CHAPTER IV.
DEFEATED AND WRONGED.
He had walked a long way before he came to himself out of those whirling circles of thought in which the mind gets involved when it is suddenly stung by a great wrong, or startled by a poignant incident. With this strong pressure upon him, he had gone right away into the Strand, and along that busy line of streets into the din and crowds of the city, feeling, like a deaf man, that the noise around made it more possible to hear the voice of his own thoughts, and to endure the clangour of his heart beating in his ears. He walked fast, not turning to the right nor to the left, straight through the bewildering throng in which every man had his own little world of incident, of sentiment, and feeling undisturbed by the contact of others on every side.
At first it had been the keen tooth of that wrong, the undeserved disgrace that had fallen upon him, which had occupied all his sensations. But by degrees other thoughts came in. He had left Edgeley in haste to strike his blow for fortune and reputation, though he was so young, to qualify himself for a new phase of life, to put himself nearer at least to the level of Elly, to justify his own pretensions to her. The scene in Mrs. Egerton’s room suddenly flashed before him as he walked, adding another and yet sharper blow to that which he had already received. He had said that he would succeed, that he should be rich, that he had the ball at his foot. This morning when he came out of his lodgings he had felt the ball at his foot. How could it be otherwise? He knew the value of his own work. It was a work much wanted, upon which the comfort of a district, the value of the property in it, and the lives of its inhabitants might depend. And he felt convinced that he had hit upon the right way of remedying this fault of nature which had given so much trouble and cost so much suffering. What hours and hours he had thought of it and turned it over! What quires of paper he had covered with his calculations! It did not perhaps seem romantic work; but all the poetry in John’s nature had gone into it. It had been Elly’s work, too, though Elly could not have done one of all those endless mathematical exercises. It had occupied his mind for two at least of those early lovely years in which imagination is so sweet: and his imaginations had been sweet, though they had to do, you would have said, with things not lovely, cuttings and embankments, and drawings, and figures upon figures, armies of them, calculations without end. His very walks and the exercise he took, the boating which was his favourite recreation when he had any time, had all been inspired and accompanied by this. While he waited outside a lock, he was busy calculating its fall, and the weight and force of the water, and studying the banks high or low, for his purpose. He had grown learned in the formations of the district, in its geology and its productions with the same motive. He had marked unconsciously where wood could be got at and bricks made for the future works, and when his eye travelled over the river flats to the line of cottages with dull lines upon their lower storey, showing the flood-mark to which the water had risen, there rose in him a fine fervour as he thought that by-and-by all such dangers should come to an end. Thoughts frivolous and unworthy, the light and trifling mental dissipations that beguile young minds, and the insidious curiosities and temptations with which they play, were all crowded out by these imaginations, which were so practical, so professional, so enthusiastic, so full of the poetry of reality. This was the way in which many months had been occupied. And now——!
It was a long time before John had sufficiently calmed himself down, and got the mastery of those whirling circles of ever-recurring thought which almost maddened him at first, to face the situation as it now stood. At first, and for a long time, it appeared to him that ruin as complete as it was undeserved had overwhelmed him; his good fame seemed to be gone, and the bitterness of the thought that people who knew him, and knew him so well, and who had years of experience of his integrity and faithful service, should have at once believed him guilty of such treachery, seemed to drown him in a hopeless flood; for how should he convince strangers of his honour if they had no faith in it? or how attempt to clear himself professionally when two of the chief authorities in his profession believed him to have behaved so? Would it be the best way, the only way, to shake the dust from off his feet and rush away to the end of the world where a man could work, if it were the roughest navvy work, and be free from false accusation and the horror of seeing himself falsely condemned. But, then, Elly! John plunged again deeper than ever into that blackness of darkness. He had boasted in his self-confidence of the success which was awaiting him, of the certainty of his prospects. He remembered now how Mrs. Egerton had shaken her head. And now here he stood with his success turned into failure, his confidence into despair; the people who knew him best refusing to hear him. He had no fear that Elly would refuse to hear him; but who else would believe? They would not, indeed, believe that he had been treacherous, or played a villain’s part, as the Barretts did; but they would think that he had mistaken his own powers, that he was not what he imagined, that his account of himself was a boy’s brag, and not a sober estimate of what he knew he could do. And how convince them, how remedy the evil? Was it possible that any remedy would ever be found?
He had gained a little calm when he began to ask himself this question. Out of the whirl of painful thoughts and passionate entanglement of all the perplexities round him, he suddenly came to a clear spot from which he could look behind and after. He found himself on the bridge crossing the river, having got there he scarcely knew how, coming back in the direction of the office and of his lodgings after a feverish round through all the noise of London. As he walked across the bridge, there suddenly came to him a recollection of his first beginning—how he had paused there with the letter in his hand with which he had been sent to the Messrs. Barrett by his mother. He had paused, angry and wounded and sore, and looked down upon the outward-bound ships, and for a moment had thought of forsaking this cold, unkindly world in which he had no longer any home or anyone who loved him, of tossing the letter into the river and going his own way, and taking upon himself the responsibility of his own life. He had not carried out that wild resolution. He had swallowed all his repugnances, his pride, his rebellious feelings, and accepted the more dutiful way: and till now he had never repented that decision. He paused again, and before him lay the same great stream leading out into the unknown, the same ships ready to carry him thither, into a world all strange, where nobody would know John Sandford had ever been accused of falsehood. The repetition of this scene and suggestion gave him a certain shock, and brought him back sharply to himself. John Sandford, John May—he had not then been sure which he was—his heart had risen against the woman who was his mother, who had distrusted him and taken from him his father’s name. Now he was more or less ashamed of the boyish rashness which had set him against her decision in this respect. He was John Sandford now, beyond any question. What if, perhaps, this fever of indignation and despair which was in his veins might die down and pass away, as the other had done?
