This announcement of Lionel Crawford head an electrical effect upon Dominique Lavirotte. Notwithstanding Dr. O'Malley's strict orders to the contrary, the Frenchman sat bolt upright in the bed, looking ghastly in his bandages, and stared at the old man. "You, Dora's grandfather!" he cried. His eyes starting in their sockets, and bloodless lips remaining open when he had spoken. "You, Dora's grandfather! You are telling me a hideous lie. For what purpose are you telling me this hideous lie?" "Hush!" cried the old man, alarmed lest Lavirotte in his excitement should make allusion in similarly loud tones to his great secret. "You must not excite yourself. Someone may hear you, and then how should we be?" Lavirotte stared still, but uttered no word. The power of speech was taken from him by the nature of the statement made by the other man. Had this dark-visaged ogre come here to worm the history of his perfidy to Dora from him, in order to be avenged on him out of a confession from his own mouth? Was this man about to add to his mental tortures a storm of intolerable abuse, or, taking advantage of his helpless state, finish the work which the night of that encounter had left undone? "You seem to misunderstand my intention altogether. I assure you all I have said and have to say is for your good, for our good, for the good of our great object." Like all other men who have ever been possessed by the idea of discovering hidden treasure, all pursuits and considerations seemed of comparatively little moment compared with the thought which possessed him. Like all other such men, he dreaded more than anything else the chance that his secret might become known to anyone not absolutely essential to success. Lavirotte fell back, relieved and exhausted. There was no mistaking the wild earnestness of this strange-eyed enthusiast. "Go on," he said faintly. "There can be nothing simpler or, I think, better, than I suggest," continued Lionel Crawford. "I cannot say, I do not know, how long yet it may take me to get down to where the plate and jewels lie buried. It may be a year, it may be more or less, six months at least, and not farther off than a year-and-a-half. You are, unfortunately, sceptical of the existence of any such treasure. I am as sure it is there as though I myself had buried it." "Why not then use the money you speak of in employing men to dig for it under your superintendence?" asked Lavirotte, peevishly. "Do not talk so loud." Lavirotte had, because of his weakness, spoken almost in a whisper. "Do not talk such nonsense. Employ men to dig, and have the whole thing town-talk in twenty-four hours! Let a lot of mere day labourers within the magic spell, within touch of the thing I have brooded over and kept secretly apart from all the rest of the world for years and years! What profanation! I would rather forego all hope of ever enjoying final triumph than let the shrine of my dreams be defiled by unsympathetic hands!" The old man was once again back in dreamland, and unconscious that the present had any real existence, save that it was the roadway to the future. "But if there is any likelihood of long delay in--in finding this treasure" (Lavirotte believed his visitor would come on the chests of precious articles belonging to the great Lord Tuscar on the same day that someone else found the philosopher's stone), "you will want all the money you have, and cannot afford to give it to me for the purpose of spending it on a speculation which may be as likely to succeed as----," he was about to say "your own," but substituted, "the search for the North Pole. It seems to me that there is no earthly use in my even thinking of such a thing. I am beaten by fate, and the best thing I can do is to give in." This speech instantly recalled the old man to the subject in hand and the immediate surroundings of the case. Apart from his ruling passion--the hidden gold and stones--he was simple, almost childlike. But anything which touched his darling project roused up in him a fiery spirit of intelligence no one under ordinary circumstances could anticipate. "No, no!" cried he. "You must not even think of giving in. You must make up your mind to succeed. You must succeed, not only for your own sake, but for the sake of Dora as well." A faint smile came over Lavirotte's face. "Tell me more. Tell me more. You give me hope. You make me aspire." The peevishness was fading out of Lavirotte's manner and face. "It may be possible for me to redeem my character and my credit yet." "Of course it is quite possible, quite easy for you to do so. There is not the least difficulty about the matter. Is it a bargain?" After a little more talk it was arranged that Lavirotte should take the money as an advance on his share of the great Tuscar hoard. "And now," said Lavirotte, "dear Mr. Crawford, don't you think that in this matter of making love to one girl while I was engaged to another, I deserved the very severest instead of the most merciful treatment at your hands?" "Well," said the old man, "that's all past and gone now, and we all grow wiser as we grow older. It will, I suppose, be some days before you are up and about again. The landlord of this place has been very wise, and by his aid I have been able to keep all knowledge of the circumstances of your case from Dora. There is no need why she should hear anything about it now, and as you are on the way to recovery, and we need not be anxious about your health, I fancy the best thing we can do is to get her away as quickly as possible from this. What do you think?" "I don't know," said Lavirotte, gloomily. "You see, if she does not hear the truth now it will be like practising another deceit upon her. I shall have to act a part, and not a very creditable one." Crawford became uneasy. He knew too little of Dora to be able to judge how she would receive the whole story, and it seemed now to him a matter of the first importance that he should lose no possible hold of Lavirotte. "You see," said he, "she will be shocked to learn that you have been hurt in an encounter, and are not ill in a natural way as she supposes. Then you will have to explain almost everything, and it might be better that portion of the explanation should be postponed." Lavirotte moved restlessly. "It is very difficult," he said. "I own it is very difficult. One hardly can know what to do. I want to spare her, of course, if I can; and I want to put myself right with her if I can." "Then," said the old man, with a sudden gleam of intelligence in his eyes, "let mercy for her prevail. You see you have been in fault. Suffer your own explanation to lie over for the present in order to spare her feelings. Later on you can put yourself right with her." Lavirotte sighed, and then asked, languidly: "What