MR. MAY'S AFFAIRS.
Mr. May went into his study and closed the door. He poked the fire--he
put himself into his easy-chair--he drew his writing-book towards him,
and opened it at where a half-written sheet lay waiting. And then he
paused, rubbed his hands softly together, and falling back again,
laughed quietly to himself.
Yes; he who had stormed out of the drawing-room like a whirlwind, having
discomfited everybody, leaving the girls in tears, and the boys in a
white heat of passion, when he reached the profoundest depths of his own
retirement, laughed. What did it mean? Of all the people in the world,
his children would have been most entirely thunderstruck by this
self-betrayal. They could not have understood it. They were acquainted
with his passions, and with his moments of good temper. They knew when
he was amiable, and when he was angry, by instinct, by the gleam of his
eye, by the way in which he shut the door; but this was something
totally unknown to them. The truth was that Mr. May, like many other
people, having a naturally bad temper, which he indulged freely when he
pleased, had attained the power of using it when it suited him to use
it, without being suspected by anybody. A bad temper is a possession
like another, and may be made skilful use of like other things which,
perhaps, in themselves, are not desirable. He could work himself up into
fury, and launch the doom he felt disposed to launch, like a burning and
fizzing thunder-bolt from a hand which was, in reality, not at all
excited; and like most other people who possess such an unrevealed
power, it pleased him very much when he persuaded his surroundings that
it was an impulse of rage which moved him. He had been at the Meeting at
the Music Hall, "to hear what those fellows had to say for themselves."
Contempt, unbounded but wrathful, was the feeling in his mind towards
"those fellows;" but he felt that young Northcote's eloquence, reported
in next day's papers, was quite enough to quash for ever all hopes of
his son's acceptance of the chaplaincy. So he walked home as fast as his
legs would carry him, and burst into his house, as we have seen, with a
semblance of passion so perfect as to deceive his entire family and
fill the place with anger and tears. Upon which, withdrawing from the
scene of conflict, he threw himself down in his easy-chair and chuckled,
recovering his composure by slow degrees.
When, however, this private indulgence was over, Mr. May's face grew
dark enough. He pushed his writing away from him, and pulling out a
drawer in his writing-table, which was full of papers of a very
unliterary aspect, betook himself to the consideration of them, with
anything but laughter in his looks, or in his mind. Letters upon blue
paper in straight up and down handwriting--other papers, also blue, with
ruled lines and numerals, for which Mr. May was more frightened than he
would have been for a charge of cavalry. These were the very
unattractive contents of this drawer. He brought two or three of them
out in a bundle and read them over, one after another, with contracted
brows. Debt is an idiosyncrasy like other things. Some people keep clear
of it miraculously, some seem to drop into it without cause or meaning,
and to spend all their lives afterwards in vain attempts to get out. Mr.
May was one of these unfortunate men. He could not tell himself where
his money went to. Poor man! it was not so much he had, and there was a
large family to be fed and clothed, and schooled after a sort. But still
other people on incomes as small as his had managed to maintain their
families without dropping into this hopeless condition. He had been in
debt since ever he could remember; and to be sure it was not the pain
and trouble to him that it is to many people. So long as, by hook or by
crook, he could manage to stave off the evil day, so long was he happy
enough, and he had managed this by all sorts of semi-miraculous
windfalls up to the present time. James's remittances had been like
heavenly dew to him. It is true that these remittances had been intended
to keep Reginald at Oxford, and perhaps something of the special
hardness with which he regarded Reginald arose from the fact that he had
done him wrong in this respect, and had appropriated what was intended
for him. But after all, he had said to himself, the maintenance of the
house in comfort, the keeping clean of the family name, and the staving
off disagreeable revelations of the family's poverty, were more, for
even Reginald's comfort, than a little more money in his pocket, which
everybody knew was very dangerous for a young man.
Mr. May had always a bill coming due, which James's remittances arrived
just in time to meet. Indeed, this was the normal condition of his life.
He had always a bill coming due--a bill which some good-humoured banker
had to be coaxed into renewing, or which was paid at the last moment by
some skilful legerdemain in the way of pouring out of one vessel into
another, transferring the debt from one quarter to another, so that
there may have been said to be always a certain amount of quite
fictitious and visionary money floating about Mr. May, money which
existed only in the shape of symbol, and which, indeed, belonged to
nobody--which was borrowed here to-day, and paid there to-morrow, to be
re-borrowed and repaid in the same way, never really reaching anybody's
pocket, or representing anything but that one thing which money is
supposed to be able to extinguish--debt. When human affairs reach this
very delicate point, and there is nothing at any moment, except a
semi-miraculous windfall, to keep a man going, the crisis is very
serious. And it was no wonder that Mr. May was anxious to drive his son
into accepting any possible appointment, and that he occasionally railed
unreasonably at his family. Unless a hundred pounds or so fell down from
the skies within the next ten days, he saw nothing before him but ruin.
This, it is needless to say, is very far from being a comfortable
position. The _sourde_ agitation, excitement, feverish hope and fear of
the sufferer might well affect his temper. If he could not get a hundred
pounds within ten days, he did not know what he was to do.
