FATHER AND SON

XVIII

THE AMALGAMATED BRICK CO.

The offices of the Amalgamated Brick Co. were situated within a stone's-throw of the Mansion House. London throbbed and roared around them; on every side spread an intricate confusion of narrow and ancient streets, inhabited by a host of nomadic men, who camped in them for a few hours each day, filled them with clamour, and fled at nightfall. The invasion began with the earliest light; then might be seen the scouts of the advancing army, mere boys, whose fresh faces had not yet acquired the London pallor or lost the mischievous vivacity of boyhood; youths immaculately dressed in well-brushed common clothes; narrow-shouldered men in shabby overcoats; oldish men, who walked with eyes fixed upon the pavement, as if bowed with some unforgetable humiliation, and, here and there, women, some mere girls, treading briskly, others shawled and shapeless figures with battered bonnets, charwomen, office scrubbers, and the like, all passing in an endless stream, and swallowed up at last in these dim byways of the city. Later on came another class of men, wearing better clothes, but whose eyes were anxious; then well-fleshed and confident persons, who walked upright with an air of authority; last of all, the magnates, fur-coated and wearing diamond pins and studs, smoking cigars or cigarettes, arriving in cabs or carriages, who were received in these crowded offices with the silence which awaits the passage of kings. With their advent began the real business of the day. At their glance every pulse beat faster, every brain grew more alert, and the great wheel of business revolved with electric speed, humming, throbbing, tumultuous, till the very walls shook with its reverberations, and the whole city became clamorous as a cave into which a fierce sea thunders. By noon the tide was at its height; at four o'clock the ebb began; with the earliest stars the invading host began the process of dispersal till, by the time midnight had arrived, Tadmor in the wilderness was not more silent or more solitary than this deserted city.

For centuries this daily invasion had gone on, and who shall say what uncounted multitudes had fallen on the field of battle! For centuries more it would go on, and always with the same history. Here was achieved a perpetual immolation of mankind, a hopeless and unatoning sacrifice. To this battlefield youth brought its energy, manhood its virtue and its strength, womanhood its humble patience. To what delusive trumpet-music had they marched, beneath what visionary banners, with what far-off thrilling glimpses of golden heights which they would never scale! To these thronged recruits in the regiments of Mammon, experience brought no caution, age no wisdom. For the story was always the same, the issue unvarying: first the baseless hope of youth, then the long unfruitful patience of laborious manhood, lastly the miserable despair of age. Happy those who fell early in the struggle; they had the consolation of a might-have-been whose absurdity was not detected, and they were spared the worst. Most miserable those who lived on, until hope failed, each year became a new disability, and at last they found themselves superseded, thrust out by a new generation, discarded, and left alone with the spectres of want, sickness, and the workhouse. A few survived, of course, and their histories, passed from lip to lip, became the stimulus for fresh hosts of foredoomed toilers. By luck, by fraud, by adroit use of opportunity, by unscrupulous ability, by cruel and ruthless stratagem, these few rose, climbed upon a holocaust of victims into power, and became the battle lords of this inglorious field. None saw in them a warning, multitudes offered them adulation; and they thus became new lures for ignorant ambition. And so the endless martyrdom went on; ever fresh hosts clamouring to sacrifice flesh and brain upon these ignoble altars, with a fervour of fanaticism never equalled in the most sacred causes of freedom or religion. Ah! not upon the snows of Russia, the plain of Waterloo, or the heights of Gettysburg are found the most dreadful battlefields of earth! The bloodiest of all battlefields are in the heart of cities.

Archibold Masterman was one of those who had risen, especially since the successful launching of the Amalgamated Brick Co. He had become a personage sought for at civic dinners, known at clubs, and surrounded by a clamour of more or less sincere flattery. From the windows of his office he could see the gray roof of the Mansion House, and he never looked that way without elation. Why should he not reign there? What was there to prevent him moving at the height of civic glory? The kingdoms of the world—his world—were spread before him, and the glory of them, and he was eager to inherit them. Lord Mayor of London, Member of Parliament for the city, knighthood, baronetcy—so ran his dream, and he knew that it was not a foolish dream. Men less able than himself had won these prizes. And he meant to have them in good time. The truly great period of his life was just beginning. He had got the world beneath his feet at last, and he meant to keep it there.

