The Daughters of a Genius Part 17

"Bless me, miss, you _are_ white!" cried the woman anxiously. "Have you turned faint? Sit down, my dear, and I'll make you a cup of tea."

"Thank you, you are very kind, but I shall be all right when I get into the air. The room--the room is rather warm."

Madge gave a nickering smile, pulled herself together, and went through the concluding interview with the shopman with creditable composure; but once outside in the street, and lost in the deadliest of all solitudes-- a London crowd--her agitation could no longer be restrained.

Oh Barney! beloved Benjamin of the family--radiant, clear-eyed child-- honest, fearless boy--have you come to this? Betting, Barney! Losing five pounds in a fortnight--throwing it away with both hands--while at home Philippa sat sewing--sewing from morning to night--mending, turning, contriving, to save a penny--while Steve became old before his time, and Hope grew pale and thin with anxiety. A rush of colour flooded Madge's cheeks, and the indignant blood tingled in her veins.

Then came a sudden terrifying thought before which she paled again.

_Where had Barney got this money_? It was impossible that he could have saved it out of his pittance of a salary; the home exchequer could not furnish it; then how had he come by it? Madge walked along the busy streets pondering on this question, and on another equally important-- her own course of action. If she could save her sisters from this painful discovery, if she could bring Barney to a sense of his wrong-doing, and pay off his debts by her own work, Madge felt that she would not have lived in vain. It did not matter how hard she had to work; she would sit up half the night gladly--gladly; and her experience had been so encouraging as to justify her in more ambitious flights.

She would set to work at once on a design for a nursery frieze which had been in contemplation for some time past, offer it to a West End firm, and boldly ask a good price. If only Barney would be frank, and confess the whole truth! She reviewed his conduct for the last few weeks, and realised that, with the exception of one outburst of spirits, the boy had been preoccupied, silent, inclined to be irritable. She studied his face throughout the evening which followed, and was startled at what it told, even as Hope had been before her.

It was not until the house was quiet, and Barney had retired to his room, that Madge found her opportunity. Then she knocked softly at the door, was told to come in, and entered, to find Barney hastily covering up a bundle of papers. The action, the glimpse at the papers which showed them so surely to be tradesmen's bills, fired Madge with fresh indignation. She looked fixedly at the boy, and he returned her gaze with surprised inquiry.

"Well! What do you want?"

"I want a little conversation with you apart from the rest. I was in that tobacconist's shop this afternoon when you came in, Barney--that is to say, I was in the room behind the shop putting a few last touches to my sketch."

"Well!"

"The door was open, and I heard what you said."

Barney sat down on a chair, stretched out his legs, stuck his hands in his pockets, and looked at her with an air of insolent calm. The worried, downcast air which he had worn on her entrance disappeared as if by magic; his face was hard, stubborn, and defiant.

"Well--and what if you did?"

"What if I did? You can ask me that, when by your own confession you are betting and gambling, and leading a double life--when you are throwing away money which is needed for daily bread!"

"I never threw away any of your money, did I? You mind your own business, Madge, and leave me to mind mine."

"It is my business to look after you and keep you out of mischief.

Where did you get that five pounds? It is bad enough that you should have lost it, but did you get it honestly, in the first place?"

"You'd better be careful what you say. You are not talking to a thief, remember!"

"How am I to know that?" cried Madge wildly. "If a man begins to bet, one can never tell to what he may sink next. And how could a boy like you have such a sum to spare? Where did you get it, Barney? Wherever you got it, it must be paid back at once."

There was no reply. Barney folded his arms, and set his lips in sullen determination. The question was repeated, to be ignored once more, when the tide of the girl's indignation could no longer be restrained.

"Coward! Despicable! To see your sisters slaving for a pittance, and to be content to be a shame and a burden! If you cannot work, at least you might try to be a man, and not disgrace our name."

Bitter words--bitter words I what need to repeat them? The girl had worked herself into a frenzy of anger, and hardly realised what she was saying, and the boy eat still and listened--the boy of seventeen, who all his life had been the spoiled darling of the household. Ten minutes before the stress of acc.u.mulated troubles was upon him, and he had been wrestling with an agony of repentance. A kiss from Philippa, a soft word from Hope, would have brought him to his knees in a flood of penitent tears; but the lash of Madge's words hardened his heart within him. He made no attempt to stop the torrent of reproach, but when at last she came to a pause he rose slowly, and standing at his full height, looked down upon her.

"If you have quite finished, will you kindly leave my room?" He pointed to the door as he spoke, and there was a look on his face which Madge had never seen before. Barney the boy was dead: Barney the man confronted her with haggard face, and spoke in a tone of authority which she dared not disobey. She turned towards the door, murmuring disjointed words of warning:

"If you will not tell, I must. Philippa--she will have to know."

"There is no necessity to disturb Philippa to-night. In the morning, no doubt, she will hear that--and other things!"

There was an ominous sound in those last three words which chilled Madge with a sense of trouble to come, but the door was closed against her even as they were spoken, and she crept back to bed s.h.i.+vering and dismayed. Perhaps if she had been gentler, more conciliating--if she had fought with the weapons of love instead of anger--she would not have been so signally defeated. Like many another quick-tempered sister, Madge's anger ended in self-reproach, and when too late she would have given the world to withdraw her bitter, pitiless words.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

DARK DAYS.

The next morning, when the four sisters were seated at breakfast, Steve entered and stationed himself before the fire to read a long, business-looking letter. His exclamations of dismay as he read roused the girls' attention, but Steve did not reply--to their eager questioning. With set face he handed them the letter, and one by one they read the unwelcome intelligence, and swelled the chorus of sighs.

