A Man of Means | Page 3

pole.
Probably, if he could have gone on merely being engaged, Roland would never have
wearied of the experience. But the word marriage began to creep more and more into the
family conversation, and suddenly panic descended upon Roland Bleke.
All his life he had had a horror of definite appointments. An invitation to tea a week
ahead had been enough to poison life for him. He was one of those young men whose
souls revolt at the thought of planning out any definite step. He could do things on the
spur of the moment, but plans made him lose his nerve.
By the end of the month his whole being was crying out to him in agonized tones: "Get
me out of this. Do anything you like, but get me out of this frightful marriage business."
If anything had been needed to emphasize his desire for freedom, the attitude of Frank
and Percy would have supplied it. Every day they made it clearer that the man who
married Muriel would be no stranger to them. It would be his pleasing task to support
them, too, in the style to which they had become accustomed. They conveyed the idea
that they went with Muriel as a sort of bonus.
* * * * *
The Coppin family were at high tea when Roland reached home. There was a general stir
of interest as he entered the room, for it was known that he had left that morning with the
intention of approaching Mr. Fineberg on the important matter of a rise in salary. Mr.
Coppin removed his saucer of tea from his lips. Frank brushed the tail of a sardine from
the corner of his mouth. Percy ate his haddock in an undertone. Albert Potter, who was
present, glowered silently.
Roland shook his head with the nearest approach to gloom which his rejoicing heart
would permit.
"I'm afraid I've bad news."
Mrs. Coppin burst into tears, her invariable practise in any crisis. Albert Potter's face
relaxed into something resembling a smile.
"He won't give you your raise?"
Roland sighed.
"He's reduced me."

"Reduced you!"
"Yes. Times are bad just at present, so he has had to lower me to a hundred and ten."
The collected jaws of the family fell as one jaw. Muriel herself seemed to be bearing the
blow with fortitude, but the rest were stunned. Frank and Percy might have been posing
for a picture of men who had lost their fountain pens.
Beneath the table the hand of Albert Potter found the hand of Muriel Coppin, and held it;
and Muriel, we regret to add, turned and bestowed upon Albert a half-smile of tender
understanding.
"I suppose," said Roland, "we couldn't get married on a hundred and ten?"
"No," said Percy.
"No," said Frank.
"No," said Albert Potter.
They all spoke decidedly, but Albert the most decidedly of the three.
"Then," said Roland regretfully, "I'm afraid we must wait."
It seemed to be the general verdict that they must wait. Muriel said she thought they must
wait. Albert Potter, whose opinion no one had asked, was quite certain that they must
wait. Mrs. Coppin, between sobs, moaned that it would be best to wait. Frank and Percy,
morosely devouring bread and jam, said they supposed they would have to wait. And, to
end a painful scene, Roland drifted silently from the room, and went up-stairs to his own
quarters.
There was a telegram on the mantel.
"Some fellows," he soliloquized happily, as he opened it, "wouldn't have been able to
manage a little thing like that. They would have given themselves away. They would----"
The contents of the telegram demanded his attention.
For some time they conveyed nothing to him. The thing might have been written in
Hindustani.
It would have been quite appropriate if it had been, for it was from the promoters of the
Calcutta Sweep, and it informed him that, as the holder of ticket number 108,694, he had
drawn Gelatine, and in recognition of this fact a check for five hundred pounds would be
forwarded to him in due course.
* * * * *
Roland's first feeling was one of pure bewilderment. As far as he could recollect, he had

never had any dealings whatsoever with these open-handed gentlemen. Then memory
opened her flood-gates and swept him back to a morning ages ago, so it seemed to him,
when Mr. Fineberg's eldest son Ralph, passing through the office on his way to borrow
money from his father, had offered him for ten shillings down a piece of cardboard, at the
same time saying something about a sweep. Partly from a vague desire to keep in with
the Fineberg clan, but principally because it struck him as rather a doggish thing to do,
Roland