A Man of Means | Page 2

on your salary is a hundred and ten.
No, no, don't thank me. You're an excellent clerk, and it's a pleasure to me to reward
merit when I find it. Close the door after you."
And Mr. Fineberg returned with a lighter heart to the great clover-seed problem.
The circumstances which had led Roland to approach his employer may be briefly
recounted. Since joining the staff of Mr. Fineberg, he had lodged at the house of a Mr.

Coppin, in honorable employment as porter at the local railway-station. The Coppin
family, excluding domestic pets, consisted of Mr. Coppin, a kindly and garrulous
gentleman of sixty, Mrs. Coppin, a somewhat negative personality, most of whose life
was devoted to cooking and washing up in her underground lair, Brothers Frank and
Percy, gentleman of leisure, popularly supposed to be engaged in the mysterious
occupation known as "lookin' about for somethin'," and, lastly, Muriel.
For some months after his arrival, Muriel had been to Roland Bleke a mere automaton, a
something outside himself that was made only for neatly-laid breakfast tables and silent
removal of plates at dinner. Gradually, however, when his natural shyness was soothed
by use sufficiently to enable him to look at her when she came into the room, he
discovered that she was a strikingly pretty girl, bounded to the North by a mass of auburn
hair and to the South by small and shapely feet. She also possessed what, we are
informed--we are children in these matters ourselves--is known as the R. S. V. P. eye.
This eye had met Roland's one evening, as he chumped his chop, and before he knew
what he was doing he had remarked that it had been a fine day.
From that wonderful moment matters had developed at an incredible speed. Roland had a
nice sense of the social proprieties, and he could not bring himself to ignore a girl with
whom he had once exchanged easy conversation about the weather. Whenever she came
to lay his table, he felt bound to say something. Not being an experienced gagger, he
found it more and more difficult each evening to hit on something bright, until finally,
from sheer lack of inspiration, he kissed her.
If matters had progressed rapidly before, they went like lightning then. It was as if he had
touched a spring or pressed a button, setting vast machinery in motion. Even as he reeled
back stunned at his audacity, the room became suddenly full of Coppins of every variety
known to science. Through a mist he was aware of Mrs. Coppin crying in a corner, of Mr.
Coppin drinking his health in the remains of sparkling limado, of Brothers Frank and
Percy, one on each side trying to borrow simultaneously half-crowns, and of Muriel,
flushed but demure, making bread-pellets and throwing them in an abstracted way, one
by one, at the Coppin cat, which had wandered in on the chance of fish.
Out of the chaos, as he stood looking at them with his mouth open, came the word
"bans," and smote him like a blast of East wind.
It is not necessary to trace in detail Roland's mental processes from that moment till the
day when he applied to Mr. Fineberg for a reduction of salary. It is enough to say that for
quite a month he was extraordinarily happy. To a man who has had nothing to do with
women, to be engaged is an intoxicating experience, and at first life was one long golden
glow to Roland. Secretly, like all mild men, he had always nourished a desire to be
esteemed a nut by his fellow men; and his engagement satisfied that desire. It was
pleasant to hear Brothers Frank and Percy cough knowingly when he came in. It was
pleasant to walk abroad with a girl like Muriel in the capacity of the accepted wooer.
Above all, it was pleasant to sit holding Muriel's hand and watching the ill-concealed
efforts of Mr. Albert Potter to hide his mortification. Albert was a mechanic in the
motor-works round the corner, and hitherto Roland had always felt something of a worm

in his presence. Albert was so infernally strong and silent and efficient. He could dissect
a car and put it together again. He could drive through the thickest traffic. He could sit
silent in company without having his silence attributed to shyness or imbecility. But--he
could not get engaged to Muriel Coppin. That was reserved for Roland Bleke, the nut, the
dasher, the young man of affairs. It was all very well being able to tell a spark-plug from
a commutator at sight, but when it came to a contest in an affair of the heart with a man
like Roland, Albert was in his proper place, third at the