'More than a thousand?'
'You have not read the deed through. Call yourself a lawyer? Sit down, and read it word for word.'
George obeyed, reading it as if it was a paper submitted to him for consideration, a paper belonging to some one else.
'Well? You have read it?'
'Yes; I have read it through.'
'Observe that the Partnership may be dissolved by Death, Bankruptcy, or Mutual Consent. I receive two-thirds of the proceeds for life. That—alas!—will not be for long.—Well, young man, do you accept this offer?'
'Accept? Oh! Accept? What can I do? What can I say—but accept?' He walked to the window, and looked out; I suppose he was admiring the trees in the square, which were certainly very beautiful in early July. Then he returned, his eyes humid.
'Aha!' Mr. Dering chuckled. 'I told you that I would make it impossible for you to marry on two hundred pounds a year. I waited till Elsie's birthday. Well? You will now be able to revise that little estimate of living on two hundred a year. Eh?'
'Mr. Dering,' said George, with breaking voice, 'I cannot believe it; I cannot understand it. I have not deserved it.'
'Shake hands, my Partner.'
The two men shook hands.
'Now sit down and let us talk a bit,' said Mr. Dering. 'I am old. I am past seventy. I have tried to persuade myself that I am still as fit for work as ever. But I have had warnings. I now perceive that they must be taken as warnings. Sometimes it is a little confusion of memory—I am not able to account for little things—I forget what I did yesterday afternoon. I suppose all old men get these reminders of coming decay. It means that I must reduce work andresponsibility. I might give up business altogether and retire: I have money enough and to spare: but this is the third generation of a successful House, and I could not bear to close the doors, and to think that the Firm would altogether vanish. So I thought I would take a partner, and I began to look about me. Well—in brief, I came to the conclusion that I should find no young man better qualified than yourself for ability and for power of work and for all the qualities necessary for the successful conduct of such a House as this. Especially I considered the essential of good manners. I was early taught by my father that the greatest aid to success is good breeding. I trust that in this respect I have done justice to the teaching of one who was the most courtly of his time. You belong to an age of less ceremony and less respect to rank. But we are not always in a barrack or in a club. We are not all comrades or equals. There are those below to consider as well as those above. There are women: there are old men: you, my partner, have shown me that you can give to each the consideration, the deference, the recognition that he deserves. True breeding is the recognition of the individual. You are careful of the small things which smooth the asperities of business. In no profession, not even that of medicine, is a good manner more useful than in ours. And this you possess.—It also pleases me,' he added after a pause, 'to think that in making you my partner I am also promoting the happiness of a young lady I have known all her life.'
George murmured something. He looked more like a guilty schoolboy than a man just raised to a position most enviable. His cheeks were flushed and his hands trembled. Mr. Dering touched his bell.
'Checkley,' he said, when that faithful retainer appeared, 'I have already told you of my intention to take a partner. This is my new partner.'
Checkley changed colour. His old eyes—or was George wrong?—flashed with a light of malignity as he raised them. It made him feel uncomfortable—but only for a moment.
'My partner, Checkley,' repeated Mr. Dering.
'Oh!' His voice was dry and grating. 'Since we couldn't go on as before—— Well, I hope you won't repent it.'
'You shall witness the signing of the deed, Checkley.Call in a clerk. So—there we have it, drawn, signed, and witnessed. Once more, my partner, shake hands.'
Elsie retired to her own room after the snub administered to her rising spirits. She soon began to sing again, being much too happy to be affected by anything so small. She went on with her portrait, preserving some, but not all, of the softness and benevolence which she had put into it, and thereby producing what is allowed to be an excellent portrait, but somewhat flattering. She herself knows very well that it is not flattering at all, but even lower than the truth, only the other people have never seen the lawyer in an expansive moment.
Now while she was thus engaged, her mind going back every other minute to her newly-acquired inheritance, a cab drove up to the house—the door flew open, and her lover—her George—flew into her arms.
'You here—George? Actually in the house? Oh! but you know——'
'I know—I know. But I could not possibly wait till this evening. My dear child, the most wonderful—the most wonderful thing—the most extraordinary thing—in the whole world has happened—a thing we could never hope and never ask——'
'Mr. Dering has told you, then?'
'What? Do you know?'
'Mr. Dering told me this morning.—Oh, George! isn't it wonderful?'
'Wonderful? It is like the last chapter of a novel!' This he said speaking as a fool, because the only last chapter in life is that in which Azrael crosses the threshold.
'Oh, George!—I have been walking in the air—I have been flying—I have been singing and dancing. I feel as if I had never before known what it was to be happy. Mr. Dering said something about having it settled—mind—it's all yours, George—yours as well as mine.'
'Yes,' said George, a little puzzled. 'I suppose in the eyes of the law it is mine, but then it is yours as well. All that is mine is yours.
'Oh! Mr. Dering said it was mine in the eyes of the law. What does it matter, George, what the stupid old law says?'
'Nothing, my dear—nothing at all.'
'It will be worth five hundred pounds a year very nearly. That, with your two hundred pounds a year, will make us actually comfortable after all our anxieties.'
'Five hundred a year? It will be worth four times that, I hope.'
'Four times? Oh, no!—that is impossible. But Mr. Dering told me that he could hardly get so much as four per cent., and I have made a sum and worked it out. Rule for simple interest: multiply the principal by the rate per cent., and again by the time, and divide by a hundred. It is quite simple. And what makes the sum simpler, you need only take one year.'
'What principal, Elsie, by what interest? You are running your little head against rules of arithmetic. Here there is no principal and no interest. It is a case of proceeds, and then division.'
'We will call it proceeds, if you like, George, but he called it interest. Anyhow, it comes to five hundred a year, very nearly; and with your two hundred——'
'I don't know what you mean by your five hundred a year. As for my two hundred, unless I am very much mistaken, that will very soon be two thousand.'
'Your two hundred will become——? George, we are talking across each other.'
'Yes. What money of yours do you mean?'
'I mean the twelve thousand pounds that Mr. Dering holds for me—with accumulations—accumulations'—she began to sing the rhyme of the omnibus wheels—'accumulations—ations—ations.'
'Twelve thousand pounds? Is this fairyland? Twelve thousand——? I reel—I faint—I sink—I melt away. Take my hands—both my hands, Elsie—kiss me kindly—it's better than brandy—kindly kiss me. Twelve thousand pounds! with accumulations——'
'—ations—ations—ations,' she sung. 'Never before, George, have I understood the loveliness and the power of money. They were given to Mr. Dering by an anonymous person to be held for me—secretly. No one knows—not even, yet, my mother.'
'Oh! It is altogether too much—too much: once there was a poor but loving couple, and Fortune turned her wheel,and—— You don't know—you most unsuspecting ignorant Thing—you can't guess— Oh, Elsie, I am a partner—Mr. Dering's partner!
They caught hands again—then they let go—then they sat down, and gazed upon each other.
'Elsie,' said George.
'George,' said Elsie.
'We can now marry like everybody else—but much better. We shall have furniture now.'