This brought him back to more particular questions. He had felt no doubt from the first moment as to what had really happened: that the man whom he had so foolishly trusted, whom he had no reason to trust, had played him false, and carried off the copy which John had given him to do, out of what had appeared to him pure benevolence, Christian charity—to the rival firm. That was perfectly clear to him, though in his indignation and fury he would not pause to explain. If it was explained ever so, it would not restore the scheme thus betrayed to its original importance, or place it, as he had intended, in all its novelty and originality and ingeniousness, in the hands best able to carry it out. In any case, his secret was broken, his ideas exposed to curious and eager competitors who might, and probably would, take instant advantage of them. John still felt that he was ruined, however it might turn out. And yet he might clear his honour at least, and show how he had been himself betrayed. He had begun to acknowledge this possibility, to breathe more freely, to feel the fumes of passion dispersing, and the real landscape, chilled and grey with all the rosy illusions of hope disappearing, yet still real and solid under his feet, once more coming into his sight, when he became suddenly aware of an approaching figure, very unwelcome, most undesirable to meet at such a moment, yet not to be ignored. Why should he turn up precisely now, that chance acquaintance to whom John had committed himself in the impatience of his boyhood, and with whom he had a sort of irregular, fictitious intercourse, more congenial to Montressor’s profession and ways than to his own? It brought a sort of ludicrous element into his trouble to meet this man, to whom he was not himself but another, a being who had never existed save for that one night on which he had enacted a sort of little single-scene tragic-comedy as John May. Montressor was not a person to be eluded: he came forward with his hands stretched out, his shiny hat bearing down over the heads of the other passengers upon John, as if it had been a flag carried aloft, with the directest and straightest impulse.
‘Me dear young friend,’ he said, ‘me brave boy! how glad I am to see ye.’
Montressor was a little better dressed than usual. The shiny hat was new, or almost new, though it had somehow caught the characteristics of the old one. His coat was good, his well-brushed aspect no longer giving so distinct an accentuation to his shabbiness. He put his arm within John’s in the fervour of having much to say.
‘Fate’s been good to me,’ he said, ‘and when it’s so in great things ’tis also in small. Here have I been watching for ye, wondering would ye pass hereabouts, to tell ye, me young friend, that once again good luck has come Montressor’s way.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said John; but what he felt was only a sort of dull half pang additional, a sense that good luck might now come in anyone’s way save his, which was closed to it for evermore.
‘That I’m sure of,’ said the actor, ‘it isn’t very much we’ve seen of ye, John May, and I don’t even know where to find ye. To tell the truth, in me shabbiness and me poverty I didn’t care to know: for meeting you in the street is one thing and pursuing you to your lodging is another. No. Montressor was not one to shame his friends, even though ’twas virtuous poverty. But rejoice with me, me young friend—that phase is over, never, I hope, to come me way again.’
‘Have you got an engagement?’ asked John, wondering and reflecting upon the shabbiness which was as pronounced as ever one short week before.
‘Better than that,’ said the actor. He put his hand to his eyes with a mixture of fiction yet reality. ‘Me eyes are full and so’s my heart. Pardon me, young man. Once you saved her life—never knowing that small thing was the future Rachel, the future Siddons. Me dear friend! it is Edie that has an engagement. Edie, me chyild!’
‘Edie!’ cried John, and then he laughed aloud at the thought. Edie, that baby, to whom he had sent something the other day to buy a doll.
‘Indeed, ’tis Edie, no one else. Ye haven’t seen her for a great while. Ye don’t know that she’s sixteen or near it, and a genius. She has a right to it, sir. It’s hers by inheritance. My chyild, and her mother’s—who under the name of Ada Somerset took leading parts for years—I don’t grudge it to her, me dear May. She has had devoted care. She has had a training, me dear sir, that began in her cradle—and now!’ He laid his hand upon the heart that no doubt was as full of real emotion as if he had not had a word to say on the subject. ‘And she is a good girl, and the ball at her foot,’ he added, in a tremulous tone, with water standing in his eyes.
‘The ball at her foot,’ said John, with a harsh laugh. ‘So had I yesterday—or, at least, so I thought.’
‘There’s something happened to you, me brave boy?’
‘Nothing’s happened: at least, nothing that’s wonderful or out of the way. I’m supposed to have broken trust and disgraced myself. It’s like the things that happen in your stage plays. I’m condemned for something I never thought of, and robbed by one to whom I tried to be kind. Go home and take care of Edie. Never let her try to be kind to anyone,’ John said, ‘it’s fatal; it’s nothing less than ruin.’
‘Me dear boy, open your mind to me, and relieve it of that perilous stuff. It is the best way. Come, tell me. Montressor has but little in his power even now, but what he can do is always at his friends’ disposal; and, if there’s a villain to be hunted down, trust me, me brave boy—I’ll hunt him to the death!’
‘Why should I trouble you with my vexations?’ cried John. But in the end he yielded to the natural satisfaction of recounting all that had happened to a sympathetic—almost too sympathetic—ear. Montressor’s was no indifferent backing of his friend. He threw himself with his whole soul into the wrongs of the unfortunate young man. Indeed, so entirely did he enter into John’s case that John felt himself restored to hopeful life, half by the sympathy, and perhaps a little more than half by the genial absurdity that seemed to glide into everything from Montressor’s devoted zeal. The light came back to the skies more completely in this humorous way than if some happy incident had restored it. He began to see through the exaggeration of his friend’s feeling, that after all there was something laughable in his own despair, and that a man is not ruined in a moment in any such stagy and artificial way.
While this change began to operate, and while John poured forth his tale, he pursued the familiar way to his lodgings instinctively, leading the sympathetic Montressor with him without question asked. The actor had never before penetrated so far. It had not occurred to John to invite him, especially as he had never informed him of his real name. The fact that he had been so foolish as to call himself May to this early acquaintance had raised a barrier between them more effectual than any barrier of prudence or sense that such a friendship was not one to be cultivated. But in the fervour of his confidence, and in the enthusiasm of Montressor’s sympathy, the consolation of it and the ridicule of it, everything else was forgotten. And John found himself at his own door with his faithful sympathiser before he was aware. He had opened it and bidden his friend to enter when his eye was suddenly caught by a slouching figure on the opposite side of the street, which aroused another set of feelings altogether. John thrust Montressor in, calling on him to sit down and wait, and then turning with a bound rushed across the street in the direction of this lounger, who, suddenly taking fright, had turned too, and was hurrying along as fast as a wavering pair of legs would carry him. The legs were unsteady, and little to be depended upon, though sudden panic inspired them, and they were worth nothing in comparison with youth and hot indignation now suddenly set on their track. The chase lasted but a minute. John made up to the fluttering, retreating figure, and was just about, with outstretched hand, to seize him, when the pursued suddenly turned round, meeting him with a rueful, deprecating, yet woefully smiling face, in which the same ridicule which had been rising in John’s mind towards himself was blended with a sort of helpless despair and insinuating prayer for mercy.