Extreme prosperity had had a softening influence upon the man; a harsh critic might have called it a disintegrating influence. The mental force was not abated, the alertness of his eye was not dimmed; but he went with a looser rein. He rose later, sat longer at the table, and had learned to rely upon subordinates. His suspicion, that sixth sense of the man of business, was relaxed. The strong opiate of self-sufficiency had begun to work in his veins. He was the conscious conqueror, walking with uplifted head, and no longer closely watchful of the way he trod.

With him Elisha Scales had risen too. The clerk, with his mean face and crafty eyes, had proved himself indispensable. Masterman's dislike for him remained, but use and contiguity had worn down much of his original prejudice. He could not but admit his ability. Beyond that, however, he did not care to go. He knew him to be adroit, patient, obsequious, daring; but the inner springs of his character remained inscrutable.

It was Scales who had really engineered the Brick Trust. The purchase of the Leatham brick-yard had been but the first of a great number of similar transactions. No sooner was the Amalgamated floated than it achieved a miraculous success. There was a fortnight of frantic buying by the public; gold poured into the treasury; the financial papers, duly subsidised by copious advertisement, pushed the boom; and at the end of three months the name of Masterman was enrolled among the great magnates of modern commerce. His portrait appeared in the journals. The story of his early struggles was adorned with legendary marvel. Due stress was laid upon his piety: was he not the deacon of a church, a man of strict morals, a man who might be safely trusted, a man of solid character? And of all the baits that drew the public, perhaps this was the most successful. The small investor rallied to him. Humble folk in remote religious communities learned his name, discussed his doings, and struggled for the chance to lay their savings at his feet. If any word of warning reached them, it was disregarded. Six per cent. is so much more attractive than four, that, when it is guaranteed by the piety and genius of a Masterman, the voice of prudence speaks in vain.

A few months of secret campaigning, a month of deafening publicity, and behold the result—Scales flourishing in a house of new and expensive furniture, the possessor of a carriage; Masterman enthroned in spacious offices, from whose windows he beholds all the vanities of earth—sheriffship, mayoralty, knighthood, and the like—moving steadily towards him in a golden pageant.

Has the reader ever seen a balloon of paper, with a tiny light burning in its centre, soar into the evening air? It is a pretty spectacle. One wonders how so frail a thing can hold so perilous a force as flame. We watch with astonishment its little lamp borne aloft, carried hither and thither like a starry feather on the delicate tides of air, yet always moving higher. Watch it long enough, and you will see something else. Sooner or later there comes a flash of fire, a dim red spark, visible for an instant, and where is the balloon? Its very fragments are undiscoverable, and it is seen no more.

Masterman's balloon soared bravely in those first six months. Then something happened which no sagacity could predict—a wind of war arose suddenly, and the lamp showed dangerous flickerings.

When war happens to a nation it at once becomes the supreme interest. And this was no common war. From insignificant beginnings, at which the nation smiled in proud contempt, it grew into a devastating struggle. Troops were poured to the front, until the martial resources of the nation were exhausted. There was a cry for volunteers; and city offices and warehouses were depleted by whole battalions of heroic youth. All business was arrested, and sank into narrow channels. The daily crash of bankruptcy filled the air. And, since the last thing men do at such a time is to extend their premises and build houses, it came to pass that there was no demand for bricks. The Brick Trust ruled the market; but, when there is no market, this appears a hollow boast. And yet there were dividends that must be paid, for they were guaranteed; there was an appearance of prosperity which must be maintained at all costs. There came at last a day when a chill apprehension began to spread through the offices of the Trust. It was at first but a tiny cold wave, but it crept higher, for a whole sea lay behind it. Masterman, sitting in his office, heard the lapping of the rising tide, and saw it carrying away the broken gauds of the pageant of which he had dreamed.

