Warburton waited for a quarter of an hour after the artist had gone,
then set out for his walk. The result of this unexpected conversation
with Franks was excellent; the foolish fellow seemed to have recovered
his common sense. But Will felt ashamed of himself. Of course he had
acted solely with a view to the other's good, seeing no hope but this
of rescuing Franks from the slough in which he wallowed; nevertheless,
he was stung with shame. For the first time in his life he had asked
repayment of money lent to a friend. And he had done the thing
blunderingly, without tact. For the purpose in view, it would have been
enough to speak of his own calamity; just the same effect would have
been produced on Franks. He saw this now, and writhed under the sense
of his grossness. The only excuse he could urge for himself was that
Franks' behaviour provoked and merited rough handling. Still, he might
have had perspicacity enough to understand that the artist was not so
sunk in squalor as he pretended.
"Just like me," he growled to himself, with a nervous twitching of the
face. "I've no presence of mind. I see the right thing when it's too
late, and when I've made myself appear a bounder. How many thousand
times have I blundered in this way! A man like me ought to live
alone--as I've a very fair chance of doing in future."
His walk did him no good, and on his return he passed a black evening.
With Mrs. Hopper, who came as usual to get dinner for him, he held
little conversation; in a few days he would have to tell her what had
befallen him, or invent some lie to account for the change in his
arrangements, and this again tortured Will's nerves. In one sense of
the word, no man was less pretentious; but his liberality of thought
and behaviour consisted with a personal pride which was very much at
the mercy of circumstance. Even as he could not endure subjection, so
did he shrink from the thought of losing dignity in the eyes of his
social inferiors. Mere poverty and lack of ease did not frighten him at
all; he had hardly given a thought as yet to that aspect of misfortune.
What most of all distressed his imagination (putting aside thought of
his mother and sister) was the sudden fall from a position of genial
authority, of beneficent command, with all the respect and gratitude
and consideration attaching thereto. He could do without personal
comforts, if need were, but it pained him horribly to think of being no
longer a patron and a master. With a good deal more philosophy than the
average man, and vastly more benevolence, he could not attain to the
humility which would have seen in this change of fortune a mere
surrender of privileges perhaps quite unjustifiable. Social grades were
an inseparable part of his view of life; he recognised the existence of
his superiors--though resolved to have as little to do with them as
possible, and took it as a matter of course that multitudes of men
should stand below his level. To imagine himself an object of pity for
Mrs. Hopper and Allchin and the rest of them wrought upon his bile,
disordered his digestion.
He who had regarded so impatiently the trials of Norbert Franks now had
to go through an evil time, with worse results upon his temper, his
health, and whole being, than he would have thought conceivable. For a
whole fortnight he lived in a state of suspense and forced idleness,
which helped him to understand the artist's recourse to gin and
laudanum. The weather was magnificent, but for him no sun rose in the
sky. If he walked about London, he saw only ugliness and wretchedness,
his eyes seeming to have lost the power of perceiving other things.
Every two or three days he heard from Sherwood, who wrote that he was
doing his utmost, and continued to hold out hope that he would soon
have money: but these letters were not reassuring. The disagreeable
interview with Applegarth had passed off better than might have been
expected. Though greatly astonished, and obviously in some doubt as to
the facts of the matter, Applegarth behaved as a gentleman, resigned
all claims upon the defaulters, and brought the affair to a decent
close as quickly as possible. But Warburton came away with a face so
yellow that he seemed on the point of an attack of jaundice. For him to
be the object of another man's generous forbearance was something new
and intolerable. Before parting with Sherwood, he spoke to him
bitterly, all but savagely. A few hours later, of course, repentance
came upon him, and he wrote to ask pardon. An evil time.
At length Sherwood came to Chelsea, having written to ask for a
meeting. Will's forebodings were but too well justified. The disastrous
man came only to say that all his efforts had failed. His debtor for
ten thousand pounds was himself in such straits that he could only live
by desperate expedients, and probably would not be able to pay a penny
of interest this year.
