CHAPTER V

THE SCION


To Harrington Surtaine, life had been a game with easy rules. Certain
things one must not do. Decent people didn't do them. That's all there
was to that. In matters of morals and conduct, he was guided by a
natural temperance and an innate sense of responsibility to himself.
Difficult questions had not come up in his life. Consequently he had not
found the exercise of judgment troublesome. His tendency, as regarded
his own affairs, was to a definite promptness of decision, and there was
an end of the matter. Others he seldom felt called upon to judge, but if
the instance were ineluctable, he was prone to an amiable generosity.
Ease of living does not breed in the mind a strongly defined philosophy.
All that young Mr. Surtaine required of his fellow beings was that they
should behave themselves with a due and respectable regard to the rights
of all in general and of himself in particular--and he would do the same
by them. Rather a pallid attenuation of the Golden Rule; but he had thus
far found it sufficient to his existence.

Into this peaceful world-scheme intruded, now, a disorganizing factor.
He had brought it home with him from his visit to the "shop." An
undefined but pervasive distaste for the vast, bustling, profitable
Certina business formed the nucleus of it. As he thought it over that
night, amidst the heavily ornate elegance of the great bedroom, which,
with its dressing-room and bath, his father had set aside for his use in