"The war will end in a month!" he cried. But it did not end. "It will end in three months," he prophesied; "and then will come a marvellous prosperity." But the prophecy proved false. On lonely veldt and behind unassailable kopjes a daring and sullen foe held on. "It looks as if it will go on for ever!" he exclaimed at last, in the bitterness of his heart. And the day when he said that brought with it something the strong man had never known before—a sudden loosening of the bonds of all his vigour. For weeks he had slept little; he had grown gaunt and nervous; and now there came this thrill of weakness, this collapse of force. In the gray winter dawn he rose and dressed as usual, but his strong hands trembled, and his head swam. A newsboy, racing past his house, shouted, "Another British defeat!" That was the last stroke. He sank helpless to the ground. When he woke he was in bed.

"I must go to the city!" he cried.

"You cannot!" said the voice of Dr. Leet. "If you don't obey my orders now, you will never go to the city again."

"A million of money is at stake!" he groaned.

"So is your life," said the doctor.

He lay quiet a long time after that. It was a new and terrible thought, and he found it hard to adjust his mind to it. "His life"—he had always assumed that that at least was his own unforfeitable possession. He had never known the moment when eager nerve and artery and brain-cell had not leapt to obey his will. And now it seemed his whole house of life was in revolt. His will, that iron captain-general of all these servile forces, was deposed. Well, he simply would not die. If he must obey the doctor, he must. And, after all, to a man tired in brain and body this restfulness of soft pillows, this utter quietness and shaded light, was sweet. Anything was better than that horrible thrill of weakness, that loosening of each intimate joint and muscle—anything!

He turned his face from the light, and fell asleep.

Toward evening he was told that Scales insisted on seeing him. He would have seen him; but the doctor was present, and interposed his fiat. The most that the doctor would allow was that Scales should send him a written message.

The message came: "What are we to do?"

It was accompanied by no explanation, but the words were ominous. He made an effort to grasp their meaning, but it escaped him.

"Do what you will," he wrote.

Then the blind wave of stupor overwhelmed him again. Why should he trouble? It was all right—everything was all right. It was a hard thing that a man who had worked all his life couldn't get one day's rest. He wasn't going to worry. Let Scales do the worrying; that was what he was paid for. Everything was all right—it must be all right ... and Scales was no fool. So he fell asleep again, and the black night settled on the city, and he heard no more the voices wailing in the darkness, "Another British defeat!"

If his eyes could have followed the clerk, he would have seen a face paler than his own, with puckered, blinking eyes, and jaw set in grim determination. As Scales drew nearer to his own house, it was as though he smoothed out his face by some magic of dissimulation. Perhaps it was the mere spectacle of the house that turned the scale of destiny for him that night. How could he give up that house? It was the outward symbol of his social apotheosis. He had bought it but a year ago. And since then how much had he spent on it! What delighted chafferings he had had with decorators and upholsterers! There was the dining-room, all panelled in oak, with beautiful red walls, and a Turkey carpet; and the little library, with its bookcases—all mahogany; and the drawing-room, with its white stucco decorations, and its white wooden partitions, which every one admired; and the billiard-room, with its French windows opening on the little lawn; why, even the servants' bedrooms were done in white and gold! There was never a completer house—every one had said so. He had never grown tired of explaining its unique conveniences to his less fortunate friends; and on Thursday afternoons, when Mrs. Scales "received," she had usually closed the function by taking her more intimate acquaintances all over her house, never even omitting the kitchens. And he was to give this up? He was to sink back again into a "semi-detached," with iron railings and a strip of garden, and rooms with cheap wall-papers? And he was to sell his horse, which he had bought from an alderman, and get rid of that adorable victoria, in which he aired his greatness on Saturday afternoons before envious suburban eyes—and perhaps come back again to the indignity of cheap trams and 'buses? Well, not if he knew it! He knew a trick worth two of that. Masterman had told him to do as he liked; and an evil spirit whispered at his ear as he went up the steps of the house, and told him quite distinctly what it was that he must do.