"Happily," said Sherwood, "his father's health is breaking. One is
obliged to talk in this brutal way, you know. At the father's death it
will be all right; I shall then have my legal remedy, if there's need
of it. To take any step of that sort now would be ruinous; my friend
would be cut off with a shilling, if the affair came to his father's
ears."
"So this is how we stand," said Warburton, grimly. "It's all over."
Sherwood laid on the table a number of bank-notes, saying simply:
"There's two hundred and sixty pounds--the result of the sale of my
furniture and things. Will you use that and trust me a little longer?"
Warburton writhed in his chair.
"What have you to live upon?" he asked with eyes downcast.
"Oh, I shall get on all right. I've one or two ideas."
"But this is all the money you have?"
"I've kept about fifty pounds," answered the other, "out of which I can
pay my debts--they're small--and the rent of my house for this quarter."
Warburton pushed back the notes.
"I can't take it--you know I can't."
"You must."
"How the devil are you going to live?" cried Will, in exasperation.
"I shall find a way," replied Sherwood with an echo of his old
confident tone. "I need a little time to look about me, that's all.
There's a relative of mine, an old fellow who lives comfortably in
North Wales, and who invites me down every two or three years. The best
thing will be for me to go and spend a short time with him, and get my
nerves into order--I'm shaky, there's no disguising it. I haven't
exhausted all the possibilities of raising money; there's hope still in
one or two directions; if I get a little quietness and rest I shall be
able to think things out more clearly. Don't you think this justifiable?"
As to the money he remained inflexible. Very reluctantly Warburton
consented to keep this sum, giving a receipt in form.
"You haven't said anything to Mrs. Warburton yet?" asked Sherwood
nervously.
"Not yet," muttered Will.
"I wish you could postpone it a little longer. Could you--do you
think--without too much strain of conscience? Doesn't it seem a
pity--when any day may enable me to put things right?"
Will muttered again that he would think of it; that assuredly he
preferred not to disclose the matter if it could decently be kept
secret. And on this Sherwood took his leave, going away with a brighter
face than he had brought to the interview; whilst Will remained
brooding gloomily, his eyes fixed on the bank-notes, in an unconscious
stare.
Little of a man of business as he was, Warburton knew very well that
things at the office were passing in a flagrantly irregular way: he
knew that any one else in his position would have put this serious
affair into legal hands, if only out of justice to Sherwood himself.
More than once he had thought of communicating with Mr. Turnbull, but
shame withheld him. It seemed improbable, too, that the solicitor would
connive at keeping his friends at The Haws ignorant of what had
befallen them, and with every day that passed Will felt more disposed
to hide that catastrophe, if by any means that were possible. Already
he had half committed himself to this deception, having written to his
mother (without mention of any other detail) that he might, after all,
continue to live in London, where Applegarth's were about to establish
a warehouse. The question was how; if he put aside all the money he had
for payment of pretended dividend to his mother and sister, how, in
that case, was he himself to live? At the thought of going about
applying for clerk's work, or anything of that kind, cold water flowed
down his back; rather than that, he would follow Allchin's example, and
turn porter--an independent position compared with bent-backed slavery
on an office-stool. Some means of earning money he must find without
delay. To live on what he had, one day longer than could be helped,
would be sheer dishonesty. Sherwood might succeed in bringing him a few
hundreds--of the ten thousand Will thought not at all, so fantastic did
the whole story sound--but that would be merely another small
instalment of the sum due to the unsuspecting victims at St. Neots.
Strictly speaking, he owned not a penny; his very meals to-day were at
the expense of his mother and Jane. This thought goaded him. His sleep
became a mere nightmare; his waking, a dry-throated misery.
In spite of loathing and dread, he began to read the thick-serried
columns of newspaper advertisement, Wanted! Wanted! Wanted! Wants by
the thousand; but many more those of the would-be employed than those
of the would-be employers, and under the second heading not one in a
hundred that offered him the slightest hint or hope. Wanted! Wanted. To
glance over these columns is like listening to the clamour of a
hunger-driven multitude; the ears sing, the head turns giddy. After a
quarter of an hour of such search, Will flung the paper aside, and
stamped like a madman about his room. A horror of life seized him; he
understood, with fearful sympathy, the impulse of those who, rather
than be any longer hustled in this howling mob dash themselves to
destruction.