do you propose?" "That I should take her back with me to London at once, telling her that you are not allowed to see her in your present state of health; but that immediately on your recovery you will follow us to London, and that, in the meantime, I will take care of her." "Perhaps, after all," said the injured man, "that is the best plan." Now that the prospect of an immediate meeting between him and Dora grew dim, he lost interest in the conversation, and the excitement of anticipation being withdrawn, the weakness of his condition asserted itself. After some more talk, it was finally agreed between the two men that Lionel Crawford's suggestion should be carried out. Then it became the duty of the latter to inform Dora of this decision. He found the girl in a state of the greatest excitement and anxiety. "Oh!" she cried, "I thought you would never come. May I not see him now?" The old man took her by the hands and led her back to the seat she had risen from on his entrance. "My dear child," he said, "there is not the least cause for your anxiety about Dominique's health. He is progressing most favourably. But it would be exceedingly unwise that he should see you now." "But you said I might see him. You promised I might see him!" "Since I told you so I have been with him and learned more of his case. Although he is most anxious to see you, he is persuaded that doing so would be injurious now. He will be all right in a few days. We have talked the whole matter over. I intend assisting him to a much better position than he now holds. I am authorised by him to make all preparations for your marriage." The young girl coloured, partly by surprise and partly by bashfulness. Lionel Crawford saw that these words had made an impression favourable to his views. "If we want to get him well and make him happy soon," he continued, "he and I agree that the best thing to be done is that you and I should instantly set out for London." "But it is very hard to have to go without seeing him," said the girl, confused by the new and unexpected turn affairs had taken, and elated by the assurance that the difficulties of her lover's worldly position were at an end, and that when next they met it would be to part no more. The old man saw that he had carried his point. He rose briskly, and said: "The sooner we are off the better. There is no use in our staying here an hour. Being so near him when you may not see him would only add to your uncomfortableness. I will go and see at once how and when we are to get back. Wait for me here." As he reached the bar, he found two young men there. One was in the employment of the railway at Rathclare, the other in the post-office of that town. Their backs were towards him, and they did not hear him entering the room. "Maher told me," said the Railway, "that an old man and a young girl have come to see Lavirotte. That's the girl, no doubt, he made love to in London. Maher wouldn't tell me their names; but I'll find out all about them when I get to London." "You may not find it so easy, my young man," thought Lionel Crawford. "I have kept a secret for years."
It was a sore disappointment to the town of Glengowra when it found that its two interesting visitors had left, and left suddenly; having had, as far as current accounts went, no communication whatever with anyone in the place but the landlord of the hotel and Lavirotte, neither of whom would give any information as to the strangers or their business. It was not, of course, until the next day that it became generally known two strangers had arrived and gone away. Kempston, the fussy little magistrate, said it was a shame, a part of a scandalous plot to defeat justice, and that someone or other ought to be punished all the more severely on this account. The police became more gloomy and suspicious, and silent, and the general townsfolk, visitors included, felt that they had been robbed of an exciting item in the programme of crime. Dr. O'Malley was no exception to the general protest, but he took a rather different view of it. "I am told," he said to Lavirotte, "that two highly mysterious and attractive strangers arrived last night. An old man, attractive, because venerable, and all that. A young girl, a seraph, a sylph, a miracle of beauty, attractive because of her loveliness. The old man has an interview with Maher. The old man has an interview with you. The two slope. Let us say, for argument sake, 'Confound the old man, but what about the nightingale, the bride of Abydos, the seraph?' Here am I, Dr. Thomas O'Malley, one of the lights of my profession, and a man who may at any time be called into consultation at the bedside of Royalty, and yet I am not permitted to be fascinated. You know, Lavirotte, I am not in the least curious, but who was this goddess, and why was I not permitted to see her?" Lavirotte raised his hand and let it fall on the counterpane with a gesture of deprecation. "Even I was not permitted to see her, O'Malley." "But all those who did see her say she was adorable, divine. You arch hypocrite, you know all about her, and will not speak. At this moment there may be a telegram awaiting me at home, announcing that I have been created a baronet. How, in heaven's name, am I to get on without a Lady O'Malley? And once I am a baronet, a man of my appearance, parts, and position would be so assailed by ambitious and designing spinsters, that I should be compelled, in sheer self-defence, and in order to prevent myself committing bigamy, to turn my back upon the whole brood. What spite have you, Lavirotte, against this dark-eyed wonder, that you would not give her a chance of becoming Lady O'Malley?" Lavirotte affected to be languid, and said: "I really cannot give you any information, and you said I was not to talk much." "I'll take very good care you do not talk much whileIam present.Inever let anyone talk too much in my presence." "Look here, O'Malley," said the invalid, "I really must ask you to let me alone on this subject. I'm not equal to it just at present." "I know, my dear fellow. I won't worry you. I'm the least curious man in the world. As your medical adviser, I would recommend you, with a view to relieving your mind, to tell me all about this matter. But, as your friend, I would advise you to tell me nothing at all of it, unless you wish it all over the town in an hour." The busy little doctor left and proceeded to the room of the other patient. Here he found Mrs. Creagh with O'Donnell. She had insisted upon dividing the work of nursing with her daughter, and made the girl go home and lie down for some hours. Under the circumstances of Mr. O'Donnell's business difficulties, his wife did not dare to leave him. She had paid a flying visit the morning after the encounter, and gone back