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A Maori Maid

Chapter XIV

page 94

Chapter XIV.

All men are selfish—and some women.

Cyril Anderson was muchly so. It was his nature, his mighty characteristic. As a child he was selfish, and time developed and refined the subtlety of his greed and heartlessness. His mother's devotion to him exceeded even a mother's love; yet he never seemed capable of realising it. His father's affection was limitless; his forbearance marvellous; and yet he despised the kind-hearted old man, nor had the very slightest consideration for him.

He regarded his parents much as the cock did the sun. It arose to hear him crow. They existed for his benefit. They did what they did for him, because it was their duty, and did it badly. They loved him because—well, what else could they do?

All women who were his social inferiors professed love for him so long as he spent sufficiently freely to be worth loving. Women of his own station in life found him pleasant and agreeable, but they one and all disliked him. He was selfish, they said, and his temper was execrable. He was vain and conceited, and he looked at women as women never like to be looked at, though they scarcely know why.

Men hated him.

The cold, contemptuous manner in which he spoke of his parents jarred on the minds of even the most casual. Men and women dislike people who lack filial affection. They may forgive their own want of it, but not other people's.

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Perhaps Cyril was rather indifferent than hostile to his mother. It was strange that he could be even that She idolised him. He was the warm spot in her cold, worldly nature. She seemed a woman of extremes. Her love, when she did love, was the blind, unreasoning love that amounts to worship. She prayed for him—when she prayed. She watched over him, jealously, unceasingly, tirelessly. She petted him as a child; she spoilt him.

He accepted all that was done, all that was sacrificed for him, with little else than ill-natured complainings. He refused to show himself in the very slightest sense under an obligation to his mother. He conceived the idea, as he grew older, that he had even been wronged by his parents, inasmuch as, as he termed it, they had "dragged him up." They should have "brought him up" and not spoilt him. He flung this at his mother as an answer to some of her mild reproofs. He taunted her with it, as a justification of his excesses. Her own self-sacrifice and love became the very thong he lashed her with.

She was not utterly blind to the young fellow's faults. How could she be? They were too apparent. She frequently endeavoured to remonstrate and to exercise some influence over him, and she invariably failed.

"It's perfectly sickening," Cyril would remark to one or other of his intimates—"It's perfectly sickening the way in which the old woman bothers and pesters. I suppose she thinks I'm content to sit in her pocket, or be tied for ever to her apron-strings. She's jolly well mistaken."

She was.

During a brief illness which he had, the same selfishness, the same absence of all feeling or gratitude was apparent. He railed at the patient, uncomplaining mother. He even cursed at her. The food he knew she had cooked for him with her own hands he found page 96a hundred faults with. He wanted her near him on every trivial matter, nor gave her a moment's relief.

"It's because he is sick," she said to herself. "Sick men are always so."

Yes, truly; and some healthy ones.

A few men in this world earn what they never spend; many spend what they never earn. Cyril had the very dimmest idea of what he spent He earned as a junior clerk exactly ninety pounds and some shillings and pence per year. It gradually grew to one hundred and twenty pounds a year. The balance of his income consisted in an allowance and frequent five-pound notes from his father, many a housekeeping pound from his mother—and loans.

His loans were chiefly at high interest on personal secuiity. He patronised each and all the loan companies, and financed sometimes as the drawer of a promissory note and sometimes as endorser.

He preferred Somers.

Somers was a Christian. Money-lenders are generally supposed to be Jews. They often are; but some are Christians, and good Christians make the best money-lenders. The Jew charges "shent per shent," and does not always get it; the good Christian charges a modest sixty per cent.—and gets it, always.

He is full of "sacred duty," and "my clients' money," and invariably gets his pound of flesh with blood thrown in.

He is perfectly right. The man who lends money to a man who has only a remote chance of repaying it must certainly charge high interest. At least, Somers said so, and used to prove it, or think he did, to his clients.

"Average, my dear sir, average. My interest doesn't average ten per cent, and think of the risk. Think of what I often lose."

"It's all deuced fine, but think what I pay," an-page 97swered Cyril, to whom the remark happened to be made.

"Think what you owe. Three lots of your paper here, and another with your name on the back; not to mention what you have elsewhere."

"How the devil do you know what I have elsewhere?"

Somers shrugged his shoulders.

"Business, my dear sir, business. Mutual protection."

"Mutual thieving."

"Tut, tut! Where would you have been if I hadn't helped you?"

"A jolly sight better off."

"Ah me, such is gratitude," said Somers; and there lurked on his lips a suspicion of a smile, if Somers could smile, as he drew out a book of promissory-note forms.

