But all this while, notwithstanding his seething thoughts, he seemed very calm, gently inhaling his cigarette smoke. Joe thought him the finest variety of "sport" the deadly cool plunger. But he also thought that his friend must be at least a little better off than he had hitherto supposed not that he himself, having the same means as Arthur, would not have risked as much and more without a qualm. But that was his temper and way of living; he had never credited Arthur with any such characteristics. However his admiration remained substantially unchanged; many fellows with tons of money had no spunk.
"May I tell them in Regent's Park?" he asked. "It'll make 'em all sit up."
"Tell them I'm in with you, but not for how much."
"I shall let 'em know you've done it handsome."
"If you like!" laughed Arthur. "How are they? I haven't seen them just lately."
"They're all right. You have been a bit of an absentee, haven't you?"
"Yes, I must go one day soon. I say, Joe, who are your stockbrokers?"
Joe supplied him with the name of his firm, and then began to go. But what with his admiration of Arthur, and his enthusiasm for the farce, and the beauty and talent of the girl he had discovered, it was, or seemed, quite a long time before he could be got out of the room. Arthur wanted him to go, and listened to all his transports with superficial attention; his real mind was elsewhere. At last Joe did go triumphant to the end, already fingering thousands just as, on his entrance, he had so facetiously fingered Arthur's imaginary briefs. Arthur was left alone with the Law Reports still on the floor where they had fallen in rebound from Henry's waistcoat. Let
them lie! If they had not received notice to quit, they had at least been put very much on their good behaviour. "Prove you're of some use, or out you go!" Arthur had delivered to them his ultimatum.
So much, then, for his Stern Mistress the Law for her who arrogated the right to exact so much and in return gave nothing, who claimed all his days only to consume them in weary waiting, who ate up so much of his means with her inexorable expenses. She had tried to appease him by dangling before his eyes the uncertain distant prospect that in the space of years some great, almost impossible, number of years he would be prosperous that he would be even as Norton Ward was, with briefs rolling in, "silk" in view, perhaps a candidature. It seemed all very remote to Arthur's new impatience. He set his mistress a time-limit. If within the time that it took him to spend that five hundred pounds he did not decide definitely how long it would be she did something to redeem her promises, well and good, he would be prepared to give her a further trial. If not, he would be take himself, with his diminished income, to fresh woods and pastures new, lying over the Back of Beyond in some region unexplored and therefore presumed to be fertile and attractive. He would indeed have no choice about the matter, since the diminished income would no longer meet her exactions, and yet enable him to live. A break with the Stern, and hitherto ungrateful, Mistress would be a matter of compulsion. He was very glad of it.
What of that other the Mistress of his Fancy, delicate sumptuous Cousin Bernadette? Vaguely, yet with a true instinct, he felt that she was at the back of this mood of his and the impulses it inspired. She was the ultimate cause, Joe Halliday's sanguine suggestions but the occasion. Had he not outbid Joe's daring with a greater of his own? She it was who had stirred him to discontent, be it divine or a work of the Devil's; she it was who braved him to his ventures. She showed him the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them or, at least, very tempting glimpses thereof; would she not herself be his guide through them, conferring on them thereby a greater glory? In return he was ready enough to fall down and worship, asking for himself nothing but leave to kneel in the precincts of the shrine, not touching so much as the hem of her garment.
In response to her beauty, her splendour, the treasure of her comradeship, he offered a devotion as humble and unselfish as it was ardent. But he burned to have an offering to lay at her feet a venture achieved, the guerdon of a tournament. The smaller vanities worked with these high-flying sentiments. For her sake he would be comely and well-equipped, point-de-vice in his accoutrements; not a poor relation, client, or parasite, but a man of the world a man of her world on equal terms with others in it, however immeasurably below herself. If she thought him worthy of her favour, others must think him worthy too; to which end he must cut a proper figure. And that speedily; for a horrible little fiend, a little fiend clever at pricking young men's vanity to the quick, had whispered in his ear that, if he went shabby and betrayed a lack of ready cash, Cousin Bernadette might smile or be ashamed. Adoration must not have her soaring wings clipped by a vile Economy.