"I know enough to say that in this place all losses appear magnified, unnaturally distorted even. When you get away, you will smile to see how you have been affected. I have known this happen again and again. Even if the loss be great, what is it compared with the sorrow, despair, waste of life, and utter hopelessness into which this morbid feeling of yours will hurry you!"
"You speak to me," I said, "with uncommon freedom, sir."
"Good Heavens!" he went on, "what are a few pounds, compared with life, and a happy home; with the misery which you selfishly—forgive me the word—entail on those who should be so dear to you should you persist in investing this matter with all the horrors of a tragedy. Come, Mr. Austen, be a man, and a manly one; face this difficulty as a hundred thousand merchants and commercial men have faced far greater ones. The first thing is, fly from this place, without a second's delay. Think of your lost money as if it had gone back into the bowels of the earth from whence it came. Let it go! It will never come back to you! "
"Fine comforter!" I said.
"Get to your own home, your dear home, as fast as you can travel, night and day, until you have put the sea between you and this fatal tempter. Then search out your friends, tell them the trouble boldly, get the weight off your soul, and you will be amazed to find with what a quiet, 'Is that all?' they will come to rescue you from your terrible misfortune."
"Fine advice!" I said, bitterly. "Your trade, sir, in this place, accustoms you to think lightly of all the wretchedness that flows from the infamous system maintained here! At the news of some wretch found suspended in that wood, 'Is that all?' would be the remark of you, and your employers."
He coloured.
"'My employers!' But I see I am wasting your time and my own. I must tell you that you have been most ungracious, now as you were in the beginning. If you had attended to me then, with even ordinary civility, you might have been spared this humiliation and even degradation. For I tell you, and I see it as plainly as that bright sun, you are only beginning, and you will be dragged down fatally, lower and still lower. The very first day I noted your self-sufficiency and confidence, and air of superiority to these most pardonable human failings."
"Pardonable," I said, amazed at the man's obsequious toleration of vice.
"Yes, pardonable; and I knew that you would be one of the earliest to fall. I would have helped you, that is, have got you help, to leave this place; but go on your own road now: I shall not trouble you more."
He was gone, to make his morning calls to the fashionable strangers wandering about, just as the humbug German doctor made his. How insulting he was with his impertinent taunt about "my superiority " and self-sufficiency, because I dared to encroach upon his preserves and to talk piously and conscientiously without a licence! There was the sting! So he would get me helped away would he? Now I see it all. His employers would be the ones to help me away. They do not like to see excited faces, or wild eyes, about their place. It scares the genteel. Fine almonership for the church! And, sooner than contaminate my fingers with their unholy gold, I would beg! So that was the secret of his embassy. I shall neither fly nor stay; but I am not sunk so low, as that the loss of some money should lay me under obligation to a doubtful and "shady," as they call it, parson.
Note to South African Gold.
We have received a temperate statement from a resident in Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal Republic, referring to the article, South African Gold, which appeared in Number Five of our New Series, page one hundred and six.
It would appear that, although many bad characters may make the Transvaal Republic a place of refuge, it should by no means be inferred that the population is exclusively recruited from the ranks of the miscreants and other members of the "dangerous" classes.
MR. CHARLES DICKENS'S FAREWELL READINGS.
MR. CHARLES DICKENS will read at Glasgow, February 18; Edinburgh, February 19; Glasgow, February 22; Edinburgh, February 24; Glasgow, February 25; Edinburgh, February 26; St. James's Hall, London, March 2; Wolverhampton, March 4; Manchester, March 6 and 8; Hull, March 10; York, March 11; Hull, March 12.
All communications to be addressed to Messrs. Chappell and Co., 50, New Bond-street, London, W.
The Right of Translating Articles from All The Year Round is reserved by the Authors.
Published at the Office, No.26, Wellington Street Strand. Printed by C. Whiting, Beaufort House, Strand.