‘Stop,’ cried his amanuensis, the traitor who had ruined him, with that rueful smile, ‘I’ll go with you anywhere—take me where you please. I—I can’t defend myself.’
‘What have you done with my papers?’ cried John, trembling with hurry and rage, yet subdued, he could not tell how.
‘I’ll tell you,’ said the other. ‘I’ll tell you everything. Take me somewhere and let me tell you.’
The young man laid his hand upon the old man’s arm, and led him back, feeling somehow his heart melt towards the unresistant sinner. Montressor stood at the door watching this pursuit and capture. He waited for them as they came forward, his face expressing a sort of stupefication of wonder. John only remembered the spectator when he reached the door with his prisoner, and found this startled countenance confronting him.
‘Why, May!’ cried he, turning from one to another. ‘Why, May!’
CHAPTER V.
THE CULPRIT.
John’s amanuensis, whom he had so rashly trusted, had carried away his copy of John’s scheme with, in reality, little or no idea of cheating, and none at all of injuring John. His faculties were confused by long courses of meditative sophistry, such as had been his amusement in the years when he had no other, and by the criminal atmosphere in which he had lived, in which the deception or spoiling of your neighbour was the most natural matter, the best sign of talent and originality, at once the excitement and the amusement of the perverted mind. The man who called himself March had a more than usual share of that confusion which so often accompanies breaches of the moral law. He had gone through far more than usual of those mental exercises by which all but the most stupid and degraded attempt to prove themselves right, or at least not so far wrong, in those offences which to the rest of the world are beyond excuse. And his mental ingenuity was such that he could make a wonderful plea to himself in favour of any course which fancy or temptation suggested. In the present case the effort had not been at all a difficult one. He had really meant no harm to John. He intended, in fact, to recommend John warmly, to put a good thing in his way. In all probability the young man would not prove a good advocate for himself. He might be shy of pushing his own interests: most inventors were shy and retiring, easily discouraged: and what he meant to secure would not in reality be more than a percentage on the trouble he would take in recommending John. A percentage—that was what in reality it would be—and well earned: for had he not been at the trouble of copying, and indeed adding something of his own to the young man’s dry plans and calculations, besides the service he would do him in carrying his goods as it were to market and securing a sale for them, and a profitable job for their inventor. Nothing could be more self-evident than this. At the end he came to be quite sure that he was doing his young benefactor a real service, and that nothing in his conduct wanted excusing at all.
He was a little shaken, however, by his reception at the office of Messrs. Spender and Diggs, and by their instant recognition of John’s name, and their curious questions on the subject. Had the plan been rejected by Barretts, they asked—and he did not even know what ‘Barretts’ meant. He was still more dismayed when he found (though he ought to have known very well it must be so) that no answer would be given him on the subject till the papers were examined, and that it would be necessary that Sandford should come himself to elucidate and explain them. There was quite a little excitement in the office, evidently, about Sandford’s work and its presentation there. The partner who seemed to him to be Diggs (he could not tell why, from his appearance), came and looked over the shoulder of the partner who must be Spender, and one or two others were called into the council and questions asked as to whether young Sandford had left Barretts, whether there had been a quarrel, what had happened. The ignorance he showed about all this, brought suspicious looks upon him, looks which disturbed all his calculations: for it had never occurred to him that any suspicion could attach to him in respect of a document written in his own hand, and which by that very fact surely belonged to him, more or less. He was glad at last to get away, feeling a certain distrust involved in the questions that were addressed to him, and beginning to wonder what they could do to him if it were discovered to be without John’s permission that the papers were brought here. Pooh! he said to himself, but only when he had got away—nothing could be done to him; it was no wrong to John or anyone. He had a right, a moral right, to the work of his own hands: and it was in kindness he had done it; kindness qualified by a percentage which is what the very best of friends demand.
But if he was disturbed and troubled by this contretemps, Joe, who was really throughout the matter his inspiring influence, was much more so. He was angry and disappointed beyond description. He had expected, being so much more ignorant than his principal, money immediate, a sum down, for the papers which young Sandford had said were his fortune. He was furious with the feebleness of his ‘mate,’ who had left those papers without getting anything for them.
‘I’d not a’ bin such a blooming fool,’ said Joe, whose adjectives are generally left out in this record. ‘I’d a’ up and spoken. Money down or ye gets nothin’ from me. Lor, if I had a ’ansom coat to my back like you, and could speak like as them swells would listen to me, d’ye think I’d a’ come back empty-handed like that?’
March was still more confused by this vituperation. It was in vain, he knew, to convince Joe that such a rapid transaction was impossible in the nature of things, for neither Joe nor his kind know anything of the nature of things. They know that when they have anything to sell, money is to be got for it, and that is all. Joe made his patron and dependent (for the poor man was both) very uncomfortable on this subject: and other things too made him uncomfortable; the necessity for communicating with John, and informing him that he must see Spender & Diggs, and explain his scheme to them; and the necessity for going back to Spender & Diggs, which Joe had pressed upon him, incapable of hearing reason. What was he to do? The poor man hung about the street in which John lived, half hoping for an encounter which might clear up the matter one way or other. When he saw John his heart gave a jump of pleasure and relief in the first instance, and then the instinct of the offender came upon him and he turned and fled. But what was his flight worth before the pursuit of the active and impassioned youth who could have outstripped his swiftest pace in a stride or two? And then the fugitive said to himself that he was not really guilty, that he had done nothing to be afraid of. Kindness, qualified by a percentage. The rueful smile which was in his eyes when he turned to John was half conciliatory and half made up of self-approbation and amusement at the success of that phrase. Naturally, John was aware of neither of these sentiments. He pushed his prisoner before him into his sitting-room, taking no heed of the exclamations of Montressor. It was a trouble to him at all times to hear that name of May from the actor’s lips, but it was his own fault, and he could blame nobody. He thrust the culprit into his sitting-room, and pushed him into a chair without saying a word. He was breathless, not with the exertion so much as with the tumult in his mind, the eagerness, and passion. He had not expected to find thus the means of exonerating himself so soon, nor could he help a certain blaze of wrath against the man who had done him so ill a turn.
‘There!’ he said, waving Montressor aside with his hand. ‘Tell me first why you did it. What induced you to steal my papers and try to ruin me? Was not I kind to you?—was I not——’
‘Steal your papers!’ said the offender, with a look of surprised innocence. ‘I stole none of your papers. The copy which I had myself made at your request was surely by all laws of reason mine in the first place, and not yours.’