And nobody could say (he thought to himself) that he was an expensive
man; he had no expensive habits. He liked good living, it is true, and a
glass of good wine, but this amount of regard for the table does not
ruin men. He liked books also, but he did not buy them, contenting
himself with such as the library could afford, and those which he could
obtain by the reviews he wrote for the Church Magazines. How then was it
that he never could get rid of that rapidly maturing bill? He could not
tell. Keeping out of debt is one thing, and getting rid of it when you
have once taken its yoke upon your neck is another. His money, when he
had any, "slipped through his fingers," as people say. When James's
remittance or any other piece of good fortune gave him enough to pay
that hundred pounds without borrowing elsewhere, he borrowed elsewhere
all the same. It was a mysterious fatality, from which he seemed unable
to escape. In such circumstances a crisis must come sooner or later, and
it appeared to him that now at least, after many hairbreadth escapes,
the crisis had come.
What was he to do? There was no chance, alas! of money from James, and
even if Reginald accepted the chaplaincy, and was willing at once to
come to his father's aid, there was no hope that he would have anything
for some time--for chaplains incomes are not, any more than other
people's, generally paid in advance. He leaned back in his chair and
went over again, for the hundredth time, the list of all the people he
could borrow from, or who would "back" a bill for him, and he was still
employed in this melancholy and hopeless enumeration, when a low knock
came to the door, and a maid-of-all-work, pushing it open, thrust in a
homely little man in a dusty-brown coat, who put up a hand to his
forehead as he came in with a salutation which was half charity
school-boy, half awkward recruit. Beyond this there was no ceremony
about his entrance, no leave asked or question made. Betsy knew very
well that he was to come in when he pleased, and that her master did not
deny himself to Cotsdean. Mr. May received him with a familiar nod, and
pointed hastily to a chair. He did not even take the trouble to put away
those blue papers, which he would have done if any other individual,
even if one of his children had come into the room.
"Good evening, Cotsdean," he said, in a friendly tone. "Well, what
news?"
"Nothing as is pleasant, sir," said the man, sitting down on a corner of
his chair. "I've been to the bank, and it's no use my explaining, or
begging ever so hard. They won't hear of it. 'We've done it times and
times,' they says to me, 'and we won't do it no more. That's flat,' and
so indeed it is flat, sir, as you may say downright Dunstable; but that
ain't no advantage to you and me."
"Yes, it is, Cotsdean," said the clergyman, "it is a decided advantage,
for it shows there is nothing to be hoped from that quarter, and that is
always good--even though it's bad bad, as bad as can be--"
"You may say so, sir," said Cotsdean. "I don't know what's to be done no
more than the babe unborn, and it's wearing me to death, that's what
it's doing. When I looks round on my small family, it's all I can do not
to cry out loud. What's to become of my children, Mr. May? Yours, sir,
they'll never want friends, and a hundred or so here or there, that
don't ruin gentlefolks; but without selling up the business, how am I
ever to get a hundred pounds? It ain't equal, sir, I swear it ain't. You
gets the money, and you takes it easy, and don't hold your head not a
bit lower; but me as has no good of it (except in the way o' a bit of
custom that is a deal more in looks than anything else), and has to go
round to all the folks, to Mr. Brownlow, at the bank, and I don't know
who, as if it was for me! I suffers in my credit, sir, and I suffers in
my spirits, and I suffers in my health; and when the smash comes,
what's to become of my poor children? It's enough to put a man beside
himself, that's what it is."
Here the poor man's eyes grew bloodshot, partly with rubbing them,
partly with tears. He rubbed them with the sleeve of his rough coat, and
the tears were very real, though few in number. Cotsdean's despair was
indeed tragical enough, but its outside had in it a dash of comedy,
which, though he was in no mirthful mood, caught the quick eye of Mr.
May. He was himself very painfully affected, to tell the truth, but yet
it cost him an effort not to smile.
"Cotsdean," he said, "have I ever failed you yet? You have done a good
deal for me, I don't deny it--you have had all the trouble, but beyond
that what have you suffered except in imagination? If you choose to
exaggerate dangers, it is not my fault. Your children are as safe as--as
safe as the Bank of England. Now, have I ever failed you? answer me
that."
"I can't say as you have, sir," said Cotsdean, "but it's dreadful work
playing with a man's ruin, off and on like this, and nobody knowing what
might happen, or what a day or an hour might bring forth."
"That is very true," said Mr. May. "I might die, that is what you mean;
very true, though not quite so kind as I might have expected from an old
friend--a very old friend."
"I am sure, Sir, I beg your pardon," cried the poor man, "it wasn't
that; but only just as I'm driven out o' my seven senses with thinking
and thinking."
"My dear Cotsdean, don't think; there could not be a more unnecessary
exercise; what good does your thinking do, but to make you unhappy?
leave that to me. We have been driven into a corner before now, but
nothing has ever happened to us. You will see something will turn up
this time. I ask you again, have I ever failed you? you know best."