Mrs. Scales met him in the hall, plump, smiling, robed in yellow satin; and somehow that yellow satin angered him like an insult. He regarded it with distinct aversion. He felt a rising wave of disgust against his wife, merely because she looked so cheerful and proud, while he endured secret tortures—she could wear yellow satin, while his mind wore crape. That was like women—they had nothing to do but eat and drink and dress, while their men-folk were on the rack. Talk about the fine discernment of women! Why, they hadn't any! You might live with a woman for years, and she would never guess what you, endured and suffered. So he let his ill temper against his wife smoulder; for it is a habit common with persons of the Scales variety to treat a wife as a kind of lightning-rod, which conveniently receives the discharge of their superfluous wrath.

This wrath accumulated violence in the course of an uncomfortable dinner. The poor woman had but one theme of perennial interest—her house and her servants.

"I've thought of a new improvement," she began joyously. "What do you think of it? I'm going to have a little conservatory opening from the library window. The builders' men were here this afternoon, and they say it can be done quite easily, and won't cost more than about two hundred pounds."

"Ah! that's like you!" he retorted, with a vicious snarl. "Always planning and plotting to spend my money, aren't you? Do you think I'm made of money? Do you think I've nothing to do but pay for your whims? I'd have you know I'm master in this house! And I'll have no builders' men coming here when I'm out!"

"But Elisha, I thought you'd be pleased——"

"Then you'd no business to think? I won't have you doing things without consulting me! No, I don't want any more dinner! I've other things to think of besides conservatories!"

And he flung off from the table in a rage, leaving behind him tears and consternation.

"What's the matter with father?" asked young Benjamin.

"I'm sure I don't know," she replied.

"He's getting mighty ill tempered."

But at that the instinctive woman's loyalty flew to his defence.

"I expect he's worried. Your father has so much to think of. Sometimes I think we were happier before we had all this money."

"I don't," grinned the son. "That's all nonsense, mother. Money is about the only thing I know that's worth having in this world."

With which admirable sentiment he took himself off to the billiard-room, where he remained till bed-time, smoking innumerable cigarettes, and playing a sullen game of pool. He also helped himself somewhat plentifully to whiskey, for what was the use of money if you couldn't get all the drink you wanted with it? The creed that money was the one thing in the world best worth having had not found a conspicuous justification in Benjamin Scales. He was not an amiable youth, as we have already seen; under no circumstances could he have achieved manly virtues; but, whereas poverty might have kept him in a straight course by the mere pressure of deprivation, money had set wide for him the gateway of easy vices and destructive pleasures.

The dark night sped on; and, in the little library with the mahogany bookshelves, Scales devised his scheme. It was by no means novel; it had often been achieved before, and sometimes with success; it was simply the last throw of the commercial gambler. Dividends must be paid; and, when the entire credit of a great concern depends upon their instant payment, why not pay them out of capital? It was a risk, of course—the kind of risk which a hundred petty thieves run every day when they back horses with money stolen from their master's till, in the firm belief that they can pay it back before suspicion is aroused. Scales was not constitutionally a brave man; he would have fled from physical peril promptly and without the least sense of shame; but one form of courage he had, the courage of the rat that fights desperately when it is at bay. He saw with terrifying vividness what stood at the end of the road he proposed to travel—a judge in a red gown, with a face of inimitable sternness, warders in blue coats with brass buttons, and the doors of a prison. Nevertheless, he resolved to take the risk. Masterman had taken the same risk years before in that matter of the bogus cheque. And he was proud of the transaction; he had boasted of it many times; it had been the beginning of all his greatness. Providence had removed Masterman from the area of the present crisis; and perhaps it was as well, for since his rise into notoriety he had shown himself more and more eager to obey the safe traditions of society. But, in the mind of the clerk, that early and successful piece of trickery was not forgotten, and he used it now for his own justification. Masterman, at all events, would have no right to grumble at the repetition of his own trick, but upon a far wider scale and for a greater prize.

