of the impending fate, and not to desert him.
Mr. May was angry at this perpetual appeal. “Why should I desert him, the idiot?” he said to himself; and moved by the man’s persistence, he took out his pocketbook again, and made out beyond all chance of mistake, that it was the 18th. Why should the fool insist upon its being the 15th with such perpetual iteration? There were the figures as plain as possible, 18th April.
Mr. May wrote a peremptory note announcing this fact to Cotsdean, and then returned to his own thoughts. Sir Robert had asked him to go over that morning and spend the day at the Hall with the Copperheads, not knowing of any breach between them. He thought he had better do this. If Clarence determined to stay, that would be a great thing in his favour, and he had seen that the young man’s dull spirit was roused; and if that hope failed, there might still be advantage even in this sudden breaking of the bond. Part of the second quarter was gone, and the father had offered three months additional pay. These two payments would make up the hundred and fifty pounds at once, and settle the business. Thus, in either way, he should be safe, for if Clarence went away the money would be paid; and if he stayed,
Mr. May himself had made up his mind to risk the bold step of going to the bank and asking an advance on this inalienable security. All these deliberations made his mind easy about the bill. It must come right one way or another; he might have chosen perhaps not to run it quite so close; but after all the 15th was only tomorrow, and there were still three days. While his mind was full of these things he did not care to go upstairs. He heard the voices of the young people, but he was too much engrossed with his own calculations to care to join them. It was a close thing, he said to himself, a very close thing; but still he felt that he could do it—surely he could do it. If
Mr. Copperhead settled with him—and he was the sort of man, a man to whom money was nothing, to do so on the spot if he took it into his head—then all was right. And if
Mr. Copperhead did not do so, the bank, though his past transactions with it had not been encouraging, would certainly make all right on account of these Copperhead payments, which were as certain as any payments could be. He went to bed early, being engrossed by these thoughts, not even saying good night to Ursula, as was his wont; and he made up his mind to take an early breakfast, and start the first thing in the morning for the Hall. There was an early train which would suit admirably. He could not afford to drive, as Sir Robert had done, changing horses halfway. He went upstairs to bed, somewhat heavily, but not discontented, seeing his way. After all, the great thing in life is to see your way. It does not matter so much whether that way is great or small, so long as you can see it plain before you.
Mr. May breathed a sigh of anxiety as he ended the day. He had a great many things on his mind; but still he was not altogether heavyhearted or discouraged beyond measure; things, he felt, would shape themselves better than he had hoped. He was not perhaps going to be so much better off than of old, as he thought possible when Clarence Copperhead came. Such delusive prospects do glimmer across a poor man’s path when any apparent expansion of means occurs to him; but in the majority of cases he has to consent to see the fine fictitious glow die away.
Mr. May was not ignorant of this experience already. A man who is over fifty is generally more or less prepared for anything that can happen to him in this kind; but he thought he could “get on;” and after all that is the sum of life to three parts of mankind.
He was silent at breakfast, but not disagreeable, and Ursula was too much taken up with her own concerns to pay much attention to him. Ursula’s concerns were developing with a rapidity altogether extraordinary. In the mind of a girl of twenty, unforestalled by any previous experience, the process that goes on between the moment when the surprising, overwhelming discovery rushes upon her that someone loves her in the old way of romance, until the corresponding moment when she finds out that her own heart too has been invaded by this wonderful sentiment, which is like nothing that was ever known before, is of a very rapid description. It is like the bursting of a flower, which a day’s sunshine brings to the blooming point like a miracle, though it is in reality the simplest result of nature. Already there began to glow a haze of brightness about those three months past in which everything had begun. When or how it began she could not now tell. The glow of it was in her eyes and dazzled her. She heard the voices of the others sounding vaguely through this bright mist in which she herself was isolated; when she was obliged to reply, she called herself back with an effort, and did so—but of her own will she seldom spoke. How Janey chattered, how the children maundered on about their little concerns, which were of consequence to nobody! Papa was the person whom Ursula really respected this morning, for he had more sense than to talk. How could people talk, as if there was pleasure in that? But papa had more sense, he had things to think of—too. So the girl approved her father, and thought more highly of him, and never inquired what it might
