“And, when you get it, dearest, I have to borrow half. I’m a wretched muddler. I used to think great things of myself once, but now—well, they’d better make me bankrupt, and have done with it. At least, I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that, if I have robbed the rich man and the trader, it has been to relieve the poor. Why, my own clothes are so shabby that I am ashamed to face the sunlight.”
It did not for one moment occur to his generous 18 nature to glance at the costly garments of his beautiful wife, who wanted for nothing, who spent her days in a round of pleasure. He took her hand as she stood beside him, and raised it to his lips.
“I have been a miserable failure as a husband for you, Mary,” he said. “You remember that they used jestingly to call you the bishop’s wife, and said that you would never regret having married a parson. Well, I really thought in those days that I should make up for the disparity in our relative positions, and raise you to an eminence worthy of you.”
“Poor old John!” laughed his wife, smoothing his gleaming, silvery hair. “It’s not your fault. Father ought to have done more. He’s a perfect beast. He is a miser, mean, deceitful, avaricious, spiteful, everything that’s wicked. He is ruining you, and he will ruin Dick, too. He threatens that, when he dies, we may find all his wealth left to charities. Charities, indeed, when we have to pinch and screw to satisfy insolent tradesmen, and the everlasting hunger of a lot of cringing, crawling loafers and vagabonds who won’t work!”
“Hush, hush, my darling! Don’t let’s get on that topic to-night. We never agree as to some things, and we never shall.”
“There’s talk, too, of Dick’s going to the front. And that will cost money. Anyway, I shall see father to-morrow. You must write to that wretched 19 builder man, and tell him he will have his money. I’ll get it somehow, if I have to pawn my jewels.”
“Your father has repeatedly informed you, dearest,” the rector objected, “that your jewels do not really belong to you—that he has only loaned them to you.”
“Yes, that’s a device of his, although they belonged to my mother. At any rate, write the man a sharp letter.”
“Very well, my dear,” replied the rector, wearily, and he rose, and walked with bowed head toward his desk. “I’ll say that I hope to pay him.”
The two had been through scenes like this before, but never had the situation hitherto been so desperate as to-night.