“A MODERN MIRACLE.”
ONE other curious thing happened before they left Cornwall. At breakfast next morning, as they sat moody and taciturn — for Mr Solomons didn’t greatly care to talk, nor Paul to break in upon his companion’s blank misery — the elder man suddenly interrupted the even flow of their silence by saying with a burst, “I think Miss Blair lives in Cornwall.”
“She does,” Paul answered, starting, and completely taken aback, for he had no idea Mr. Solomons even knew of his Nea’s existence. Then, after a slight pause, he added shyly, “She lives near Fowey.”
“We passed the junction station on our way down, I noticed,” Mr. Solomons went on in a measured voice.
“Yes,” Paul replied, surprised once more that the old man had observed it. Young people always imagine their little love-affairs entirely escape the eyes of their elders: which is absurd. As a matter of fact, everybody discovers them.
“We shall pass it again on our way back,” Mr. Solomons went on, in that weary, dreary, dead-alive tone in which he had said everything since Lionel’s death and his terrible awakening.
“Naturally,” Paul answered, looking up in amaze, and much wondering whither this enigmatic conversation tended.
Mr. Solomons paused, and looked over toward him kindly. “Paul, my boy,” he said, with a little tremor in his throat— “you’ll excuse my calling you Paul now as I used to do in the old days, you know — Paul, my boy, it seems a pity, now you’re so near, you shouldn’t drop in as you pass and see her.”
Paul let his fork drop in blank astonishment. To be sure, he had thought as much a dozen times himself, but he had never dared to envisage it as practically possible. “How good of you to think of it — and now especially!” he exclaimed with genuine gratitude.
Mr. Solomon drew himself up stiffly, and froze at once. “I was thinking,” he said, “that as a matter of business, it might be well if you got that question about marrying settled some day, one way or the other. I regarded it only in the light of my own interests — the interests of the Jewish widows and orphans. They’re all I have left to work for now: but you don’t get rid of the habits of a lifetime in a day; and I shall look after their money as I looked after — Lionel’s. It’s become an instinct with me. Now, you see, Sir Paul, I’ve got a vested interest, so to speak, in your future — it’s mortgaged to me, in fact, as you know; and I must do my best by it. If you won’t marry the sort of lady I expected you to marry, and had a claim to believe you’d try to marry, in my interest — at least don’t let me be a loser by your remaining single. I’ve always considered that being in love’s a very bad thing indeed for a man’s business prospects. It upsets his mind, and prevents him from concentrating himself body and soul on the work he has in hand. A man who has to make his own way in the world, therefore, ought to do one of two things. Either he should avoid falling in love at all, which is much the safest plan — I followed it myself — or else, if he can’t do that, he should marry out of hand, and be able to devote himself thenceforward unreservedly to business.”
Paul could hardly help smiling at this intensely practical view of the situation, in spite of the cold air of utter despondency with which Mr. Solomons delivered it: but he answered with as grave a face as he could, “I think myself it may act the other way — as a spur and incentive to further exertion.”
“No,” Mr. Solomons retorted firmly. “In your case no. If you waited to marry till you’d cleared off your debt, you’d lose heart at once. As a security for myself, I advise you to marry as soon as ever the lady’ll take you.”
“And yet,” Paul answered, “it was consideration for your claims that made us both feel it was utterly hopeless.”
“Exactly so,” Mr. Solomons replied, in the same cold, hard voice. “That’s just where it is. What chance have I got of ever seeing my money back again — my hard-saved money, that I advanced for your education and to make a gentleman of you — if you begin by falling in love with a penniless girl, and feeling, both of you, that it’s utterly hopeless? Is that the kind of mood that makes a man fit for earning and saving money, I ask you?”
“I’m afraid not,” Paul answered, penitently.
“And I’m afraid not either,” Mr. Solomons went on, with icy sternness. “You’ve paid up regularly so far — that I admit in justice: and mind, I shall expect you to pay up just as regularly in future. Don’t suppose for a moment I won’t look after the Jewish widows’ and orphans’ interests as carefully as ever I looked after poor Leo’s. You’ve got into debt with your eyes open, and you’ve got to get out of it now as best you can.” (Paul, listening aghast, felt that his disillusionment had hardened Mr. Solomons terribly.) “And the only way I can see for you to do is to put the boldest face upon it at once, and marry this young lady.”
“You think so?” Paul asked timidly, half wishing he could see things in the same light.
“Yes, I do,” Mr. Solomons replied, with snappish promptitude. “I look at it this way. You can keep your wife for very little more than it costs you to keep yourself; and your talents will be set free for your work alone. You could teach her to help you copy your manuscripts or work a typewriter. I believe you’d earn twice as much in the end, if you married her for a typewriter, and you’d pay me off a great deal faster.”
“Well, I’ll think about it,” Paul answered.
“Don’t think about it,” Mr. Solomons replied, with curt incisiveness. “In business, thinking’s the thief of opportunity. It’s prompt decision that wins the prize. Stop at Fowey this very afternoon and talk it over off hand with the lady and her father.”
