And with this assurance he was fain to be content.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
SYDNEY PAYS HIS DEBTS.
The fight which Sydney Campion had had to wage with his creditors was bitter enough up to the time of his marriage. Then there had been a lull for a few months, during which it was confidently said and believed that he was about to touch a large sum of money, and that all who had put their trust in him would be rewarded.
Month after month went by, and there was no realization of the prospect. Sydney touched no money but what he earned. He might, no doubt, have touched some of his wife's money, even for the payment of his old debts, if he had told her the distress that he was in. But it had never occurred to him to be thus sincere with Nan. He had thought to figure before her as one who was not dependent on her fortune, who could very comfortably play with his hundreds, though not able, like herself, to be generous with thousands. He would, in fact, have been ashamed to own his rotten financial condition, either to Nan or to any of his social or political friends; and he fancied that he was concealing this condition in a very ingenious manner when he made a liberal outlay in connection with their quiet marriage, the honeymoon abroad, and the subsequent arrangements of their household in London.
This was all the more unfortunate because Nan, just of age, with her fortune in her own hands, would have given him anything without demur or question, if she had for a moment suspected that he needed it. His concealment was so effectual that it never entered her unsophisticated mind that this barrister in good practice, this rising politician, who seemed to have his feet on the ladder of success, could be crushed and burdened with debt. Sydney, however, was by no means blind. He knew well enough that he could have had the few thousands necessary to clear him if he had asked his wife for a cheque; but he did not trust her love sufficiently to believe that she would think as well of him from that day forward as she had done before, and he was not large-minded enough to conceive himself as ever shaking off the sense of obligation which her gift in such a form would impose upon him.
He had therefore drifted, in the matter of his debts, from expedient to expedient, in the hope that by good fortune and good management he might avoid the rocks that beset his course, and reach smooth water by his own exertion. But, as ill luck would have it, he had given a bill for six hundred pounds, due on the 23rd of November, to a certain Mr. Copley, a man who had been especially disgusted by Sydney's failure to obtain ready money at the time of his marriage, and who for this and other reasons had worked himself up into a malicious frame of mind. But on the 23rd of November, Sydney and his wife had run over to Paris for a few days with Sir John and Lady Pynsent, and then Nan had been so seriously indisposed that Sydney could not leave her without seeming unkindness; so that they did not reach London again until the 26th. This delay opened a chapter of incidents which ended as Sydney had not foreseen.
He had not forgotten the date of the bill, and knew that it was important to provide for it; but he did not anticipate that the last day of grace would have expired before he could communicate with the man who held his signature.
Early on the morning of the 27th, he set out for Mr. Copley's office; and it so happened that at the same moment Mr. Copley set out also for Sydney's private house.