It was not Keelings usage to take any step concerning finance or business without considering where that step would take him, though that consideration could often be condensed into a moments insight. The thought of his sudden munificence with regard to the hospital occupied his mind, when he settled down to work again, as little as did the thought of his new typist whom he had just shut up in the stuffy little chamber adjoining his own. Momentary as had been the time required for his offer, his determination to make it was but the logical next step in the secret ambition{79} which had so long been growing in his mind. Indeed his interview with Lord Inverbroom had been his opportunity no less than the hospitals, and it would have been very unlike him not to take advantage of it. But he was not going to snatch at the fruit which it would help to bring within his reach: he had no wish that the Committee or the town generally should learn the identity of the benefactor until at the opening the name of the new wing should flash on the assembled gathering. That opening must be a day of pomp and magnificence: in course of time he would talk over that with Lord Inverbroom. At present he had plenty of occupations to concern himself with. And noticing the very fluent clacking that came faintly from behind the padded door, he filed the accounts which he had found so satisfactory, and buried himself in business again.
But the contents were another matter, and they both annoyed him excessively, and kindled in him a blaze of defiance. He would much have{244} liked to know who were these members for whom he was not good enough, and whose opposition Lord Inverbroom had been unable to mitigate. But as far as withdrawing his candidature went for fear of the result of the election, or acquainting Lord Inverbroom of the fact that as purchaser of the property he had the ex officio privilege of being a member, such craven notions never entered his head. If sufficient members to secure his rejection, objected to him, they should record their objections: he was not going to withdraw on the chance of their doing so. He had never yet abandoned a business proposition for fear of competition, and it seemed to him that to withdraw his name was somehow parallel to being frightened out of a deal. Judging from the purely business standpoint (and there was his mistake) he expected to find that a large quantity of this supposed opposition was bluff. Besides, before the election came on, it would be known who had given the new wing to the hospital, and pulled the committee out of a quagmire of rotten finance: it would be known too, that whether the County Club thought him a suitable occupant of the bow-window that looked on Alfred Street, his Sovereign thought him good enough to go into dinner before any of them except Lord Inverbroom. He was no snob himself, but he suspected that a good many other people were.CHINESE METAL VASE. CHINESE METAL VASE."Not by any means," the Doctor answered. "The government gave to each man a money allowance, or gift, to take the place of his pension, and let him do with it whatever he pleased. Some of them spent it in dissipation, and found themselves eventually without a penny, and with no means of obtaining anything. They were then obliged to go to work like other people, and some of them had a very hard time to exist. I was told in Yokohama that some of the former Samurai were working as coolies in various ways, not only in that city, but all through the empire. A good many of them have found employment among the foreign merchants[Pg 220] as clerks and salesmen, and there are many in government employ in the offices at Tokio and in other cities. The officers you saw at the custom-house were probably ex-Samurai, and ten years ago they would have been wearing two swords apiece. The Japanese book-keeper you saw in the office of the American merchant on whom we called the day of our arrival was once a Samurai of high degree. He spent his government allowance in a short time after receiving it, and was then compelled to find employment or starve. He tried the starvation system a short time, and concluded he did not like it. He turned his education to account by undertaking to keep the Japanese accounts of a foreign merchant, and his employer is well pleased with him.
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No, you neednt do that, he said. Its a handsome book enough. And then there is another Omar Khayyam.Top-side Galah!"It is nothing to me," Hetty said coldly. "If you desire to avoid a scandal for the sake of the house, my lips are sealed. If you have nothing further to say to me, I will go and see if Mamie is still asleep."