to Rathclare the following day. After the position in which her husband had been found that night, she did not dare to leave him for an hour. Like a brave woman she faced all the world for his sake, and although no one blamed him for the ruin which had overtaken him, the pair were pitied universally, and pity is harder to bear than blame. The doctor found his second patient doing remarkably well; in fact, much better than could be expected. Of course, Mrs. and Miss Creagh had been cautioned, with all the others who might visit the sick room, to say nothing of the Vernon disaster. "Let me see," said the cheery little man; "let me see. I think you said your wedding was fixed for a month after the accident. Well, if you don't want to be all right until a month, I'll have to give you some powerful medicine to keep you back. It's amazing, ma'am," he said, turning to Mrs. Creagh, who sat smiling pleasantly at the bedside. She was a plump, fair, good-looking woman, between fifty and sixty, with a genial, round face, and a gracious, cordial manner, which are better in a sick room than all the medicines in the Pharmacopœia. "It is amazing, ma'am, how these young men will get well in spite of us doctors. We can generally manage to polish off the old people in a handsome, becoming, and professional way; but these young people are dead against us--or alive against us, what's worse. Whenever, Mrs. Creagh, you hear of a doctor dying of a broken heart, it isalways--mind, I sayalways--because of the stubbornness of the young people. Ordinary men die of broken hearts because of love, or business, or something of that kind; but when a patient defies prussic acid, nux vomica, or aqua pura, it is all up with one of our profession." "By-the-way, O'Malley," said O'Donnell, "have you got a couple of hours to spare to-day?" "My dear fellow, pending the arrival of the official documents appointing me Surgeon-in-ordinary to the Queen, I can spare you a couple of hours." "Then I'd be very much obliged to you," said O'Donnell, "if you'd run into Rathclare and see the old people. I am very anxious about them. I know the governor always has his hands full of business, and that my mother does not wish to be away from him, but I cannot help wondering why neither of them has come out. I am greatly afraid there must be something the matter with the governor. Of course Mrs. Creagh or Nellie writes twice a day, and we hear once a day; but I can't make out how neither of them has come here." "I'm sure your father is in excellent health," said O'Malley; "but if it will relieve your mind in the slightest degree, I shall go in by the next train and come out with news." O'Malley went straight to the railway station and took the first train leaving Glengowra for Rathclare. He of course knew, or guessed, why it was neither father nor mother came to visit the son; but under the circumstances it was best to humour Eugene and see Mr. and Mrs. O'Donnell. He found the old couple in the small library behind the dining-room. The window of this looked into the garden in the rear, and so was shielded from prying eyes. "Dr. O'Malley," cried the woman, rising to her feet, "have they been writing me lies? Is he worse?" The old man was sitting at the table, on which lay a few open ledgers. In his hand he held a quill pen, with which he was making, tremorously, figures on a large sheet of ruled paper. At his wife's words he dropped the pen on the paper and looked up. Then, hearing the noise of the pen fall, he looked down again, and cried: "Confound it, I have blotted the sheet." At that moment the traditions of a lifetime of business were all upon him. He stood in the centre of the ruins of his beloved city, laid low by earthquake; the fiery heat of all his years of commercial toil were focussed on him then. He was making outhis bankrupt sheet. The doctor replied instantly, taking no notice of what the old man had said: "On the contrary, Mrs. O'Donnell, I am come to tell you, thinking you would be glad to hear it by word of mouth from me, that your son is getting on infinitely better than I had ever dared to hope. You may make your mind quite easy that he will be up and about sooner than we thought at the best." The woman threw herself into a chair and burst into tears. "Mary," said the husband, looking at her in perplexity as he sopped up the ink with a piece of blotting-paper, "I was so busy I did not hear. What did he say?" "He said that all is well at Glengowra," said the woman, through her sobs. "He means, Mary," said the old man, "that Eugene is dead." She dried her eyes, ceased her sobs, and looked up. "No, James, no. He said Eugene is better--getting on as well as can be expected, and that he will soon be up and about once more." The father put down his pen, leaned back in his chair, covered his face with his hands, and said in a feeble, tremulous voice: "It would be better if my boy was dead." Mrs. O'Donnell made a gesture of silence and caution to the doctor. Then she rose and beckoned the latter to follow her out of the room. When they were in the hall she said: "The shock, the business shock, has been too much for his brain, I fear. Ever since that awful night they found him in the strong-room with the revolver I am in dread if I leave him for even a minute. I must go now. God bless you for coming. Good-bye. Be good to my boy." That evening, when O'Malley called to see Lavirotte, he told him the scene he had witnessed that day in the library at O'Donnell's. All at once the Frenchman became strangely excited. He sat up in the bed, and cried out: "I have it, O'Malley; I have it. I have done a great wrong to those people, but I think I see my way to setting it right again." "Lie down, you maniac," said the doctor, pushing him softly back. "Do you want to burst your bandages, or bring on fever? What do you mean?" "Mean!" cried the other. "I mean to sell my last shirt rather than that Eugene's father should come to ruin." "Keep quiet," said the doctor. "Keep quiet, or you will surely bring on delirium." "I have the means of doing it," cried Lavirotte, fiercely, "and I will do it." By this time O'Malley was bathing the injured man's head copiously. "If he gets delirium," thought the doctor, "it's all up with him." "I see the money," cried Lavirotte, excitedly shaking his arms in the air. "Half a million if it's a penny! That will clear James O'Donnell, the noble, honourable James O'Donnell, the father of my best, my dearest friend Eugene. Come here, Eugene, and take it, every sovereign, every sou. It is all yours. Take it, my boy; clear the old man, marry Nellie, and God bless you and her, and then the devil may have me if he will only have the goodness to wait so long." "Delirium," said the doctor, "has set in, and he will die."
