After much more of such converse, Mr Bairnsfather retired. And the next who came for the relief which she was not destined to receive, was Widow Mercer.
"This is a dreadful business, Mr Thriven," said she, as she ran forward in the confusion of unfeigned anguish.
"Dreadful, indeed, my good lady," answered he; "and who can feel it more than myself—that is, after you."
"You are a man, and I am a woman," rejoined the disconsolate creditor; "a woman who has struggled, since the death of her good husband, to support herself and a headless family, who, but for their mother's industry, might have, ere now, been reduced to seek their bread as the boon of pity. But ah, sir, it cannot be that you are to class me with the rest of your creditors. They are men, and may make up their losses in some other way. To me the loss of fifty pounds would be total ruin. Oh, sir, you will!—I know by that face of sympathy, you will make me an exception. Heaven will bless you for it; and my children will pray for you to the end of our lives."
"All this just adds to my misery," replied Mr Samuel; "and that misery, Heaven knows, is great enough already. Your case is that of the mother and the widow; and what need is there for a single word to tell me that it stands apart from all the others. But, madam, were I to pay your debt, do not you see that both you and I would be acting against the laws of our country. What supports me, think ye, under my misfortune, but the consciousness of innocence. Now, you would cruelly take away from me that consciousness, whereby, for the sake of a fifty-pound note, you would render me miserable here, and a condemned man hereafter. A hotter fire, of a verity, there is than that which burned up my stock. But I am bound to make amends for the loss I have brought upon you; and you may rest assured that, as soon as I am discharged, I will do my best for you and your poor bereaved sons and daughters."
And thus Mr Thriven managed these importunate beings, termed creditors, in a manner that he, doubtless, considered highly creditable to himself, in so far as he thereby spread more widely the fact that he had been ruined by no fault of his own, at the same time that he proved himself to be a man of feeling, justice, and sentiment. Meanwhile, his agent, Mr Sharp, was as busy as ever an attorney could be, in getting out a sequestration, with the indispensable adjunct of a personal protection, which the lords very willingly granted upon the lugubrious appeal, set forth in the petition, that Mr Thriven's misfortunes were attributable to the element of fire. A fifty-pound note, too, sent his shopman, Mr Joseph Clossmuns, over the Atlantic; and, the coast being clear, Mr Thriven went through his examinations with considerable eclat.
CHAP. IV.—THE WINDFALL.
"These men," said Mr Thriven, after he got home to dinner, "have worried me so by their questions, that they have imposed upon me the necessity of taking some cooling liquor to allay the fervour of my blood. I must drink to them, besides, for they were, upon the whole, less severe than they might have been; and a bottle of cool claret will answer both ends. And now," he continued, after he drank off a bumper to the long lives of his creditors—"the greatest part of my danger being over, I can see no great risk of my failing in getting them to accept a composition of five shillings in the pound. But what then? I have no great fancy to the counter. After all, a haberdasher is at best but a species of man-milliner; and I do no see why I should not, when I get my discharge in my pocket, act the gentleman as well as the best of them. All that is necessary is to get the devout Miss Angelina M'Falzen, who regenerates the species by distributing good books, to consent to be my wife. She has a spare figure, a sharp face, and a round thousand. Her fortune will be a cover to my idleness; and then I can draw upon the sum I have made by my failure, just as occasion requires."
At the end of this monologue, a sharp broken voice was heard in the passage; and Mr Samuel Thriven's bottle of claret was, in the twinkling of an eye, replaced by a jug of cool spring water.
"Ah, how do you do, my clear Miss M'Falzen?" cried Mr Samuel, as he rose to meet his devout sweetheart.