"I gave you no advice whatever, sir. Please to remember that;" and he sat up in his chair with a suggestion of dignified offence on his features which made Jordan feel contrite and ashamed, and thoroughly satisfied that he had better not disturb his shares for the next twenty-four hours at any rate. "You can tell Stinson about your shares if you have a mind to; but whatever you do, I must beg that you will not only not circulate, but that you will put down any foolish report such as that you have just mentioned."
"You may depend on me for that, old fellow," cried Jordan, nodding adieu, and walking out with a sense of disburdenment from the cares he had been carrying, which made his middle-aged gait positively elastic.
Ralph rose, and watched through a convenient chink his retreating figure off the premises, and then he drew a breath, and stretched himself with a sardonic twitch of the eyebrows. "There's nothing like bluff after all! Yet where should I have been if he had concluded to take my offer? A fine rumpus those white-livered directors next door would have raised over the cheque. However, that's weathered. Now for the mines," and he sat down and wrote his telegrams. He felt better and stronger than he had done for weeks. There was something to do now, action, work, combat with circumstances. He was a man once more with a fund of strength within, which needed only to be drawn on to come forth. The sherry decanter diffused its topaz radiance in vain all that day, for never once came Ralph within sight of the seductive lustre. He had something to do and think of, and in doing he found the best tonic for his system. It is waiting and looking forward to uncertain evil, distant as yet, and impossible to be struggled with, which racks the nerves to pieces with its strain, and drives the victim to artificial supports, which they from whose coarser construction a nervous system seems to have been omitted, and who cannot comprehend such needs, brand as intemperance and dissipation.
CHAPTER XII.
[A BOARD MEETING].
It was not yet eight o'clock on a summer morning at the little railway station of St. Euphrase. The sweetness from the dew on the ripening hay fields still hung on the drowsy breezes which came laggingly athwart the dusty platform, growing fainter each moment in the waxing heat.
Farmer Belmore was the earliest intending passenger to appear on the platform. The ticket office was not yet open, and he flopped about impatiently in his clean linen coat, mopping his brow with a vast handkerchief drawn from the crown of his broad-leafed Panama hat. His grand-daughter had arranged a poppy and a branch of southern-wood in his button-hole by way of embellishment, his cravat was of the fiercest blue, fastened with a gold horse-shoe of the largest size. He felt himself, as director in a great company, to be a man of mark, appropriately and becomingly arrayed on the present occasion, and it disappointed him that none of the general public should be there to see him.
Joe Webb appeared ere long; compact, well knit, athletic; an example of the very satisfactory result to be looked for by-and-by, when the Teutonic and Gallic stocks shall have joined and blended to form the specialized type of a new nationality; swarthy and black-eyed, with the nose short, but prominent and aquiline, marking affinity to the high-spirited and vivacious French, while the level eyebrows and forward balancing of the head showed equal kinship with the reflective Saxon.
"Ha!" cried both men simultaneously. "For town? Board meeting?" Simultaneously, too, they answered, as if there could be any doubt. "Yes. Thought I might as well go this morning as another, and be present at the meeting. And draw my five dollars," added Belmore. "This special meeting will be just so much pure gain, if we do not do too much business, as I hope we shall not, and make the next regular meeting unnecessary. But to be sure the monthly meetings are obliged to be held, according to the bye-laws, or the charter, or something--so Mr. Stinson tells me--therefore, this is quite an extry five dollars to the good, and better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick. You think so, too, squire, I guess."
The distant whistle of the approaching train was now heard, and the opening of the ticket office with a bang. There were only three or four other intending passengers, and all had soon bought their tickets, and stood awaiting the train.