Page 34 of A Debt Inherited

In her Edinburgh drawing room, Lady Isobel had kept a narrow fire and a narrower household. Nothing was wasted there: not coal, nor paper.

Certainly not resentment.

She had taught him accounts first, manners second, and trust last of all. When her hand began to fail, she made him copy the allowance papers twice—once for Armitage and once for himself—then watched while he blotted neither sheet.

“Provision is not affection, Alexander,” she had said. “Do not mistake one for the other. Do not despise either when you need it.”

She died before he had learnt how to need without despising.

After that came school, university, testimonials, certificates, letters of introduction written by men who admired him at a distance, and London: the natural destination of young gentlemen with prospects, and young men without them.

He sat at the escritoire in the back parlour with the candles drawn close, his papers laid in ordered ranks. Outside, the street had sunk into February damp; wheels passed softened by mud, and the lamps shone through the fog as if each flame had been wrapped in dirty gauze. Inside, the coal had burned low. He had not rung for more.

He placed the Kerr letter at the upper left of the desk. James Kerr was his father’s elder brother, from the only branch of the family willing to shelter him without claiming him.

Sir,

The house in Upper Gower Street, formerly occupied by Major Robert Kerr during his residence in London, shall remain at your disposal for the term of your natural life, provided always that no alienation, subletting, or material alteration be attempted without the consent of the trustees of the Drumcairn settlement.

The furniture listed in the attached inventory shall be considered appurtenant to the house and not your personal property.

Your obedient servant,

James Kerr

He set his uncle’s terms beside the paper Lady Isobel had left him. Four hundred pounds per annum, payable quarterly through Armitage & Co. of Edinburgh, for his maintenance, education, and proper establishment.

Proper establishment.

He had not yet discovered what proper establishment could be purchased for one hundred pounds a quarter by a young man whose name opened no door beyond the first bow.

The school papers lay next. They made the fairest show.

Royal High School, Edinburgh. Latin, Greek, rhetoric, geography, arithmetic. Mr Haldane’s hand praised industry; Mr Sinclair’s praised judgement; Mr Fraser, who had never praised anything without first wounding it, had written that Mr Kerr possessed “a mind exact beyond the common run, provided he learns to submit exactness to use.”

Kerr had liked him for that. Praise without a bruise seldom endured.

The University papers lay beneath: certificates of attendance for moral philosophy, civil history, and Scots law. No degree. No profession. Lectures attended, essays marked, disputations noted, professors thanked. A neat record of preparation for nothing in particular.

He touched the topmost testimonial.

Mr Alexander Kerr has conducted himself with diligence, sobriety, and uncommon attention. I should not hesitate to recommend him for a clerkship requiring discretion, orderly habit, and command of written expression.

Discretion, orderly habit, written expression.

He had them in abundance. The City appeared overstocked.

The replies lay at his right.

Mr Carstairs, solicitor, regretted that his offices were full.

Messrs Bell and West, insurance brokers, had no present vacancy but would retain his name.

Mr Lumsden, merchant, found his education admirable but unsuitable to counting-house discipline unless supported by prior commercial practice.

Sir Malcolm Ryde required a private secretary already accustomed to parliamentary papers.

Mr Henry Wray of Lincoln’s Inn Fields thanked him for his application and advised that a gentleman’s prospects must be pursued through friends rather than advertisements.