"You want me to renew, eh?" he said.

"Of course."

"Twenty-five pounds?"

"Make it thirty-five, and give me two."

Somers took no notice, but continued to fill in the form. He paused at the amount.

"It's time you changed the face of this. My client is anxious for his money. I'm sorry, Mr. Anderson, but my duty, you know—the face must really be changed, or the back."

"Make it thirty-five."

"I can't. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, but—twenty-five."

"I tell you I can't give you the money. Make it thirty-five and give me two pounds."

"Then if the face is not going to alter for the better —or at any rate the lesser—the back really must Who is going to endorse it?"

"Stevenson."

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"I've one of his already, with you on the back. Mutual protection, eh?—mutual thieving? Which is it? Ha, ha! The joke is first class. I didn't see the application when you made it. It must have been the way you said it Ha, ha! Anyway, if you want this made into thirty-five you must get some other name."

"Give me the beastly thing," said Cyril.

Somers completed the filling in of the amount and handed it across.

"Bring it back this afternoon," he said;" and I will give you thirty shillings."

"Two pounds."

"Not at all. You owe me three pounds for the interest of the renewal. You haven't got it. I lend you five pounds for which I charge you ten shillings. That leaves four pounds ten. You pay me the three pounds and it leaves you exactly thirty shillings. I write five pounds on the note and pay you thirty shillings."

It was useless to argue, and the young fellow took up the bill, put it into his pocket, and swaggered off.

"A young scoundrel, if ever there is one," was Somers' remark to himself. "If I didn't know the sort of man your father is, I wouldn't trust you many feet, my fine fellow."

During the afternoon the transaction was completed and the thirty shillings were paid. The ticket for a subscription ball Cyril must needs attend absorbed ten shillings. Dice and liquor took the remaining twenty.

"Just my infernal bad luck," was the only reflection of his fuddled brains as he slipped into bed in the small hours, smelling of smoke and spirits.

His mother heard him. She had watched him go to his room, anxious lest he might hurt himself. She would never have dared to have spoken to him; he would have accused her of spying; she almost accused herself.

page 99

A man may sometimes be pardoned for his extravagance. The individual who ruins himself by his reckless expenditure upon travelling, or upon yachting, or even upon keeping race-horses, at least is guilty of nothing vulgar. When he commences to gamble, he descends.

In these days, when smartness is the best policy and honesty a mere detail, the great gambler is less despised than the small one. The "blade" who comes a "mucker" is a king beside the petty "welsher." The bankrupt who fails for a million and pays a penny in the pound is a lion, a financial lion. The tradesman who fails for a thousand and pays six hundred is commercially damned. The petty meanness of nineteen shillings in the pound is contemptible beside the pluck of a hundred thousand pounds' worth of debts and no assets.

But the vulgar is inexcusable. Cyril gambled; it was criminal. He drank, which was worse; it was vulgar.

Crime may be picturesque, or even romantic. Vulgarity never can. This for ever damns vulgarity as amongst national virtues.

Boys will be boys; and young men, the world over, will have a certain exuberance of spirits that more usually than not takes the form of sowing their wild oats. Wild oats are not absolutely harmful, though they are not highly creditable. Sowing them is wrong, and yet out of evil, sometimes, in an evil world, good, which is experience, may come.

With Cyril, however, "seeing life" was a low occupation. It consisted, at the best, of the theatre in the evening, if there chanced to be a company in the town, and the principal public-houses afterwards. With three or four boon companions, he would stand at the bar, making doubtful remarks to a slim-waisted barmaid. It was part of her employment to listen and smile page 100and jest, and say every now and then, "Now, boys, what is it to be?"

The "boss" expected her to sell, and she sold as long as the "boys" had money. Lights were turned out when their funds were exhausted.

Dice generally commenced in some back parlour, or if it was after eleven and the front door was locked, in the billiard-room. Hour after hour Cyril would spend playing "Yankee Grab" or such-like games for shillings. As a rule he was the "fancy-man" of the barmaid. He spent most freely, and she stood next to him and allowed him to risk frequent shillings for her, and to slip his arm around her waist and pinch her ears and twist her hair, and sometimes even she permitted him to snatch a kiss from her.

A woman can stand that from a boy, and smile and forget. It makes him drunk and drink. Consequently, doubtful liquor and the excitement of gambling in due course made Cyril tipsy. The earlier portion of the evening he could generally recall; the later portion became blurred and indistinct

In the early dawn, faint, fuddled and rank, he would seek his home. He would tumble into bed and toss and turn until he snored.