Rupert Godwin

RESURGAM.

Rupert Godwin had been summoned to the bank by a letter from his clerk.

“My dear sir,” wrote Jacob, “things are looking very black in the City, and the old rumour is beginning to get afloat again. You had better come to the office and look into matters yourself. I have made a business appointment for you to-morrow, at twelve sharp; and as it is an affair of some considerable importance I would recommend you to be punctual.—Obediently yours, J. D.”

This letter had been addressed to the banker’s West-end apartments; and it was this summons which had brought him to the bank about three minutes before Clara and Violet entered it.

For some time Rupert Godwin’s affairs had been gradually sinking back into the state in which they had been before his theft of the twenty thousand pounds intrusted to him by the sea captain.

That sum was not the tenth part of the amount that would have been needed to restore the firm to a solvent position. But it had been enough to stop the leak in the ship, and to enable the rotten old vessel to right herself for a time, while her captain sailed in search of new gold-fields.

Small depositors—always the first to take alarm—had been appeased. Suspicion had been set at rest by the promptitude with which all demands were satisfied; and customers who had withdrawn their balances in a fever of alarm, had brought back their custom when the panic was over.

Unhappily for Rupert Godwin, this halcyon state of things could not endure for ever. The effects of the preceding year’s commercial panic were still felt. The edifice of credit had been shaken to its foundations, and the enchanted temple still tottered, frail as some confectioner’s fairy fabric of spun sugar.

There were prophetic rumours of an approaching crisis more alarming than that through which the commercial classes of London had passed, more or less scorched and scathed by the ordeal, so lately. There were those who said that the first blast of the trumpet which sounded the alarm in the halls of the Stock Exchange would ring the death-knell of Rupert Godwin’s credit.

There was one who knew this only too well; and that one was the banker himself. He knew that an hour’s run upon his bank would demonstrate the fact of his insolvency.

He had been insolvent for more than ten years, and had borne the burden of that guilty secret, knowing that whenever the crash came thousands of innocent people would suffer for the inordinate extravagance which had sapped the capital of one of the most respectable private banks in the metropolis.

Utterly indifferent as to the sufferings of other people, this knowledge had troubled Rupert Godwin very little. But he was considerably disturbed by the thought of his own ruin—his disgrace, and perhaps even poverty; or, at any rate, a miserable state of existence which to him would be little better than absolute indigence—a kind of suspension between the heaven of wealth and the hell of penury. “Better to be an outcast and Bohemian, begging in the high-road by day and sleeping in an empty barn by night, than to drag out the remnant of my days as a dreary old twaddler in some suburban cottage, with a maid-of-all-work to wait upon me, and a garden thirty feet square to walk in,” the Sybarite said to himself as he contemplated the future. He had tried to make a purse for himself; but of late his mind had been entirely absorbed by considerations that were even more alarming than his financial difficulties; and he had not been able to garner any great store against the day of ruin. He had set aside something; but even that something would be wrested from him if he did not make his plans for a speedy escape from the financial storm whose first hoarse thunders already rumbled ominously in the distance. And those commercial tempests travel so quickly!

Upon his confidential clerk’s fidelity the banker relied with implicit confidence; not because he believed the clerk to be attached to his person, or bound to him by any sense of honour. Mr. Godwin had directed his attention to the vices rather than the virtues of his fellow-men. He had paid Danielson handsomely for fidelity in the past, and had promised him ample payment for fidelity in the future; and, as he looked upon good faith as a marketable commodity, to be purchased in any quantities at the current market rate, he was troubled by no doubt of his ally’s fidelity.

He came to the office this morning in no very pleasant frame of mind; but distrust of Jacob Danielson had no part in his conflicting doubts and difficulties.

“Well, Jacob,” he said, as he seated himself at his desk, “how are things looking?”

“As black as they can look,” answered the clerk, with a mixture of respect and indifference that always galled his master—“as black as they can look. People have begun to talk; and when they once begin, it is not very easy to stop them. There may be a run upon the bank any day, and then the murder’s out.”

