He paused a moment, as if he half expected Westray to speak; but the architect making no suggestion, he went on.
“I didn’t know,” he said timidly; “I wasn’t quite sure whether you had been here long enough to take much interest in the matter. I had an idea of buying the picture myself, so that we could still keep it here. It would be no good offering Miss Euphemia money as a gift; she wouldn’t accept it on any condition. I know her quite well enough to be sure of that. But if I was to offer her twenty pounds for it, and tell her it must always stop here, and that she could buy it back from me when she was able, I think she would feel such an offer to be a godsend, and accept it readily.”
“Yes,” Westray said dubitatively; “I suppose it couldn’t be construed into attempting to outwit her, could it? It seems rather funny at first sight to get her to sell a picture for twenty pounds for which others have offered fifty pounds.”
“No, I don’t think so,” replied the organist. “It wouldn’t be a real sale at all, you know, but only just a colour for helping her.”
“Well, as you have been kind enough to ask my advice, I see no further objection, and think it very good of you to show such thoughtfulness for poor Miss Joliffe.”
“Thank you,” said the organist hesitatingly—“thank you; I had hoped you would take that view of the matter. There is a further little difficulty: I am as poor as a church mouse. I live like an old screw, and never spend a penny, but, then, I haven’t got a penny to spend, and so can’t save.”
Westray had already wondered how Mr. Sharnall could command so large a sum as twenty pounds, but thought it more prudent to make no comments.
Then the organist took the bull by the horns.
“I didn’t know,” he said, “whether you would feel inclined to join me in the purchase. I have got ten pounds in the savings’ bank; if you could find the other ten pounds, we could go shares in the picture; and, after all, that wouldn’t much matter, for Miss Euphemia is quite sure to buy it back from us before very long.”
He stopped and looked at Westray. The architect was taken aback. He was of a cautious and calculating disposition, and a natural inclination to save had been reinforced by the conviction that any unnecessary expenditure was in itself to be severely reprobated. As the Bible was to him the foundation of the world to come, so the keeping of meticulous accounts and the putting by of however trifling sums, were the foundation of the world that is. He had so carefully governed his life as to have been already able, out of a scanty salary, to invest more than a hundred pounds in Railway Debentures. He set much store by the half-yearly receipt of an exiguous interest cheque, and derived a certain dignity and feeling of commercial stability from envelopes headed the “Great Southern Railway,” which brought him from time to time a proxy form or a notice of shareholders’ meetings. A recent examination of his bankbook had filled him with the hope of being able ere long to invest a second hundred pounds, and he had been turning over in his mind for some days the question of the stocks to be selected; it seemed financially unsound to put so large a sum in any single security.
This suddenly presented proposal that he should make a serious inroad on his capital filled him with dismay; it was equivalent to granting a loan of ten pounds without any tangible security. No one in their senses could regard this miserable picture as a security; and the bulbous green caterpillar seemed to give a wriggle of derision as he looked at it across the breakfast-table. He had it on his tongue to refuse Mr. Sharnall’s request, with the sympathetic but judicial firmness with which all high-minded persons refuse to lend. There is a tone of sad resolution particularly applicable to such occasions, which should convey to the borrower that only motives of great moral altitude constrain us for the moment to override an earnest desire to part with our money. If it had not been for considerations of the public weal, we would most readily have given him ten times as much as was asked.
Westray was about to express sentiments of this nature when he glanced at the organist’s face, and saw written in its folds and wrinkles so paramount and pathetic an anxiety that his resolution was shaken. He remembered the quarrel of the night before, and how Mr. Sharnall, in coming to beg his pardon that morning, had humbled himself before a younger man. He remembered how they had made up their differences; surely an hour ago he would willingly have paid ten pounds to know that their differences could be made up. Perhaps, after all, he might agree to make this loan as a thank-offering for friendship restored. Perhaps, after all, the picture was a security: someone had offered fifty pounds for it.
The organist had not followed the change of Westray’s mind; he retained only the first impression of reluctance, and was very anxious—curiously anxious, it might have seemed, if his only motive in the acquiring of the picture was to do a kindness to Miss Euphemia.
“It is a large sum, I know,” he said in a low voice. “I am very sorry to ask you to do this. It is not for myself; I never asked a penny for myself in my life, and never will, till I go to the workhouse. Don’t answer at once, if you don’t see your way. Think it over. Take time to think it over; but do try, Westray, to help in the matter,