It was late that evening when O'Malley left Lavirotte. The doctor gave instructions that if the delirium increased he was to be called. In the case of the Frenchman, two things puzzled the energetic little doctor. Although unquestionably the patient was raving mad, his pulse was normal, and his skin moist. When the nurse came up to the sick room, she could find no sign whatever of delirium. Lavirotte seemed as calm and collected as any judge on the bench. He asked was the doctor gone, and receiving an answer in the affirmative, said to the nurse: "Bring me a pencil and some paper. I want to write a couple of short notes." "Are you not afraid it would be too much for you, sir?" remonstrated the nurse. "No, no," said the other, decisively. "There is something on my mind, and I cannot sleep unless I get rid of it, so the sooner you get me what I want the better." The woman left the room, and in a few moments returned with what he required. Then, on the back of a book, he wrote the two following notes:
"My Dear Mr. Crawford,
"Since I saw you last I have thought of a matter which makes it of vital consequence we should not lose an hour in realising your great hope. I therefore beg of you to do all you can in furtherance of the scheme. Let me hear from you by return of post. The moment I am able to move I shall follow you to London. "Give my dearest love to Dora; say I am very sorry they would not let me see her when she was so near to me, and that to-morrow I will write her as long a letter as my strength will allow.
"Yours, most devotedly,
"Dominique Lavirotte."
The second was to this effect:
"Dear Mr. O'Donnell,
"I am too weak to write you a long letter. I hope you will take the will for the deed. I cannot tell you how sorry I am for all that has lately occurred, and how deeply I sympathise with you in the business troubles which, because of no fault of your own, have come upon you. "You know, of course, that Eugene and I are the greatest friends on earth. From news which I received to-day, and which I had little expectation of ever hearing, I have reason, good reason, to hope that within a very short time I am likely to come into possession of an enormous fortune--a fortune so large that it will make me one of the richest men in the kingdom. You are a man of business. To be precise, I expect about half a million. Need I tell you what my first, my greatest pleasure, will be in this? It will be to place the whole of it absolutely at the disposal of my best friend's father, so that he may be led carefully out of the present storm into the calm waters of prosperous trade, in which his honour and his industry have already made his name a household word in Ireland. "This note has run out much longer than I expected. Good-night, my dear Mr. O'Donnell. God bless you.
"Dominique Lavirotte."
When he had finished his two letters he enclosed them in envelopes, directing the latter first. Then suddenly he thought of what at first sight seemed an insuperable difficulty. How was he to address Crawford's letter? If he wrote on the envelope, "St. Prisca's Tower, Porter Street," there was little doubt that in due time the letter would be returned to him through the dead-letter office. Yet St. Prisca's Tower was the only address he knew for Crawford in London. How stupid it was of him not to have asked for an address. At the time, he had thought Dora or the old man should write to him first. Since they had left, this idea had occurred to him, and now he felt himself hopeless of communicating it to Crawford for the present. No postman would in his senses think of knocking at the massive door of that solitary tower, and if a postman, touched with lunacy, did knock with his knuckles, he would never receive a reply. He was fairly beaten. In this matter every hour was of value, of the highest value; and here he was paralysed by an unpardonable stupidity of his own. "Will you ask Mr. Maher," he said to the nurse, "if he would be good enough to step this way? I want a word with him." When the landlord entered, Lavirotte said: "Mr. Crawford, who was here last night, left for London without giving me his address. Can you think of any means by which I might be able to find it out at once? The matter is of very great importance." The landlord looked with a keen glance at the sallow face and bandaged head of the prone foreigner. Before Crawford left, he had made a confidant of Maher to the extent that all would yet be well between Lavirotte and his grand-daughter, and he had bound Maher, as an honourable man, to silence. He had, moreover, tried to persuade Maher that Lavirotte might not be quite so black as circumstances represented him. Still the other could not help regarding Lavirotte with a feeling the reverse of cordial. There could, however, be no harm, he thought, in helping Lavirotte in this matter. He said: "Mr. Crawford came first-class." "Yes." "From Euston?" "From Euston." "Then telegraph to Euston, address Mr. Crawford, first-class passenger Irish mail, Euston." The difficulty was solved, and in a few minutes Lavirotte had forwarded the telegram, asking to what address he should send a letter to him in London. At the same time he posted his letter to Mr. O'Donnell. There was little or no chance of his receiving a reply that night, as the Glengowra office would, in all likelihood, be shut before it could be forwarded there. Next morning the answer came:
"Address letter to the Cygnet Hotel, Porter Street, E.C."
