“I thought we had got beyond asking each other anything of that sort; if I wanted a service from you, I should simply tell you so,” replied the baronet.
“You are right. That is just what I feel about it. Well, what I want to say is this: I have a hundred pounds laid by. I don’t want it at present; there is no knowing when I may want it, so I will draw it to-morrow and take it to you.” Raymond made his little announcement very simply, but there was a tremor in his voice. Sir Simon hardly knew what to say. It was impossible to accept, and impossible to refuse.
“It’s rather a good joke, my offering to lend you money!” said Raymond, laughing and walking on as if he noticed nothing. “But you know the story of the lion and the mouse.”
“Raymond, you’re a richer man than I am,” said Sir Simon; “a far happier one,” he added in his own mind.
“Then you’ll take the hundred pounds?”
“Yes; that is to say, no. I can’t say positively at this moment; we’ll talk it over to-morrow. You’ll come up early, and we’ll talk it over. You see, I may not want it after all. If I get the full value of Nero and Rosebud, I shouldn’t want it.”
“But you may not find a purchaser at once, and a hundred pounds would keep this man quiet till you do,” suggested Raymond.
“My dear old boy!” said the baronet, grasping his hand—they were at the gate now—“I ought to be ashamed to own it; but the fact is, Roxham—you know Lord Roxham in the next county?—offered me a thousand pounds for Rosebud only two days ago. I’ll write to him to-morrow and accept it. I dare say he’d be glad to take the two.”
“Oh! how you unload my heart! Good-night, mon cher ami. A demain!” said Raymond.
On his way home Sir Simon looked stern realities in the face, and came to the determination that a change must be made; that it was not possible to get on as he was, keeping up a huge establishment, and entertaining like a man of ten thousand a year, and getting deeper and deeper into debt every day. Raymond was right. Common sense and justice were the best advisers, and it was better to obey their counsels voluntarily while there was yet time than wait till it was too late, and he was driven to extremities. This architect’s bill was a mere drop in the ocean; but it is a drop that every now and then makes the flood run over, and compels us to do something to stem the torrent. As Sir Simon turned it all in his mind in the presence of the stars, he felt very brave about the necessary measures of reform. After all, what did it signify what the world said of him? Would the world that criticised him, perhaps voted him a fool for selling his hunters, help him when the day of reckoning came? What was it all but emptiness and vanity of vanities? He realized this truth, as he sauntered home through the park, and stood looking down over the landscape sleeping under the deep blue dome. Where might he and his amusements and perplexities be to-morrow—that dim to-morrow, that lies so near to each of us, poor shadows that we are, our life a speck between two eternities? Sir Simon let himself in by a door on the terrace, and then, instead of going straight to his room, went into the library, and wrote a short note to Lord Roxham. It was safer to do it now than wait till morning. The morning was a dangerous time with Sir Simon for resolves like the present. It was ever to him a mystery of hope, the awakening of the world, the setting right and cheering up of all things by the natural law of resurrection.