'All the furniture we shall want, and a house where we please. No contriving now—no pinching.'
'No self-denying for each other, my dear.'
'That's a pity, isn't it?—But, George, don't repine. The advantages may counterbalance the drawbacks. I think I see the cottage where we were going to live. It is in Islington: or near it—Barnsbury, perhaps: there is a little garden in front, and one at the back. There is always washing hung out to dry. I don't like the smell of suds. For dinner, one has cold Australian tinned meat for economy, not for choice. The rooms are very small, and the furniture is shabby, because it was cheap and bad to begin with. And when you come home—oh, George!'—she stuck her forefinger in her chalk, and drew two or three lines on his face—'you look like that, so discontented, so grumpy, so gloomy. Oh, my dear, the advantages—they do so greatly outbalance the drawbacks; and George—you will love your wife all the more—I am sure you will—because she can always dress properly and look nice, and give you a dinner that will help to rest you from the work of the day.'
Once more this foolish couple fell into each other's arms and kissed again with tears and smiles and laughter.
'Who,' asked Mrs. Arundel, ringing the bell up-stairs, 'who is with Miss Elsie below?'
On hearing that it was Mr. George Austin, whose presence in the house was forbidden, Mrs. Arundel rose solemnly and awfully, and walked down the stairs. She had a clear duty before her. When she threw open the door, the lovers were hand in hand dancing round the room laughing—but the tears were running down Elsie's cheeks.
'Elsie,' said her mother, standing at the open door, 'perhaps you can explain this.'
'Permit me to explain,' said George.
'This gentleman, Elsie, has been forbidden the house.'
'One moment,' he began.
'Go, sir.' She pointed majestically to the window.
'Oh!' cried Elsie. 'Tell her, George—tell her; I cannot.' She fell to laughing and crying together, but still held her lover by the hand.
'I will have no communication whatever with one who robs me of a daughter,' said this Roman matron. 'Will you once more leave the house, sir?'
'Mother—youmusthear him.'
'Nothing,' said Mrs. Arundel, 'will ever induce me to speak to him—nothing.'
'Mother, don't be silly,' Elsie cried; 'you don't know what has happened. Youmustnot say such things. You will only be sorry for them afterwards.'
'Never—never. One may forgive such a man, but one can never speak to him, never—whatever happens—never.' The lady looked almost heroic as she waved her right hand in the direction of the man.
'I will go,' said George, 'but not till you have heard me. I am rich—Elsie is rich—we shall not marry into poverty. The whole situation is entirely changed.'
'Changed,' Elsie repeated, taking George's arm.
'My dear George,' said Mrs. Arundel, when she had heard the whole story—and by cross examination persuaded herself that it was true—'you know on what a just basis my objections were founded. Otherwise, I should have been delighted at the outset.—Kiss me, Elsie.—You have my full consent, children. These remarkable events are Providential.—On Mr. Dering's death or retirement, you will step into an enormous practice. Follow his example. Take no partner till old age compels you. Keep all the profits for yourself—all.—My dear George, you should be a very happy man. Not so rich, perhaps, as my son-in-law, Sir Samuel, but above the ordinary run of common happiness. As for the past—— We will now go down to lunch.—There is the bell. These emotions are fatiguing.'
May one dwell upon so simple a thing as a small family dinner-party? It is generally undramatic and uneventful: it is not generally marked even by a new dish or a bottle of rare wine. Yet there lingers in the mind of every man the recollection of pleasant dinners. I should like to write a Book of Dinners—not a book for thegourmet, but a book of memories. It might be a most delightful volume. There would be in it the school-boys' dinner. I remember a certain dinner at eighteenpence a head, at Richmond, before we had the row in the boat, when we quarrelled and broke the oars over each other's heads, and very nearly capsized: a certain undergraduates' dinner, in which four men—three of whom are now ghosts—joined: the Ramblers' dinner, of lamb chops and bottled ale and mirth and merriment: the two-by-two dinner in the private room, a dainty dinner of sweet lamb, sweet bread, sweet peas, sweet looks, sweet Moselle, and sweet words. Is it really true that one never—never—gets young again? Some people do, I am sure, but they are under promise to say nothing about it. I shall—and then that dinner may perhaps—one cannot say—one never knows—and I suppose—if one was young again—that they would be found just as pretty as they ever were. There is the official dinner, stately and cold: the city dinner, which generally comes to a man when his digestion is no longer what it was: the family dinner, in which the intellect plays so small a part, because no one wastes his fine things on his brothers and sisters: the dinner at which one has to make a speech. Indeed, this Book of Dinners promises to be a most charming volume. I should attempt it, however, with trembling, because, to do it really well, one should be, first of all, a scholar, if only to appreciate things said and spoken, and in order to connect the illustrious past with food and drink. Next, he ought to be still young: he certainly must have a proper feeling for wine, and must certainly understand when and why one should be grateful to good Master Cook: he should be a past or present master in the Art of Love and a squire of Dames: he should be good at conversation: he must,in the old language, be a worshipper of Bacchus, Venus, Phœbus Apollo, the Muses nine and the Graces three. He must be no poor weakling, unable to enjoy the good creatures of flesh, fowl, fish, and wine: no boor: and no log insensible to loveliness.
Dinner, which should be a science, has long been treated as one of the Fine Arts. Now every Fine Art, as we all know, has its fashions and its caprices. Those who are old enough to remember the dinners of twenty, thirty, or forty years ago can remember many of their fashions and caprices. In the Thirties, for instance, everything was carved upon the table. It required a man with a strong wrist to give a dinner-party. Fortunately, a dinner then consisted of few dishes. They drank sherry with dinner, and port afterwards. The champagne, if there was any, was sweet. The guests were bidden for half-past six: they sat down to dinner before seven. At eight the ladies went up-stairs: at half-past ten the men joined them. Their faces were flushed, their shoulders were inclined to lurch, and their speech was the least bit thick. Wonderful to relate, brandy-and-water used to be served to these topers in the drawing-room itself.
Mr. Dering had altered little in his dinner customs. They mostly belonged to the Sixties, with a survival of some belonging to the Thirties. Things were carved upon the sideboard: this was in deference to modern custom: champagne formed an integral part of the meal: but the dinner itself was solid: the cloth after dinner was removed, leaving the dark polished mahogany after the old fashion: the furniture of the room was also in the old style: the chairs were heavy and solid: the walls were hung with a dark crimson paper of velvety texture: the curtains and the carpets were red: there were pictures of game and fruit: the sideboard was as solid as the table.
Checkley the clerk, who was invited as a faithful servant of the House, to the celebration of the new partnership, was the first to arrive. Dressed in a hired suit, he looked like an undertaker's assistant: the gloom upon his face heightened the resemblance. Why the partnership caused this appearance of gloom, I know not. Certainly, he could never expect to be made a partner himself. It was perhaps a species of jealousy which filled his soul. He would no longer know so much of the business.
