Mr. May winced slightly; but why should it be wrong to be grateful to God in any circumstances? he asked himself, having become already somewhat composed in his ideas on this particular point.
“Are we quite alone?” he said. “Nobody within hearing? I have not brought you the money, but a piece of paper that is as good as the money. Take it: you will have no difficulty in discounting this; the man is as well known as the Carlingford Bank, and as safe, though I dare say you will be surprised at the name.”
Cotsdean opened out the new bill with trembling hands. “Tozer!” he said faintly, between relief and dismay.
“Yes. You must know that I am taking a pupil—one who belongs to a very rich Dissenting family in London. Tozer knows something about him, from his connection with the body, and through this young man I have got to know something of him. He does it upon the admirable security of the fees I am to receive with this youth; so you see, after all, there is no mystery about it. Better not wait for tomorrow, Cotsdean. Go at once, and get it settled. You see,” said Mr. May, ingratiatingly, “it is a little larger than the other—one hundred and fifty, indeed—but that does not matter with such an excellent name.”
“Tozer!” said Cotsdean, once more bewildered. He handled the piece of paper nervously, and turned it upside down, and round about, with a sense that it might melt in his hold. He did not like the additional fifty added. Why should another fifty be added? but so it was, and there seemed nothing for him but to take the immediate relief and be thankful.
“I’d rather, sir, as Tozer hadn’t known nothing about it; and why should he back a bill for me as ain’t one of my friends, nor don’t know nothing about me? and fifty more added on,” said Cotsdean. It was the nearest he had gone to standing up against his clergyman; he did not like it. To be Mr. May’s sole standby and agent, even at periodical risk of ruin, was possible to him; but a pang of jealousy, alarm, and pain came into his mind when he saw the new name. This even obliterated the immediate sense of relief that was in his mind.
“Come three months it’ll have to be paid,” said Cotsdean, “and Tozer ain’t a man to stand it if he’s left to pay; he’d sell us up, Mr. May. He ain’t one of the patient ones, like—some other folks; and there’s fifty pounds put on. I don’t see my way to it. I’d rather it was just the clear hundred, if it was the same to you.”
“It is not the same to me,” said Mr. May, calmly. “Come, there is no cause to make any fuss. There it is, and if you don’t like to make use of it, you must find some better way. Bring the fifty pounds, less the expenses, to me tonight. It is a good bit of paper, and it delivers us out of a mess which I hope we shall not fall into again.”
“So you said before, sir,” said the corn-factor sullenly.
“Cotsdean, you forget yourself; but I can make allowance for your anxiety. Take it, and get it settled before the bank closes; pay in the money to meet the other bill, and bring me the balance. You will find no difficulty with Tozer’s name; and what so likely as that one respectable tradesman should help another? By the way, the affair is a private one between us, and it is unnecessary to say anything to him about it; the arrangement, you understand, is between him and me.”
“Beg your pardon, sir,” said Cotsdean, with a deprecatory movement of his hand to his forehead; “but it is me as will be come upon first if anything happens, and that fifty pounds—”
“Have you ever found me to fail you, Cotsdean? If you knew the anxiety I have gone through, that you might be kept from harm, the sleepless nights, the schemes, the exertions! You may suppose it was no ordinary effort to ask a man like Tozer.”
Cotsdean was moved by the touching tone in which his partner in trouble spoke; but terror gave him a certain power. He grumbled still, not altogether vanquished.
“I don’t say nothing against that, sir,” he said, not meeting Mr. May’s eye; “but when it comes to be paid, sir, I’m the first in it, and where is that other fifty to come from? That’s what I’m a thinking for—for I’m the first as they’d haul up after all.”
“You!” said Mr. May, “what could they get from you? You are not worth powder and shot. Don’t be ridiculous, my good fellow. I never avoid my responsibilities, as you know. I am as good, I hope, for that fifty as for all that went before. Have you ever known me leave you or anyone in the lurch?”
“No, sir, I can’t say as—I don’t suppose I have. I’ve always put my trust in you like in Providence itself,” he cried, hastily, holding his breath.
“Then do as I tell you,” said Mr. May, waving his hand with careless superiority; and though his heart was aching with a hundred anxious fears, he left the shop with just that mixture of partial offence and indifference which overawed completely his humble retainer. Cotsdean trembled at his own guilty folly and temerity. He did not dare to call his patron back again, to ask his pardon. He did not venture to go back to the table and snatch a bit of cold bacon. He was afraid he had offended his clergyman, what matter that he was hungry for his dinner? He called the young man from the bacon, which was now cold and all but eaten up, and snatched at his hat and went out
