Agatha asked him if the dainty spread before them was the usual method of breakfast in America. Gilead Beck replied that of late years he had been accustomed to call a chunk of cold pork with a piece of bread a substantial breakfast, and that the same luxuries furnished him, as a rule, with dinner.
"The old life," he said, "had its points, I confess. For those who love cold pork it was one long round of delirious joy. And there was always the future to look forward to. Now the future has come I like it better. My experience, Mrs. L'Estrange, is that you may divide men into two classes—those who've got a future, and those who haven't. I belonged to the class who had a future. Sometimes we miss it. And I feel like to cry whenever I think of the boys with a bright future before them, who fell in the War at my side, not in tens, but in hundreds. Sometimes we find it. I found it when I struck Ile. And always, for those men, whether the future come early or whether it come late, it lies bright and shinin' before them, and so they never lose hope."
"And have women no future as well as men, Mr. Beck?" asked Phillis.
"I don't know, Miss Fleming. But I hope you have. Before my Golden Butterfly came to me I was lookin' forward for my future, and I knew it was bound to come in some form or other. I looked forward for thirty years; my youth was gone when it came, and half my manhood. But it is here."
"Perhaps, Mr. Beck," said Mrs. L'Estrange, who was a little rococo in her morality, "it is well that this great fortune did not come to you when you were younger."
"You think that, madam? Perhaps it is so. To fool around New York would be a poor return for the Luck of the Butterfly. Yes; better as it is. Providence knows very well what to be about; it don't need promptin' from us. And impatience is no manner of use, not the least use in the world. At the right time the Luck comes; at the right time the Luck will go. Yes,"—he looked solemnly round the table,—"some day the Luck is bound to go. When it goes, I hope I shall be prepared for the change. But if it goes to-morrow, it cannot take away, Mrs. L'Estrange, the memory of these few months, your friendship, and yours, Miss Fleming. There's things which do not depend upon Ile; more things than I thought formerly; things which money cannot do. More than once I thought my pile ought to find it easy to do somethin' useful before the time comes. But the world is a more tangled web than I used to think."
"There are always the poor among us," said the good Agatha.
"Yes, madam, that is true. And there always will be. More you give to the poor, more you make them poor. There's folks goin' up and folks goin' down. You in England help the folks goin' down. You make them fall easy. I want to help the folks goin' up."
At this moment a telegram was brought for him.
It was from his London bankers. They informed him that a cheque for a small sum had been presented, but that his balance was already overdrawn; and that they had received a telegram from New York on which they would be glad to see him.