This buzzing in my ears was almost my only worry, as Edmund was my only anxiety.
His first ship was burned in the Canton River, and he was landed penniless. He got a cable sent to me by the British Consul. Instead of sending what he asked for I cabled £250 and an urgent message to return.
I waited in vain for his arrival, eager to share with him all the comfort that had come into my life. Instead I got a letter in reply to one I had written on chance of his start being delayed. He congratulated me on my good fortune: had gone up country and invested two hundred of my good pounds in some wild-goose land speculation. All that was wanted to make the money bring forth an hundredfold was another thousand.
It was curious to me that I resented the loss of this £250 much more than I should have done when I was a poor man. I knew that this was the effect of possessing money on ordinary men, but I suppose no man expects to find himself reacting after the manner of his kind.
I was angry and sent another £50 and a peremptory message. Then I was sorry. I could see Edmund cashing the draft and shying from the insult like a young horse from the unexpected. I would have given the thousand to have him back.
But would not the thousand have kept him there until he lost it in its turn?
I heard no more and settled back as comfortably as possible into my groove. But for the first time I felt Edmund had not behaved well, a film formed on the surface of my warm love for him, and I knew there was anger towards myself in his heart.
Nearly two years passed during which he wrote three times when he wanted money—paltry sums which I loathed sending, but I could not trust him with a larger amount, though God knows I was willing to share my all with him, if he would only spend it and live on it.
Then he had come, announced by wire from Southampton.
He came in his fo’c’sle kit, with three sovereigns and some shillings which he called his “savings.” But he brought the promised parrot in a gilded cage, and a costly offering of Chinese silk for Louisa, who had long ago vanished into the limbo which awaits parlour vestals disapproved of by Mrs. Rattray.