Phoebe, Junior · Chapter 22 (2/2)

This was all that was in it. Mr. May opened it out on his table with a half-smile of that same superficial amusement which the entire incident had caused him⁠—the contact, even momentary, of his own household with that of Tozer, the old Dissenting butterman, was so droll an event. Then he sank down on his chair again with a sigh, the amusement dying out all at once, purely superficial as it was. Amusement! how strange that even the idea of amusement should enter his head in the midst of his despair. His mind renewed that horrible mechanical wandering through the dismal circle of might-be’s which still survived amid the chaos of his thoughts. Once or twice there seemed to gleam upon him a stray glimmer of light through a loophole, but only to throw him back again into the darkness. Now and then he roused himself with a look of real terror in his face, when there came a noise outside. What he was afraid of was poor Cotsdean coming in with his hand to his forehead, and his apologetic “Beg your pardon, sir.” If he came, what could he say to him? Two days⁠—only two days more! If Mr. May had been less sensible and less courageous, he would most likely have ended the matter by a pistol or a dose of laudanum; but fortunately he was too rational to deliver himself by this desperate expedient, which, of course, would only have made the burden more terrible upon the survivors. If Cotsdean was to be ruined, and there was no remedy, Mr. May was man enough to feel that it was his business to stand by him, not to escape in any dastardly way; but in the meantime to face Cotsdean, and tell him that he had done and could do nothing, seemed more than the man who had caused his ruin could bear. He moved about uneasily in his chair in the anguish of his mind. As he did so, he pushed off some of his papers from the table with his elbow. It was some sort of break in his feverish musings to pick them up again in a bundle, without noticing what they were. He threw them down in a little heap before him. On the top, as it chanced, came the little dirty scrap of paper, which ought to have been tossed into the fire or the wastepaper basket. Saml. Tozer! What was Saml. Tozer to him that his name should stare him in the face in this obtrusive way? Tozer, the old butterman! a mean and ignorant person, as far beneath Mr. May’s level as it is possible to imagine, whose handwriting it was very strange to see on anything but a bill. He fixed his eyes upon it mechanically; he had come, as it were, to the end of all things in those feverish musings; he had searched through his whole known world for help, and found there nothing and nobody to help him. Those whom he had once relied on were exhausted long ago; his friends had all dropped off from him, as far, at least, as money was concerned. Some of them might put out a hand to keep him and his children from starvation even now, but to pay Cotsdean’s bill, never. There was no help anywhere, nor any hope. Natural ways and means were all exhausted, and though he was a clergyman, he had no such faith in the supernatural as to hope much for the succour of Heaven. Heaven! what could Heaven do for him? Banknotes did not drop down out of the skies. There had been a time when he had felt full faith in “Providence;” but he seemed to have nothing to expect now from that quarter more than from any other. Samuel Tozer! why did that name always come uppermost, staring into his very eyes? It was a curious signature, the handwriting very rude and unrefined, with odd, illiterate dashes, and yet with a kind of rough character in it, easy to identify, not difficult to copy⁠—

What was it that brought beads of moisture all at once to Mr. May’s forehead? He started up suddenly, pushing his chair with a hoarse exclamation, and walked up and down the room quickly, as if trying to escape from something. His heart jumped up in his breast, like a thing possessed of separate life, and thumped against his side, and beat with loud pulsations in his ears. When he caught sight of himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, he started as if he had seen a ghost. Someone else seemed to see him; seemed to pounce upon and seize him out of that glass. He retreated from the reach of it, almost staggering; then he returned to his table. What thought was it that had struck him so wildly, like a sudden squall upon a boat? He sat down, and covered his face with his hands; then putting out one finger, stealthily drew the paper towards him, and studied it closely from under the shadow of the unmoved hand, which half-supported, half-covered his face. Well! after all, what would be the harm? A gain of three months’ time, during which every sort of arrangement could be made so nicely; supplies got anywhere, everywhere; the whole machinery of being set easily in motion again, and no harm done to anyone: this was the real force of the idea⁠—no harm done to anyone! Long before the three months were out, that hundred pounds⁠—a paltry business, a nothing, when a man had time before him⁠—could be got, one might make sure; and where was the harm? He would never know it. Poor Cotsdean need never have the slightest burden upon his conscience. Here, in the stillness of his own room, it could all be done as easily as possible, without a soul being taken into confidence, except that bloodless wretch in the glass with his staring face, Mr. May said to himself, only dimly sensible that this wretch was himself. No, it would harm no one, that was clear; it never need be known to anyone. It was a mere act of borrowing, and borrowing was never accounted a crime; borrowing not money even, only a name, and for so short a time. No harm; it could do no one in the world any harm.

While these reasonings went on in his mind, his heart dropped down again into its right place; his pulse ceased to beat like the pistons of a steam-engine; he came gradually to himself. After all, what was it? Not such a great matter; a loan of something which would neither enrich him who took, nor impoverish him who, without being aware of it, should give⁠—a nothing! Why people should entertain the prejudices they did on the subject, it was difficult to see, though, perhaps, he allowed candidly to himself, it might be dangerous for any ignorant man to follow the same strain of thinking; but in the hands of a man who was not ignorant, who knew, as he himself did, exactly how far to go, and what might be innocently done; innocently done⁠—in his own mind he put a great stress on this⁠—why, what was it? A thing which might be of use in an emergency, and which was absolutely no harm.

Mr. May was late in leaving his room that night. It was understood in the family that he “was writing,” and all was kept very quiet in the house; yet not sufficiently quiet, for Janey, when she brought in the coffee, placing it on the table close to the door, was startled by the fierceness of the exclamation with which her father greeted her entrance.

“What do you want prying here?” he said, dropping his hand over the writing.

“Prying himself!” said Janey, furiously, when she was up again in the cheerful light of the drawing-room; “a great deal there is to pry into in that dreadful old study.”

“Hush! he never likes to be disturbed in his writing,” said Ursula, soothingly.

And he sat at his “writing” to a much later hour than usual, and he stumbled upstairs to his bedroom in the dead of the night, with the same scared pale face which he had seen in the glass. Such a look as that when it once comes upon a man’s face takes a long time to glide away; but his heart beat more tranquilly, and the blood flowed even in his veins. After all, where was the harm?