John gazed at him with a gasp of astonishment at this extraordinary doctrine, but for the first moment found nothing to say.
‘I allow,’ said the culprit, with a certain magnanimity, ‘that had I been engaged by you at, let us say, so much a day to make this copy, with a full understanding that it was to be your property, your question might be justified; but, as a matter of fact, no stipulations of the kind were made. You suggested to me that I should come here and copy your papers—with the benevolent intention of keeping me out of mischief—I suppose out of the company which you did not think good for me, of my faithful Joe.’
He had changed his position in the chair to a more easy one, and leaned forward a little, speaking, demonstrating slightly, easily, with his hand. John, in his sudden fury, and in the darkness of his distress, felt the current of his thoughts arrested, and his mind standing still with wonder. He gasped, but the words would not come.
‘But there was no engagement,’ resumed the speaker, with a smile; ‘nothing was said about so much a day. My labour was not put to any price, nor was there any time mentioned when it should be finished, or anything said about its ultimate destination. You will see that I am quite exact when you think over the circumstances. Isn’t it so? Well, then, by all laws of logic, the copy was mine, and I had a right to do what I liked with it; put it in the fire if I liked——’
‘But not to offer my scheme, my work, my ideas to—to—another firm,’ cried John, in his confusion: ‘to an opposition—to a——’
He saw he had made a mistake, but in his excitement could not tell what it was.
‘Oh,’ said March, ‘I see! Now I understand; it is a question of rivalry: they’re competitors—they’re on the other side? Certainly that wasn’t at all what I intended: and now I understand.’
It was John’s impulse to seize him by the collar, to shake the sophistry out of this bland usurper of his rights. But he did not do so. He restrained himself with a strong effort, and recovered the thread of reason which had been snatched for a moment out of his hand.
‘We might go into that,’ he said, ‘if you had the least right to take from me what was my work, and not yours. But you are too clever not to see that this is quite a secondary question. Whatever you may say, you copied those papers for me, by my orders, for payment. Bah! what is the use of arguing about such a matter? You know it as well as I do. You know my papers are stolen, that you have tried to make a profit of them, that you have taken them from me, to whom they belonged——’
John’s aspect in spite of himself was threatening: his countenance flushed, he changed his position, he clenched his hand. He was a powerful young man and the other was feeble and limp if not very old. Montressor, with his stage instinct, found it time for him to interfere.
‘May,’ he said, ‘old friend, I have always stood up for you, though I know you’ve done a dark deed. I’ve spoken for you even to this brave boy. He’s your own name, and may-be for aught I know he’s your own flesh and blood. Oh, me old friend! there used to be a deal of good in you, though weak. How could you find it in your heart to do a wrong to a young beginner? That wasn’t like what ye used to be, me old May——’
John had listened with a stupefied air to this speech. May! what did Montressor mean? He caught him by the arm.
‘The man’s name is March,’ he said.
This brought, what all other accusations had not done, a faint colour to the culprit’s face.
‘One month’s as good as another,’ he said, with a feeble laugh, ‘and begins with the same letter. So it’s you, Montressor. I didn’t notice who it was: the outer part of you is in better trim than when I saw you the other day.’
The actor replied, with a wave of his hand,
‘What has to be thought upon at present,’ he said, ‘is you and not me.’
This was not the policy of the man who was on his trial.
‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘it’s the fortune of war. The other day I was able to help you as an old friend, and now it’s you that patronise me.’
‘May,’ said John. He could not get beyond that point. What they said between themselves was nothing to him. He paid no attention to what they said. May! There swept into his mind a quick passing recollection of the feverish anxiety he had once felt to identify somehow and find out his relationship with some one of the name, and the Mayor of Liverpool, whom he had almost disturbed in his state to ask, Do you know anyone——? But he never met anywhere an individual who bore that name till now.
‘Ye see before ye,’ said Montressor, embarrassed, ‘me young friend, the unfortunate man that I was trying to recommend to you the last time we met. He says true, he was better off at that moment than I was; but that makes no difference. Yes, me noble boy. This is the May I told ye of. I have thought there was a likeness in some things between ye; but me wife would not hear me say it, for, John May, ye have the heart of a king: and me poor friend there, though he’s named the same——’
The man, who had not been listening any more than John had listened to the private conversation between his two companions, here woke up from his own thoughts with a slight start.
‘Who,’ he said, ‘are you calling John May? My name is Robert, not John at all—if it is me you mean. My father’s name was John, an honest worthy man. I always made up my mind to call the boy after him. What do you know about John May? that’s not my name, not my name at all. I’m rather in a weak state of health and I can’t bear very much. You wouldn’t speak of such things if you knew that they threw me into a tremble all over, which is very bad for me. Who do you mean by John May?’
The three men looked at each other in a tremulous quiver of excitement, like the flashing of intense heat in the air. They gazed at each other saying nothing. Montressor, though he had hitherto been calm, was growing agitated too, he could not tell why. There was a suppressed excitement in the very air round them which none of the three could fully understand. At this moment there was a knock at the door, which they all heard, as if they heard it not, without an attempt to make any reply. The world outside was for the moment blank to them; they had something more important than anything outside to settle among themselves.
CHAPTER VI.
A CRISIS.
It had been about noon when John left Messrs. Barretts’ office. It was now between three and four in the afternoon. His long walk, his talk with Montressor, the agitation and excitement of the catastrophe had made the time go as upon wings. But it had not gone upon wings at the office, where there was a great deal of commotion and discomfort, the pupils saying among themselves that for Sandford to go away in such a way was next to impossible; that little Prince, the little sneak, had told some lie—just like him; that the bosses, or the governors, or whatever other name for the heads of the office happened to be current at the moment, had made a howling mistake, and that the whole affair was nothing but a proof of the general stupidity of those teachers and overseers whom it is the mission of youth to dethrone. This agitation of feeling was not confined to the pupil-room or the outer office. It entered in, with the most serious results, to the very sanctuary of the establishment, Mr. Barrett’s own room, where Mr. William had a controversy with his father, which nothing but the decorum necessary between the heads of such a government could have kept within bounds.
Mr. Barrett was a pessimist by nature, and one who always expected to be deceived and wronged. He had heard, he forgot what, that had led him to expect evil of John, and to that idea he had clung during the period of the young man’s training with the purest faith. He had to confess from time to time that John had done very well so far, but—— He never forgot to shake his head and add that but. Now he was, if it is permissible to say so of a good man, delighted that his prophecies were justified. He told his son that he had always expected it, ‘from something his mother told me,’—though in the course of years he had forgotten what Mrs. Sandford had told him, which was not much.