George came with the Mother-in-law Elect and thefiancée. Forgiveness, Peace, Amnesty, and Charity sat all together upon the brow of the elder lady. She was magnificent in a dark crimson velvet, and she had a good deal of gold about her arms and neck. Jewish ladies are said to show, by the magnificence of their attire, the prosperity of the business. Why not? It is a form of enjoying success. There are many forms: one man buys books: let him buy books. Another collects pictures. Why not? One woman wears crimson velvet. Why not? In this way she enjoys her wealth and proclaims it. Again, why not? It seems to the philosopher a fond and vain thing to deck the person at all times, and especially fond when the person is middle-aged and no longer beautiful. We are not all philosophers. There are many middle-aged men who are extremely happy to put on their uniform and their medals and their glittering helmets. Mrs. Arundel wore her velvet as if she enjoyed the colour of it, the richness of it, the light and shade that lay in its folds, and the soft feel of it. She wore it, too, as an outward sign that this was a great occasion. Her daughter, Lady Dering, came also arrayed in a queenly dress of amber silk with an aigrette of feathers in her hair. To be sure, she was going on somewhere after the dinner. Elsie, for her part, came in a creamy white almost like a bride: but she looked much happier than most brides. Hilda's husband, Sir Samuel, who was some six or seven years younger than his brother, was in appearance a typical man of wealth. The rich man can no longer, as in the days of good old Sir Thomas Gresham, illustrate his riches by costly furs, embroidered doublets, and heavy chains. He has to wear broadcloth and black. Yet there is an air, a carriage, which belongs to the rich man. In appearance, Sir Samuel was tall, like his brother, but not thin like him: he was corpulent: his face was red: he was bald, and he wore large whiskers, dyed black. The late dissensions were completely forgotten. Hilda embraced her sister fondly. 'My dear,' she whispered, 'we have heard all. Everything—everything is changed by these fortunate events. They do you the greatest credit.—George'—she took his hand and held it tenderly—'I cannot tell you how happy this news has made us all. You will be rich in the course of years. Sir Samuel was only saying, as we came along——'
'I was saying, young gentleman,' the Knight interrupted,'that the most beautiful thing about money is the way it develops character. We do not ask for many virtues—only honesty and diligence—from the poor. When a man acquires wealth we look for his better qualities.'
'Yes, indeed,' Hilda murmured. 'His better qualities begin to show.—Elsie, dear, that is a very pretty frock. I don't think I have seen it before. How do you like my dress?'
George accepted this sudden turn in opinion with smiles. He laughed at it afterwards. For the moment it made him feel almost as if he was being rewarded for some virtuous action.
Dinner was announced at seven—such were the old-fashioned manners of this old gentleman. He led in Mrs. Arundel, and placed Elsie on his left. At first, the dinner promised to be a silent feast. The two lovers were not disposed to talk much—they had not yet recovered from the overwhelming and astonishing events of the day. Sir Samuel never talked at the beginning of dinner—besides, there was turtle soup and red mullet and whitebait—it is sinful to divert your attention from these good creatures. His wife never talked at dinner or at any other time more than she could help. Your statuesque beauty seldom does. Talking much involves smiling and even laughing, which distorts the face. A woman must encourage men to talk: this she can do without saying much herself.
Presently Mr. Dering roused himself and began to talk, with a visible effort, first to Mrs. Arundel of things casual: then to Elsie: and then to his brother, but always with an effort, as if he was thinking of other things. And a constraint fell upon the party.
When the cloth was removed and the wine and fruit placed upon the dark and lustrous board, he filled a glass and made a kind little speech.
'My Partner,'he said, 'I drink to you. May your connection with the House be prosperous! It is a very great good fortune for me to have found such a Partner.—Elsie, I join you with my Partner. I wish you both every happiness.'
He drained the bumper and sent round the decanters.
Then he began to talk, and his discourse was most strange. 'Had it been,' said his brother afterwards, 'the idle fancies of some crackbrained writing fellow, I could have understood it; but from him—from a steady old solicitor—a man who hasnever countenanced any kind of nonsense—to be sure he said it was only an illusion. I hope it isn't a softening. Who ever heard of such a man as that having dreams and illusions?'
Certainly no one had ever before heard Mr. Dering talk in this new manner. As a rule, he was silent and grave even at the head of his own table. He spoke little and then gravely. To-night his talk as well as his face was changed. Who would have thought that Mr. Dering should confess to illusions, and should relate dreams, and should be visited by such dreams? Remember that the speaker was seventy-five years of age, and that he had never before been known so much as to speak of benevolence. Then you will understand something of the bewilderment which fell upon the whole company.
He began by raising his head and smiling with a strange and new benignity—but Elsie thought of her portrait. 'We are all one family here,' he said; 'and I may talk. I want to tell you of a very remarkable thing that has recently happened to me. It has been growing, I now perceive, for some years. But it now holds me strongly, and it is one reason why I am anxious to have the affairs of the House in the hands of a younger man. For it may be a sign of the end. At seventy-five anything uncommon may be a sign.'
'You look well, Mr. Dering, and as strong as most men of sixty,' said Mrs. Arundel.
'Perhaps. I feel well and strong. The fact is that I am troubled—or pleased—or possessed—by an Illusion.'
'You with an Illusion?' said his brother.
'I myself. An Illusion possesses me. It whispers me from time to time that my life is wholly spent in promoting the happiness of other people.'
'Well,' said his brother, 'since you are a first-class solicitor, and manage the affairs of many people very much to their advantage, you certainly do promote their happiness.'
'Yes, yes—I suppose so. My Illusion further is that it is done outside my business—without any bill afterwards'—Checkley looked up with eyes wide open—'I am made to believe that I am working and living for the good of others. A curious Illusion, is it not?'
The City man shook his head. 'That any man can possibly live for the good of others is, I take it, always and under all circumstances an Illusion. In the present state of society—and a very admirable state it is'—he rolled his baldhead as he spoke and his voice had a rich roll in it—'a man's first duty—his second duty—his third duty—his hundredth duty—is to himself. In the City it is his business to amass wealth—to roll it up—roll it up'—he expressed the words with feeling—'to invest it profitably—to watch it, and to nurse it as it fructifies—fructifies. Afterwards, when he is rich enough, if ever a man can be rich enough, he may exercise as much charity as he pleases—as he pleases. Charity seems to please some people as a glass of fine wine'—he illustrated the comparison—'pleases the palate—pleases the palate.'
The lawyer listened politely and inclined his head.
