“And that charming young lady,” he asked after a moment, “was your daughter?”
“Yes, my only child and as good as she is beautiful. May I ask if Mrs. Clavering is alive? I remember her as a most worthy woman.”
“Yes,” answered Clavering, shortly. “Now will you come with me to one of the up–town hotels and have a smoke and a drink? In the old days when I was a sutler and you were a captain, I should have known better than to ask you; but I never expected to remain a sutler always. I have made money in the West, and I have ambitions of various sorts. Some day you will hear of me.”
“Nothing,” said General Brandon, impressively, “should be or is, in this country, out of reach of any man with brains and solid worth.” The General himself was an aristocrat from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet, but he never dreamed of it.
“And some education,” added Clavering. He knew his man thoroughly. “Brains are the first requisite, and solid worth is all very well. But a man must have some other qualifications. A man must know something beyond the common school of his youth and the bigger common school of his manhood, in order to make a lasting impression on his time. Of course I don’t include geniuses in this category, but men of talent only. I have not what I call education, but I have the next best thing to it. I know my own limitations. I have a boy on whom I shall put a twenty–thousand–dollar education, but I am very much afraid that he is a twenty–dollar boy.”
General Brandon did not exactly understand this, and Clavering said no more about his boy. They walked off together, and in a little while they were seated in the lobby of an up–town hotel and Clavering was telling the story of his life—or what he chose to tell of it—to General Brandon. It was not an instinctive outpouring of the truth, but as a matter of fact Clavering was rehearsing for the rôle he intended to play in a few years’ time,—that of the rich man who has hewn his way through a great forest of difficulties and has triumphed in the end. He was astute enough not to despise men of General Brandon’s stamp, simple, quiet, brave, having little knowledge of affairs but perfectly versed in ethics. Clavering in short knew the full value of a gentleman, although he was not one himself.