William Barrett, however, was of another mind. He had liked John—he had put full faith in him, he had appreciated his practical abilities, and the good work he did, and his power of managing men, and had been disposed to look indulgently upon any theories or plans he might have. This was all the length his mind had gone when John spoke to him first of that scheme for draining the Thames Valley. He had smiled at it very good-humouredly—he had said to himself that when boys do take up an idea it is generally a magnificent one, but that it is better even to plan something on a ridiculously gigantic scale than to think of nothing at all. He was prepared, indeed, to get some amusement out of John’s Thames Valley. Perhaps there might be something in it, some idea which a maturer brain could work out. There was no telling, but at all events it would be worth looking at for the fun of it, if nothing more: a youth of that age, with no experience to speak of, tackling a business which had baffled the wisest! But it was like a boy to do so. Fools rush in—or at least pupils rush in—where engineers sometimes fear to tread.
So he looked forward with amused expectation to the production of John’s scheme. But when Prince told him that story of Spender & Diggs, the scheme took a different aspect in Mr. William Barrett’s eyes. It gained an importance, a reality which nothing else could have given it. He did not smile at the idea of this absurd youthful plan as presented to the rival office. It became immediately a serious matter; a project of the greatest importance. All at once it became possible, very likely, that the other firm, who had nothing to do with John, might be about to reap all the benefit of him, and to enter upon the greatest engineering work that had been attempted for years, through this boy at whose plans ‘Barretts’ had smiled. William Barrett had no inclination to smile now. It was deadly earnest by this time: and he could not but feel sure in the natural certainty of events that this scheme which he had pooh-poohed would be seen in its true light by the others, and would make the fortune of Spender & Diggs.
This thought had made him severe to John, though not so severe as his father: and more open to conviction. His mind was at all times more open to conviction than that of his father: and when John had burst out of the office, in the first rage of his indignation, refusing to defend himself, Mr. William, as has been said, followed him to the door, calling him back, with a compunction which he could not get rid of. This compunction did nothing but go on increasing in the blank which followed that fiery scene. And the atmosphere in the pupil’s room affected Mr. William, too, though he was not aware of it. He had a consciousness that the lads were saying among themselves, in the slang of which all elder persons disapprove, that the bosses had made a thundering mistake. Had they made a mistake? He was, in his heart, of the same opinion as the pupil-room. He did not think that John Sandford had done this thing. Now that the flurry of discovery was over, he asked himself was it likely? had the young fellow ever done anything that looked the least like it? Had he not always been as steady as a rock, always honest and true, never neglecting his employers’ interests, carrying out their orders, as good a worker as could be? Was it likely he should turn round all at once? This thought worked in his mind silently, while those boys entertained each other with saying that the bosses had made a mistake: and it was greatly stimulated by the exasperating suggestion that Spender & Diggs might reap all the profit, and might go far ahead of Barretts in the struggle for fortune and fame. Would they go ahead of Barretts? He began to remember John’s start of surprise, his question as to who it was that had carried his papers to the other office, his look of enlightenment. If they had been stolen from him, and the papers which he had flung down on the table, were, as he had said, his original scheme, Spender & Diggs might not find it so easy to shoot ahead of Barretts. On the whole, thinking it over, it was more likely that Spender & Diggs had cheated than John. It would not be the first time. They might have put one of their men up to it, to find out what the young fellow was working at. Of course it soon got abroad among the lads what one was doing—and what more likely than that the rival firm, old hands at that sort of thing, people far more used to picking the brains of other people’s pupils than to developing talent among their own, what if they had secured possession of the copy of John’s scheme by one of the underhand ways with which they were familiar? On the whole, that was really more likely than that Sandford, a lad against whom nobody had a word to say, who had always behaved well, should have gone over, without rhyme or reason, to the enemy.
By dint of long-continued reasonings like this, William Barrett worked himself up by the time he left the office to seek another interview with John. He said to himself that he would put his pride in his pocket, and go after the young fellow, who no doubt was miserable, though he had so much pluck he would not show it. His heart smote him that he had not taken all these things into consideration before, and he had visions of young Sandford’s misery and despair, which affected even the middle-aged imagination of a man quite unused to anything heroical. He felt that his father had been unkind to John, which gave him at once an impulse and a motive for seeking the young man out—for, though he respected his father, the junior partner was generally more or less in opposition to him. All these things together made him determine to go after John, and have it out with him. He got his address almost stealthily, as not wishing anyone in the office to know until he saw what would come of it, and set out from the office a little earlier than usual that no time might be lost. He found the door open when he came to the house, and being himself somewhat excited, and beyond the rule of common laws, went in without ringing the bell; and, hearing voices in the first sitting-room he came to, knocked at the door. He was thus brought into the very midst of the agitated group which we have attempted to set before the reader at the climax of their excitement. The voices ceased, after a moment, but no attention was paid to Mr. Barrett’s knock. Something of the excitement that was in the air communicated itself to him.
‘Sandford,’ said William Barrett, putting his head in at the door.
They were all silent, staring at each other full of confused trouble, suspicion, and uncertainty. Even John felt vaguely, when the original question rose up before him in the sudden apparition of Mr. William Barrett’s grave face, that another matter had since arisen which swallowed up the first. The intruder who came in without invitation, feeling somehow that here was a crisis above conventional rules found that the interest centred like the high light in a picture in the countenance of the man who sat at the table, leaning on it, his whole person quivering with a tremulous movement like palsy, his face turned, pale, with a half-anxious, half-fatuous beseeching smile upon it to the other man standing opposite to him, who on his side looked from John to the new-comer and back again with a look of amazement and confusion. John himself stood half-stupefied between them, giving no more than a glance of recognition to his employer, occupied with more urgent affairs; and yet Mr. Barrett had good reason to know that his own mission to this youth who was so strangely daring his fate, was in one sense life and death.
‘Whom do you mean by John May? John May’s not a common name, neither is Sandford. Montressor, you’re stirring up all my life, and you know it. Most things I can bear well enough. I’ve gone through a great deal. I’m hardened to most things—but not—not—to my little boy’s name. You’ve got a child of your own, and you ought to know. I’ve not seen that little chap for fourteen years. I don’t know where he is now, if he’s living or if he’s dead, and yet once he was the apple of my eye. Montressor, what do you mean with your play-acting and your stage tricks, bandying about what was the name of my little boy?’
