Mrs. Arundel groaned. "This is terrible!" she said.
"Meantime, the notes are numbered: they may be traced: they are stopped: we shall certainly find the criminal by means of those notes."
"Mr. Dering"--Mrs. Arundel rose and laid her hand on his--"you are our very old friend. Tell me--if this wretched boy goes away--if he gives back the money that remains--if I find the rest--will there be--any further--investigation?"
"To compound a felony is a crime. It is, however, one of those crimes which men sometimes commit without repentance or shame. My dear lady, if he will confess and restore--we shall see."
Mrs. Arundel drove home again. She came away fully persuaded in her own mind that her son--her only son--and none other, must be that guilty person. She knew Mr. Dering"s room well: she had sat there hundreds of times: she knew the safe: she knew old Checkley. She perceived the enormous improbability of this ancient clerk"s doing such a thing. She knew, again, what temptations a.s.sail a young man in London: she saw what her Trustee thought of it: and she jumped to the conclusion that her son--and none other--was the guilty person. She even saw how he must have done it: she saw the quick look while Mr. Dering"s back was turned: the s.n.a.t.c.hing of the cheque book: the quick replacing it. Her very keenness of judgment helped her to the conviction. Women less clever would have been slower to believe. Shameful, miserable termination of all her hopes for her boy"s career! But that she could think of afterwards. For the moment the only thing was to get the boy away--to induce him to confess--and to get him away.
He was calmer when she got home, but he was still talking about the thing: he would wait till the right man was discovered: then he would have old Dering on his knees. The thing would be set right in a few days. He had no fear of any delay. He was quite certain that it was Checkley--that old villain. Oh! He couldn"t do it by himself, of course--n.o.body could believe that of him. He had accomplices--confederates--behind him. Checkley"s part of the job was to steal the cheque book and give it to his confederates and share the swag.
"Well, mother?" he asked.
His mother sat down. She looked pale and wretched.
"Mother," cried Hilda, the elder sister. "Quick! What has happened? What does Mr. Dering say?"
"He accuses n.o.body," she replied in a hard dry voice. "But----"
"But what?" asked Hilda.
"He told me everything--everything--and--and----Oh!" She burst into sobs and crying, though she despised women who cry. "It is terrible-- It is terrible-- It is incredible. Yet, what can I think? What can any one think? Leave us, Hilda. Leave us, Elsie." The two girls went out unwillingly. "Oh! my son--how can I believe it? And yet--on the one hand, a boy of two-and-twenty exposed to all the temptations of town: on the other, an old clerk of fifty years" service and integrity. And when the facts are laid before you both--calmly and coldly--you fly into a rage and run away, while Checkley calmly remains to await the inquiry."
Mrs. Arundel had been accustomed all her life to consider Mr. Dering as the wisest of men. She felt instinctively that he regarded her son with suspicion: she heard all the facts: she jumped to the conclusion that he was a prodigal and a profligate: that he had fallen into evil ways, and spent money in riotous living: she concluded that he had committed these crimes in order to get more money for more skittles and oranges.
"Athelstan "--she laid her hand upon his arm, but did not dare to lift her eyes and behold that guilty face--"Athelstan"--confess--make reparation so far as you can--confess--oh! my son--my son! You will be caught and tried and found guilty, and--oh! I cannot say it--through the notes which you have changed. They are all known and stopped."
The boy"s wrath was now changed to madness.
"You!" he cried. "You! My own mother! You believe it, no! Oh! we are all going mad together. What? Then I am turned out of this house, as I am turned out of my place. I go, then--I go; and"--here he swore a mighty oath, as strong as anybody out of Spain can make them--"I will never--never--never come home again till you come yourself to beg forgiveness--you--my own mother!"
Outside, in the hall, his sisters stood, waiting and trembling.
"Athelstan," cried the elder, "what, in the name of Heaven, have you done?"
"Go, ask my mother. She will tell you. She knows, it seems, better than I know myself. I am driven away by my own mother. She says that I am guilty of--of--of forgery."
"If she says so, Athelstan," his sister replied coldly, "she must have her reasons. She would not drive you out of the house for nothing. Don"t glare like that. Prove your innocence."
"What? You, too? Oh! I am driven away by my sisters as well----"
"No, Athelstan--no," cried Elsie, catching his hand. "Not both your sisters."
"My poor child;" he stooped and kissed her. "They will make you believe what they believe. Good Heavens! They make haste to believe it; they are glad to believe it."