Lavirotte's letter to Mr. O'Donnell was delivered the morning after it was written. He put it aside as the work of a man not responsible for his actions; and yet, since it contained the first suggestion that it was possible his business might be saved, he felt a slight tenderness towards it, as a man, whose powers are altogether small, out of proportion to his ambition, feels a tenderness towards the one person who believes in his strength. Immediately after it became generally known that Vernon and Son had stopped payment, Mr. O'Donnell had asked a few of his best friends to come and advise him as to his position. He explained to them that as far as the business in Rathclare was concerned, he was perfectly solvent and capable of carrying it on, but that, as he understood the affairs of Vernon and Son were in a desperate and disgraceful way, and as the company was unlimited, he should be certainly ruined by the "calls." He would, he told them, be quite content to lose all the money he had invested in Vernon and Son, if he might only keep on the Rathclare business as it was going; but that, of course, he was liable to the creditors of the bank up to the very last penny he had, and the chances were a thousand to one that, when Vernon and Son were completely wound up, he would find himself as poor as the poorest man in the parish. Then he asked what they would recommend him to do with respect to the business. They tried to persuade him that things were sure to turn out much better than he anticipated, and they advised him to keep the business running exactly as it now was. He had adopted their advice, but his heart was no longer in his work, and he wandered about the place which he had reared from the foundation to the roof, and he looked at the trade which he had created, with a faltering step and a lack-lustre eye. The evening of the day he got Lavirotte's letter was that following Dr. O'Malley's call. Mrs. O'Donnell had, in the few days between Eugene's hurt and this, tried to induce the father to go out to Glengowra and see their son. But he had declined, saying: "It would do neither him nor me any good. I can be of no use whatever to him now, after all my big promises to him. The boy's prospects are ruined, and, of course, for the girl's sake, that marriage must be broken off." This evening the mother felt more than ever anxious to see her son, and she made a strong appeal to the old man to take the train and run down to Glengowra for an hour. "No," he said, wearily. "Let me be, let me be. The very sight of the boy would be a reproach to me. He must see I was a fool to venture all my money, all my credit, with Vernon and Son." "Don't say that, James. You know he is the best and kindest son that ever lived. Besides, don't you see, as I told you before, it has all been kept from him?" "Then it will be all the worse to hear him talk about his marriage and his prospects. I could not stand it, Mary. I should go mad. I should let it all out to him, and kill him. My poor boy!" "Well," said the mother, "come down to Glengowra, and don't see him at all. He need not know you are there. Come with me--just for company." The poor woman was torn between devotion to her husband and affection for her son. She durst not leave the old man alone at home, and her heart was breaking to see her only son, her only child, the infinity of her maternity. At this suggestion of his wife's, that he might go to Glengowra without seeing his son, the old man looked up. "Wait a moment," he said, and lifted a paper-weight off some letters of the morning. He took up Lavirotte's and read it over carefully once more, then thrust it into his pocket, and said: "Very well, Mary. Come along." He uttered these words more brightly and briskly than any he had spoken since the great crash had come upon him. When the old couple arrived at Glengowra, they went straight to the hotel. The mother ascended to her son's room. The father sent his card up to Lavirotte. He was requested to walk upstairs. When he entered the room Lavirotte asked the woman to retire. "Mr. Lavirotte, I got your letter this morning, and I am extremely obliged to you for your kind words and for your offer of such enormous help. I most sincerely hope you may get your fortune; for, from all I have heard from Eugene, no one in the world could deserve better. I have come especially to thank you for your kind offer; but, of course, Mr. Lavirotte, you know I could never accept it. I am a doomed man." "You shall, you must accept it," cried the prostrate man, energetically. "I should care no more for all the money in the world than for a handful of pebbles on the beach below. With the money in my possession, should I see my friends wanting it? Besides, the sum I am to come into will be so great that even largely as you have suffered through that bank, I shall be able to spare you what you want to make good the breach, and still leave myself in absolute affluence." The manner of the Frenchman was one of utter self-possession, and it confounded Mr. O'Donnell to find one so apparently sane talking such trash. "May I ask you," said the old man, "if it is a fair question, from what source you expect to acquire this fortune?" "I am under an oath of secrecy in the matter, and cannot tell you. But since I have been hurt, the person who is working the affair for me, or rather on our joint behalf, has paid me a visit, and assured me there is not the least prospect of failure or miscarriage, and that at the end of six, and certainly in less than eighteen months from this, I should be in possession of my share, not less than half a million sterling." The figures six and eighteen months appealed to certain possible exigencies in the mind of Mr. O'Donnell, and carried his mind away from the main prospect of the consideration to the details. "I suppose," he thought, "they will make the first 'calls' light, so as to get all they can out of the poorer shareholders. Then they will go on increasing the sums of the 'calls' as the poorer ones drop off, and this they cannot do under a certain time. Of course, I can pay the 'calls' up to a certain point, but when they reach the end of the poorer shareholders, and have to fall back on the five or six men of large means, I shall certainly be ruined. But I do not think they can reach the point at which I should be left absolutely penniless before eighteen months." Lavirotte and Mr. O'Donnell talked on for half-an-hour in the same strain. The Frenchman was careful to adhere strictly to his vow to Crawford, and yet to say such things to the merchant as in the end convinced him there was at least something in the statements made by his son's friend. At last he looked at his watch, and saw there was no time to lose if they would catch the last train to Rathclare. After a cordial parting with the Frenchman he went down, and found his wife waiting for him. By this time both were radiant. One had firm faith in the recovery of her son, the other full assurance of the salvation of his position.