And, besides, the risk was more apparent than real. This long run of ill luck to the British army in South Africa was something that went beyond the natural chances of the game. It must end; and, when it ended, it would be suddenly. A single sweeping victory, and the tide of prosperity would roll back. Hadn't some pious person said that it was always darkest before the dawn? If that were true, the dawn was close at hand—it was more than probable, it was inevitable. And what a fool he would be if, after holding on to the Amalgamated through all these weeks of darkness, he let it sink just when the first gleam of gold was in the sky!

So Scales argued with himself through that long night in the solitary library. In such arguments it is inclination that supplies the final bias. When a man argues with himself upon a question of right and wrong, it is never right that wins.

And during that same long night Masterman slept peacefully, ignorant of the Tragic Angel that stooped above his pillow. If the Angel could have spoken, he would have told the story thus. "Years ago a man did wrong, and was not punished for it. He was elated by his immunity, and boasted of it. He succeeded in life, as men count success. He climbed to a place of honour, from which he saw a new world opening at his feet. Then he would have been glad to forget that early deed of wrong. He did forget it, as far as he could. But there is a general memory in the world which forgets nothing. It goes about with a searchlight, raking over the gutters of the past, and making discoveries. This sleepless memory found the thing which he was now anxious to forget; gave it to another, who turned it round and round like a precious talisman; and, last of all, this other used the talisman both for the ruin of himself and of the man who had shown him how to use it. And this other man did not know that the talisman had lost its magic. Still less did he suspect that it was a fatal and malignant gift. Who are we to suppose that we can divorce the present from the past? Words live, deeds live—they live eternally. We cannot lose them at will. They are seeds which are carried far away upon the wind, but they always find some soil in which they spring up. They are dead, we say. Thou fool, nothing is dead which man has ever said, thought, or done. It only waits its hour, and it always springs up at last."

A month later the financial journals remarked with ardent approbation that in spite of the wide depression of trade, produced by this calamitous war, the Brick Trust had paid its full dividends. Such a circumstance reflected great credit upon the management of the Trust, especially on its president, Mr. Masterman, whose financial genius had thus received an extraordinary vindication. If the investor had ever had the least doubt of the stability of this great commercial venture, his doubts should be set at rest for ever by this remarkable achievement. They regretted to add that Mr. Masterman had been seriously ill, as the result of his indefatigable labours on behalf of the Trust. He was now, however, quite himself again, and those who had recently seen him reported him in the best of health.

This announcement created a new boom in the stock of the Trust. At the same time news came of what appeared to be the first wave of final triumph in South Africa. Bells were rung, rockets soared, and shouting multitudes filled every street. Masterman, from his rooms at Brighton, saw the passing of the shouting crowd, and the tumult went to his head like wine.

"We are past the worst!" he cried. "I feel years younger. To-morrow I will wire for Scales, and get into harness again."

And, as he spoke, the face kindled with its old fire of vigour, his eyes flashed, and his form had its old erectness.

He also believed himself to have won another battle, and the pageant of his ambitions once more moved steadfastly before him.

XIX

THE FEAR

Another month had passed, and Masterman was back in his office. Outwardly he appeared little changed by his illness. The superb frame had suffered a shock, but there was no sign of vital injury. The eye was as keen as ever, the face as firm in outline, the expression of the lips as masterful.