"No--no. Don"t go, Athelstan." Elsie threw her arms about him. "Stay, and show that they are wrong. Oh! you are innocent. I will never--never--never believe it."
He kissed her again, and tore himself away. The street door slammed behind him: they heard his footsteps as he strode away. He had gone.
Then Elsie fell into loud weeping and wailing. But Hilda went to comfort her mother.
"Mother," she said, "did he really, really and truly do it?"
"What else can I believe? Either he did it or that old clerk. Where is he?"
"He is gone. He says he will come back when his innocence is proved.
Mother, if he is innocent, why does he run away? It"s foolish to say that it is because we believe it. I"ve said nothing except that you couldn"t believe it without reasons. Innocent young men don"t run away when they are charged with robbery. They stay and fight it out.
Athelstan should have stayed."
Later on, when they were both a little recovered, Hilda tried to consider the subject more calmly. She had not her mother"s cleverness, but she was not without parts. The following remarks--made by a girl of eighteen--prove so much.
"Mother," she said, "perhaps it is better, so long as this suspicion rests upon him, that he should be away. We shall certainly know where he is: he will want money, and will write for it. If it should prove that somebody else did the thing, we can easily bring him back as a martyr--for my own part I should be so glad that I would willingly beg his pardon on my knees--and of course we could easily get him replaced in the office. If it is proved that he did do it--and that, you think, they will be certain to find out--Mr. Dering, for your sake, will be ready to hush it up--perhaps we may get the notes back--he can"t have used them all; in any case it will be a great comfort to feel that he is out of the way: a brother convicted--tried in open court--sentenced--oh!" She shuddered. "We should never get over it: never, never! It would be a most dreadful thing for Elsie and me. As for his going away, if people ask why he is gone and where, we must invent something--we can easily make up a story--hint that he has been wild--there is no disgrace, happily, about a young man being wild--that is the only thing that reconciles one to the horrid selfishness of wild young men--and if, by going away in a pretended rage, Athelstan has really enabled us to escape a horrid scandal--why, mother, in that case--we may confess that the blow has been by Providence most mercifully softened for us--most mercifully. We ought to consider that, mother."
"Yes, dear, yes. But he is gone. Athelstan is gone. And his future seems ruined. There is no hope for him. I can see no hope whatever. My dear, he was so promising. I thought that all the family influence would be his--we haven"t got a single City solicitor in the whole family. I thought that he was so clever and so ambitious and so eager to get on and make money and be a credit to the family. Solicitors do sometimes--especially City solicitors--become so very, very rich; and now it is all gone and done--and nothing left to hope but the miserable wish that there should be no scandal."
"It is indeed dreadful. But still--consider--no scandal. Mother, I think we should find out, if we can, something about his private life--how he has been living. He has been out a good deal of evenings lately. If there is any--any person--on whom he has been tempted to spend money--if he has been gambling--or betting, or any of the things that I read of"--this young lady, thanks to the beneficent a.s.sistance of certain works of fiction, was tolerably acquainted with the ways of young men and their temptations--"it would be a satisfaction to know it at least."
The ladies of a family where there is a "wild" young man do not generally find it easy to get at the facts of his wildness: these remain locked up in the bosoms of his companions. No details could be learned about any wildness--quite the contrary. He seemed, so far as could be learned, to have led a very quiet and regular life. "But then," said the philosopher of eighteen, quoting from a novel, "men shelter each other.
They are all bad together."
But--no scandal.
Everybody knows that kind of brother or sister by whom all family events are considered with a view to the scandal likely to be caused and the personal injury resulting to himself; or the envy that will follow and the personal advantage accruing from that event. That her brother was perhaps a shameful criminal might be considered by Hilda Arundel later on: at first, she was only capable of perceiving that this horrid fact, unless it could be hidden away and kept secret, might very materially injure herself.
Almost naturally, she folded her hands sweetly and laid her comely head a little on one side--it is an att.i.tude of resignation which may be observed in certain pictures of saints and holy women. Hilda knew many little att.i.tudes. Also, quite naturally, she glanced at a mirror on the wall and observed that her pose was one of sorrow borne with Christian resignation.
We must blame neither Hilda nor her mother. The case as put by Mr.
Dering in the form of plain fact without any comment, did seem very black indeed against Athelstan. In every family the first feeling in such a case--it is the instinct of self-preservation--is to hush up the thing if possible--to avoid a scandal.
Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery--with a verdict of guilty--is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just a.s.suming the robes of respectability: it ruins the chances of the girls: it blights the prospects of the boys: it drives away friends: it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off. Therefore, while the mother hoped, first of all, that the boy would escape the clutch of the law, Hilda was, first of all, grateful that there would be no scandal. Mr. Dering would not talk about it. The thing would not interfere with her own prospects. It was sad: it was miserable; but yet--no scandal. With what a deep, deep sigh of satisfaction did the young lady repeat that there would probably be no scandal!
As for Elsie, that child went about for many days with tearful eyes, red cheeks, and a swollen nose. She was rebellious and sharp with her mother. And to her sister she refused to speak. The days went on. They became weeks, months, years. Otherwise they would not have been days.
Nothing at all was heard of Athelstan. He sent no letters to any one: he did not even write for money: they knew not where he was or what he was doing. He disappeared. It was understood that there had been wildness.
Now--which was very remarkable--though the forger had had a clear run of three weeks, it could not be discovered that any of the notes had been presented. Perhaps they were sent abroad: yet foreign and colonial banks would know the numbers of stopped notes. And towards the discovery of the forger no further step had been taken. The commissionaire who took the cheque had been, as you have seen, easily found: he said he should know the old gentleman who gave him the forged draft to cash. He said, being again interrogated, that Checkley was not in the least like that old gentleman. What could be thought, then? Athelstan must have "made up" as an old man: he was fond of private theatricals: he could make up very well: of course he had made up. And then, this point being settled, they left off talking about the business.
Other things happened--important things--which made the memory of the prodigal son to wax dim. First of all came Hilda"s case. She was a graceful young person, with features of great regularity: her expression was cold, her eyes were hard, and her lips were a little thin, but these things at nineteen are hardly perceived. She was that sort of a girl who seems created for the express purpose, first of wearing and beautifying costly raiment, and next of sitting in a splendid vehicle. The finer the dress, the more beautiful she looked. The grander the carriage, the more queenly she seemed. In rags her coldness would be arctic, her hardness would be granitic: in silk and velvet she became a G.o.ddess. It was therefore most fitting that she should marry a rich man. Now, to be rich in these days, one must be old. It is the price that one has to pay for wealth. Sometimes one pays the price and gets old, and yet does not get what one has paid for. That seems hardly fair. There was a certain rich man, Mr. Dering"s younger brother, Sir Samuel Dering, Knight, one of the most substantial City men, a man who had a house in Kensington Palace Gardens, a yacht, a country place in Suss.e.x, and piles of papers in a safe, meaning investments. He was a widower without enc.u.mbrance: he was fifty-seven years of age, not yet decayed: he wanted a wife to be the mistress of his house, and to look well at his dinner-parties. Of course, when one does want a wife, at any age, one wants her young.
Hilda Arundel, his brother"s ward, looked as if she would discharge the duties required of the position admirably. He suggested the arrangement to his brother, who spoke about it.
There was a good deal of taking about it. Mrs. Arundel showed that she knew the value of her daughter; but there was no doubt about the conclusion of the matter. There was a grand wedding, at which all the richer Arundels were present, and none of the poor relations. Mr.
Dering, the young lady"s guardian, gave her away; Hilda became Lady Dering, and has been perfectly happy ever since. Elsie remained with her mother. Her brother was never spoken of between them. But she remembered him, and she was firm in her conviction that his innocence would be some day established.
After five years, nothing at all having been heard of the notes, Mr.
Dering made application to the Bank of England, and received from them the sum of 720_l_. in new crisp notes in the place of those of which he had been robbed, so that the actual loss at 4 per cent. compound interest amounted to no more than 155_l_. 19_s_. 9-3/4_d_., which is more than one likes to lose, yet is not actually embarra.s.sing to a man whose income is about ten thousand a year. He ceased to think about the business altogether, except as a disagreeable episode of his office.
Then Athelstan Arundel became completely forgotten. His old friends, the young men with whom he had played and sported, only remembered him from time to time as a fellow who had come to some unknown grief, and had gone away. There is always some young fellow in every set of young fellows who gets into some sc.r.a.pe, and so leaves the circle, and is no more seen or heard of. We go on just the same without him: very seldom is such a man remembered long: it is the way of the world: we cannot stop to lament over the fallen: we must push on: others fall: close up the ranks: push on: Time drives: the memory of the fallen swiftly waxes dim.
Fours years or so after the mysterious business of Edmund Gray, Mr.
Dering received a letter with an American stamp marked "Private and Confidential." He laid this aside until he had got through the business letters; then he opened it. He turned first to the signature. "Ha!" he said, "Athelstan Arundel. At last. Now we shall see. We shall see."