'There is at least some method in my Illusion,' he went on. 'You mentioned it. The solicitor is always occupied with the conduct of other people's affairs. That must be admitted. He is always engaged in considering how best to guide his fellow-man through the labyrinthine world. He receives his fellow-man at his entrance into the world, as a ward: he receives him grown up, as a client: he advises him all his life at every step and in every emergency. If the client goes into partnership, or marries, or buys a house, or builds one, or gets into trouble, the solicitor assists and advises him. When the client grows old, the solicitor makes his will. When the client dies, the solicitor becomes his executor and his trustee, and administers his estate for him. It is thus a life, as I said, entirely spent for other people. I know not of any other, unless it be of medicine, that so much can be said. And think what terrors, what anxieties, what disappointments, the solicitor witnesses and alleviates! Think of the family scandals he hushes up and keeps secret! Good heavens! if a solicitor in large practice were to tell what he knows, think of the terrible disclosures! He knows every thing. He knows more than a Roman Catholic priest, because his penitents not only reveal their own sins but also those of their wives and sons and friends and partners. And anxiety, I may tell you, makes a man better at confessing than penitence. Sometimes we bring actions at law and issue writs and so forth. Well now: this part of our business, which is disagreeable to us, is actually the most beneficent of any. Because, by means of the cases brought before the High Court of Justice, we remind the world that it must be law abiding as well as law worthy. The Law, in order to win respect, must first win fear. Force comes before order. The memory of force must be kept up.The presence of force must be felt. For instance, I have a libel case just begun. It is rather a bad libel. My libeller will suffer: he will bleed: but he will bleed for the public good, because thousands who are only anxious to libel and slander, to calumniate and defame their neighbours, will be deterred. Oh! it will be a most beneficent case—far reaching—striking terror into the hearts of ill-doers.—Well—this, my friends, is my Illusion. It is, I suppose, one of the many Illusions with which we cheat old age and rob it of its terrors. To everybody else I am a hard-fisted lawyer, exacting his pound of flesh from the unfortunate debtor, and making myself rich at the expense of the creditor.'
'Nonsense about how a man gets rich,' said the man of business. 'He can only get rich if he is capable. Quite right. Let the weak go under. Let the careless and the lazy starve.'
'At the same time,' said Elsie softly, 'it is not all illusion. There are others besides the careless and the lazy——'
'Sometimes,' the old lawyer went on, 'this Illusion of mine—oh! I know it is only Illusion—takes the form of a dream—so vivid that it comes back to me afterwards as a reality. In this dream, which is always the same, I seem to have been engaged in some great scheme of practical benevolence.'
'Practical—— What? You engaged in Practical Benevolence?' the City man asked in profound astonishment. The Illusion was astonishing enough; but to have his brother talk of practical benevolence was amazing indeed.
'Practical benevolence,' repeated Mr. Dering. His voice dropped. His eyes looked out into space: he seemed as one who narrates a story. 'It is a curiously persistent dream. It comes at irregular intervals; it pleases me while it lasts.—Oh! in the evening after dinner, while one takes a nap in the easy chair, perhaps—it is, as I said, quite vivid. The action of this dream always takes place in the same room—a large room, plainly furnished, and looking out upon an open space—I should know it if I saw it—and it fills me with pleasure—in my dream—just to feel that I am—there is no other word for it—diffusing happiness. How I manage this diffusion, I can never remember; but there it is—good solid happiness, such as, in waking moments, one feels to be impossible.'
'Diffusing happiness—you!' said his brother.
'A very beautiful dream,' said Elsie. But no one dared to look in each other's face.
'This strange dream of mine,' continued Mr. Dering, 'does not form part of that little Illusion, though it seems connected with it. And as I said, mostly it comes in the evening. The other day, however, I had it in the afternoon—went to sleep in my office, I suppose.—Did you find me asleep, Checkley? It was on Friday.'
'No. On Friday afternoon you went out.'
'Ah! When I came back, then— I had forgotten that I went out. Did I go out? Strange! Never mind. This continuous dream opens up a world of new ideas and things which are, I perceive, when I am awake, quite unreal and illusory. Yet they please. I see myself, as I said, diffusing happiness with open hands. The world which is thus made happier consists entirely of poor people. I move among them unseen: I listen to them: I see what they do, and I hear what they say. Mind—all this is as real and true to me as if it actually happened. And it fills me with admiration of the blessed state of poverty. In my dream I pity the rich, with all my heart. To get rich, I think—in this dream—they must have practised so many deceptions——'
'Brother! brother!' Sir Samuel held up both hands.
'In my dream—only in my dream. Those who inherit riches are burdened with the weight of their wealth, which will not suffer them to enter into the arena; will not allow them to develop and to exercise their talents, and afflicts them with the mental and bodily diseases that belong to indolence. The poor, on the other hand, who live from day to day, sometimes out of work for weeks together, practise easily the simple virtues of brotherly love, charity, and mutual helpfulness. They have learned to combine for the good of all rather than to fight, one against another, for selfish gain. It is the only world where all are borrowing and lending, giving and helping.'
'Brother, this dream of yours is like a socialistic tract.'
'It may be. Yet you see how strongly it takes hold of me, that while I see the absurdity of the whole thing, it is not unpleasing to recall the recollection of it. Well—I do not know what set me talking about this dream.'
The smiles left his face: he became grave again: he ceasedto talk: for the rest of the evening he was once more the old solicitor, weighed down with the affairs of other people.
'Checkley'—it was on the doorstep, and Sir Samuel waited while his wife said a few fond things to her sister—'what the devil came over my brother to-night?'
'I don't know indeed, Sir Samuel. I never heard him talk like that before. Doin' good to 'em? Servin' a writ upon 'em is more our line. I think he must be upset somewhere in his inside, and it's gone to his head.'
'Practical benevolence! Living for other people! Have you heard him complain of anything?'
'No, Sir Samuel. He never complains. Eats hearty, walks upright and strong, works like he always has worked.—Doin' good! And the blessedness of being pore! Seems most wonderful. Blessedness of being pore! Well, Sir Samuel, I've enjoyed that blessedness myself, and I know what it's like. Any or'nary preachin' chap might talk that nonsense; but for your eminent brother, Sir Samuel, such a lawyer as him—to be talking such stuff—if I may humbly so speak of my learned master's words—it is—Sir Samuel—it really is amazing!'
'He said it was a dream, remember. But I agree with you, Checkley.—It is amazing.'
'Humph! The blessedness of being pore! And over such a glass of port, too! I thought I should ha' rolled off my chair—I did, indeed.—Here's your good lady, Sir Samuel.'
'Elsie,' said Mrs. Arundel in the carriage, 'I think it was high time that Mr. Dering should take a partner. He to dream of practical benevolence! He to be diffusing happiness with open hands! Oh! most lamentable—I call it. However, the deeds are signed, and we are all right. In case of anything happening, it is a comfort to think that George's position would be only improved.'
Many women have advanced the doctrine that the happiest time of life is that of their engagement. Of course no man can possibly understand this theory; but from a woman's point of view it can be defended, because it is for some girls the most delightful thing in the world to be wooed; and until the church service is actually said and the ring is on the finger, the bride is Queen and Mistress; afterwards—not always. But the happiness of it depends upon its being a courtship without obstacles. Now, in the case of the young couple whose fortunes we are following, there was plenty of love with excellent wooing; but the engagement had been opposed by the whole tribe of Arundels, so that every time she met her lover it was in open rebellion against her mother. To go home from a walk with him only to find the silence of resentment at home was not pleasant. Again, we have seen how they were looking forward to a life of poverty—even of privation. Dame Penury with her pinching ways and shrewish tongue was going to be their constant lodger. Then the young man could not choose but ask himself whether he was not a selfish beast to take a girl out of plenty into privation. And the girl could not choose but ask herself whether she was not selfish in laying this great burden upon the back of her lover. No one can be indifferent to such a prospect: no one can contemplate with pleasure the cheeseparings, the savings, the management of such a life: no one can like having to make a penny do the work of sixpence: no one can rejoice as one steps down, down, down the social ladder: no one can anticipate with satisfaction the loss of gentlehood for the daughters, and the loss of an adequate education for the sons.
