The first thing she did was to tell him that he could not let his house that season and that he must make up his mind to it. The second was to discover what balance there was at the bank—and to hear that it was pitifully small. The third was to offer him a short loan that would carry him over at least a few weeks of necessary expense, and the fourth to tell him that, not upon the morrow but upon the day after, she would have decided.
Meanwhile he must post a letter for her.
She sat down and wrote at once to William Bailey.
“When you get outside, George,” she said as she gave him the letter, “you will see a very large pillar box. It is much larger than most pillar boxes; it has two slits in it instead of one. Do you follow me?”
“Yes,” he said humbly.
“You will not put this letter in your pocket, George,” she went on firmly and kindly, as certain practitioners do when they propose to hypnotise their patients. “You will carry it in front of you like this.” She put it into his right hand, crooked his arm, held his wrist upright, so that his eyes could not help falling upon the missive. “The moment you get outside you will put it in the right-hand slit of the pillar box, won’t you?”
He said “yes” again, as humbly as before. And as he went out he did all that she had asked him, though to make the matter more sure she watched for a moment from the window.
When William Bailey received the letter next morning he was in the best of moods. For one thing he was going to leave London for three weeks,—a prospect that always delighted him. For another he was going to do some sea fishing, a sport of which he was passionately fond. For a third, an Austrian money-lender and a baron at that, had shot himself—it had of course been kept out of the English papers, but he had read all the details in one of the anti-semitic rags which are the disgrace of Vienna, and his spirits had risen, buoyant at the news. Finally, and what was of perhaps most importance for an eccentric and middle-aged celibate, the house which he had hired for a month he knew exactly suited him. It was the house of Merry, the architect, and stood just so far from Parham Town as would give him the isolation he adored, yet just so near to Parham Harbour as would put him in touch with the sea.
For all these reasons he read Mary Smith’s little note in great gaiety of heart, and in a mood in which men of influence are willing to do what they can for their kind.
Like many men of wealth and ability whom opportunity has made eccentric, William Bailey could not bear to handle the pen. He hesitated for some moments between the extreme boredom of writing and the tantalising business of the telephone, decided in favour of the former, wrote on a form—