Young Mr. Barter's Repentance Part 4

'You don't seem to have made the money last long, sir.'

'The money,' cried Bommaney, turning furiously upon him. 'What money?'

Hornett edged away upon his knees, and his thumb and fingers traced the creases of his smile up and down his stubbly cheeks.

'Do you think,' the old man demanded pa.s.sionately, 'that I took away a penny?'

Hornett was afraid to rise. There was such a despair and so much fury in the other's looks that he could do nothing but crouch at his feet with his mean meek face turned fearfully towards Bommaney, and his body cowering.

'You think I took that eight thousand pounds?' Bommaney quavered, with a voice of bitter disdain.

He had never in his life regretted anything so profoundly as he had regretted his resistance of that temptation. To have had all the blame and shame, and to endure all the miseries a convicted thief might earn for himself, to have been an outcast and a pauper, only because he had been resolute against temptation! It is easy enough for a man whom circ.u.mstances keep honest to think himself honourable beyond the chance of temptation. But misery has the virtue of Ithuriel's spear, with a difference. As the one touched the beast and transformed him to the seeming of a high intelligence, so will the other touch a seemingly impregnable armour of bright honour, and turn it into tinder, leaving the poor beast revealed and unprotected from his own base natural longings. The poor Bommaney was maddened to think he had not done what the other's thoughts charged him with, even though he pa.s.sionately rebelled against the accusation.

'When did you ever know me to be a rogue, James Hornett?' he asked, with an air and voice to which his pa.s.sion lent something like dignity. 'When did you ever know me defraud a man of a farthing?'

'Never, sir, I'm sure,' Hornett responded, not doubting in his own mind that Bommaney was guilty. 'But----'

'But what?' cried Bommaney. 'My own son, my own flesh and blood, would hardly shake hands with me. My clerk--I took him out of the gutter, _you_ know that, Hornett! I took you out of the gutter and made a man of you, and lavished kindness on you. n.o.body has a minute's trust in me--n.o.body thinks of misfortune or disaster. I was right to run away and hide myself, for n.o.body would have believed me if I had stayed and told the truth.'

Hornett looked more frightened than before after this outburst, but Bommaney read incredulity in his face, and answered it with an added pa.s.sion.

'What good would it do me to tell lies to you? Suppose I made you believe me, am I such a fool as to, think your pity could set me on my legs again?'

He turned away, moved by his own wrath and anguish, and Hornett, rising, made himself as small as he could in the corner beside the grate.

Bommaney, in his pitiful broken boots, went shuffling up and down the room.

'What became of the money, sir?' the clerk asked with a shaky voice.

He was ready to run for his life, and he was more than half afraid that the old man was mad--his eyes blazed so, and his voice and gestures were so tempestuous.

'It was lost,' said Bommaney. 'I lost it, Heaven knows how. I've thought a thousand times,' he said, through his clenched teeth, 'that that young Barter must have had it.'

'Young Barter, sir?' said Hornett.

Then Bommaney told all he knew of the story of his own loss, and at a certain point in the narrative Hornett started and made a step forward.

He remembered the night well enough--he had reason to remember it. An appointment for the theatre that evening had led him to call upon a brother clerk in Gable Inn, and he had seen young Mr. Barter leaving his chambers in what had struck him at the time as being an odd and stealthy fas.h.i.+on. He had remarked it for the moment, and had forgotten it afterwards, as men forget a thousand things of the sort which have no interest personal to themselves. But now he saw young Mr. Barter's figure with a singular distinctness, and the face turned round in the gaslight was again as visible as it had been at the moment. He thought he read a meaning in it now. But for this slight confirmation of his employer's story he would probably have disbelieved it, but the accidental character of the clue weighed with him, an apparent touch of romance in it gave it a value beyond its merits.

'Could you tell me, sir,' he asked, 'exactly what time it was when you left Mr. Barter's office?'

'No,' said Bommaney, suddenly weary after his outburst of self-exculpation, 'I don't know. It was after banking hours. It was dark; he had to light the gas. What if I could? What would that have to do with it?'

'Well, you see, sir,' Hornett answered, 'I'm not likely to forget that evening. Of all the evenings of my life, sir, I made a call at Gable Inn myself, sir, at Number One. If young Mr. Barter had found the notes he wouldn't care to face you again, and he mightn't have answered your knock at the door, though he might have heard it.'

'Any fool could tell me that,' said Bommaney roughly. 'What do you mean?'

'I've noticed, sir,' said Hornett, with marked humility, as if he apologised for having said anything, 'that young Mr. Barter is a gentleman who goes about in rather a large way, and noisy way, sir. He's a biggish man, as it is, and to look at him at first you'd fancy that he was bigger than he is. He talks very loud and cheery, sir, and he bangs things about a good deal.'