Rupert Godwin’s nerves had been terribly shaken of late. He could not control a slight shuddering movement as the clerk pronounced that ghastly word “murder.”

Before he could speak, one of the junior clerks opened the parlour-door and ushered in Mrs. Westford and her daughter.

The banker started violently, and half rose from his chair with a convulsive movement at the aspect of those two slender figures draped in solemn black.

“Who are these people?” he gasped. “I cannot see them.—Walters, take these ladies back to the public office; they can have no business here.—What is the meaning of this, Danielson?” added the banker, turning indignantly to the old clerk. “You told me you had arranged an important business meeting here at this hour. These people cannot possibly have any business to transact with me.”

“O, yes, they have, sir,” answered the clerk quietly.—“Sit down, ladies, pray. Mr. Godwin is rather unprepared for your visit, you see, as I have not found time to explain matters to him before your arrival. But he will find the business very simple—quite simple. Pray sit down.”

The mother and daughter obeyed. Clara had not in any manner saluted the banker, nor he her, though they had looked at each other fixedly for a moment.

Mrs. Westford’s face was pale, and rigid as the face of a statue.

Rupert Godwin’s countenance had grown livid. The sudden appearance of those two women had inspired him with a strange fear.

As he turned indignantly towards the old clerk, something in Jacob Danielson’s face told the banker that he was about to find a deadly foe in the man who had so long been his tool and accomplice.

“Insolent scoundrel!” he exclaimed, “how do you dare to defy me thus? Take your friends out of my room! I will not be intruded on by any one.”

“These ladies are no friends of mine,” answered the clerk; “though I shall be proud indeed if I can render them any service. They are no intruders here. They have a claim upon you, Mr. Godwin, and a very large one.”

“You are mad!” exclaimed the banker contemptuously. “What claim can these ladies have upon me?”

“A very terrible one, it may be, Rupert Godwin,” replied Clara Westford solemnly. “What if I come to claim justice upon the murderer of a beloved husband? Retribution is very slow sometimes; but it is none the less certain. Sooner or later the day of reckoning comes; if not in this world, in the next. Heaven have pity on those who are not allowed to expiate their iniquities upon earth!”

Rupert Godwin tried to carry matters with a high hand—but even his bravado failed him in this supreme moment of fear. His livid countenance, convulsed every now and then by sudden spasms, betrayed the state of his mind.

“We will not talk of retribution here,” said Jacob Danielson. “It is only on a matter of business that these ladies have called on you this morning, Mr. Godwin. They come to claim the sum of twenty thousand pounds, intrusted to your care by Captain Harley Westford, of the Lily Queen, with five per cent. interest thereupon for the time the money has been in your hands.”

Rupert Godwin laughed aloud. It was a wild spasmodic kind of laugh, and by no means agreeable to hear.

“My good Danielson,” he exclaimed, “you are evidently going mad. I had better send for the parish authorities and the parish strait-waistcoat.”

“Not just yet,” replied the clerk coolly. “You are rather fond of putting people into lunatic asylums, I know. But as I am not mad, your philanthropic and compassionate nature need not be troubled by any concern about me. Perhaps you’ll be so kind as to pay these ladies the money they claim—twenty-one thousand pounds. Mrs. Westford’s husband died suddenly; but he made his will, bequeathing all he possessed to his wife, with undivided power to administer his affairs. She has not yet gone through the usual formula; but as this is an exceptional case you can afford to waive ceremony, and pay Captain Westford’s widow the money that belongs to her, without waiting for legal formalities. Here is the receipt signed by yourself, and witnessed by me.”

The clerk produced an oblong slip of paper, which he held before the eyes of his master. Those eyes glared at the document with a blank stare of mingled astonishment and horror.