Mr. O'Donnell got home that evening in remarkably good-humour. Lavirotte had explained to him that his own hope of coming into this money had been absolutely nothing until the visit from the man who was working with him. So that here were two men who knew all about a certain chance, believing thoroughly in it. Why should not he, a third, who knew absolutely nothing about the matter, accept their judgment? What a splendid thing it would be if, after all, the firm which he had created did succeed in weathering the storm! He had said nothing to his wife about the matter on his way to the station, in the train to Glengowra, or from the Glengowra station to his own home. He thought he would preserve the good news--by this time it had taken the substantial form of news in his mind--until they were quietly seated in his little library, where many of the projects leading to his fortune had been devised. When at last he reached that haven, he found the writing-table littered with the ledgers he had left upon it, and between the leaves of one of these ledgers was the completed rough balance-sheet he had made out. Mrs. O'Donnell was astonished to find her husband in such good-humour. She could in no way understand it, for he had not even seen their boy or noticed the progress towards recovery he was making. "The run has done you good, James," she said. "I told you it would. Why, it has been as much to you as good news." "I should think it has," he said; "in fact, Mary, I have heard the very best news while I was in Glengowra. I have every reason to hope we may be able to save the business, anyway." "Thank God!" cried the woman devoutly. There was a tone of incredulity in her voice. It was not easy to imagine that, after all the hideous certainties of ruin they had been facing for days, there was any prospect these certainties would melt away before doubts that might be shaped into hopes. They were now both seated in their accustomed easy-chairs. The old man caught the arms of his firmly, as though he now saw no reason why it should come under the hammer and pass away for ever from him. "Yes," he said; and then he told her all that had passed between him and Lavirotte, enjoining her to strict secrecy. Then the wife lifted up her voice in praise of Lavirotte, and thanksgiving for their great deliverance, and bargained with her husband for one thing--namely, that she should be allowed to tell the good news to Nellie. "For," said the mother, "she heard the bad news, and bore it like a true-hearted woman! Of course if she was only to think of him, she must have been very sorry to hear it, but when we remember it affected herself too, it must have been harder still to bear. Eugene never heard the bad news. It is only now fair she should hear what Lavirotte promises." It was there and then settled that the hopes aroused that evening should be made known to Ellen Creagh. Next day Mrs. O'Donnell found herself under no necessity of keeping close to her husband, for he was not only not depressed and hopeless, but active, cheerful, and full of projects for the future. So she went early to Glengowra, and, having taken the girl aside, told her all. Nellie clasped her hands in mute stupefaction, and when she did speak at last, could say only: "Mr. Lavirotte! Mr. Lavirotte! Has he really promised to do this, and do you think the thing is in his power? I never felt more bewildered in all my life." Yes, it was enough to make one think one was dreaming. This Lavirotte had asked her to marry him. He had said her refusal would ruin him. O'Donnell had asked her to marry him, and she had consented. Then this Lavirotte had sought O'Donnell's life. In the struggle both had been badly hurt. O'Donnell had forgiven Lavirotte. Upon this came the absolute ruin of O'Donnell's father, and the consequent ruin of his son also. By this commercial catastrophe the possibility of his marrying her was indefinitely postponed, and at the very moment when it might be supposed a man in Lavirotte's position, and of his excitable temperament, would nourish hope anew of succeeding where he had failed before with her, he offered to rescue the father from ruin, and reinstate the whole family in affluence! "It is incredible," she said, after a long pause. "I cannot believe it possible." "But it is true," said Eugene's mother. "Believe me, my dear, it is true. My husband, after all his years and years in business, is not likely to make a mistake or be misled in such matters." "It may be true," said the girl, "but I cannot believe it." All things were now going on well with everybody. The old merchant was no longer in dread of bankruptcy. Lionel Crawford had got an additional hold on Lavirotte. The two wounded men were progressing rapidly towards perfect health. Lavirotte had forsworn his fickleness, and declared himself devoted to Dora. The two men who had met in a struggle for life had shaken hands by proxy, and sworn friendship anew; and Nellie and Dora passed the happy days in the full assurance of the devotion of their lovers, and the speedy approach of their marriages. The time went quickly by. Dr. O'Malley called regularly at the hotel, and regularly reported favourably of the patients. Now Lavirotte wrote a few lines every day to Dora, and she every day a long letter to him. And every day came Nellie to sit a while with Eugene, and hear his voice, and go away with strengthening consciousness that daily he grew more like his own self. Once more Lionel Crawford was happy at his old work, excavating at the base of the old tower with increased vigour, and getting rid of the fruits of his toil with greater despatch. Nothing, indeed, but good seemed to have come of that dark night's work. It is true that the police were still a little bitter over their disappointment, and that the townsfolk observed a more reserved attitude towards those connected with that affair. But if those chiefly concerned in the matter were content, the police and the people might be dismal and disagreeable if they pleased. In the town of Rathclare, besides Mr. and Mrs. O'Donnell, there was another person greatly pleased with the turn things had taken. This was Mr. John Cassidy, a gentleman of slight build, pale, small, impertinent, pretty face, the nose of which turned up slightly. He had an exquisitely fair moustache, an exquisitely fair imperial, and the most exquisitely made clothes a man on a hundred pounds a year could afford to wear in a provincial town in Ireland. He had what he believed to be a very pretty English accent, although he never had been out of Ireland. He wore a delicate yellow watch-chain purely as an ornament, for its use had no existence. He wore an eye-glass for ornament also. He had never been seen to smoke a pipe, and never much more than the tenth part of a cigar at a time. He was always scrupulously neat and consciously pretty, and spoke of the whole female sex as "poor things," as though it grieved him to the soul he could not make every woman alive absolutely happy by marrying her. He really wasn't a scamp, and had no offensive accomplishments or acquirements. He had a ravenous curiosity, particularly in love affairs. How it came to be that a man who devoted so much of his time to the courtship of others, should have himself the time to break and cast away all female hearts he encountered, no one could tell. It was the great prerogative of his genius to be able to do so. The chief source of his present amiable condition of mind was that he found himself about to start in a few days for London, and that, by way of an introduction to that vast place, he carried with him the clue to a mysterious love affair in which he was not a principal, and which he had sworn to follow up. He had sworn to his friend of the Post Office that he would discover what girl Lavirotte was sweet on in London before he had made love to Nellie Creagh, and his efforts in such a case hitherto had seldom failed. He had no heart and no tact, but instead of these a wonderful power of going straight at the mark, and in a case of this kind demanding of a woman point-blank: "Is it a fact that Mr. Lavirotte, while engaged to you, asked Miss Creagh to marry him? I'm interested in all subjects of this kind." Mr. John Cassidy had up to this been employed in the head office of the railway at Rathclare, and was now about to separate himself from his dear friend, a clerk in the Post Office, and go to London, where something better had offered, and where he should have, he hoped, for the sake of womankind, a larger female audience to hearken to his attractions, and where, moreover, he should have a very handsome mystery of his own particular pattern to solve.