'You will make me happy,' said the lover, 'at the cost of everything that makes life happy for yourself.'
'If I make you happy,' said the girl, 'I ask for nothing more. But oh! I am laying a heavy burden upon you. Can you bear it? Will you never blame me if the burden is greater than you can bear?'
And now all the trouble vanished like a cloud from the morning sky—vanished so completely that there was not a trace of it left anywhere. The accusing figure of her mother was changed into a smiling face of pleased and satisfied maternity: reproaches were turned into words of endearment, angry looks to presents and caresses. And as for her sister, you might have thought that all this good fortune was actually achieved and conquered by Elsie—otherwise, how could one justify the praise and flattery that Hilda now lavished upon her? She gave a great dinner as a kind of official reception of the bridegroom into the family; she also gave a dance, at which she herself was the most beautiful woman—she stood in a conspicuous place all the evening, magnificently dressed, statuesque, wonderful: and Elsie was the prettiest girl at the party; but between the most beautiful woman and the prettiest girl was a difference! There is nothing like good fortune to bring out a girl's good qualities: Elsie had always had friends, now she might have numbered them by hundreds. Good fortune breeds friends as the sunshine creates the flowers. She was congratulated, caressed, and flattered enough to turn her head. Now, girls are so constituted that they love admiration, which is a kind of affection, even when it takes the form of flattery: and their heads may be easily turned; but they are as easily turned back again. And the house—the widow's house—which for so many years had been so dull and quiet a place, was transformed into a place of entertainment. It only wanted coloured lamps to make it another Vauxhall: it was crowded every night with the younger friends of bride and bridegroom. George had many friends. He was gregarious by nature: he was a rowing man on the athletic side: he had a healthy love and a light hand for things like billiards, shooting, and fishing: they are tastes which assist in the creation of friendships.
These friends—young fellows of like mind—came to the house in multitudes to rally round the man about to desert their ranks. Young men are forgiving: George would row no more among them: he would be lost to the billiard table, and to the club itself: yet they forgave him, and accepted his invitation and went to see the bride. They found her with the friends of her own age. Heavens! how the daring of one man in taking away a maiden from the band encourages others! There are six love stories at least, all rising out ofthese evenings, and all of surpassing interest, had one the time to write them. They are both grave and gay: there are tears in every one: the course of true love in no case ran smooth except in the Story of the Two Stupids. Love's enemies can never effect aught against a Stupid, and so these two Stupids became engaged without opposition, and were married with acclamations; but they are too Stupid—perhaps—to know their own happiness.
All this went on for three weeks. It was arranged that the happy pair should be married in the middle of August: they had resolved to spend their honeymoon in France, staying a few days in Paris, and then going on to see the towns and the country along the Loire, with the old city of Tours for their centre. They proposed to live entirely upon fruit and wine and kisses. No place in the world like Touraine for those who are so young, and so much in love, and so perfectly satisfied with so simple a diet. Even for those who take a cutlet with the fruit and the wine, there is no place equal to Touraine. Meantime, against the home-coming, a desirable flat was secured, not one of your little economical flats, all drawing-room with two or three rabbit-hutches for bedrooms, but a large and highly decorated flat with all the newest appliances, large rooms, and a lift and plenty of space for the dinner-parties and receptions which Elsie would have to give. The servants were engaged. The furniture was ordered, all in the advanced taste of the day—carpets, curtains, pictures, over-mantels, cabinets, screens. Elsie went every day to her new home and found something omitted, and sat down in it to wonder what it would be like—this new life she was entering upon. Oh! it was a busy time.—Then there was her trousseau—everybody knows the amount of thought and care required for a trousseau: this was approaching completion—everybody knows the happiness, peculiar, and unlike any other kind of happiness, with which a girl contemplates a heap of 'things,' all her own. I suppose that it is only at her wedding that she can enjoy this happiness, for afterwards, the 'things' are not her own, but the things of the family. The bride's dress, another thing of supreme importance, had been tried on, though as yet it was very, very far from being finished. The bridesmaids, two of George's sisters, had also already tried on their dresses. They came every day, two very sweet girls, who have both to do with those six lovestories which will never, I fear, be told, to talk over the events and to see the presents. These came in daily, and were laid out in a room by themselves, looking very splendid: their splendour proved the wealth and the position of the pair, because rich presents are only given to rich people.
In a word, everybody was heartily, loyally sympathetic, as if to make up for the previous harshness and coldness. For four weeks this happiness lasted! It was on Monday, June 29, that the golden shower descended upon them: it was on Monday, July 20, that the rain of gold ceased, and another kind of cloud came up which speedily changed into a driving storm of rain and sleet and hail and ice and snow.
Look at them on Sunday. Before the storm there is generally a brief time of sunshine, warm and fine: after the storm, the calm that follows is a time of dismay, speechless and tearless. Sunday was the day before the storm: it was a day of sunshine without and within. The lovers spent the whole day together, hand in hand. They went to church together: they sat side by side, they warbled off the same hymn book. The service proved, as the preacher used to say, a season of refreshment, for never doth religion so uplift the soul as when it is entirely happy: the voices of the choir chanting the psalms filled them with joy, and would have done so even if they had been penitential minors, and the lamentation of a sinner. Their hearts rose higher and higher as the preacher exhorted, and would have flown upwards just as much whether he had brandished the terrors of the law or held out the gracious promise of the Gospel. For you see, at such a time as this, whatever was said or done only led this faithful pair farther and deeper into the shady glades and fragrant lawns and flowery dells of Love's Paradise.
Every church, at every service, and especially in the evening, contains many such lovers. You may know them by certain infallible signs. They sit very close together: they sing off the same book: their faces betray by the rigidity of their attitude, which is that of pretended attention, the far-away expression of their eyes, and the absence of any external sign of emotion or sympathy with the preacher, that their hands, beneath some folds of the feminine gabardine, are closely clasped. It has sometimes pleased the philosopher and relieved the tedium of a dull sermon to look round the congregation and to pick out the lovers—here a pair and therea pair. Even in the church, you see, Love is conqueror and king.
These lovers, therefore, went to church in a frame of mind truly heavenly: nobody in the whole congregation felt more deeply pious: every response was an Act of Praise: every prayer an Act of Gratitude: every hymn a personal Thank-offering. But beneath those seemingly calm faces was flying and rushing a whirlwind of hopes, memories, plans, projects, and gratitudes. He who looks back upon the days immediately before his wedding-day—most men no more remember their own emotions than a child remembers yesterday's earache—will wonder how he lived through that time of change, when all that he prayed for was granted, but on the condition of a turning upside down of all his habits, customs, and petted ways.