Nevertheless, there were changes of a more subtle character which were obvious to a critical observer. He had hours of languor when he would sit with folded hands, dreamily gazing out of the window, entirely careless of business. His temper had grown fitful and capricious. There was no longer the old steady dominance; there was swift assertion, gusty, violent energy, soon spent, and followed by periods of sullen inaction. His clerks approached him with trepidation, and often fled from him in dismay. They never knew what to expect. Sometimes they were received with brutal and unjust reproaches for faults they had not committed, or for faults so slight that a generous mind would have disregarded them. At other times they were welcomed with familiarity, treated as equals, and perhaps invited to listen to long boastful talks which had neither purpose nor coherence. And then, for a few days, as though some obstruction in the brain were suddenly dissolved, another man would appear, firm, sagacious, capable of swift decision, a human driving force of incomparable energy—the Masterman whose marvellous efficiency was the legend of the city.

One feature of his conduct in these days was very marked—he avoided Scales. He had to meet him every day, but such intercourse as existed was approached uneasily, hurried through, and dismissed with visible relief. The truth was, that at the back of his mind lay a great fear which he dared not even formulate to himself. There was a question always on his lips which he ached to ask, yet he dared not ask it: "What was it Scales had done to save the credit of the Trust?" It appears incredible that he should not have satisfied his curiosity. A single hour of scrutiny would have put him in possession of the truth. But it was precisely because he already guessed too accurately what that truth was, that he refused to hear it uttered. It is easy enough to walk with boldness in the dark, ghost-haunted room, if you undoubtedly believe there is no ghost. But if you do—if you have heard the rattling chain and stealthy sigh, and have felt your blood stiffen at the moving shadow—then what? The easiest plan is the child's old game of make-believe. You will invent some fantastic reason why you should look no closer. And that is what Masterman was doing. He played at make-believe, haunted by the single terror that the ghost was real.

He would sometimes skirt the edge of the thought that was consuming him, begin a sentence boldly, and then let it trail off into a kind of hurried whisper, or turn it to another end.

"All going well?" he would begin interrogatively, as Scales entered his private room. "Ah! there are some things I wanted to talk over with you, Scales—important things, you know."

For a moment his eyes would search the crafty face of the clerk, and then he would add, "But it doesn't matter, just now. I'm busy to-day—very busy. Another time will do."

"I'm at your service whenever you like," Scales would say, with a kind of half-defiant obsequiousness.

"No, no; not now. I'm too busy to-day. Another time." And then he would rustle the papers on his desk, with a great pretence of business, and drop his gaze, and go on muttering aimlessly, "Another time, Scales, when I'm a little stronger, you know."

When Scales left the room he would sit quiet for a long time, and gaze out of the window, his eyes always falling at last on the gray roof of the Mansion House.

He never looked in that direction without receiving a new impulse to his ambition. From the silent doors of that great house he saw himself issuing forth triumphant, the conqueror of circumstance, seated in a golden carriage drawn by noble horses, with the applauding crowd thronging at his wheels. He adorned his triumph with new features day by day, wearied his invention to create them, and dwelt upon them with a childish ardour of delight. There were even moments when they ceased to be imaginary; they had the glow and substance of reality, and he could hear the beating of the horses' hoofs upon the asphalt, the crash of music, and the raucous shouting of the crowd.

Then a cold, gray cloud obscured the vision, a gust of cold air set him shivering, and he was alone once more with his silent fear.

In his own home his conduct was marked by the same contradictions. He would arrive from the city at nightfall, enter the house in a fierce bustle of energy, talking eagerly, laughing loudly; and then, as like as not, in the midst of dinner, would relapse into a heavy silence. The chief subject of his talk on these occasions, was the things he meant to do with his increasing wealth. He had engaged a firm of architects to plan a country house for him, although the site was not yet found nor the estate bought. He would spend hours over the details of this house. It would be such a house as was never built before. It should have a marble swimming-pool, electric ovens, and a vast palm-garden. For its decoration he would import marble fireplaces from Italian palaces, tapestries from France, oak carving from Holland. Of course it would have a picture-gallery—every gentleman had that. He would employ an expert to collect the pictures. And of course there would be a great library, and vast stables, and a private golf-course, and sheets of ornamental water, and extensive gardens.

