The Argosy — page 31: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

18 In the Dead of Night. “Not at all. Iam only judging you by your own standard.” ‘© And is the standard such a very poor one?” “ Not a poor one at all, as the world goes. I should like very much to be a millionaire.” “To say that I am not richer to-day than I was the day I was twenty- one would not be true,” said Tom, with a demure smile. ‘I am years and years, halfa lifetime at the very least, from being a millionaire—if, indeed, I ever live to be one. But I no longer live in two cheap rooms in the city, and dine at an eating-house for fifteen pence. I have very nice chambers just out of Piccadilly, where you must look me up when you are next in town. I belong toa club where I have an opportunity of meeting good people—by ‘good people’ I mean people who may some day be useful to me in my struggle through life. Finally, I ride my hack in the Park two or three afternoons a week during the season, and am on bowing terms with a duchess.” “T can no longer doubt that you are a rising man,” said Lionel, with a laugh. “‘ My head is full of schemes of one kind or another,” said Tom, a little wearily. ‘ Or rather it was full of them before I met with that confounded accident. In one or the other of those schemes the duchess will play her part like any other pawn that may be on my chess-board ~ at the time. There is no keener speculator in the whole City of London than her Grace of Leamington.” “What a martyrdom it must seem to you to be shut up here, in this — dull old house, so far away from that exciting life you have learned to love so well!” . “A martyrdom, Dering? It is anything but that. Had I been well in health, I can’t tell what my feelings might have been. I should pro- bably have considered it a waste of time to have spent a month, either here or anywhere else, in absolute idleness. But being ill, and having just been dragged back, by main force as it were, from Death’s very door, I cannot tell you how grateful, how soothing to me is the quietude of this old spot. If, now and then, when I feel better and stronger, there come moments when I long to glance over the money article of The Times, or to write a long, impatient letter to my broker in London, there are days and nights when such things have no longer the faintest interest for me—times when bare life itself seems a burden almost too heavy for endurance, and all my ambitious schemes and speculations nothing more than a tissue of huge mistakes.” ‘‘ Your old interest in everyday matters will gradually come back to you as you grow better,” said Lionel, “‘and with it will come the de- sire to be up and doing.” : ‘“‘T suppose you are nght,” said Tom. “It would never do for a little illness to change the plans and settled aims of a lifetime.” ‘“No chance of your settling down here at Gatehouse Farm as Her- mit Number Two ?” Gomicbooks.co m =>