“I made up my mind to it, and went at last,” said this odd man, puffing at his cigar with a vehemence that made it evident he felt it still. “I found that nobody wanted me there; that everybody preferred not to be interfered with; that the managers had fallen each into his own way, and had no desire for me to meddle. But I am not the sort of man that can stand and look on with his hands in his pockets. You will wonder, and perhaps you will despise me, when I tell you that I found Tottenham’s on the whole a very interesting place.”
“I neither wonder nor despise,” said Edgar. “What did you do?”
“What didn’t I do?” said Mr. Tottenham, with rueful humour. “I did all the mischief possible. I turned the whole place upside down. I diminished the profits for that year by a third part. I changed the well-known good order of Tottenham’s into confusion worse confounded. The old managers resigned in a body. By-the-way, they stayed on all but one afterwards, when I asked them. As for the assistants, there was civil war in the place, and more than one free fight between the different sides; for some sided with me, perhaps because they approved of me, perhaps because I was the master, and could do what I liked; but the end was that I stayed there three months, worked there, and then wrote to Mary; and she took me back.”
“I am very glad to hear it,” said Edgar; and he smiled and sighed with natural sympathy.
He had become quite interested in the story by this time, and totally forgotten all about his own miseries. He came out of his cloud finally just at this point, and took, at last, the cigar which his new friend had from time to time offered him.
“Ah! come now, this is comfortable,” said Tottenham. “Up to that moment mine had been a very hard case, don’t you think so? I don’t pretend to have anything more to grumble about. But, having had a hard case myself, I sympathize with other people. Yours was a horribly hard case. Tell me now, that other fellow, that Arden scamp! I know him—as proud as Lucifer, and as wicked as all the rest of the evil spirits put together—do you mean to say he allowed you to go away, and give him up all that fine property, and save him thousands of pounds in a lawsuit, without making some provision for you? Such a thing was never heard of.”
“No,” said Edgar; “don’t be unjust to him. It was a bitter pill for me to take a penny from him; but I did, because they made me.”
“And you’ve spent it all!”
Edgar laughed; he could not help it. His elastic nature had mounted up again; he began to feel sure that he could not be ruined so completely after all; he must be able to do something. He looked up at his questioner with eyes full of humour. Mr. Tottenham, who was standing in front as grave as a judge, looked at him, and did not laugh.
“I don’t see the fun,” he said. “You shouldn’t have done it. You have let yourself drop half out of recollection before you asked for anything, whereas you should have got provided for at once. Hang it all! I suppose there are some places yet where a man in office may place a friend—and some opportunities left to put a good man in by means of a job, instead of putting in a bad man by competition, or seniority, or some other humbug. You should have done that at first.”