“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 tomorrow—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