“Where,” he gasped,—“where did you——”

“Where did I find it?” said the clerk, with supreme coolness. “Ah, to be sure. I was prepared to hear you ask that question. I’ll tell you where I found it. On the night on which Harley Westford came to you at Wilmingdon Hall, to claim the money which this receipt represents, he wore a light overcoat. Ah, you remember it, I see. The night was warm; and when the Captain came into the dining-room, where you and I were lingering over our dessert, he carried his outer coat across his arm. When he left the dining-room he flung it down upon a chair. I found it there when I returned to the Hall, after missing the train. I’m rather of an inquisitive disposition, and I had peculiar motives for my curiosity that night; so I took the liberty to examine the pockets in the Captain’s overcoat. I was very well rewarded for my pains, for in the small breast-pocket I found this. You recognize it, Mr. Godwin, I can see. It is the receipt for which you searched the same pocket that night, but a little too late. You only half did your work when you stabbed Captain Westford in the back, and flung him down the cellar-steps, to lie and rot there unburied and forgotten.”

“O, great Heaven!” shrieked Clara, with a wail of agony. “My husband was murdered then—by him; and you know the secret of his murder! You know, and you have never denounced the hellish assassin!”

“Hush, Mrs. Westford,” cried the clerk, almost imperiously; “not a word! I told you that the greatest surprise, the happiest surprise you had ever experienced in your life, would come upon you to-day. Wait, and trust in me.”

Mrs. Westford had risen in her sudden agony and terror; but overawed,—influenced, in spite of herself, by something in the old clerk’s manner,—she sank back upon her chair, pale and breathless, waiting to hear more.

“Come, Mr. Godwin,” said Jacob Danielson; “the best thing you can do is to pay this money quietly, and immediately. You would scarcely care to have any public inquiries made as to how I came into possession of this receipt.”

“It is a forgery!” gasped the banker.

“Is it? That’s a question which must be decided by a court of law, if you dispute the settlement of Mrs. Westford’s claim. And if this case once gets into a court of law, you may be sure it will be sifted to the very bottom. The mystery of that summer night at Wilmingdon Hall will be brought before the public, and then——”

Jacob Danielson uttered the last words very slowly.

“I will pay the money,” cried Rupert Godwin; “but you must give me time!”

“Not a day! Not an hour! I know the state of your affairs. This money shall be paid before these ladies leave this house. If you have not that amount of ready cash, you have convertible securities, and they must be melted at once. Nor is that all, Mr. Godwin. You must sign a paper acknowledging that the document under which you took possession of the Grange——”

“I will do no such thing!” answered the banker defiantly. Then, with a sudden burst of fury, he sprang upon the old clerk, and seized him by the throat.

“Villain! hypocrite! dog!” he cried, “you have taken my money, you have pretended to serve me, and now you turn upon me and betray me—you, my slave, my foot-ball, the creature that I have paid as I pay the lowest scullery-maid in my house! But I——”

He released his hold, for the door was opened, and one of the clerks looked in with a scared face. He had overheard the noise of the scuffle in the outer office.

But as Rupert Godwin had sunk back exhausted into his chair, and as Jacob Danielson was standing quietly by him in his usual deferential attitude when the man looked in, he murmured an apology and withdrew, closing the door behind him.

“You perceive, Mr. Godwin, that violence here is not quite so secure from detection as in the cellars of the northern wing. Every man’s house is his castle; but there is some difference between a haunted abbey in Hertfordshire and an office in the heart of Lombard-street,” said Jacob, with quiet significance. “I tell you again, you had better call your cashier, and order him to realize stock to the amount of twenty thousand pounds. How about those Canadian Grand-Trunk Debenture Bonds which you bought the other day? Ah, I had my eye upon you, you see, when you were quite unconscious of my watchfulness. That’s a capital form of security. Safe as a bank-note; easy to realize; no fuss or bother involved in the transfer. You can sell those in the open market. We will talk of the forged documents afterwards.”

Never was baffled fury more strongly visible in a human face than it was in the scowling visage of the banker, as he turned from the clerk and touched a little handbell on the table.

His summons was responded to in less than a minute. The same clerk who had looked into the room before looked in again.

“The cashier,” said Rupert Godwin briefly.