He thought over the list of his friends. Friends--what man has more
than two or three? At this moment he knew of no one who wished him well
who could be of the slightest service. His acquaintances were of course
more numerous. There lay on his table two invitations just
received--the kind of invitation received by every man who does not
live the life of a hermit. But what human significance had they? Not a
name rose in his mind which symbolised helpfulness. True, that might be
to some extent his own fault; the people of whom he saw most were such
as needed, not such as could offer, aid. He thought of Ralph Pomfret.
There, certainly, a kindly will would not be lacking, but how could he
worry with his foolish affairs a man on whom he had no shadow of claim?
No: he stood alone. It was a lesson in social science such as reading
could never have afforded him. His insight into the order of a man's
world had all at once been marvellously quickened, the scope of his
reflections incredibly extended. Some vague consciousness of this now
and then arrested him in his long purposeless walks; he began to be
aware of seeing common things with new eyes. But the perception was
akin to fear; he started and looked nervously about, as if suddenly
aware of some peril.
One afternoon he was on his way home from a westward trudge, plodding
along the remoter part of Fulham Road, when words spoken by a woman
whom he passed caught his ears.
"See 'ere! The shutters is up. Boxon must be dead."
Boxon? How did he come to know that name? He slackened his pace,
reflecting. Why, Boxon was the name of the betting and drinking grocer,
with whom Allchin used to be. He stopped, and saw a group of three or
four women staring at the closed shop. Didn't Mrs. Hopper say that
Boxon had been nearly killed in a carriage accident? Doubtless he was
dead.
He walked on, but before he had gone a dozen yards, stopped abruptly,
turned, crossed to the other side of the road, and went back till he
stood opposite the closed shop. The name of the tradesman in great gilt
letters proved that there was no mistake. He examined the building;
there were two storys above the shop; the first seemed to be used for
storage; white blinds at the windows of the second showed it to be
inhabited. For some five minutes Will stood gazing and reflecting;
then, with head bent as before, he pursued his way.
When he reached home, Mrs. Hopper regarded him compassionately; the
good woman was much disturbed by the strangeness of his demeanour
lately, and feared he was going to be ill.
"You look dre'ful tired, sir," she said. "I'll make you a cup of tea at
once. It'll do you good."
"Yes, get me some tea," answered Warburton, absently. Then, as she was
leaving the room, he asked, "Is it true that the grocer Boxon is dead?"
"I was going to speak of it this morning, sir," replied Mrs. Hopper,
"but you seemed so busy. Yes, sir, he's died--died the day before
yesterday, they say, and it'd be surprising to hear as anybody's sorry."
"Who'll take his business?" asked Warburton.
"We was talking about that last night, sir, me and my sister Liza, and
the Allchins. It's fallen off a great deal lately, what else could you
expect? since Boxon got into his bad ways. But anybody as had a little
money might do well there. Allchin was saying he wished he had a few
'undreds."
"A few hundred would be enough?" interrupted the listener, without
noticing the look of peculiar eagerness on Mrs. Hopper's face.
"Allchin thinks the goodwill can be had for about a 'undred, sir; and
the rent, it's only eighty pounds--"
"Shop and house?"
"Yes, sir; so Allchin says. It isn't much of a 'ouse, of course."
"What profits could be made, do you suppose, by an energetic man?"
"When Boxon began, sir," replied Mrs. Hopper, with growing animation,
"he used to make--so Allchin says--a good five or six 'undred a year.
There's a good deal of profit in the grocery business, and Boxon's
situation is good; there's no other grocer near him. But of course--as
Allchin says--you want to lay out a good deal at starting--"
"Yes, yes, of course, you must have stock." said Will carelessly.
"Bring me some tea at once, Mrs. Hopper."
It had suddenly occurred to him that Allchin might think of trying to
borrow the capital wherewith to start this business, and that Mrs.
Hopper might advise her brother-in-law to apply to him for the loan.
But this was not at all the idea which had prompted Will's inquiries.