The gloom of irreparable ruin had fallen on the house of Vernon. The deeper its business affairs became investigated the more ghastly appeared the inevitable finish. At first people were doubtful as to whether the result of the failure would be this or that or the other, in connection with Mr. Vernon's social position. Now it seemed there was no longer any room for speculation. Bankruptcy of the worst kind would be the end. All at once a still more startling rumour got abroad. At first people whispered it only in quiet places, and only to confidential friends. Then gradually a murmur arose. Finally, within a month of the failure of the bank, and before yet the accounts had been fully investigated, people had been heard to say openly that William Vernon ought to be made the object of a criminal prosecution and put in the dock. The panic of fear which had kept people's mouths shut, upon this suggestion, disappeared at once; and where there had been, a few hours before, but hints and faint whispers, and timid words of acquiescence, there was now a loud, clear, articulate demand for the impeachment of William Vernon. There was, on the day of the bank's failure, scarcely less talk of that disaster than there was now of the passionate desire that this fraudulent speculator should suffer at the hands of the law. An evening paper hinted that steps of the kind ought to be taken at once. Next morning, Mr. William Vernon was not to be found. He had left Dublin--Ireland--for some place unknown abroad--Mexico it was supposed. A few days after the flight of Vernon, the accountants, in whose hands the bank affairs had been placed, made a report, and upon this report was based the first call. It was not a heavy one. It ruined only a few people, and drove only one man mad. James O'Donnell met this call promptly and cheerfully. It did not strain him in the least. He had put most of his savings into Vernon's bank, but then he was a man of large prudence, and held a considerable reserve of ready money. Indeed, after he had paid the first call he had still at command what people in moderate circumstances would consider a very large sum. When he got the acknowledgment from Dublin, he showed it to his wife with a buoyant laugh, and said: "You see, Mary, I am not yet quite a bankrupt. Up to this I have met every engagement, this included, and, please God, I shall be able to meet all." Although it had been hoped that there would have been no delay to the marriage of Eugene and Nellie, a variety of circumstances made it desirable that a postponement of about a month should take place. In the present posture of affairs it would have been impossible for Mr. O'Donnell to settle money on his son; or, indeed, to give him anything worth speaking of, beyond the salary he drew in connection with the firm. When Eugene had recovered sufficient strength to bear the shock, he had been told of the misfortune which had overtaken his father in business. When he heard it he made little of it. He thought little of everything except his approaching marriage. It was Nellie who broke the news to him. She had been timid, fearful, as she approached the subject. She had prepared the way by saying that all those people who were dear to him were in good health and spirits, but that a certain unpleasant thing had occurred--a very unpleasant thing--a terribly unpleasant thing of a purely business nature; in fact, his father had lost a vast sum of money--all his savings. The young man looked grave, and said he was very sorry for the poor old man; but that--as long as the business held they should be more than comfortable, and that he was sure Nellie did not want riches such as would be his if this misfortune had not arisen. What exactly had happened? She told him all. He was serious, and said it was too bad--too hard on the governor, who was the best of men. In an interview later with his father, the latter told him that for the present he was not in a position to make any settlement whatever, but that if his son was contented to marry on his present salary, there would be no opposition. The son said he would be more than contented; that he had no extravagant habits or expensive tastes, and that he and Nellie could manage very well on the five hundred pounds a year his father allowed him. The old man said he had felt quite sure his son would be satisfied; but what would Nellie say, in the face of former promises he, the father, had made? The young man laughed a strong, joyous, wholesome laugh, and told his father that Nellie would marry him on a pound a week. "For you know, sir," he said, "she is not used to luxuries. She does not want them, and she is the most sensible, as she is the best, girl in the world." Then Eugene's father told his son of what Lavirotte had promised. "I am not surprised, father, to hear he has offered to help us. I always told you he was true as steel." At the word steel he winced, but recovered himself instantly. "People here don't like him, because they can't understand his quick southern ways. But the longer you know him the better you like him, and the more you'll trust him." When Eugene spoke to Nellie on the subject of his father's conversation with him, she confirmed his anticipations, and said: "You know, Eugene, that five hundred pounds a year is a great deal more than a girl like me could ever reasonably have hoped for. Why, it's a small fortune to one who has been a poor governess, and who never knew what it was to have even one hundred pounds a year." He took her in his arms and kissed her, and called her his own true, loyal darling, his best of girls, his wisest sweetheart, his only sweetheart. "And if the worst comes to the worst, Nellie, even supposing that the Lavirotte affair never turns up, you know I am young and once more strong, and if we had to go to America, love, I could hoe a field, or split rails, or conduct a car, or heave on a winch, or get a crust for the two of us somehow; and if the two of us mean, above all things, to be together, what are all other things to us compared to our being together?" She was of the same opinion, and so it was settled that at the end of the