XXXV
The Millionaire
When Mr. May woke next morning, it was not the bookcase he thought of, but that date which had been the last thing in his mind on the previous night. Not the 15th—the 18th. Certainly he was right, and Cotsdean was wrong. Cotsdean was a puzzle-headed being, making his calculations by the rule of thumb; but he had put down the date, and there could be no possible mistake about it. He got up disposed to smile at the poor man’s ignorance and fussy restlessness of mind. “I have never left him in the lurch, he may trust to me surely in the future,” Mr. May said to himself, and smiled with a kind of condescending pity for his poor agent’s timidity; after all, perhaps, as Cotsdean had so little profit by it, it was not wonderful that he should be uneasy. After this, it might be well if they did anything further of the sort, to divide the money, so that Cotsdean too might feel that he had got something for the risk he ran; but then, to be sure, if he had not the money he had no trouble, except by his own foolish anxiety, for the payment, and always a five-pound note or two for his pains. But Mr. May said to himself that he would do no more in this way after the present bill was disposed of; no, he would make a stand, he would insist upon living within his income. He would not allow himself to be subject to these perpetual agitations any more. It would require an effort, but after the effort was made all would be easy. So he said to himself; and it was the 18th, not the 15th, three days more to make his arrangements in. It had come to be the 12th now, and up to this moment he had done nothing, having that vague faith in the Indian mail which had been realized, and yet had not been realized. But still he had nearly a week before him, which was enough certainly. Anything that he could do in six months, he said to himself, he could easily do in six days—the mere time was nothing; and he smiled as he dressed himself leisurely, thinking it all over. Somehow everything looked perfectly easy to him this time; last time he had been plunged into tragic despair; now, and he did not know why, he took it quite easily; he seemed to fear nothing. There were various ways of getting the money as natural as the daylight, and in the meantime why should he make himself unhappy? As soon as he was ready he went to his room and had another look at the bookcase which, with his best books in it, all in order and ranged in unbroken lines, looked everything a bookcase ought to look. It made him feel more of a man somehow, more like the gentleman and scholar he had meant to be when he started in life; he had not intended then to be a poor district incumbent all his life, with a family of eight children. His bookcase somehow transported him back to the days when he had thought of better things for himself, and when life had held an ideal for him. Perhaps at the best of times it had never been a very high ideal; but when a man is over fifty and has given up doing anything but struggle through each day as it comes, and get out of his work as best he may, doing what he must, leaving undone what he can, any ideal almost seems something higher than himself; but the recollection of what he had meant to be, came back to him strongly when he looked at his carved oak. It had not been carried out; but still he felt rehabilitated and better in his own opinion as he stood beside this costly purchase he had made, and felt that it changed his room and all his surroundings. It might have been almost wicked to run into such an extravagance, but yet it did him good.
“My people came down to the Hall last night,” Clarence Copperhead said to him at breakfast, “and the Governor is coming over along with Sir Robert. He’d like to see you, I am sure, and I suppose they’ll be going in for sightseeing, and that sort of thing. He is a dab at sightseeing, is the Governor. I can’t think how he can stand it for my part.”
“Then you must remember that I put myself at his orders for the day,” said Mr. May graciously. “Sir Robert is not a bad guide, but I am a better, though it sounds modest to say it; and, Ursula, of course Mr. Copperhead will take luncheon with us.”
“Don’t think of that,” said Clarence, “he’s queer and likes his own way. Just as likely as not he’ll think he ought to support the hotels of the place where he is—sort of local production, you know. I think it’s nonsense, but that is how it is—that’s the man.”
“We shall look for him all the same,” said Mr. May, with a nod at Ursula; and a sudden project sprang up in his mind, wild as projects so often are. This father whom his fancy, working upon what Clarence said, immediately invested with all the prodigal liberality of a typical rich man; this stranger to whom a hundred pounds was less then a penny was to himself, would give him the money he wanted. What so easy? He drew a long breath, and though he had not been aware that he was anxious, he was suddenly conscious of a sense of relief. Yes, to be sure, what so simple, what so likely? he would explain his monetary necessities lightly and with grace, and Mr. Copperhead would supply them. He was
