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Florian And Crescence
by
She waited for him on the front door-steps. Schlunkel said, “Well, where’s my money?”
“I can’t pay you now: I can’t cut it out of my ribs.”
“Then you must give me the knife there in pawn.”
“Oh, now, just wait till to-morrow night: do. If I don’t give it to you then, you shall have it double.”
“Oh, yes: you can promise it double; but who’s to give it to me?”
“I am.”
“Will you come to me to-morrow night?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m agreed.”
Florian passed on, and when Crescence asked him, “What does that wretch want of you?” he blushed like a fire-thief, and answered, “Nothing: he wanted me to sell him my knife.”
“Don’t let him have it: he’d murder somebody with it.”
Florian shuddered; and it pained him to see the undoubting faith with which Crescence received his words.
9.
WHAT BECOMES OF A SCAPEGRACE AND OF A LOVING GIRL.
Half the world do not know how the other half lives. People could not imagine how Florian managed to get enough to eat. The truth was, he very often had not enough. In one of these emergencies he applied to the College Chap for a loan.
“Why, Florian,” was the answer, “this sort of thing won’t do: you must manage to get a living: you can’t go on this way.”
“That’s neither here nor there,” replied Florian: “you can tell me all that some other time when I’m not head over ears in trouble. Help me out now, and preach your sermons afterward.”
The admonition was ill-timed, and therefore worse than useless: Florian pitied instead of blaming himself, and thought himself more sinned against than sinning. With a certain air of forgiveness, he repeated his request.
“It won’t do,” said the College Chap, “for a man to scatter his money about just when he’s going to be married. You’ll have to get along without me.”
The College Chap was betrothed to the old squire’s Babbett,–although, as the readers of Ivo’s story may remember, he was not inordinately fond of her. He had asked for the hand of Buchmaier’s Agnes, and had met with a refusal. This he told wherever he went, calculating that he must pass for a trump card if people knew he’d had the pluck to try for the first girl in the village: “they all knew that the richest would come in for their turn in no time.” But they did not come in, and he contented himself with Babbett.
Like many other spendthrifts, the College Chap was no sooner thrown upon his own resources than he turned stingy and unfeeling.
It was Florian’s misfortune that of all others the College Chap was his most intimate companion. He could not but say to himself, “He isn’t a bit better than I am: why am I so much worse off?” He quarrelled with his fortunes more and more, lost his energy, and became morose and querulous.
Meanwhile Crescence was quite happy. Her father’s ill-treatment of her, though unrelenting, afforded her at bottom more gratification than regret. She was restored to herself from the moment she had determined to be his alone whom her heart had chosen. Knowing Florian’s circumstances, she did not scruple to relieve him by all the means in her power. She took tobacco and other creature-comforts out of the store, and forced them upon Florian’s acceptance. Though at first ashamed to receive them, he soon came to devising plans with her for more extensive peculations, having found means of disposing of them through Schlunkel’s intervention. Crescence obeyed in all things. To her mind Florian was lawfully the lord of the world and of all it contained, and entitled to regard all men as his subjects. For a while, she thought, he chose to live without the insignia of his power, but he would soon arise and show the world what was really in him. She hoped that the time was at hand when he would come forth in all his glory. This hope was as clear and confident in her heart as her expectation of the coming day; and yet she knew not what she hoped. But a storm soon broke in rudely upon her daydreams. The tailor detected the embezzlements of his daughter, and drove her out of his house, threatening to hand her over to justice if she returned. Her mother was at the point of death and unable to protect her.