Chapter 17

Brazil Silver

Boy Woodburn's calling had thrown her from early youth into contact with Eton men.

Indeed, in her experience the world was divided into Eton men--and the Rest. That was what the girl believed; and it was clearly what the Eton men believed, too. Boy herself belonged to the Rest, and did not seem to regret it. The Rest were infinite in number and variety; that was why she liked them so; for the Infinite can know no limitations. It was not so with the other division of the Human Race. Eton men, though almost equally numerous, were limited and stereotyped all to pattern. In the girl's judgment there were three types of them: the Superior Person, who treated her as if she was not; the Bad Ass, to whom she was a poor sort of Joke; and the Incorrigible Creature, who made up to her as if she was a barmaid.

That was her theory. And once the girl had formed a theory as the result of observation, she hated that theory to be upset.

Mr. Silver displeased her because he blew her hypothesis to smithereens on his first appearance; for he was an Eton man, yet clearly he did not come within any of the three known categories.

At first the girl escaped from her intellectual dilemma by a simple and purely feminine wile--she refused to believe that he was an Eton man.

And even when it was proved to her that he had rowed in the Eton boat she remained unconvinced.

"Need you be an Eton man to be in the Eton boat?" she inquired warily.

Mr. Haggard, her informant, thought it probable, but added that he would inquire.

It was not till she had known the young man some six months that she settled the question for herself by asking him point-blank if he had been at Eton.

"I believe so," he answered.

That was his invariable answer to the question when put to him. Now for once he elaborated on it a little.

"Mother wanted me to go," he added. "Father didn't."

"Were you happy there?" asked the girl.

The other's face lit up with the enthusiasm she liked in him so well.

"Was I not?" he said.

* * * * *

Albert Edward took all the credit to himself for the name of Silver Mug. Albert always took all the credit for everything; but really he was by no means so original as he imagined.

In fact, Jim Silver had been Silver Mug when Albert was still a ragged little urchin asking for cigarette pictures from passing toffs outside Brighton Railway Station.

A Lower Boy at Eton had originated the name. It was apt, and it stuck.

Jim Silver in Bromhead's was hugely rich, and he had a great, ugly, honest face. Friends and enemies called him by the name; and he had a good few of both. The former loved him for the qualities the latter hated him for. The cads of the school chaffed surreptitiously about his birth. They said he was the grandson of an agricultural labourer and the son of a bank clerk; but only one of them, more caddish or more courageous than the rest, said so to his face.

"I wouldn't mind if I was," said simple Jim, and was cheered by his loyal little friends, Lord Amersham and others of the right kidney.

His father never came to see him when he was at school.

"I know why," sneered the enemy.

"Why, then?" flared Jim.

"He daren't. Give the show away."

After that the lad gave his enemy a sound hiding, and peace reigned. The bounders might say he was a bounder, but they had to admit that he could give and take punishment with the best.

* * * * *

He left Eton absolutely unspoilt.

A year before the lad quitted the school his father sent for him.

"I didn't want you to go to Eton, Jim," he said. "I'm glad now. Do you want to go on to Oxford?"

The boy thought; and when his reply came it was honest as himself.

"All my friends are going," he said. "I should like it for that reason. But I don't know that I should get much out of it."

"Go for a year," said his father. "See what you make of it. If you're getting any good of it, you can go on. If not, we'll see."

The boy did not leave the room.

His interviews with his father were rare; and there was a question he had long wished to ask.

Now he blurted it out.

"Am I to go into the Bank, father?"

The old man blinked at his son over his spectacles, and then shoved back his chair.

"What d'you want?" he asked.

"I should like the Army, or to farm," replied the son.

Mr. Silver put down his paper.

It was some time before he answered.

"The Bank's my life," he said at last. "You're my son. You may choose for yourself." He drummed with his fingers on the table; and Jim left the room.

* * * * *

When the half-breeds, as Lord Amersham called them, jeered at Silver as the son of an agricultural labourer there was a modicum of truth at the back of the lie.