The clerk retired, and another man presented himself.

“You realized some Mexican securities yesterday, by my order?” said the banker.

“I did, sir.”

“To what amount?”

“Twenty-four thousand three hundred and twenty pounds.”

“You will hand over bank-notes to the amount of twenty-one thousand pounds to this lady.”

The banker pointed to Mrs. Westford. The cashier looked surprised; but he bowed in assent, retired, and presently reappeared with a packet of bank-notes.

“Twenty notes of five hundred each, and eleven notes of a thousand each,” said the cashier, as he handed the packet to his employer.

“Good. And now your deposit-receipt,” said the banker to Jacob Danielson.

The clerk gave Rupert Godwin the oblong slip of paper with one hand, while with the other he received the packet of notes.

“There, Mrs. Westford, is the fortune amassed by your husband in years of hazardous adventure,” said Jacob Danielson. “The documents relating to the Grange will be admitted as forgeries by Mr. Godwin. And you will be able to return to your home whenever you please.”

“I cannot accept this money,” answered Clara.

“But it is your own.”

“It has passed through the hands of my husband’s murderer. There is not one of these notes that, to my mind, is not stained with my husband’s blood. It is not money which I want, Mr. Danielson, but justice—justice on the man who murdered my husband.”

“She is mad!” cried Rupert Godwin hoarsely. “I will not be thus defied in my own house by a mad woman and a scoundrel. I will——”

His hand moved towards the bell, but he did not touch it.

“Ring that bell, Rupert Godwin,” cried the old clerk; “or if you will not, I will.”

The clerk’s skinny fingers pressed the spring of the bell,—not once only, but three separate times.

“What is the meaning of this?” gasped the banker.

“It means that you have failed in the capacity of assassin as completely as you have failed in your commercial career, Mr. Godwin,” answered the clerk coolly.—“You shall have justice, Mrs. Westford,” he continued, turning to Clara, “but not on the murderer of your husband, for he survived the stroke that was intended to be his death-blow. He is here to denounce, in his own person, the would-be assassin and the daring swindler.”

As the old clerk spoke, the powerful form of the merchant captain appeared upon the threshold, and in the next moment Clara Westford flung herself into her husband’s arms with a wild hysteric shriek.

It was indeed as if the dead had been restored to life.

Harley Westford had changed terribly since the hour when he had last stood in that room, in all the pride and vigour of manhood. His stalwart figure had wasted, though it still retained its noble outline. His handsome face was pale and careworn; dark circles surrounded his frank blue eyes, and haggard lines had been drawn about his mouth; but as he clasped his wife to his breast, his countenance was illumined by a light which restored to it, for a moment, all its former brightness.

“It is not a dream!” cried Clara; “it is not a dream! O, Harley, Harley, is it really you? I have suffered so much—so much! I can scarcely bear this surprise.”

These words were spoken amidst hysteric sobs that almost choked their utterance. Violet was sobbing on her father’s shoulder. The Captain looked from his wife to his daughter. Unspeakable affection beamed from his countenance; but he was unable to utter a word. He sank into a chair presently, quite overcome, and his wife and child knelt one on each side of him.

Rupert Godwin looked on this picture with the gaze of a baffled fiend. He had the passions of an Iago, but not the triumph which gladdened the heart of the Venetian schemer even in the hour of defeat. He had not the grim satisfaction of seeing the ruin he had worked. He had achieved nothing—not even the misery of the rival he hated.

“I told you you only half did your work that night at Wilmingdon Hall. With all your cleverness, you’ve proved no better than a bungler!” exclaimed the old clerk triumphantly.

The banker groaned aloud; but he uttered no exclamation of surprise—no questioning word. Ruin had fallen upon him—so entire, so unexpectedly, that he was quite unable to struggle longer with the awful shadow of Nemesis. He could only abandon himself to a sullen despair. Remorse was a stranger to his nature: remorse is the sorrow we feel for the wrong we have done to others. It was only on his own account that Rupert Godwin suffered.