He made it his business not to inquire too closely into anything that
Cuthbert did, in which he showed himself to be unlike the majority of
those people who give to others; and assuredly he was generous enough
to his half-brother. For Cuthbert, of course, had the major portion of
anything their mother had, and Rupert's first action (when he had
realized that he had the command of so much money) had been to put his
mother out of the reach of difficulty.
He bought her the house in which she now lived, she had her own
carriage, and a very comfortable income. He gave her, in fact, exactly
the sum equivalent to that which he spent on himself.
Matthew Woolgar had left him the money unreservedly--everything save a
legacy to his sister, an old, crippled, and humble woman, had passed
"To the son of the best man I ever knew." But Rupert himself had
certain theories. He felt convinced that this money would never have
come to him if Woolgar had not seen in him the proper medium through
which this immense wealth could be handled judiciously, and it was his
one desire, his one anxiety, that he should prove worthy of the immense
trust which had been placed in his hands.
The schemes about which he had spoken to Agnes Brenton the night before
were no paltry things; they were planned on the most generous lines.
There was scarcely a public charity to which Haverford did not already
subscribe largely, and his private expenditure of this kind was almost
without limit, but he intended to do more, much more. And his keenest,
his most living sympathy was with those people among whom he worked so
long; it was on these toilers and out of them that this great wealth
had been gleaned in the first instance, and Rupert resolved to give
back to them in full measure. Nothing was too large or too important
that dealt with their welfare and the good of their rising generation.
Already there had sprung up in that smoke-grimed factory town a
monument dedicated to the memory of the man who had enriched him and
the man who had given birth to him. It took the form of a large
institution designated for the practical education and the physical and
moral uplifting of his old comrades.
Life in the factory served to stunt the growth and stultify the
intellect of those who did not possess, like himself, that piercing,
that vitalizing determination to keep looking upwards. It was to such
as these that Haverford determined the major part of Matthew Woolgar's
money should go.
After leaving Kensington he went back to the city, where he had an
office, and it was late in the afternoon before he reached the house
that was perhaps the sole reason why he had elected to make London his
head-quarters.
Matthew Woolgar had raised up to himself a veritable palace. Money had
been lavished on this house like water. The art experts of the various
great Continental centres had been busy for months and months finding
treasures with which to garnish this lordly dwelling-place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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