"Have you done anything more about the new house?" Helen would ask, as she fluttered up to him with a perfunctory kiss.

"Not to-day. It's been a busy day in the city. But we'll have a look at the plans presently."

And then the plans would be unrolled, and the details once more discussed, and new features added.

"I'm tired of this old house," Helen would cry, with pretty petulance. "I don't see the good of being rich if you've got to live here."

"And you won't live here much longer. Wait till the war is over, and then you shall take your place with the greatest ladies of the land."

And then Helen would blush with pleasure, her light mind inflated with pride, her imagination picturing a bright butterfly flight through all kinds of glittering scenes. Mrs. Masterman, silent as ever, took no part in these conversations. They were to her a source of pain; but to Helen they were the breath of life. In the future she pictured to herself her mother had no part. But she saw herself with singular distinctness moving on a high plane of circumstance and pleasure, and she made it her aim to foster her father's vanity as a means of gratifying her own.

"Father's easy enough to manage," she often told herself. And yet there were many occasions when her boast was rudely falsified. Did she never notice the sudden shadow that fell across her father's face? Did she never ask why it was he would angrily sweep the plans of his new house aside, crying that, maybe, he would never want them after all, and would stalk off in gloomy silence to his own room, where he sat alone until long after the midnight hour had struck? No; she never guessed the cause of these explosions. But her mother did, and trembled.

And amid all these aberrations, perhaps the most curious was that his mind appeared to have received a new bias toward religion.

There was a certain Sunday evening when Mrs. Masterman surprised him, reading in his office. The house was very still, and he was reading aloud in a grave and solemn voice.

He looked up as she entered, and, instead of frowning on her intrusion, motioned her to silence, and went on reading.

"Listen to this," he said. "I thought I knew the Bible, but here's something I've never met before. The man that wrote this was a wise fellow.

"'What hath pride profited us? Or what good hath riches with our vaunting brought us? All those things are passed away like a shadow, and as a host that hasted by; and as a ship that passeth over the waves of the water, which, when it is gone by, the trace thereof cannot be found, neither the pathway of the keel in the waves; or, as when a bird hath flown through the air, there is no token of her way to be found, but the light air being beaten with the stroke of her wings, and parted with the violent noise and motion of them, or passed through, and therein afterwards no sign where she went is to be found; or like as, when an arrow is shot at a mark, it parteth the air, which immediately cometh together again, so that a man cannot know where it went through: even so we in like manner, as soon as we were born, began to draw to our end.'

"There's a lot of truth in that," he remarked. "As soon as we are born we begin to draw near to our end. That's mighty true. It kind of makes a man feel small, though, as if nothing mattered. It makes a man feel as though God laughed at him. And it makes me feel, too, as if it would be rather a good thing to be done with it all. If I could be a boy again I wouldn't say. I believe I should think it worth while being kicked and beaten again, just to feel as I did then. But, by the time a man is going on for sixty, he's about tired of it all. Doesn't seem worth while doing anything then, except to get into bed and go to sleep."

He paused a moment, as if to swallow some choking bitterness, and then went on again in the same low tone:

"There's few men that ever had a harder time than I did when I was a boy. You never knew my father? No, and a good job too. There's no question he was a brute. But somehow, when I heard that he was dead, it came to me what it all meant. He'd never had a fair chance, never had his real share in life, never had enough of anything, except, maybe, drink, and of that he'd had too much. Well, that day when I pictured him lying there all white and quiet, I kind of understood what the drinking meant too. He was in a rage against life, wanted to forget the way he'd been treated, and that's why he drank. I reckon that's why most men drink, just to forget. And I said to myself, 'Well, I don't want to forget. I'll remember everything the world did to him, and I'll pay it back, blow for blow, and bruise for bruise. I'll get my fingers into the world's throat before I've done, and I'll get what I want.' And I've done it too. And now the queer thing is, it doesn't somehow seem worth while. Things you've wanted all your life don't seem what you thought 'em when once you've got them. Seems as if you'd paid too dear for them, and been cheated after all. Your good time is when you want 'em, and can't get them, and, when you've got them, you wonder what made you want 'em. That's what I meant when I said it seemed as though God laughed at us. I believe I'd laugh myself if I could see it far enough off. All the fuss and bother, and rampaging up and down, and then a quiet old fellow puts his hand on your shoulder, and says, 'What hath pride profited us?' and goes on to tell you all you've done don't amount to a row of pins, and you know it's true, too. That's the thing that hurts—it's true, and you know it, and feel like the worst kind of fool."

