There was a very fine leader indeed in the Messenger, which I have myself cut out and keep framed before me upon the wall of my study, to cheer me when I come near to despairing of my fellow-men. His Grace (for it was His Grace who inspired that leader, though he did not actually write it, because he could not write consecutively), pointed out that such things only happened here and in America, and that they were characteristic of the Nordic Race and of the modern man of affairs; that the sacrifice was Idealist ... a peak.... But, indeed, I have no space for it all; at any rate, that leader in the Messenger was calculated to lead to some later friendly relation between the Duke and Mr. John K. Petre; and would inevitably have done so, as the Duke intended it to do, had it not been for the fact that Mr. Petre suffered from so uneasy, so insane a panic, which grew upon him with every passing day.
He would meet no one. He refused to go out into the great world of Dukes and Gwryths and their sisters. He hid.
While these negotiations were toward he had, as may be believed, fled from the Splendide; for once more, less than a week after his return, he had seen Mephistopheles—only the back of him—striding towards the bar. He had taken refuge in the omniscience of Charles Terrard, and Charlie Terrard had found him rooms in the Temple under the convenient name of Patten. Henry Patten was painted on the door and Mr. Petre was at great pains to remember it. There for the moment he could feel a little more secure. Charlie Terrard had suggested, indeed, how pleasant it would be if they could share a flat, but Mr. Petre already appreciated the world in which Charlie Terrard moved, and he was about as inclined for that arrangement as a devout spinster in a country village is inclined for appearance upon the stage with song and dance.
He lay low. He visited his Hampshire lair continually. He prayed for peace—but how could peace come to a man who had lied so freely in pursuit of it?
The weeks went by without incident. He had signed what papers were put before him; he dreaded abominably the day when he would have to sign something else: when he would have to sign for money which was not there and to pay sums more than tenfold the capital at his command. But that day never came.
Incredible as it may seem to you, my chance reader, and to all those million sisters of yours who with so much difficulty earn real money which they pay in real form, across real counters, for food and permission to live, incredible as it may seem to professors of political economy, there is such an operation as selling without buying, and that blessed paradox was put in operation by Mr. Petre’s Guardian Dæmon with the greatest ease.
It was, to be accurate, upon the 17th of May that at last a letter was signed which bound the Education Department in bonds of iron—nothing as yet negotiable, but a sure and certain pledge of completion; and that bunch of honest fellows, Terrard and Charlbury and the hard-faced man, and I know not how many of their merry hangers-on entered into the fullness of their joy. Some even borrowed on the strength of it, for they were pressed; therefore did the Banks come to hear of it, and among others the Branch Bank where Mr. Petre’s huge current account, still well over £73,000, lay idle or rather earning money at usury for others.
The only man who had not heard the final news was the obstinately secluded Petre. He was in Hampshire again, lost; and none dared seek him. Anxiously did Terrard await his return; but when he did come up to the Temple, a few days later, it was too late in the evening for business.
Next day Mr. Petre sought the Bank early in the morning to draw a casual check for his trifling personal expenses (he was still a little nervous, but he was getting accustomed to the place), the young man in horn-rimmed spectacles with a face like the moon asked whether he could possibly see the Manager. Again a hairy terror passed through Mr. Petre’s being. But he nerved himself, and once more did he tread the carpet of that corridor, once more conducted by the leader of souls who had conducted him those weeks before; once more did he pass the three engravings; once more did he find the presiding godlet of the place, and there was still a fire, for May’s a bitter month and the Managers of Banks are sedentary men.
For a few moments he did not speak. He looked on that extraordinary man to whom seventy odd thousands were as small change, and who left such a sum on current account as your common lord leaves a rickety overdraft of seventy.