Barney was dismissed from his situation! The manager wrote a courteous explanatory letter to the effect that an inexcusable escapade--the last of a long series--made it necessary for the lad's connection with the office to cease. He regretted this conclusion, not only from the fact that his old friend Mr Loftus would have cause for disappointment, but also, he might add, for the sake of the boy himself, who had many good points and was a favourite among his companions. If he might be pardoned for making a suggestion, an office desk was hardly the right position for a youth of so much spirit. Given more congenial work, he would no doubt do better. It was a kindly letter, and one which made its import as palatable as possible. Philippa sighed, and said, "Just what I have been thinking! It was too hard on the boy to expect him to settle to that humdrum life. Perhaps this is the best thing that could have happened."

But Steve was not disposed to take such a lenient view of the matter.

"If Barney had told us honestly that he could not stand it, we would have done our best to find another opening. But to be dismissed like this--to be turned away at an hour's notice--it is disgraceful! Uncle Loftus will have every right to be angry. 'An inexcusable escapade'!

What can that refer to, I wonder?"

Theo covered her lips with her hands, for even at that moment she could not restrain a smile at the recollection.

"I think I know. Barney told me the night before last. One of the clerks bought an alarm and left it on his desk while he went out to lunch. He had previously announced that he was going to meet his fiancee in town, and take her to a concert after dinner. Barney got hold of the alarm and set it for nine o'clock. He knew the poor creatures would be sitting in cheap seats, and that there would be no cloak-room for their things. The man would put the clock in his hat under the seat, and at the appointed time, _Cr-r-r-r-r_, off it would go! He would not be able to stop it. I asked Barney last night what had happened, but he would not tell me much. I suppose he was in low spirits about his dismissal. The alarm had gone off in the midst of a cla.s.sical concerto, and the people around had been so cross that the clerk had to rush out with it as fast as he could go. He was very angry, and went straight to the manager to complain."

"Oh! oh! how naughty!" cried Philippa. Hope was laughing softly to herself, but Phil looked at Steve's stern face and dared not show any amus.e.m.e.nt. "Where _is_ Barney!" she asked. "Perhaps he does not like to come in until we have read our letters. Call him, Theo dear, will you! His breakfast will be cold."

Theo stepped across the narrow pa.s.sage and tapped at the door of Barney's room, waited a moment, opened it gently, then came running back, all scared and breathless.

"He is not there! The bed has not been slept in. Oh Phil, what does it mean?"

But she knew what it meant; they all knew. There was no need for explanation. Together they crushed into the little room and looked around with haggard eyes. Theo had a dreary sense of having been through it all before; and indeed it was an old, old story, even to the torn-up papers on the hearth and the letter of farewell on the dressing-table. It was addressed to Philippa, and she read it aloud, with short, gasping breaths:

"'I have lost my situation, and have got into debt, and lost money betting on races, and the best thing I can do is to take myself off and not trouble you any longer.--I can't stay here to be a shame and a burden.'--[Oh Barney!]--'If you and Steve will pay off my bills, you can look upon the money as my share in what was left. I will never trouble you for any more.'"

Here came a great dash as if the writer had intended to end the letter, but at the bottom of the sheet were a few words scribbled in uncertain letters: "Good-bye, Phil. I'll try to keep straight for your sake."

Philippa looked up; agony was written on her face, but her first words were of thanksgiving. "Thank G.o.d! He is alive and well; he will do himself no harm. My poor boy! We must find him and bring him home again."

"Betting!" echoed Steve. "Debts! I can't understand it. We kept him supplied with pocket-money; he had a comfortable home; what more did he want? I don't wonder he was ashamed to face us, but it is a cowardly thing to run away from the consequences of his wrong-doing and bring fresh anxiety upon us. I wouldn't have believed it of Barney."

"It is my fault! Blame me; I drove him to it," said Madge desperately.

Her sisters stared at her in amazement, while she told the history of the last afternoon and evening, omitting nothing, extenuating nothing, repeating her bitter words with unflinching honesty. Only her face betrayed the inward agony of remorse, but that was eloquent enough, and when she had finished not one of her hearers had the heart to utter a reproach. Philippa looked appealingly at Steve, as if asking what could be done next; but for once the set face refused her comfort in her need.

Stephen could be trusted to do what was right, but his search would lack the inspiration which would come from a thorough understanding of the boy's character.

"And I'm only a woman; I haven't the knowledge that a man would have,"

sighed poor Phil to herself; then she stretched out her hands and cried sharply, "I want to see the Hermit. Barney liked him so much! They used to talk together; he will know best what was in the boy's mind, and be able to help us."

"I'll bring him up," said Steve, and turned straightway to the door.

He, too, was eager for a man's advice--a calm, masculine judgment--to temper the discussion with these distracted girls. Relief was apparent in his manner when he followed the Hermit into the dining-room five minutes later, and summoned his sisters to meet him.

"Barney has gone!" said Philippa simply as she put her hand into the one outstretched to meet it. Then as she met the grave tenderness of the gaze that was turned upon her, for the first time she broke down and sobbed out a wild appeal: "Oh, find him for me--find him for me! He has run away, and it is all my fault. I brought him to this terrible city, and shut him up in an office all day long; and Barney is such a restless creature; he can't endure confinement. If he got into trouble here, when we were all near him, what will Income of him now when he is alone?

Oh, find him for me! Bring him back--"

"I will, Miss Philippa, if it is humanly possible," replied the Hermit gravely. And then Madge's story was retold, and the question raised again as to how Barney had come into possession of so much money.