"No, Sir," was the answer, "he is not; and he will not be just at present."
"But when will he be in? for I must see him on some pressing business of importance."
"Not to-day, Sir," replied the clerk, smiling expressively; "he cannot be interrupted to-day on any business of any kind whatever."
"The deuce he can't!" returned Mr. Schulemberg. "I'll see about that very soon, I can tell you. He promised to pay me cash for fifty thousand dollars' worth of Holland linens a week ago; I have not seen the color of his money yet, and I mean to wait no longer. Where does he live? for if he be alive, I will see him and hear what he has to say for himself, and that speedily."
"Indeed, Sir," pleasantly expostulated the clerk, "I think when you understand the circumstances of the case, you will forbear disturbing M. M——— this day of all others in his life."
"Why, what the devil ails this day above all others," said Mr. Schulemberg, somewhat testily, "that he can't see his creditors and pay his debts on it?"
"Why, Sir, the fact is," the clerk replied, with an air of interest and importance, "it is M. M———'s wedding-day. He marries this morning the Signorina G———, and I am sure you would not molest him with business on such an occasion as that."
"But my fifty thousand dollars!" persisted the consignee, "and why have they not been paid?"
"Oh, give yourself no uneasiness at all about that, Sir," replied the clerk, with the air of one to whom the handling of such trifles was a daily occurrence; "M. M——— will, of course, attend to that matter the moment he is a little at leisure. In fact, I imagine, that, in the hurry and bustle inseparable from an event of this nature, the circumstance has entirely escaped his mind; but as soon as he returns to business again, I will recall it to his recollection, and you will hear from him without delay."
The clerk was right in his augury as to the effect his intelligence would have upon the creditor. It was not a clerical error on his part when he supposed that Mr. Schulemberg would not choose to enact the part of skeleton at the wedding breakfast of the young Prima Donna. There is something about the great events of life, which cannot happen a great many times to anybody,—
"A wedding or a funeral,
A mourning or a festival,"—
that touches the strings of the one human heart of us all and makes it return no uncertain sound. Shylock himself would hardly have demanded his pound of flesh on the wedding-day, had it been Antonio that was to espouse the fair Portia. Even he would have allowed three days of grace before demanding the specific performance of his bond. Now Mr. Schulemberg was very far from being a Shylock, and he was also a constant attendant upon the opera, and a devoted admirer of the lovely G———. So he could not wonder that a man on the eve of marriage with that divine creature should forget every other consideration in the immediate contemplation of his happiness,—even if it were the consideration for a cargo of prime linens, and one to the tune of fifty thousand dollars. And it is altogether likely that the mundane reflection occurred to him, and made him easier in his mind under the delay, that old G——— was by no means the kind of man to give away a daughter who dropped gold and silver from her sweet lips whenever she opened them in public, as the princess in the fairy-tale did pearls and diamonds, to any man who could not give him a solid equivalent in return. So that, in fact, he regarded the notes of the Signorina G——— as so much collateral security for his debt.
So Mr. Schulemberg was content to bide his reasonable time for the discharge of M. M———'s indebtedness to his principal. He had advised Mynheer Van Holland of the speedy sale of his consignment, and given him hopes of a quick return of the proceeds. But as days
