew up an idle, passionate, turbulent boy, pursuing his own way, and laughing to scorn the entreaties and prayers of his weak father. As time went on, his character developed; he chose his companions from the wildest and least reputable youths of the neighbourhood, and soon became even wilder and less reputable than the worst of them. He at length led such a life, that his father was only too glad when he expressed a desire to go up to London, in hopes that there, with other companions and habits, he might yet retrieve himself. Robert Gregory was not all bad, he had his good points, and with other training might have turned out, if not a good man, at any rate not the character that Dr. Ashleigh had described. He was good-natured and even generous—by fits and starts certainly—but still enough so to make those who knew him as a boy, before he had got entirely beyond all control, regret that his father, by his weakness and injudicious kindness, was allowing him to grow up a curse to himself and a nuisance to the whole neighbourhood. Any hopes his father may have entertained of his reformation from the influence of a life in London, were destined to be very shortly extinguished. He wrote at first flaming accounts of the grand friends he was making, but lamenting their expensive way of living, and begging more money to enable him to do as they did. For months, for years, the letters came regularly, and always demanding money, sometimes very large sums. Some of these letters were accompanied by plausible tales that he wished to oblige his great friends, through whom he shortly expected to obtain a lucrative appointment. At other times he told the truth—various losses on the turf, or heavy gambling debts which must, he said, be paid, or his honour would be irretrievably lost. The old man patiently answered these constant demands upon him, and paid without a complaint the large sums required. He truly, although weakly, loved this reprobate son of his: he knew that no remonstrances could now avail: he feared so to alienate the liking which his son still felt for him by remonstrances which would irritate, without reforming him, and so he continued to pay, and pay. "The boy can have it but once," he said to himself; "as well now as at my death; there will be enough to last my time." But there hardly was. After Robert had been six years in London, during which he had only paid three or four flying visits to his native place, he received a letter from his father, asking him to let him know the total amount of his debts; as he would rather settle the whole at once and set him clear, than be continually asked for money. Robert consequently sent him a list, which even he had grace enough left to be ashamed of. However, the enormous amount was paid without a word; but a week afterwards a letter came from his father, saying that in six years he had spent no less than £40,000, and that now there only remained the house in which the old man lived and a small farm which yielded a bare £200 a year; that this he would not touch, and that not one single penny would he farther advance his son; but that if he chose to come down and live with him, that he would meet with a hearty welcome, and with not one word of reproach for the past. Seeing no other course open to him, Robert Gregory came back sulkily enough to the old house, where, as has before been said, the old man did not live many months.

      Long as was the list of debts which Robert had sent up from London, it had by no means comprised the whole of them. At his father's death, therefore, he was obliged to mortgage the farm to nearly its full value, to satisfy the most pressing of his creditors, and then, for the first time in his life, Robert Gregory asked himself how he was to live. It was by no means an easy question to answer; indeed, think the matter over as he would, he could imagine no mode by which, even had he been inclined to work, which he was not, he could have earned his living. It was while he was vainly, week after week, endeavouring to solve this problem, that the intention of Mr. Harmer to make Sophy Needham his heiress was made public. Robert Gregory hailed the news as a direct answer to his question—he would marry the heiress. He did not jump at the conclusion in haste; he inquired closely concerning the habits of the family at Harmer Place, of whom previously he had known nothing except by name; he found that their life had been hitherto one of seclusion, owing to the ascetic life of the Miss Harmers, and the studious one of their brother; he heard of Sophy Needham's birth and origin, and he heard, too, that society refused to visit her, and at last he said to himself confidently and firmly, "I will marry her." Having arrived at this determination, Robert Gregory at once proceeded to act upon it, and soon had his whole scheme arranged to his satisfaction. He felt that the matter was one which required time, and he accordingly sold the farm for two or three hundred pounds beyond the amount for