John Sandford stood listening to these words which came out, with pauses between, in a voice which was full of real feeling, a voice so different from the easy sophistry, the humorous self-contempt, the confused philosophy which were its usual utterance—with sensations indescribable, and something like a moral overturn of his whole being: vague recollections, suggestions from the past, horrible fears, doubts, certainties, confusion, rose up in him, enveloping him like a mist. He cared no more for William Barrett than if he had been an office-boy; he forgot all the question about the Thames Valley. These things, though he had felt them half-an-hour ago to be the most momentous in the world, departed from him as if they had never been. He stood, scarcely able to see for the haze of feverish excitement that had got into his eyes, staring blindly, with all his faculties concentrated in that of hearing, listening for what would come next.
‘Sir,’ said Montressor, ‘ye do me wrong. The drama is the drama, and I love it; but stage business is not, as ye say, for common life. Me own name I don’t deny, if all were laid bare, is perhaps not Montressor. But the poor player is likewise a man. Had I any stage effect in me mind when I told ye there was one of your own name I would recommend ye to? here he stands, and a young fellow any man might be proud of. The first time I set eyes on him he saved me chyild’s life—judge if I was likely to forget his name. This, me poor friend, is John May.’
‘That’s nonsense as I can testify,’ said William Barrett, breaking in bluntly. ‘I don’t know who your friends are, Sandford, and perhaps I ought to beg your pardon for interfering; but you’re very young though you’re not perhaps aware of it. Come, gentlemen, if you’ve got any hold upon this young man I shall be glad to answer your questions about him, and let him attend to his business. He is in fact my pupil, and it’s not to my interest his mind should be disturbed from his work. Whatever stories you may have heard I must know more about him than you do. His name is Sandford. He was placed by his mother in our hands.’
‘Sir,’ said Montressor, with dignity, ‘these are me friends, both the young man and the old. I do not turn to strangers to ask for information concerning me friends. Ye may be well meaning, but ye are ignorant—and I find ye intrusive,’ said the actor, turning away with a wave of his hand.
‘Sandford!’ cried William Barrett. Capitals could not do justice to the injured majesty of this cry. Intrusive! In the rooms of a pupil taken without a premium (that even he remembered in the shock of the indignity), such a word to be applied to him!
But John said nothing. He was stupefied, or mad, or drunk, which was it? He scarcely gave his employer a look. The colour had disappeared from his face, his eyes seemed to have a film over them, his lips trembled. He said at last, almost inaudibly, looking straight before him at vacancy,
‘My real name is John May—that was my name when I was a child—the other—is my grandfather’s name.’
Then the man who had injured John, who had taken his plans from him and robbed him, and made him appear a traitor, rose up tottering, supporting himself by the table.
‘If it’s your grandfather’s name,’ he said, ‘and you were Johnnie May when you were a child—— God help us all, it’s fourteen years ago. Are you my little chap, my little man, that I used to take out of your bed in your nightgown, with your bonny bright eyes shining? Oh, God in heaven, I’m not fit to be any good lad’s father. Are you my little boy? Are you Johnnie May?’
The room and all that was in it swam in dark circles of confusing mist in John’s eyes. He grasped a chair to support himself, to defend himself; the floor seemed to give way under his feet.
‘I’ll—I’ll come back presently,’ he said.
Mr. Barrett thought more and more, with a grieved heart, that the young fellow must have been drinking, as with a sudden rush he gained the door, and clung to that again for a moment, like a man who has no control of his limbs or movements. There he paused, and, looking at them, said,
‘Wait: wait here: till I come back——’
Mr. Barrett followed him quickly, afraid of what might follow. He found John ghastly and helpless, sitting on the step of the outer door. The young man gave a little nod of his head.
‘Wait,’ he gasped, ‘I’ll be better—in a moment—I want a little air.’
‘Sandford, what is the matter? Something has happened to you; what are you going to do?’
John did not answer for a minute. He sat with his mouth open taking long breaths, as if the air had been a cordial which he was gulping down in mouthfuls. The street was very quiet, there was nobody in sight, and the air of early summer was fresh and a little chill in afternoon greyness. Presently the young man rose and smiled faintly at his companion.
‘I’m better,’ he said. ‘I’m fit now for what I’ve got to do.’
‘Tell me, Sandford, what is it you are going to do? Nothing desperate, I hope. I came to tell you I was ready to hear any explanation—’
John waved his hand with an air of almost derision.
‘Do you suppose I’m thinking of that? It’s gone far beyond that.’
‘What can be beyond that?’ cried the employer, with exasperation. Then he seized the young man by the arm. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I am afraid I must have a cab,’ said John, with his confused look, ‘for quickness; besides that I couldn’t walk. All my strength’s gone out of me.’
‘But what are you doing? What has happened? Where are you going now?’ John looked at his chief, the friend of so many years, with a piteous smile.
‘I am going to find out—if there’s any hope for me—what’s to become of me,’ he said.
CHAPTER VII.
MRS. SANDFORD’S VIEW.
Mrs. Sandford sat in her matron’s room in the light of the bay windows, making up her accounts as usual. She was regulating the lists of linen in the hospital, the surgical appliances, the provisions of all kinds. Her round of the wards had been made. The nurses had given their reports, the special cases had been visited. Her day’s work, so to speak, was done. The afternoon was the time for rest. She was occupying it, as she often did, in this necessary, but not ostentatious work, upon which so much of the comfort of the little community devoted to healing and merciful service, depended. Mrs. Sandford was known to be a great administrator: nothing was ever wanting, nothing to seek, under her management; her stores never ran out. But she was so used to this work of regulation and oversight that she did not find it very interesting. Sometimes she would lay down her pen, sometimes even lean back in her chair, which was not, however, a seductive lounge, but an ample, comfortable Chippendale, in which you sat upright very much at your ease, but had no encouragement to loll. She had things to think of apart from the hospital. A letter lay on her table among all her lists and account-books, which was from Susie, and there were things in it which made this mother, who, after all, though perhaps of sterner fibre than most, was still of the same stuff from which ordinary mothers are made—both smile and sigh. Susie’s life was undergoing new developments. A certain commotion was in it of new forces awakening, and new thoughts. Perhaps, under the most favourable circumstances, Susie was not likely to make such revelations as would justify any critic in saying that she was ‘in love'; but there were in her letter indications, little eddies which proved how the current went, straws that showed how the wind was blowing. For one thing, she kept up a continual comparison between two unknown persons, of which she herself was evidently unconscious, but which her mother perceived gradually by dint of repetition. ‘Mr. Percy Spencer tells me’—‘but Mr. Cattley says:’—she had told her mother at first all about her visitors, and how these two came and went, and talked of John. Susie had a great deal to say, too, of Elly, and had made her mother aware of all that had gone on in that respect, and also of Mrs. Egerton and her opposition, which by times extended to Susie and by times ebbed away altogether, as circumstances, or humour, or the weather moved the parish queen in one way or another. Those reports were always quite simple, and often amusing, for Susie had a quiet way of telling a story, very circumstantial and clear, which sometimes gave her readers a more luminous and humorous view than she was herself aware of. But Susie made no comparison in respect to the ladies of Edgeley. Their intercourse with her was simple. It was her visitors of the other sex who evidently produced this effect of balance and comparison in her mind.
