“I am in pressing difficulties, sir; I can’t explain to you how now, but it was through no fault of mine. Just now when I went home I found a couple of men seizing my wife’s things. She is in a delicate state of health, and I am afraid of the shock for her. Will you be so kind as to advance me twenty pounds of my salary? I will write to my friends in England to-night, and I shall have the money next week, and will return it to you at once, if you please. It is a very difficult thing for me to ask, but I hope you won’t refuse me.”
He hurried out the words, not daring to look at Mr. Gurton, who had risen from his chair and walked over to the fireplace with a tread which in its pompous heaviness told George before he looked up that he had failed. There was a slight pause when he finished speaking, Mr. Gurton rattling his watch-chain and clearing his throat. George raised his eyes, and saw that his chief’s bloated face expressed nothing but complacent satisfaction. Then the devil woke in the lad with such a hungry fury that he turned hastily to the door, afraid of himself. Mr. Gurton, unluckily, could not resist a little play with his fish, and he called him back. George hesitated, and at last turned slowly. Mr. Gurton paused again to find some particularly offensive form of expression, for he thought he saw his opportunity, by insulting the young fellow past endurance, to force him to resign his post, and so make room for his own reputed nephew. He had been put in possession, too, of a damaging fact against George, and here was the occasion made to his hand, to use it.
“I’m sorry for this little misfortune, Lauriston, deuced sorry; not only because it is quite beyond my powers to assist you, but because, you see, it’s so particularly bad for a House that’s just starting, for anything disreputable to be known about its employés.”
“Disreputable!” echoed George in a low voice, starting erect. “You have no right to use such a word without knowing the facts, Mr. Gurton.”
“Oh, I know all about the facts, and so does everybody,” said Mr. Gurton with confidential familiarity. “You’ve got an extravagant little madam for your wife, and somebody of course must pay the piper.”
George turned again to leave the room. Mr. Gurton, who was a big, muscular man of six feet two, with two strides reached the door first, admitted a lad with despatches who was waiting outside, and held the door close as he continued:
“You must listen, sir, to what I have to say. You were received in this House simply because we were informed that you were highly connected, and that your social position would be an advantage to the firm. What follows? You go nowhere, you know nobody; you are seen in omnibuses, on penny steamers with a little oddly-dressed girl—”
“Take care; you are speaking of my wife,” said George, in a low tremulous voice which, with his bowed head, gave an utterly wrong impression that he was cowed.
Mr. Gurton put his hands in his pockets.
“Well, sir, and if you choose to marry a courtesan’s daughter whom you picked up in the slums—it is——”