I have said that he told me little that was new. In one matter, however, he did open my eyes. He introduced me to an aspect of myself entirely unsuspected.
"They," he said—meaning me, "have unusual business capacity, and are destined to be leaders in great commercial enterprises."
One gets at times these flashes of self–revelation. In an instant I realised how wasted my life had been; in an instant I resolved that here and now I would put my great gifts to their proper uses. I would be a leader in an immense commercial enterprise.
One cannot start commercial enterprises without capital. The first thing was to determine the exact nature of my balance at the bank. This was a matter for the bank to arrange, and I drove there rapidly.
"Good morning," I said to the cashier, "I am in rather a hurry. May I have my pass–book?"
He assented and retired. After an interminable wait, during which many psychological moments for commercial enterprise must have lapsed, he returned.
"I think you have it," he said shortly.
"Thank you," I replied, and drove rapidly home again.
A lengthy search followed; but after an hour of it one of those white–hot flashes of thought, such as only occur to the natural business genius, seared my mind and sent me post–haste to the bank again.
"After all," I said to the cashier, "I only want to know my balance. What is it?"
He withdrew and gave himself up to calculation. I paced the floor impatiently. Opportunities were slipping by. At last he pushed a slip of paper across at me. My balance!
It was in four figures. Unfortunately two of them were shillings and pence. Still, there was a matter of fifty pounds odd as well, and fortunes have been built up on less.
Out in the street I had a moment's pause. Hitherto I had regarded my commercial enterprise in the bulk, as a finished monument of industry; the little niggling preliminary details had not come up for consideration. Just for a second I wondered how to begin.
Only for a second. An unsuspected talent which has long lain dormant needs, when waked, a second or so to turn round in. At the end of that time I had made up my mind. I knew exactly what I would do. I would ring up my solicitor.
"Hallo, is that you? Yes, this is me. What? Yes, awfully, thanks. How are you? Good. Look here, come and lunch with me. What? No, at once. Good–bye."
Business, particularly that sort of commercial enterprise to which I had now decided to lend my genius, can only be discussed properly over a cigar. During the meal itself my solicitor and I indulged in the ordinary small–talk of the pleasure–loving world.
"You're looking very fit," said my solicitor. "No, not fat, fit."
"You don't think I'm looking thin?" I asked anxiously. "People are warning me that I may be overdoing it rather. They tell me that I must be seriously on my guard against brain strain."
"I suppose they think you oughtn't to strain it too suddenly," said my solicitor. Though he is now a solicitor he was once just an ordinary boy like the rest of us, and it was in those days that he acquired the habit of being rude to me, a habit he has never quite forgotten.
"What is an onyx?" I said, changing the conversation.
"Why?" asked my solicitor, with his usual business acumen.
"Well, I was practically certain that I had seen one in the Zoo, in the reptile house, but I have just learnt that it is my lucky month stone. Naturally I want to get one."
The coffee came and we settled down to commerce.
"I was just going to ask you," said my solicitor—"have you any money lying idle at the bank? Because if so―"
"Whatever else it is doing, it isn't lying idle," I protested. "I was at the bank to–day, and there were men chivying it about with shovels all the time."
"Well, how much have you got?"
"About fifty pounds."
"It ought to be more than that."
"That's what I say, but you know what those banks are. Actual merit counts for nothing with them."
"Well, what did you want to do with it?"
"Exactly. That was why I rang you up. I—er―" This was really my moment, but somehow I was not quite ready to seize it. My vast commercial enterprise still lacked a few trifling details. "Er—I—well, it's like that."
"I might get you a few ground rents."
"Don't. I shouldn't know where to put them."
"But if you really have fifty pounds simply lying idle I wish you'd lend it to me for a bit. I'm confoundedly hard up."
("Generous to a fault, you have a ready sympathy with the distressed." Dash it, what could I do?)
"Is it quite etiquette for clients to lend solicitors money?" I asked. "I thought it was always solicitors who had to lend it to clients. If I must, I'd rather lend it to you—I mean I'd dislike it less—as to the old friend of my childhood."
"Yes, that's how I wanted to pay it back."
"Bother. Then I'll send you a cheque to–night," I sighed.
And that's where we are at the moment. "People born in this month always keep their promises." The money has got to go to–night. If I hadn't been born in January, I shouldn't be sending it; I certainly shouldn't have promised it; I shouldn't even have known that I had it. Sometimes I almost wish that I had been born in one of the decent months. March, say.
XII
The Rescue
William Bales—as nice a young man as ever wore a cummerbund on an esplanade—was in despair. For half–an–hour he and Miss Spratt had been sitting in silence on the pier, and it was still William's turn to say something. Miss Spratt's last remark had been, "Oh, Mr. Bales, you do say things!" and William felt that his next observation must at all costs live up to the standard set for it. Three or four times he had opened his mouth to speak, and then on second thoughts had rejected the intended utterance as unworthy. At the end of half–an–hour his mind was still working fruitlessly. He knew that the longer he waited the more brilliant he would have to be, and he told himself that even Bernard Shaw or one of those clever writing fellows would have been hard put to it now.
William was at odds with the world. He was a romantic young man who had once been told that he nearly looked like Lewis Waller when he frowned, and he had resolved that his holiday this year should be a very dashing affair indeed. He had chosen the sea in the hopes that some old gentleman would fall off the pier and let himself be saved by—and, later on, photographed with—William Bales, who in a subsequent interview would modestly refuse to take any credit for the gallant rescue. As his holiday had progressed he had felt the need for some such old gentleman more and more; for only thus, he realised, could he capture the heart of the wayward Miss Spratt. But so far it had been a dull season; in a whole fortnight nobody had gone out of his way to oblige William, and to–morrow he must return to the City as unknown and as unloved as when he left it.
"Got to go back to–morrow," he said at last. As an impromptu it would have served, but as the result of half–an–hour's earnest thought he felt that it did not do him justice.
"So you said before," remarked Miss Spratt.
"Well, it's still true."
"Talking about it won't help it," said Miss Spratt.