All round them sat the people, no doubt with minds wholly attuned to the service of Prayer and Praise. Well, the sheep in a flock to outward seeming are all alike, yet every animal has his own desires and small ambitions for himself. So I suppose with the congregation. As every man shuts the street door behind him and trudges along the way to church—theVia Sacra—with wife and children, he carries in his waistcoat pocket, close to his heart, a little packet of business cares to think upon during the sermon. And if all the thoughts of all the people could be collected after the sermon instead of the offertory, they would make a salutary oblation indeed.
'George,' said Elsie, as they came out, 'let us go into the Gardens and sit under a tree and talk. Let us get away from everybody for half an hour.'
Kensington Gardens were filled with the customary throng of those who, like themselves, had been to church. The carping philosopher says unkind things about Church, and Gardens, and Fashion. As if Church would ever keep like from congregating with like! There were shoals of beautiful girls, dressed as well as they knew or could afford: dozens of young fellows, and with them the no longer quite so young, the no longer young, the no longer young at all, the middle-aged, the elderly and the old, not to speak of the children. Elsie looked up and down the walk. 'We are never so much alone as in a crowd,' she said, with the air that some girls assume of saying an original thing which no woman ever did say yet, unless by accident.They joined the stream: presently George led the girl out of the road and across the grass to a place where two or three chairs were set under the trees. They sat down. Then occurred the miracle wrought in these gardens every day and all day long. Out of the ground sprang a man—for such he seemed, though doubtless a spirit-messenger—who demanded twopence. This paid, he vanished straightway. After this ceremony they talked.
'George,' said the girl, 'every day now, wherever I am, even at church, I feel as if I should like to jump up and sing and dance. This morning I should have liked a service all to ourselves—you to read and I to sing: you to pray and I to praise. I kept wondering if there was any girl in the place so happy as myself—or so unhappy as I was three short weeks ago.'
'Elsie,' said George—a simple thing to say, but it had a thousand meanings.
'We have not deserved it. Indeed, indeed—we have not. Why are we singled out for such joy? We already had the greatest thing of all—we had love. That is happiness enough for some women. We only wanted a little more money, and now we have all this great fortune.'
'It is wonderful, Elsie!'
She laid her hand on his and spoke in her sweet low voice, gazing upwards. 'George! I am so happy, that I want everybody else to be happy as well. The angels, I am sure, must lose some of their joy in wishing that all were with them. I pity all those poor girls who have no lovers: all those poor married people who are lying in poverty: all those poor creatures who are trying for what they cannot get; all those who are weeping outside the gates of Heaven. George, it is a beautiful world, and it should be such a happy world: there should be nothing but joy all through life. There is such an abundance of happiness possible in it. Sadness is only a passing cloud: anxiety is only a touch of east wind: evil and pain are only fleeting shadows.'
She sighed and clasped her hands, and the tears rose to her eyes.
'We shall grow old together, George,' she went on, murmuring rather than speaking.—I omit her lover's interruptions and interjections.—'You will always love me, long after my beauty—you know you will call it beauty, George—is past and gone:even when I am a poor old crone doubled up in my arm-chair: you will always love me. My life will be full—full—full of love. Perhaps——' Here her face flushed, and she stopped. 'We shall have no trouble about money: we shall go on always learning more and more, growing wiser and wiser and wiser. You will be a wise and good man, thinking and working all your life for other people, just as Mr. Dering imagined—three weeks ago. Everybody will love and respect you. Then you will grow grey-headed, you poor, dear boy; and all the world will say how wise and strong you are; and I shall be prouder of my old husband than even I was of my young lover. The life that others have dreamed, we shall live. Every day shall come laden with its own joy, so that we would not, if we could help it, suffer it to go away.' She struck a deeper note, and her voice trembled and sank and her eyes filled with tears: 'Life shall be all happiness, as God intended for us. Even Death will be little sorrow, for the separation will be so short.' Once more she laid her hand on his.
Even to the most frivolous, the prospect of the wedded life awakens grave and solemn thoughts: for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear and brains to understand, there is no prospect so charged with chances and possibilities, where even life itself may become a Death in Life.
When George left her in the evening, he drove to see Athelstan.
'So,' he said, 'you have been courting all day, I suppose. You ought to have had enough of it. Sit down and have something—a pipe—a cigar.—Well—you are going to be very jolly, I suppose. Elsie's little fortune will help a bit, won't it?'
'I should think so, indeed.'
'Yes—I've been very glad, ever since you told me that the child had had this stroke of luck. I wonder who gave her the money? To be sure, there is plenty of money knocking about among the Arundels. Most of us have had a sort of instinct for making money. Put us down anywhere among a lot of men in a city, and we begin to transfer the contents of their pockets to our own.'
'Meanwhile, give up this old resentment. Come back to your own people. Come to our wedding.'
'I cannot possibly, unless you will tell me who forged that cheque. How could I go back to people who still believe meguilty? When you are married, I will go and see Elsie, which I can do with a light heart. You have not told any one about my return?'
'Certainly not. No one suspects, and no one talks or thinks about you.'
Athelstan laughed a little. 'That is a doubtful piece of information. Am I to rejoice or to weep, because I am completely forgotten and out of mind? It is rather humiliating, isn't it?'
'You are not forgotten at all. That is a different thing. Only they do not speak of you.'
'Well, George, never mind that now. I am glad you came to-night, because I have some news for you. I have found the commissionaire who took the cheque to the Bank—actually found the man.'
'No! After all these years?'
'I wrote out the particulars of the case—briefly. Yesterday I took the paper to the commissionaires' barrack in the Strand and offered a reward for the recovery of the man who had cashed the cheque. That same evening the man presented himself and claimed the reward. He remembered the thing very well—for this reason: the gentleman who employed him first sent him with a bag to a Parcel Delivery Office: he did not look at the address. The gentleman was staying at the Cecil Hotel. Now the commissionaire was a one-armed man. Because he had only one arm, the gentleman—who was a pleasant-spoken gentleman—gave him ten shillings for his trouble, which was nine shillings more than his proper pay. The gentleman sent him to the Bank with this cheque to cash, and he returned with seven hundred and twenty pounds in ten-pound notes. Then it was that the gentleman—who seems to have been a free-handed gentleman—gave him the ten shillings. The man says that he would know that gentleman anywhere. He was old, and had grey hair. He says that he should know him wherever he saw him. What do you think of that?'
'Well—it is something, if you could find that old man.'
'Why, of course it was Checkley—grey-haired Checkley. We'll catch that old fox, yet. Beware of Checkley. He's a Fox. He's a Worm. He's a creeping Centipede. When the old man goes, you must make Checkley pack.'
On Monday morning the Unexpected happened. It came with more than common malignity. In fact, nothing more threatening to the persons chiefly concerned in the calamity could have happened, though at first they were happily spared the comprehension of its full significance.
