"This," John continued, slowly and with weight, "is my answer to your letter. Go on, as you have already begun, trusting to yourself alone. It is best for you. If you are on the downward grade, you would only be saved for a time. If you are going up, the advance you ask would not help you. That is my answer, mister, to your letter."
The draper grew very red in the face. "Then," he asked, "you—you—you refuse—you actually refuse this trifling assistance?"
"Actually."
"You hear, Charles," said the bankrupt.
"Am I in my senses?" He looked round him. "The husband of my cousin Alice, much loved—'sweet Alice, Ben Bolt'—a man of millions, refuses me an advance, upon undeniable security, of a simple thousand pounds. Why, the bank will do it for me with alacrity."
"Then go to the bank."
The poor man changed from red to white. His cheeks became flabby. His arms, which had been folded, dropped. He suddenly grew limp. It is rather terrible to see a confident, aggressive man become suddenly limp. Perhaps he had built confidently on this advance; perhaps he was not quite so substantial as he boasted and as he seemed; perhaps that great shop, with four and twenty girls in black with white cuffs, all in a row, was haunted by the spectre of which nobody talks, though it is seen daily by so many—the grisly, threatening, lean, gaunt, fierce-eyed ghost called Bankruptcy.
He clapped his hat on his head. He recovered a little. He tried to smile. He assumed some show of dignity. He even laughed. Then he replied, with genuine heartfelt emotion, "The Lord forgive you!" and walked out of the room.
John Haveril turned to the pew-opener. "Here is your letter," he said; "I return it to you. Why should I give you anything? You are fifty years of age, you say. You have a son in good employ. You have a daughter—this girl, I suppose—in the School Board service. You have a reasonably good situation."
The lady's face dropped and lengthened. "Oh!" she cried; "don't refuse! don't refuse! It's such a trifle to you; you would never miss it, and never feel it. And it would be the making of me—it would indeed."