The boy came of a long line of yeoman-farmers in Leicestershire, famous for generations for their stock and their integrity.

Jim Silver's grandfather was the last of that line. He was a big man and big farmer, husbanding his wide acres wisely and well, breeding good stock, enjoying his day's hunting, but not making too much of it, touching his hat to his landlord, a familiar and imposing figure at all the Agricultural Shows in the Midlands.

His only son George was in his father's opinion a sport. Certainly he was no true Silver: that was obvious from his earliest years. He cared nothing for a horse, was a shamefully bad judge of a beast, had no feeling for the fields, never knew the real poetic thrill at the sight and smell of a yard knee deep in muck, and hated mud and rain.

"More of a scholar," said his father regretfully. "All for books and studyin'."

Mr. Silver, wise as are those who come into contact with Nature at first hand, did not interfere with his son's queer predilections or attempt to stay his development on the lines of instinctive preference, aiding the boy indeed in every way to make the most of himself on the path he had chosen.

Thus he sent him to the Grammar School at Leicester. The boy went joyfully: for he was very modern. The town, the books, the people, the streets, the hum of business, the opening gates of knowledge, pleased and contented his insatiable young spirit. The father had the reward of his daring. George did famously and became in time Captain of the School. The farmer attended prize-giving, and watched his son march up to the table time after time amidst the cheers of his school-fellows.

"George has got the red rosette again, Mr. Silver," smiled the Headmaster.

"So I see," replied the farmer. "But the showring's one thing, work's another." And when pressed to send his son on to a University he refused.

"He'll get an exhibition," urged the Headmaster.

The father was not impressed.

"Moderation in all things," he said, shaking a shrewd head. "Edication as well. He's stood out long enough. Time he began to 'arn."

The Headmaster's arguments were of no avail.

"I'd got all the schooling I needed by then I was eleven. He's had till he's eighteen. If it's to be of any good to him it'll be good now," said Mr. Silver.

To his surprise and secret pleasure his son backed him. He didn't want to go to a University.

"It's not much use unless you're a classic," the boy said. "And I'm a mathematician."

Besides he had his own clear-cut views of what he wished to do. And those views were very strange. He wanted to go into a Bank.

"Bank!" cried the amazed father. "Set at a counter all day and calcalate sums?"

The boy grinned behind his spectacles in his foolish way.

"That's about it," he said.

"Well, I never!" cried the father.

But true to his principles he let his son go his own way. Indeed, he helped him to a clerkship in the great Midland and Birmingham Joint Stock Bank, of which his landlord, Sir Evelyn Merry, was chairman.

"Glad to get him," said the old baronet. "If he's half as good a man as his father he'll do well."

The boy started at a local branch, and in a year was transferred to the central office at Birmingham.

There he spent his spare time attending evening classes. At the end of a year he held a certificate, was entitled to put certain letters after his name, and had written an article on bullion which appeared in the _Banker's Magazine_ and was translated into German.

By the time he was thirty he was a manager, and ten years later he was one of the managing directors of the second biggest Joint Stock Bank in the richest country in the world.

And he did not stop there. George Silver was a financier in the great style, and a superlatively honest one. He had the initiative, the knowledge, and above all the judgment that made some men call him the Napoleon of Threadneedle Street. At forty-five he launched the Union Bank of Brazil and Uruguay; and to that colossal undertaking he devoted the last twenty-five years of his strenuous and successful life.

In the City he was known thereafter as Brazil Silver.

The Bank was his passion and his life.

When at fifty, to the astonishment of many, he married, the City merely said:

"He must have an heir to carry on the Bank."

Mrs. Silver was a semi-aristocratic woman of limited intelligence, suppressed ambition, and sound limbs. It was the latter characteristic which won her a husband. He was not such a bad judge of make and shape as his father would have had the world believe; and as usual Brazil Silver's judgment proved good. In the appointed time his wife fulfilled her function, and gave him the son he asked of her.