  On the third day after my adventure in the park Mr. Ravenor called to see me. He came in splashed from head to foot and had evidently ridden a long distance and fast. I offered him a chair and some refreshment, for he looked pale and tired, but he declined both, and walked slowly up and down the room, his hands grasping a long riding-whip behind his back. “I can only give you a minute or two now, Morton,” he said, with some slight return of his former brusque hauteur; “I am expecting visitors from London to-night and must get back to receive them. But there is something I must say to you. You will be surprised to hear that your mother has left you a considerable property?” I was very much surprised. “Are you quite sure of this, Mr. Ravenor?” I ventured to ask. “My mother always spoke to me as though we were poor.” “I do not make mistakes,” he answered, pausing in his walk and looking down upon me from his great height with knitted brows and piercing eyes, “least of all in matters of such importance. How much the exact sum will amount to I cannot tell yet, but it is more than twenty thousand pounds, so you will be able to choose your own profession. What will it be, I wonder—the Bar, the Army, the Church, agriculture? Come, you are a boy of imagination and have never been in love. You must have had day-dreams of some sort. Whither have they led you?” “Not to any of the professions which you have mentioned,” I answered promptly. “Then where? Tell me. I am curious to know.” “My ideas have always been very vague,” I said slowly. “I should like to live quite away from any town, to read a good deal, and to spend the rest of my time out of doors; and then, perhaps, after a time, I might try to think something out and put it into words.” “In short, you would like to be an author,” Mr. Ravenor broke in, with a slight smile. “Yes; but I should not want to write to amuse people, or to become famous,” I went on, encouraged by Mr. Ravenor’s gravity. “I should like to make people think. I should like to make them turn aside from the groove of their daily life and realise that the world is full of greater and higher things than mere material prosperity. Men seem to me to find their daily work and pleasure too absorbing. They think of themselves and others only as individuals, never as limbs of a great common humanity with a mighty destiny. The world grows narrower and narrower for them as they grow older, instead of broader and broader. It is because they neglect the use of their imagination—at least, so it seems to me.” “Have you read Hibbet’s little pamphlets?” Mr. Ravenor asked. “Both of them,” I answered. “I like his ideas.” “Have your clothes come from Torchester?” he inquired, with apparent irrelevance. “Yes; they came last week,” I told him, wondering. “Very well; put on your dress-suit and come up to the Castle at eight o’clock to-night. You shall dine with me and meet Hibbet.” Meet Sir Richard Hibbet! Dine at the same table! My cheeks flushed and my heart beat fast. Life was opening out for me. “Yes; he and Marris and Williams, the publisher, you know, are all staying at the Castle. There will be some more of them down to-night. Don’t be late. I will find time, if I can, to have some talk with you, for I want you to go to Dr. Randall’s next week.” He nodded and took his departure. I watched him mount his horse and gallop away across the open park. Then I started for a solitary walk, to ponder my altered prospects. |
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