‘Mr. Percy gave me his view of it; he takes very strong views; but Mr. Cattley tells me——’
This was always the position in which these two appeared—Percy bringing forward all kinds of opinions, decisive of many matters, social and otherwise; but Mr. Cattley always adding a criticism or comment, something that changed the issue. Mrs. Sandford, for the fiftieth time, leaned back in her chair, and put down her pen, and asked herself, with a faint, lingering smile, which softened her stern face, what Susie meant. Susie was her own child, to whom her heart was soft, her companion, the sharer of all her thoughts. The sternness which she had shown to John had never touched his sister. Susie knew her mother entirely, knew what she meant, and what her past life had been. There were no secrets between these two. Of many things in his own antecedents, John was ignorant, but Susie knew everything. All Susie’s ways of thinking had grown under her mother’s eye. She had never thoroughly known her son, but she knew Susie through and through. This made the greatest difference in their mutual relations. Mrs. Sandford was to her daughter both tender, and soft, and gentle. Susie knew how to make her laugh, to bring tears to her eyes, whereas to John there was no laughter in her. All this, and even the contrast with John, who was in no such position, drew the mother and daughter more closely together. And it was with all the mingled sympathy and alarm, and tender prescience and pleasure, and regret of that relationship, that she saw the moment coming when the child would find some one else to be nearer to her, more a portion of herself and her life than even her mother.
Mrs. Sandford felt, with that exquisite fellow-feeling which is like divination, almost before Susie did, the development of a new affection in Susie’s soul. And she leaned back in her chair between happiness and sadness, pleased to see her girl ‘respected like the lave,’ though already conscious of the desolation that desirable and good thing would bring with it—asking herself, almost with amusement, Which would it be? It was a mood more soft than was at all usual with her, and, notwithstanding the darkness that must come with the fulfilment of those dreams, it was a happy mood. That her mild Susie should have, not one but two suitors flattered and amused her. Which would it be? Mr. Cattley, in his mild, middle age, or Percy, the young priest, who had never intended to yield to the weakness of love-making? This was the subject of Mrs. Sandford’s thoughts: and other matters more painful, if any painful matters were at that moment within the possibilities of her life, had floated away like clouds from the languid sweetness of the afternoon sky.
There was something, however, in the sound of the hurried step she heard approaching which roused her. It rang along the unoccupied passages, quick, eager, hurried, yet with a little stumble of weakness in it, as of excitement gone too far, and losing hold of itself. She listened, and instantly sat upright in her chair, and put Susie’s letter away under a bundle of papers. It was perhaps something very bad brought into the accident ward, or the man in No. 4 had been taken with another attack, or—— Then something made her start a little.
‘It is his step,’ she said to herself: and he was John, the boy as she always called him in her heart.
He pushed open the door without knocking, and saying hurriedly, ‘May I come in,’ came in without waiting for permission. Her experienced eye saw at once that he had received a great shock. Either in body or mind he had been shaken violently. His hair hung in damp masses on his forehead. He was without colour, save when in speaking he suddenly reddened and then was pale again. A touch of personal disarrangement made this agitation of his appearance more remarkable. His tie had got loose, and he had not perceived it. Such a simple matter of external appearance seems to set a seal upon the profoundest commotions of life.
She cried out, ‘What is the matter?’ before he could speak a word. Then, starting suddenly with that instinctive alarm which moves us for those we love, added quickly, ‘Susie! You have had some bad news.’
‘Not of Susie,’ he said, in a breathless way. ‘Mother, I have come for you. Come with me instantly, for God’s sake!’
‘What is the matter, John? I can’t go out like this, you know. I have to make arrangements. What is it?—for heaven’s sake tell me what it is.’
‘I may never in my life ask such a thing from you again. Most likely I shall never want it. If you have any feeling for me, for God’s sake come with me. To me it is life or death.’
She put her hand upon his arm, and drew him towards her, looking in his face, feeling with a professional touch his hands and the throbbing of his pulse.
‘Something has gone amiss,’ she said. ‘Your hands are cold, and yet your pulse is high. You have had some shock.’ She got up as she spoke, and made him sit down in her chair, and put her hands upon his head. ‘Tell me what is the matter,’ she said, in that tone of mild determination with which she overawed her patients. ‘You are not fit to be flying about.’
There was something in the touch, in the maternal authority—though that was scarcely more individual to him than to any other—which touched the poor young fellow in the feverish crisis of feeling in which he was. It was a relief to sink down into the chair, to feel even its wooden arms giving him a sensation of support. And to have some one to fall back upon at such a moment was the best thing in heaven or earth. He had never wanted such a prop before. It was against all the principles of his life to look for it, and yet there was the profoundest consolation in it. He closed his eyes for a moment, and the heat and the horror of his thoughts relaxed a little. He had meant to seize upon her, to carry her away in a whirlwind of passionate haste and anxiety, to confront her with him, the stranger who had possession of John’s rooms, and seemed to claim possession of his life. That had seemed at first the only thing to do: to carry her off without warning, to bring her face to face with that unthought of, unsuspected apparition, and demand of her, ‘Who is this?’ Perhaps there had been in it a gleam of personal vengeance too, the desire to recompense with a keen, swift stroke of punishment the deception put upon him, and all the mysteries now suddenly let loose upon his head. But the touch of his mother’s hand, the anxiety in her voice, the kindness—though perhaps no more than any patient at the hospital would have called forth—over-turned all these intentions in a moment. He was wound up to such a passion of feeling that everything told upon him, and the revulsion was great. He leaned back, touching her shoulder, laying his head upon it.