There is a wide-spread superstition—so wide that it must be true—that at those rare moments when one feels foolishly happy, at peace with all the world, at peace with one's own conscience, all injuries forgiven, the future stretched out before like a sunlit peaceful lake, some disaster, great or small, is certainly imminent. 'Don't feel too happy,' says Experience Universal. The Gods resent the happiness of man. Affect a little anxiety. Assume a certain sadness. Restrain that dancing leg. If you must shake it, do so as if by accident, or as if in terror—for choice, shake it over an open grave in the churchyard. Stop singing that song of joy; try the Lamentation of a Sinner instead. So will the Gods be deceived. Above all, never allow yourself to believe that the Devil is dead. He is not even asleep. By carefully observing these precautions, a great many misfortunes may be averted. If, for instance, George had gone home soberly on Sunday night instead of carrying on like a schoolboy in playtime, obviously happy, and so inviting calamity, perhaps he would never have been connected—as he afterwards became—with this disaster.
You have heard that Mr. Dering was a man of method. Every morning he arrived at his office at a quarter before ten: he hung up his coat and hat in a recess behind the door: he then opened his safe with his own hand. Checkley had already laid out the table with a clean blotting-pad, pens, and letter-paper: he had also placed the letters of the day upon the pad. The reading of the letters began the day's work. The lawyer read them, made notes upon them, rang for his shorthand clerk, and dictated answers. These dispatched, he turned to the standing business. This morning, with the usual routine, he was plodding through the letters ofthe day, taking up one after the other, and reading half mechanically. Presently he opened one, and looked at the heading. 'Ellis & Northcote,' he said. 'What do they want?' Then he suddenly stopped short and started. Then he began the letter again, and again he stopped short. It was from his brokers in the City, and it recommended a certain advantageous investment. That was not in itself very extraordinary. But it contained the following remarkable passage: 'You have made such great transfers and so many sales during the last few months that you have probably more profitable uses for money in your own business. But if you should have a few thousands available at the present moment, it is a most favourable opportunity——'
'Great transfers and many sales?' asked Mr. Dering, bewildered. 'What transfers? What sales does he mean?'
He turned over the pages of his Diary. He could find no transactions of the kind at all. Then he reflected again. 'I can remember no transfers,' he murmured. 'Is this another trick of memory?'
Finally, he touched the bell upon his table.
'Checkley,' said Mr. Dering, on the appearance of the ancient clerk, 'I have got a letter that I don't understand at all. I told you that my memory was going. Now you see. Here is a letter about transfers and sales of stock. What transfers? I don't understand one word of it. My memory is not only going—it is gone.'
'Memory going? Nonsense,' the old man shook his head. 'No—no; your memory is all right. Mine is as clear as a bell. So's yours. You eat hearty. So do I. You sleep well. So do I. We're both as hale and hearty as ever.'
'No—no. My memory is not what it was. I've told you so a dozen times. I lose myself sometimes. Yesterday, when the clock struck twelve, I thought it was only ten. I had lost two hours. And sometimes when I walk home, I lose recollection of the walk afterwards.'
'Tut, tut; nobody of your age is such a young man as you. Why, you walk like five-and-twenty. And you eat hearty—you eat very hearty.' His words were encouraging, but he looked anxiously at his master. Truly, there was no apparent decay in Mr. Dering. He sat as upright: he looked as keen: he spoke as clearly, as ever.
'Well—about this letter. My friend Ellis, of Ellis& Northcote, writes to me about something or other, and speaks of my effecting great transfers and sales of stock lately. What does he mean?'
'You haven't bought or sold any stock lately, that I know of.'
'Well, you would have known.—Have we had to make any investments for clients of late? There was the Dalton-Smith estate.'
'That was eleven months ago.'
'I suppose he must mean that—he can't mean anything else. Yes, that is it. Well—I've got a Partner now, so that it matters less than it would have done—had my memory played me tricks with no other responsible man in the place.'
'You didn't want a partner,' said Checkley jealously. 'You had ME.'
'He must mean that,' Mr. Dering repeated. 'He can't mean anything else. However—has my Bank book been made up lately?'
'Here it is. Made up last Friday. Nothing been in or out since.'
Mr. Dering had not looked at his book for three or four months. He was well served: his people took care of his Bank book. Now he opened it, and began to run his finger up and down the pages.
'Checkley,' he said, 'what has happened to Newcastle Corporation Stock? The dividends were due some weeks ago. They are not paid yet. Is the town gone bankrupt? And—eh? Where is Wolverhampton? And—and——' He turned over the paper quickly. 'Checkley, there is something wrong with the book. Not a single dividend of anything entered for the last four months. There ought to have been about six hundred pounds in that time.'
'Queer mistake,' said Checkley. 'I'll take the book round to the Bank, and have it corrected.'
'A very gross and careless mistake, I call it. Tell the manager I said so. Let it be set right at once, Checkley—at once—and while you wait. And bring it back to me.'
The Bank was in Chancery Lane, close to the office. The old clerk went off on his errand.
'A very careless mistake,' the lawyer repeated; 'any clerk of mine who committed such a mistake should be dismissed atonce.' In fact, the certainty of full and speedy justice kept Mr. Dering's clerks always at a high level of efficiency.
He returned to the letters, apparently with no further uneasiness.
After ten minutes, Checkley taking longer than he expected, Mr. Dering became aware that his attention was wandering. 'Great transfers and many sales,' he repeated. 'After all, he must mean the investment of that Dalton-Smith money. Yet that was only a single transaction. What can he mean? He must have made a mistake. He must be thinking of another client. It's his memory, not mine, that is confused. That's it—his memory.'
The large open safe in the corner was filled with stacks of paper tied up and endorsed. These papers contained, among other things, the securities for the whole of Mr. Dering's private fortune, which was now very considerable. Even the greatest City magnate would feel for Mr. Dering the respect due to wealth if he knew the amount represented by the contents of that safe. There they were, the leases, agreements, mortgages, deeds, bonds, conveyances, shares, all the legal documents by which the wicked man is prevented from seizing and appropriating the rich man's savings. Formerly the rich man kept his money in a box with iron bands. He locked up the box and put it in a recess in the cellar contrived in the stone wall. If he was only a bourgeois, it was but a little box, and he put it in a secret place (but everybody knew the secret) at the head of his bed. If he were a peasant, he tied his money up in a clout and put it under the hearthstone. In any case, thieves broke in and stole those riches. Now, grown wiser, he has no box of treasures at all: he lends it all in various directions and to various associations and companies. Every rich man is a money-lender: he is either Shylock the Great or Shylock the Less, according to the amount he lends. Thieves can steal nothing but paper which is no use to them. As we grow wiser still, we shall have nothing at all in any house that can be of any use to any thief, because everything in the least valuable will have its papers, without the production of which nothing of value will be bought or sold. And all the gold and silver, whether forks or mugs, will be lodged in the Bank. Then everybody will become honest, and the Eighth Commandment will be forgotten.
Among Mr. Dering's papers were share certificates, bonds,and scrip of various kinds, amounting in all to a great many thousands. Of this money a sum of nearly thirteen thousand pounds belonged to Elsie, but was still in her guardian's name. This, of course, was the fortune which had fallen so unexpectedly into the girl's hands. The rest, amounting to about twenty-five thousand pounds, was his own money. It represented of course only a part, only a small part, of his very respectable fortune.