'Well?' said Bommaney, irritated by these slow preliminaries, 'what about it all?'

He could see that his late clerk was leading to a point of some sort, and listened with a growing impatience.

'He was leaving his rooms that night, sir,' said Hornett, 'as sly as a cat. I was just on the ground-floor of Number One as he was locking the door behind him. Locking it, don't you see, sir,' said Hornett, beginning to be fired by his imagination, and speaking eagerly, 'so as not to make a noise in pulling it to behind him. I suppose I made some sort of a noise in going behind him, but any way, he looked up at me--I can see him now!' he cried, with a swift conviction, 'as if he was here at this very minute, white and cowardly. That's what he was, sir. White and cowardly, I can see him now.'

Bommaney grasped him by the wrist.

'Do you remember the time?' he asked, pa.s.sing one hand confusedly through the tumbled and disgraceful old locks of his hair. 'Do you remember when I left the office? Do you remember when you left it?'

'Almost directly, sir, after you. But you drove, sir, and I walked. I stopped, and had a little conversation with a friend, and just a social gla.s.s that might have kept me back five minutes, sir. I was going to dine with Mr. Marshall (White and Fielding's Mr. Marshall, sir) before the theatre.'

Bommaney released his wrist, and dropping on his knees before the fire again, warmed his hands absently and stared into the blaze.

'The notes were all hundreds, James,' he said, after a pause. 'They were stopped at the Bank, I know, because I saw the advertis.e.m.e.nt. It wouldn't be easy to get rid of them.'

'There are ways and means, sir,' said Hornett. 'They'd have to be disposed of at a loss, of course--a heavy loss--and kept quiet for a considerable time.'

'Have you heard of any of them coming into circulation?' asked Bommaney.

'I haven't been in the way to hear of anything, sir,' the clerk answered mournfully, 'but,' with a sidelong look at his old employer, 'if I could only get to look a bit respectable, I could make inquiries in an hour. I have no doubt I could find out, sir.'

'My boy believes I'm guilty, like the rest,' said the old man, moaning and s.h.i.+vering and coughing again. The pa.s.sion of his protest and the warmth of heart which Hornett's returning confidence had taught him had all died away, and he was his bankrupt, disgraced, and broken self again, old and maudlin, and strickenly conscious of his miseries.

'Phil might help me,' he said shakily. 'He 'could, but he won't. He's got plenty of money. If I'd been a rogue, James Hornett,' and there he flashed up again, ever so little, 'I could have robbed my own flesh and blood with safety. A rogue would have done it. I was his sole trustee, and I could have had nine thousand by a stroke of the pen at any minute.'

'Mr. Phil, sir,' said Hornett 'Mr. Phil hasn't got much money left'

'Why not?' the old man asked, staring round at him with his watery eyes.

'He paid Mr. Brown the eight thousand in full, sir, and divided the rest, as far as it would go, amongst the poorest of the creditors.'

Bommaney turned back towards the fire, and drooped there. He seemed very impa.s.sive under this intelligence, but he was deeply moved by it all the same. The sense of his son's high feeling of honour gave him a keen throb of pride, and then he thought bitterly that his own ill-luck pursued his offspring.

The loss was double. It had disgraced and ruined him, and had robbed his son of his inheritance.

'Hornett,' he said, 'James Hornett.'

'Yes, sir.'

'I was brought up,' the old man said, in a m.u.f.fled voice, advancing and retiring his hands before the fire, and chafing them automatically, 'I was brought up by Christian parents. I never did a dishonourable act in all my days. I have been a G.o.d-fearing man and a--a steady church-goer.

I give it all up. I renounce it. I don't believe in G.o.d. I don't believe in religion. I don't believe in being honest. It's a--it's a vile wicked world, Hornett, and it's my belief the devil rules it.'

'Oh, sir,' cried Hornett,' you mustn't talk like this, sir. You must excuse me speaking free, sir, but I can't stand by and hear you talk like that. I can't listen to it, sir--I can't really. I've never said a disrespectful word to you, Mr. Bommaney, but I really must speak out now, sir. It isn't respectable, sir, to talk like that.'

After this there was a long silence, and Bommaney, who had repouched the bottle after his last application to it, consulted it again, and handed it wordlessly to Hornett, without looking at him.

'Phil might,' he murmured in a while--' he might be brought to believe me. He's an honest man himself, James--a very honest high-minded man indeed. I must look where he lives,' he murmured, seeking for the envelope his son had given him. 'He gave me his address.'

'His address, sir,' said Hornett. 'You could almost lay your hand on him. He lives there. That's his window with the light in it.' Bommaney moved to the window, and followed with his glance the direction of Hornett's outstretched finger. There was a window a few feet higher than the one at which he stood, and half-hidden from observation by a stone parapet. A shadow obscured the light, and moved about the ceiling, visible from below.