‘Mother,’ he said, like a child, with a pathetic voice of reproach, ‘why did you tell me he was dead?’
‘John!’ she started so violently that the pillow of rest on which he had leaned seemed to reject as well as fail him. ‘John!’
He turned round upon her suddenly, and caught her hands in his.
‘Mother,’ he said again, ‘is it true? Mother, is it true? I have never understood. God help me, was this what it meant all the time?’
Mrs. Sandford, who was so self-controlled and so strong, trembled and quivered in his hold. She said, in a hoarse whisper,
‘What has happened? Tell me what it is.’
He held her hands fast, and would not let her go, swaying a little backward and forward as if he were shaking her, though he had no such meaning.
‘I have never understood,’ he repeated. ‘I must have been told what was not true. Now I know: you ought all to have seen that I must be told sooner or later. Is that true?’
She was a woman of great resolution, and she freed herself from him, though his hold was so close. She came round to the other side of the table, and stood looking at him, with the steady look which had daunted many a rebel. She said,
‘You are ill; you don’t know what you are saying. I should not wonder if you had had a slight sunstroke. You must go to Susie’s room, which is cool and fresh, and lie down.’
And then there ensued a moment’s parley, but not with words—with keen eyes looking into each other across the table. She stood as steady as a rock, as if she were thinking of nothing but the accidental illness of which she spoke. But John saw that the lighter part of her, the edge, so to speak, the line of her black gown, the turn of her elbow, had a quiver in them. He saw this without knowing that he saw it, as we do in moments of emotion.
‘Mother,’ he said, ‘it’s no mistake; it’s not illness. It’s what I tell you. Come with me and see him: and if you can say then that it is not true—— Ah!’ he exclaimed, with a sharp tone of distress, ‘you can’t. I see it in your face.’
Mrs. Sandford did all she could to steady herself still.
‘To see whom?’ she said. ‘To see——’ Then, with a long-drawn breath, ‘You are trying to frighten me. I know—no one of whom you can be speaking.’
‘Then why are you afraid?’ he said.
She kept standing, gazing at him for a moment more. Then a sort of shivering seized her, and in a moment all her defences seemed to fail. She gave him a look of agonised appeal, then came to him like a child flying from a suddenly realised danger, and dropped down by the side of his chair.
‘Oh, John,’ she cried, clinging to him, ‘save me. I cannot see him—oh, no, no! You don’t know what you ask. Say I am dead. Say I am—— Kill me rather, kill me! It would be kinder. Oh, no, no, no, no! I cannot, I cannot. I’ll rather die. Save me, John!’
A horrible dismay crept through and through him as he bent over her, exclaiming, ‘Mother, mother!’ trying to soothe her—but above all a profound, all-subduing pity. He had his answer; there was no possibility of misunderstanding what this meant: but the sight of the convulsed and broken figure clinging to him in utter self-abandonment penetrated to his very heart. He clasped with his own the hands that held his arm. He put down his head to the face which, full of mortal terror and misery, looked up to him imploring his protection. His protection! for her so strong, so self-sufficing, so immovable. To see her at his feet was more than he could bear.
‘Mother, I will; as far as I can, by every means I can. I will, I will—mother, it breaks my heart to see you. Then it is true, all true?’
And on the other side there seemed to rise before him another picture: the man with his smile arguing the question, persuading himself that anything he had done was, if not wholly right, at least far from being wrong, that it was the thing most natural to be done—with his air of mental confusion, yet satisfaction, his amiability, his conciliatory looks, his humorous self-consciousness, the subtle semi-intoxication which seemed to have got into his character. These things had made John smile a short time ago; they had filled him with a sort of compassionate kindness, an amused toleration of all the ways of this strange specimen of what human nature could come to. He was not amused or tolerant now. He thought with shrinking of this new, never-realised, impossible agent who had come into his life, impossible, yet, alas! real, never to be ignored again. But the first thing was his mother, his mother who, their positions reversed in a moment, clung to him with that face full of panic and anguish, flinging herself upon his protection. She, who was so strong, the embodiment of self-reliance and authority, to see her as weak as water, as weak as any poor woman, imploring her son to save her! He had never in his life till now given her more than the conventional kiss which their relationship seemed to demand when they met and parted. But now he held her close and kissed over and over again the white, agonised face which was pressed against his arm. Presently he raised her up tenderly and restored her to her seat—where gradually her panic calmed down, and she was able to speak. But it was very terrible and strange to John that she asked no questions, but took the miserable fact for granted, as if it were a thing that must have happened, that she had expected sooner or later, something inevitable in her way.
‘The only thing is,’ he said, with a sigh of subdued impatience, ‘why did you not tell me, mother. Why didn’t I know?’
His question brought the shivering back, but she replied, with an effort,
‘How can I tell you? We thought it was better so. I would not have you exposed to that knowledge. You were so young—and then it might never have been necessary—it might never have come——’
‘You mean that he might have died—there?’
‘It would,’ she said, bowing her head, ‘have been better so.’
‘Without anyone to stand by him or say a word, without love or succour,’ he cried. Was there not another side to the question? He thought she drew herself away from him with a renewed movement of alarm, and he rose from her side, too pitiful to be indignant, his heart wrung with contending thoughts.
She held out her hands to him with another outcry of terror.
‘Don’t go! I have no one. Don’t forsake me, don’t leave me alone! John, John!’
‘I must,’ he said, ‘if I am to defend you, to save you, as you say. And then,’ he added, ‘there is more than that: to take care of—him. He cannot be ignored, mother; at least he has claims upon me.’
‘Oh, John! Stay with me, don’t go. It has not been for myself I have feared most, but for you. It was always for you that I have feared, lest he might get an influence, lest he might—— John, stay with me! Have I not the best right to you? I that have——’
‘Distrusted me always, mother. I don’t blame you, but you know it has been so.’
She covered her face with her hands.
‘I am but a feeble, prejudiced woman. I claim no exception. I do wrong trying to do right, like all the rest, John. I feared, God forgive me, that you might turn out—I thought you were——’
‘The son of my father,’ he said, with a mingling of sweetness and bitterness which gave something keen and poignant to the sound of his voice. ‘And so I am—and so I must prove myself now.’