'You can have some to-morrow night.' I was destined to hear a great deal more of that grating voice. 'And the rest next week, if I can get the papers signed. It is a confidential business, I suppose. 'Nothing is to be said. Our House does not like to borrow money, but the occasion is pressing.' 'Let us go,' I said to Tom. 'We shall learn presently all Matthew's secrets.' 'Matthew? Your cousin Matthew?' 'He is in one of the boxes. I have heard his voice. Come, Tom.' CHAPTER VI A CITY FUNERAL Thus we lived--humble folk if you please--far from the world of wealth or of fashion. This happiness was too great to last. We were to be stricken down, yet not unto death. The troubles began with the death of my father. One morning, when he ought to have been at his desk, my old friend Ramage came to see me. 'Master Will,' he said, the tears running down his cheeks, 'Master Will--'tis now too late. You will never be reconciled now.' 'What has happened?' I asked. But his troubled face told me. 'My master fell down in a fit last night, coming home from the Company's feast. They carried him home and put him to bed. But in the night he died.' In such a case as mine one always hopes vaguely for reconciliation, so long as there is life: without taking any steps, one thinks that a reconciliation will come of its own accord. I now believe that if I had gone to my father and put the case plainly: my manifest vocation: my incapacity for business; if I had asked his permission to continue in the musical profession: if I had, further, humbled myself so far as to admit that I deserved at his hands nothing less than to be cut off without a shilling: he might have given way. It is a terrible thing to know that your father has died with bitterness in his heart against his only son. Or, I might have sent Alice, with the child. Surely the sight of that sweet girl, the sight of the helpless child, would have moved him. I reproached myself, in a word, when it was too late. 'Sir,' said the clerk, 'I do not believe that Mr. Matthew, or his father, will send you word of this event, or of the funeral.' 'They do not know where I live.' 'Excuse me, Sir, Mr. Matthew knows where you live and everything that you have done since you left your home. Believe me, Mr. Will, you have no greater enemy than your cousin. He has constantly inflamed your father's mind against you. It was he who told my master that you were playing for sailors at a common tavern with a red blind and a sanded floor. He told him that you were playing in the orchestra at the Dog and Duck for all the 'prentices and the demireps of town: he told him that you had married--a----' 'Stop, Ramage, lest I do my cousin a mischief. How do you know all this?' 'I listen,' he replied. 'From my desk, I can hear plainly what is said in the counting-house. I listen. I can do no good. But sometimes it is well to know what goes on.' 'It may be useful--but to listen--well--Ramage, is there more to tell?'