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But what of the man whose life has been devoted to the things seen and temporal, when he finds himself in a condition of being where none of these have accompanied him? Nothing to slake his lusts, if he be a sensualist. No money-bags, ledgers, or cheque-books if he be a plutocrat or a capitalist or a miser. No books or dictionaries if he be a mere student.
His face was livid; language died from his lips. He asked to have little things explained to him the two cheque-books, for instance, and what I thought of doing when this money was all gone: for he supposed I did not expect the same amount to hand every two years; unless, he added, I had given him no more than a couple of years' lease of life when I started for my tour.
Three small tables were almost buried beneath their load of pink carnations; a box of cigarettes, half-open and half-empty, lay tucked between the cushions in each of three arm-chairs, and the white bearskin rug was littered with The Times, a round milliner's box, two cheque-books and a volume of Ronsard.
Going by this reasoning, he must have wanted a lot of money, which argues blackmail. Hum! Has he taken both cheque-books, or only one? The reason of this last query was that Bishop Pendle had accounts in two different banks. One in Beorminster, as became the bishop of the See, the other in London, in accordance with the dignity of a spiritual lord of Parliament.
A young man! that is to say, a being who possesses a treasure without knowing its value, like a Central African negro who picks up one of M. Rothschild's cheque-books; a young man ignorant of his beauty or charms, who frets because the light down upon his chin has not turned into hideous bristles, a young man who awakes every morning full of hope, and artlessly asks himself what fortunate thing will happen to him to-day; who dreams, instead of living, because he is timid and poor.
You shared cheque-books? good! . . . The devil in hell never found such a fool as you! You had your house full of your foreign bonyrobers eh? Out with it! How did you pass your time? Drunk and dancing? By such degrees my grandfather worked himself up to the pitch for his style of eloquence. I have given a faint specimen of it.
But if it pays to burn them " she suggested, with her black eyes probing vainly in the shallow ones. He roused himself. "A thousand pounds, English. You've not the money here?" "No." "Or a cheque?" Her laugh jangled contemptuously. "Do you Boer spies carry cheque-books upon Secret Service?" "I am no Boer, but an honest, square-dealing Britisher. How often have I to tell you that?
I was so pleased to have all that wealth that I determined to learn all about cheque-books and things and manage it myself. So you taught me, and at last you admitted that I was an excellent man of business. I know I thought I was myself. And I suppose I lapsed into a regular business woman and only thought of money and how to increase it. How horrid you must have thought me!"
At the end of an hour he found himself as ignorant as ever, and made only one discovery of any note, which was that the bishop had taken his cheque-book with him to London. To many people this would have seemed a natural circumstance, as most men with banking accounts take their cheque-books with them when going on a journey.
It is quite useless for me to comment upon the utterly annoying circumstance of that mixup of cheque-books Such things are fate and fate I am beginning to believe is nothing but a reflex of our own actions. If Suzette had not been my little friend, I should not have given her eight thousand francs but as she has been and I did I must stand by the consequences. After all a man?
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