“My dear, dear boy,” he exclaimed fervently on this occasion, “how can I thank you? If, like Brian, I were a poet I could compare you to the sun at midday, to the blessed rain from heaven upon a parched earth. Not being a poet, although I once had some pretensions in that direction, I am compelled to say ‘Bless you, my dear boy, bless you!’”
“Well,” said Comethup, as they paced slowly down a side street, “what’s the matter?”
“My dear boy, we are on the verge of ruin,” exclaimed Mr. Robert Carlaw. “Why should I disguise the fact from you? Why should I hide from you, who know the whole deplorable circumstances, the miserable truth? This morning a letter has arrived, threatening a distraint upon our goods unless a large sum of money be paid by to-morrow. Think of it, a distraint upon our goods! The horror, the disgrace of it!” he exclaimed, smiting his forehead with one hand and waving the other despairingly. “That is our cursed temperament—my son’s and mine—that we can go on through the world like happy children, laughing in the sunshine, picking the brilliant flowers of life, heedless of everything; when a storm comes and the wind howls—you follow my metaphor?—we are lost, absolutely lost. Others were born to face the world and its trials, to make a stubborn fight of it if necessary; we are exotics, my son and I, under an open sky, and we perish miserably. In point of fact, we are on the eve of perishing miserably at this moment.”
“I am sorry,” replied Comethup slowly, “but on this occasion I can’t help you.”
Mr. Robert Carlaw stopped and touched his arm, and peered anxiously into his face, “Can’t help us?” he cried, “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I have no money; that it’s all gone, and that I sha’n’t have any more for perhaps another two months. I’ve already drawn more than was due to me at the bank.”
“But, my dear boy,” whimpered his uncle, “what is to become of us, what is to become of me? Think of the position: you have taught me to be dependent upon you, to look to you for the supply of those little comforts—not to say luxuries—which are necessary to a man of my position. I have felt so—so safe! Fortune has not been good to me; Fortune has stripped me of everything; and then, at the last moment, melting a little toward me, has pointed to you and has said in effect: ‘Go to Comethup; our dear Comethup will assist you.’ And I have come to you accordingly. My dear nephew, what is to become of us?”
Comethup faced about and looked at him contemptuously. “Yes, I know, you’ve come to me for everything; have relied upon me for everything. I’ve had a thousand a year from my aunt, and, as God’s my witness, I haven’t spent fifty of it. It’s all gone to feed you, and your son, and”—he paused, and a gentler expression came over his face—“yes, and ’Linda. Well, I suppose it’s all right; you’d got to be fed and kept going somehow, and it was easier for me to do it than it would have been for any one else. But now, here’s an end of it. I’d help you if I could—you know that but I simply can’t. It’s impossible for me to go to my aunt, even if I could bring myself to do it; she’d want to know where the money had gone, would want to know a thousand things I can’t tell her. I tell you things have come to a deadlock; you’ve drained me—you and Brian—and you can drain me no further.”
Mr. Robert Carlaw walked slowly up and down the street with his head sunk upon his breast in profound thought; Comethup paced slowly at his side. After a time the elder man raised his head and thumped his chest, and spoke in a tone of renewed hopefulness.
“In a crisis of this kind, my dear nephew, despair is useless; we see before us a certain situation, and that situation has to be faced. In this world we are beings of one of two orders—we are either men or mice. If we are mice we submit to be crushed”—he stamped his heel vigorously on the pavement—“while if we are men we face the situation boldly and rise superior to it. In this case we are men; we refuse to be crushed. For myself I would not care; ever the sport of fortune as I have been, I yet may cut a figure in the world, even though it be a ragged one; ‘The Vagabond’ has always been my favourite song. But my heart is torn at the thought of others. I dare not return and see them hold out empty hands to me and cry for bread and tell them I have but a stone. My dear boy, it is not to be done; vagabond I may be, but I am still, I trust, a gentleman, and my heart beats true to those of my own flesh and blood. Think, my boy, think of Brian and of his young wife, and then tell me, if you will, that I am to go back to them and bow my head before them and say, ‘Behold me; I have failed!’”