month to which the marriage had been postponed, it should take place as quietly as possible, but otherwise as though no trouble had overtaken the house of O'Donnell. By this time Lavirotte was established in London. Lionel Crawford had taken lodgings for Dora in Charterhouse Square, and Lavirotte lived in one of the streets leading from the Strand towards the river. John Cassidy was now regularly installed in his London situation, and had taken a genteel lodging in Bloomsbury. His fellow clerks did not, as a rule, live so near the great centre of London. They had rooms in Peckham, Islington, Kennington, and such ungenteel neighbourhoods. But no man with any pretensions to be handsome, a gentleman, and a lady-killer, could condescend to associate his name with such haunts of rabble London as Peckham, Islington, and Kennington. Up to this he had not been able to devote much time to what he was pleased to call "the Lavirotte mystery." A variety of other matters claimed his most careful attention. On his arrival in London, he found that his coats, and collars, and ties, and socks, although the very best that his money would allow him to get in Rathclare, were not at all the right things for a man of his antecedents in the matter of the fair sex. His clothes were, it is true, equal if not superior to those worn by the mere common, ordinary clerks with whom he was bound to associate, and whose coarse and ungenteel ways he was for a portion of the day obliged to endure. But then the clothes, which in Rathclare had been those of a man of distinguished fashion, were, to his chagrin, in London no more than those proper to a mere common clerk. This was a terrible revelation to a sensitive soul. Of course it could be remedied in the future; but how terribly the fact reflected upon the past, and fancy the figure he should have made in Rathclare if he, when there, had only known as much as he did now. Imagine how ladies would have stared and admired if he had but appeared in a costume such as he was now hastening to assume. Dainty shoes, clocked socks, trousers that fitted the limb as the daintiest of gloves fit the hands of the daintiest of duchesses, coat and waistcoat which could only be put on before meals and when the lungs were empty, collars and scarfs designed by Royal Academicians and tenderly executed by tradespeople who might, if they would, have written sartorial epics; such were the splendours now preparing for his exquisite person. Apart from the cares born of his tailor and outfitter, certain other little matters had to be arranged about his room. A Japanese letter-rack had to be purchased and hung up for the reception of his prospective love-letters. Open work, china dishes of elegant hues, although of cheap manufacture, had to be obtained and set forth for the reception of rose-leaves, photographs, and cards. The portraits of celebrated beauties had to be hung up, so that, should an acquaintance drop into his room, he might have an opportunity of showing his visitor the counterpart of his dearest friends. His fellow-clerks were coarse enough to consider him a humbug. His superiors at the office did not know whether he was an ass or not; but the clerks and the superiors agreed that he had two priceless virtues--he could tot all day long without making an error, and there was not a spot of extraneous ink on any folio of his books. By this time Lavirotte was thoroughly restored to health. Daily he paid a visit to Dora. The course of their true love was running with idyllic smoothness. No suitor could be more tender, enthusiastic, constant-minded than he. Dora's life was one long daydream. Her former solitary life in London now seemed to her like a dreary unreality, forced upon her imagination merely that her present life might stand out in glory against so gray and sad a background. Since Lavirotte left London of old, the place had grown dull and dismal around her. Now the whole city was bright and joyous once again. Instead of being a vast chasm filled with unfamiliar things and unfriendly forms, and dark with her inner solitude, the buildings now were full of vital beauty, and the people of courteous friendliness. Although she looked forward with pleasant anticipations to the time when she would not be even temporarily separated from Dominique, she could not persuade herself that the future would be more happy than the present. She seemed to want nothing now beyond just a little more of his society. Meanwhile Lavirotte had availed himself of Lionel Crawford's offer and taken the money, and was getting lessons. But, in addition to these, he was now busy in another way. The idea of the treasure mastered him as completely as it had the old man. He seemed to take but a second-rate interest in his own affairs, and every hour he could spare from the lessons and Dora was devoted to helping Crawford in his work at St. Prisca's Tower. He had said to Crawford: "There is no knowing when these poor O'Donnells will want the money. You said we should have it in six to eighteen months. We must have it sooner, much sooner, as soon as ever we possibly can." And so he bent himself to the work as he did to any other work he took in hand--wholly, passionately, fiercely. The old man said he would kill himself. He swore he did not care so long as he might succeed. Now that he had entered fully into the scheme of Crawford, and was actively helping him, he, too, felt the wild pleasure of the search; the inexorable determination of not sharing the secret with anyone. No; it was their secret, and they two, unassisted by anyone who might betray them, should alone reach the golden goal. So absorbed was he in the work at the tower that he could think of little else, and felt rather put out when one morning he received a letter from Eugene O'Donnell, saying that he and Nellie were to be married on Wednesday next week, and asking him to come over a day or two beforehand, as became a best man. About this time Mr. John Cassidy found himself arrayed according to his taste, with his room in order for the reception of anyone he might care to ask in, and with his hands free to follow up the Lavirotte mystery.