Mr. Dering, whose memory, if it was decaying, was certainly clear on some points, looked across the room at the open safe, and began to think of the papers representing their investments. He remembered perfectly all the different Corporation Stock. All the water, gas, railway shares, the Indian Stock and the Colonial Stock: the Debenture companies and the Trading companies. He was foolish, he thought, to be disturbed by a mere mistake of the broker: his recent lapses of memory had made him nervous: there could be nothing wrong: but that clerk at the Bank ought to be dismissed for carelessness. There could be nothing wrong: for the sake of assurance he would turn out the papers: but there could be nothing wrong.
He knew very well where they were; everything in his office had its place: they were all tied up together in a bulky parcel, bestowed upon a certain shelf or compartment of the safe. He pushed back his chair, got up, and walked over to the safe.
Strange! The papers were not in their place. Again he felt the former irritation at having forgotten something. It was always returning: every day he seemed to be forgetting something. But the certificates must be in the safe. He stood irresolutely looking at the piles of papers, trying to think how they could have been displaced. While he was thus wondering and gazing, Checkley came back, Bank-book in hand.
'There is something wrong,' he said. 'No dividends at all have been paid to your account for the last three months. There is no mistake at the Bank. I've seen the manager, and he's looked into it, and says there can't be any mistake about the entries.'
'No dividends? What is the meaning of it, Checkley? No dividends? Why, there's thirty-eight thousand pounds worth of stock. The certificates are kept here in the safe; only, for some reason or other, I can't find them at themoment. They must be in the safe somewhere. Just help me to find them, will you?'
He began to search among the papers, at first a little anxiously, then nervously, then feverishly.
'Where are they?' he cried, tossing over the bundles. 'They must be here. They must be here. Let us turn out the whole contents of the safe. We must find them. They have never been kept in any other place. Nobody has touched them or seen them except myself.'
The old clerk pulled out all the papers in the safe and laid them in a great pile on the table. When there was nothing left in the safe, they began systematically to go through the whole. When they had finished, they looked at each other blankly.
Everything was there except the certificates and scrip representing the investment of thirty-eight thousand pounds. These alone could not be found. They examined every packet: they opened every bundle of papers: they looked into every folded sheet of parchment or foolscap. The certificates were not in the safe. 'Well,' said the clerk at last, 'they're not here, you see.—Now then!'
In the midst of their perplexity happened a thing almost as surprising and quite as unexpected as the loss of the certificates. Among the papers was a small round parcel tied up with red tape. Checkley opened it. 'Bank-notes,' he said, and laid it aside. They were not at the moment looking for bank-notes, but for certificates. When he was satisfied that these were not in the safe, and had thrown, so to speak, the responsibility of finding out the cause of their absence upon his master, he took up once more this bundle. It was, as he had said, a bundle of bank-notes rolled up and tied round. He untied the knot and laid them flat, turning up the corners and counting. 'Curious,' he said; 'they're all ten-pound notes—all ten-pound notes: there must be more than fifty of them. And the outside one is covered with dust. What are they?'
'How should I know?' said Mr. Dering irritably. 'Give them to me. Bank-notes? There are no bank-notes in my safe.'
'Forgotten!' the clerk murmured. 'Clients' money, perhaps. But the client would have asked for it. Five or six hundred pounds. How can five hundred pounds be forgotten? Even a Rothschild would remember five hundred pounds.Forgotten!' He glanced suspiciously at his master, and shook his head, fumbling among the papers.
Mr. Dering snatched the bundle from his clerk. Truly, they were bank-notes—ten-pound bank-notes; and they had been forgotten. The clerk was right. There is no Firm in the world where a bundle worth five hundred pounds could be forgotten and no inquiry made after it. Mr. Dering stared blankly at them. 'Notes!' he cried—'notes! Ten-pound notes. What notes?—Checkley, how did these notes come here?'
'If you don't know,' the clerk replied, 'nobody knows. You've got the key of the safe.'
'Good Heavens!' If Mr. Dering had been twenty years younger, he would have jumped. Men of seventy-five are not allowed to jump. The dignity of age does not allow of jumping. 'This is most wonderful! Checkley, this is most mysterious!'
'What is it?'
'These notes—the Devil is in the safe to-day, I do believe. First the certificates are lost; that is, they can't be found—and next these notes turn up.'
'What notes are they, then?'
'They are nothing else than the bank-notes paid across the counter for that forged cheque of eight years ago. Oh! there is no doubt of it—none whatever. I remember the numbers—the consecutive numbers—seventy-two of them—seven hundred and twenty pounds. How did they get here? Who put them in? Checkley, I say, how did these notes get here?'
He held the notes in his hand and asked these questions in pure bewilderment, and not in the expectation of receiving any reply.
'The notes paid to that young gentleman when he forged the cheque,' said Checkley, 'must have been put back in the safe by him. There's no other way to account for it. He was afraid to present them. He heard you say they were stopped, and he put them back. I think I see him doing it. While he was flaring out, he done it—I'm sure I see him doing it.'
Mr. Dering received this suggestion without remark. He laid down the notes and stared at his clerk. The two old men stared blankly at each other. Perhaps Checkley's countenance, of the two, expressed the greater astonishment.
'How did those notes get into the safe?' the lawyer repeated. 'This is even a more wonderful thing than the mislaying of the certificates. You took them out. Show me exactly where they were lying.'
'They were behind these books. See! the outside note is covered with dust.'
'They must have been lying there all these years. In my safe! The very notes paid across the counter to the forger's messenger! In my safe! What does this mean? I feel as if I was going mad. I say— What does all this mean, Checkley?'
The clerk made answer slowly, repeating his former suggestion.
'Since young Arundel forged the cheque, young Arundel got the notes. Since young Arundel got the notes, young Arundel must have put them back. No one else could. When young Arundel put them back, he done it because he was afraid of your finding out. He put them back unseen by you that day when you charged him with the crime.'
'I did not charge him. I have charged no one.'
'I charged him, then, and you did not contradict. I'd charge him again if he was here.'
'Any man may charge anything upon any other man. There was no proof whatever, and none has ever come to light.'
'You're always for proofs that will convict a man. I only said that nobody else could do the thing. As for putting the notes back again in the safe, now I come to think of it'—his face became cunning and malignant—'I do remember—yes—oh! yes—I clearly remember—I quite clearly remember—I see it as plain as if it was before me. He got sidling nearer and nearer the safe while we were talking: he got quite close—so—he chucked a bundle in when he thought I wasn't looking. I think—I almost think—I could swear to it.'
'Nonsense,' said the lawyer. 'Your memory is too clear. Tie up the notes, Checkley, and put them back. They may help, perhaps, some time, to find out the man. Meantime, let us go back to our search. Let us find these certificates.'
They had now examined every packet in the safe: they had looked at every paper: they had opened every book andsearched through all the leaves. There was no doubt left: the certificates were not there.