And so, to his own immense surprise, almost before he’d time to realize the situation, Paul found himself, by three o’clock that day, knocking at the door of Mr. Blair’s rectory. —
He knocked with a good deal of timorous hesitation; for though, to be sure, he had sent on a telegram to announce his coming to Nea, he was naturally so modest and diffident a young man that he greatly feared his reception by Nea’s father. Fathers are always such hard nuts to tackle. Indeed, to say the truth, Paul was even now, in spite of experience, slow to perceive the difference in his position made by his accession to the dignity of the baronetcy. No doubt, every day would serve to open his eyes more to the real state of the case in this important particular; but each such discovery stood alone, as it were, on its own ground, and left him almost as nervous as ever before each new situation, and almost as much surprised when that social “Open sesame!” once more succeeded in working its familiar wonders.
Any doubt he might have felt, however, disappeared almost at once when Nea in person, more visibly agitated than he had ever yet beheld her, opened the door for him, and when her father with profuse hospitality, instead of regarding him as a dangerous intruder, expressed with much warmth his profound regret that Sir Paul couldn’t stop the night at the rectory. Nay, more, that prudent father took special care they should all go out into the garden for the brief interview, and that he himself should keep at a safe distance with a convenient sister-in-law, pacing the lawn, while Paul and Nea walked on in front and discoursed — presumably — about the flowers in the border.
Thus brought face to face with the future, Paul briefly explained to Nea Mr. Solomons’ new point of view, and the question which it left open so clearly before them.
Now Nea was young, but Nea was a rock of practical commonsense, as your good and impulsive West Country girl is often apt to be. Instead of jumping foolishly at Mr. Solomons’ proposal because it offered a loophole for immediate marriage, as you or I would have done, she answered at once, with judicious wisdom, that, much as she loved Paul and much as she longed for that impossible day to arrive when they two might be one, she couldn’t bear, even with Mr. Solomons’ consent, so far to burden Paul’s already too heavily mortgaged future.
“Paul!” she said, trembling, for it was a hard wrench, “if I loved you less, I might perhaps say yes; but I love you so much that I must still say no to you. Perhaps some day you may make a great hit — and then you could wipe off all your burdens at once — and then, dear, we two could be happy together. But, till then, I love you too well to add to your anxieties. I know there’s some truth in what Mr. Solomons says; but it’s only half a truth if you examine it closely. When I look forward and think of the long struggle it would bring you, and the weary days of working at your desk, and the fears and anxieties, I can’t bear to face it. We must wait and hope still, Paul: after all, it looks a little nearer now than when you said good-by to me that day at Oxford!”
Paul looked down at the gravel-path with a certain shock of momentary disappointment. He had expected all this; indeed, if Nea hadn’t said it, he would have thought the less of her; and yet, for all that, he was disappointed.
“It seems such an interminable time to wait,” he said, with a rising lump in his throat. “I know you’re right — I felt sure you’d say so — but, still, it’s hard to put it off again, Nea. When Mr. Solomons spoke to me I half felt it was best to do as he said. But now you’ve put it as you put it just now, I feel I’ve no right to impose the strain upon you, dearest.”
“Some day something will turn up,” Nea answered hopefully — for Paul’s sake — lest she should wholly crush him. “I can wait for you forever, Paul. If you love me, that’s enough. And it’s a great thing that I can write to you, and that my letters cheer you.”
Nevertheless, it was with a somewhat heavy heart that Paul rejoined Mr. Solomons at Par Junction that evening, feeling that he must still wait, as before, for some indefinite future.
“Well, what have you arranged?” Mr. Solomons asked, with a certain shadow of interest rare with him these last days, as he advanced to greet him.
“Oh, nothing!” Paul answered blandly. “Miss Blair says we oughtn’t to get married while I’m so much burdened; and I didn’t think it would be right on her account to urge her to share my burdens under such peculiar circumstances. You see I’ve her interests as well as yours to think about.”
Mr. Solomons glanced hard at him with a suspicious look. For a second his lips parted, irresolute, as if he half intended to say something important. Then they shut again close, like an iron trap, with that cold, hard look now fixed sternly upon them.
“I shall lose my money,” he said curtly. “I shall never be paid as long as I live. You’ll do no proper work with that girl on your brain. But no matter — no matter. The Jewish widows and orphans won’t lose in the end. I can trust you to work your fingers to the bone rather than leave a penny unpaid, however long it may take you. And mark you, Sir Paul, as you and the young lady won’t follow my advice, I expect you to do it, too — I expect you to do it.”
Paul bowed his head to his task-master.
“I will pay you every penny, Mr. Solomons,” he said, “if I work myself to death with it.”
The old man’s face grew harder and colder still.
“Well, mind you do it quick,” he said testily. “I haven’t got long left to live now, and I don’t want to be kept out of my money forever.”
But at the rectory near Fowey, if Paul could only have seen the profoundly affectionate air with which, the moment his back was turned, Mr. Blair threw his arm round his daughter’s neck, and inquired eagerly, “Well, what did Sir Paul say to you, Nea?” — even he would have laughed at his own timid fears anent the bearding of that alarming animal, the British father, in his own rectorial lair in Cornwall. And had he further observed the dejected surprise with which Mr. Blair received Nea’s guarded report of their brief interview, he would have wondered to himself how he could ever have overlooked the mollifying influence on the paternal heart of that magical sound, “Sir Paul Gascoyne, Baronet.”
For Mr. Blair heaved a deep sigh as he heard it, and murmured softly to himself.
“He seems a most worthy, high-minded, well-principled young man. I wish we could help him out of his difficulties anyhow.” —