"No, sir," said Cotsdean, somewhat doubtfully. "No, I didn't say as you
had. It's only--I suppose I ain't so young as I once was--and a man's
feelin's, sir, ain't always in his own control."
"You must take care that it is only to me that you make such an
exhibition as this," said Mr. May. "Who is there? oh, my coffee! put it
on the table. If you are seen coming here to me with red eyes and this
agitated appearance," he went on, waiting pointedly till the door was
closed, "it will be supposed there is some family reason for
it--again--"
"Oh, lor', Sir! you know--"
"Yes, I know very well," said the clergyman. "I know that there couldn't
be a better wife, and that bygones are bygones; but you must remember
and take care; everybody doesn't know you--and her--so well as I do.
When you come to see your clergyman in this agitated state, I put it to
yourself, Cotsdean, I put it to your good sense, what is anybody to
think? You must take great care not to betray yourself to anybody but
me."
The man looked at him with a half-gasp of consternation, bewildered by
the very boldness with which he was thus set down. Betray himself--he
drew a long breath, as if he had received a _douche_ of cold water in
his face, which was indeed very much like the effect that this
extraordinary address produced--betray himself! Poor Cotsdean's
struggles and sufferings arose, at the present moment, entirely from the
fact that he had allowed himself to be made use of for Mr. May's
occasions, and both the men were perfectly aware of this. But though he
gasped, Cotsdean was too much under the influence of his clergyman to do
anything more. Had he been a Dissenter, he would have patronized young
Northcote, who was as good a man as Mr. May (or far better if truth were
told), with the frankest certainty of his own superior position, but
being a humble churchman he yielded to his clergyman as to one of the
powers that be. It is a curious difference. He sat still on the edge of
his chair, while Mr. May walked across the room to the table by the
door, where his _café noir_ had been placed, and took his cup and drank
it. He was not civil enough to ask his visitor to share it, indeed it
never would have occurred to him, though he did not hesitate to use poor
Cotsdean for his own purpose, to treat him otherwise than as men treat
their servants and inferiors. When he had finished his coffee, he went
leisurely back into his former place.
"You have nothing to suggest," he said, "nothing to advise? Well, I must
try what I can do. It will be hard work, but still I must do it, you
know," added Mr. May, in a gracious tone. "I have never concealed from
you, Cotsdean, how much I appreciated your assistance; everything of
this sort is so much worse in my position than in yours. You understand
that? A gentleman--and a clergyman--has things expected from him which
never would be thought of in your case. I have never omitted to
acknowledge my obligations to you--and you also owe some obligations to
me."
"I don't deny as you've been very kind, sir," said Cotsdean,
half-grateful, half-sullen; then he wavered a little. "I never denied
it, _her_ and me could never have 'it it off but for you. I don't forget
a favour--nobody can say that of me. I ain't forgot it in this case."
"I don't say that you have forgotten it. I have always put the utmost
confidence in you; but, my good fellow, you must not come to me in this
down-in-the-mouth way. Have I ever failed you? We've been hard pressed
enough at times, but something has always turned up. Have not I told you
a hundred times Providence will provide?"
"If you put it like that, sir--"
"I do put it like that. I have always been helped, you know, sometimes
when it seemed the last moment. Leave it to me. I have no more doubt,"
said Mr. May, lifting up a countenance which was by no means so
untroubled as could have been wished, "that when the time comes all will
be well, than I have of the sun rising to-morrow--which it will," he
added with some solemnity, "whether you and I live to see it or not.
Leave it all, I say, to me."
Cotsdean did not make any reply. He was overawed by this solemnity of
tone, and knew his place too well to set himself up against his
clergyman; but still it cannot be denied that the decision was less
satisfactory than one of much less exalted tone might have been. He had
not the courage to say anything--he withdrew with his hat in his hand,
and a cloud over his face. But as he left the house the doubt in his
soul breathed itself forth. "If so be as neither me nor him see it rise,
what good will that do to my family," said Cotsdean to himself, and went
his way to his closed shop, through all the sacks of seeds and dry
rustling grain, with a heavy heart. He was a corn-factor in a tolerable
business, which, as most of the bankers of Carlingford knew, he had some
difficulty in carrying along, being generally in want of money; but this
was not so rare a circumstance that any special notice should be taken
of it. Everybody who knew thought it was very kind of Mr. May to back
him up as he did, and even to put his name to bills for poor Cotsdean,
to whom, indeed, he was known to have been very kind in many ways. But
nobody was aware how little of these said bills went to Cotsdean, and
how much to Mr. May.
When he was gone, the clergyman threw himself back again into his chair
with a pale face. Providence, which he treated like some sort of neutral
deity, and was so very sure of having on his side when he spoke to
Cotsdean, did not feel so near to him, or so much under his command,
when Cotsdean was gone. There were still two days; but if before that he
could not make some provision, what was to be done? He was not a cruel
or bad man, and would have suffered keenly had anything happened to poor
Cotsdean and his family on his account. But they must be sacrificed if
it came to that, and the thought was very appalling. What was he to do?
His friends were exhausted, and so were his expedients. There was no
longer any one he could borrow from, or who would take even a share of
his burden on their shoulders. What was he to do?