Читать книгу The Carolinian онлайн

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To Mandeville, it was all in the day's work. He had come out to the colonies in the service of his King, like the 'poor devil of a younger son,' as he was wont, more affectedly than accurately, to describe himself. He was, in reality, the younger son of a younger son. He had run through the considerable fortune he had inherited from his mother—his father having married a wealthy heiress—in accordance with the best traditions of the younger sons of noble houses, and he was now in the position of dependency upon the State peculiar to British cadets, with the possible expectations that commonly delude them.

His uncle, the present Earl of Chalfont, had no issue, and Captain Mandeville was next in the succession. But as his uncle, now in his fifty-fifth year, was of a rudely vigorous constitution, and the Mandevilles were a long-lived race, the Captain was not disposed to build upon expectations which might not be realized until his own youth was spent. Therefore, in coming out to the colonies to serve his King, Captain Mandeville had it also in mind to serve himself in the manner not unusual among his kind, the manner of which his own father had set him the example, and the manner in which Lord William Campbell—also a younger son—had served himself when he married Sally Izard and a dowry of fifty thousand pounds. The colonies offered a fruitful hunting-ground, and colonial heiresses afforded covetable prizes for younger sons who knew how to make the best of family glamour. Apart from this, however, Captain Mandeville came out persuaded that in his own case the hunt need not be carried very far afield. Sir Andrew Carey, that wealthy and influential South Carolina tory, descended on the distaff side from that Mandeville who had been one of the original Lords Proprietors, was a remote kinsman of the Captain's, and so passionately proud of his descent from so ancient and distinguished a stock as to be disposed to regard the kinship as much closer than it actually was. And Sir Andrew had a daughter, an only child. What, then, more natural than that this widower, with no son of his own to succeed him, should perceive in Mandeville the son-in-law of his dreams?