Juliet had lived among girls who talked freely of their debts and difficulties, of sops to Cerberus, and getting round an unwilling dressmaker. Harrington’s lines had been set among old-fashioned countrified people, to whom debt—and especially feminine indebtedness—meant disgrace. He had come back from the University feeling like a murderer, because he had exceeded his allowance.
“Milliners, dressmakers, shoemakers, hatters—and ever so many more. I am afraid I have been rather reckless—only—I thought——”
“I thought I should make a great match,” she would have said, had she followed her idea to its close, but she checked herself abruptly, and cut off a sprig of yew with a swing of the stick she carried.
“If I can help you in any way——” began Harrington.
“My dear boy, there is only one way in which you can help me. Lend me any money you can spare, say fifty pounds, and I will give it you back by instalments of ten or fifteen pounds a quarter. It would be mockery for me to pretend I could pay you in a lump sum, now I have told you the extent of my income.”
Harrington’s worldly wealth at that moment was something under fifty pounds. His father had given him a cheque for fifty on Christmas Eve, and he had no right to expect anything more till Lady Day; while he had to think of the black horse who was steadily eating his head off at livery, and for whom nothing had been paid as yet.
He could not find it in his heart to tell his affianced that he was, comparatively speaking, a pauper. He knew that his father had the reputation of wealth, a man always ready to invest in any odd parcel of land that was in the market, and who was known to possess a good many small holdings and houses in his native town and its neighbourhood. Could he tell her that her future husband was still in leading-strings, and that the run of his teeth and fifty pounds a quarter were all he could count upon till he was out of his articles? No; he would rather perish than reveal these despicable facts; so, although he had only forty-three pounds odd in his little cash-box, he told her that he would let her have fifty pounds in a day or two.
“If you could manage to bring it me to-morrow I should be very glad,” said Juliet, who, once having broken the ice, talked about the loan with easy frankness. “I must have a new frock for the ball at Medlow. They are to have a ball on the first of February, the ball of the year. There will be no end of smart people. I want to send Estelle Dawson thirty-five or forty pounds, about half the amount of her last bill. It’s a paltry business altogether. I know girls who owe their dressmakers hundreds where I owe tens. Let me have the cash to-morrow if you can, there’s a dear. Miss Dawson is sure to be full of work for the country at this season, and she won’t make my frock unless I give her a week’s notice.”
“Of course, dear, yes, you shall have the money,” Harrington answered nervously; “but your white gown at our ball looked lovely. Why shouldn’t you wear that at Medlow?”
“My white gown would be better described as black,” retorted the young lady with marked acidity. “If I didn’t hate the Dorchester people like poison I wouldn’t have insulted them by wearing such a rag. I would no more appear in it at Medlow than I would cut my throat.”