originally conceived as a bright boy more cursed with money than blessed with it , a boy who wanted more than anything to compile a good record so he could go to a good university because he had earned admission and not because his father had pulled strings , he had become to jack a kind of simpering goody two-shoes , a postulant before the altar of knowledge rather than a sincere acolyte , an outward paragon of boy scout virtues , inwardly cynical , filled not with real brilliance ( as he had first been conceived ) but only with sly animal cunning .