He spoke musingly, in a voice of extraordinary softness and sad deliberation. His wife listened wonderingly. The passage he had read, whose sombre wisdom contradicted every purpose of his own conduct, the impression it produced of the vanity of life, and his own entire gravity, tenderness, and sincerity, as he read the solemn words, wrought in her complete amazement. In all her long knowledge of her husband she had never known him in this mood. A woman whose habitual thoughts moved on a more earthly level would have found the mood ominous; she would have shuddered in every fibre of her affection, and have imagined the slow beating of the wings of death upon the quiet air. But, for her, all that was ominous in the scene was eclipsed by an overmastering sense of spiritual gratitude. Through long years she had prayed for such an hour, and prayed against hope. Had it come at last, this hour of wisdom, this impartation of a higher light, this sudden softening and sweetening of a nature whose harsh earthiness had been to her a cause of unspeakable distress?

"O Archie," she cried, "how glad I am to have you speak like that! Let the world go, Archie dear, before it lets you go. Let us go from this hateful life, you and I. If we could only be poor again, and live in some quiet place, we could be happy yet. You've never got any happiness yet out of all your money that I can see, and you never will. Can't we start again, dear, and won't you forgive Arthur, and have him back?"

She was on her knees beside him, her head bowed, or she would have seen the swift hardening of his face.

"Don't be a fool!" he said harshly.

"Is it folly?" she cried.

"Yes, the silliest of folly. A man can't turn back if he would, and I don't really want to. He must go on to the end of things."

"Ah! the end—what will that be, Archie?"

"God knows. But there's one thing I know, and that is, that a man doesn't fight all his life to get something, just to throw it away upon a whim. I'd think shame of myself if I didn't fight my battle out to the last stroke. You and me have never agreed, and we don't agree now."

"If you'd only forgive Arthur," she persisted.

"I never forgive fools. I reckon God doesn't do that either. He forgives sinners, but not fools. Arthur's a fool!"

He closed the Book with a bang, and rose. His face was dark and troubled. His wife left the room without another word. From the church across the road there came the soft music of the evening hymn. He listened, with dilated eyes, keeping time to the familiar rhythm with extended finger. He breathed a long sigh as it ceased. "It's a queer thing to think about, that in fifty years' time not one of those folk will be alive," he reflected. "All gone like—how did the words run?—like a ship on the water that leaves no trace. I wonder where Scales will be? Nowhere near where I am, I hope. Scales is a beast!"

And then once more The Fear returned. He saw it like a dark-winged phantom, pale-faced, threatening, gliding up the road, standing at his gate.

It stood there a long time, and he wondered if the people coming out of church could see it too. The wings trailed the ground, and it wore a black hood. The face beneath the hood he could not see, but he could hear the words softly uttered, "What hath pride profited us? Or what good hath riches with our vaunting brought us?" And the evening hymn, which had ceased, seemed to begin again, attenuated like a whisper from some organ in the air, a frail, slow, unearthly melody:

Just then a door clanged, Helen's light, laughing voice was heard in the hall, and the whole phantom sunk out of sight. He took hold of gross reality again, and saw his path, hard and lucid like a line of burnished gold, leading on to a bright shining ridge, on which arose the long colonnades of a great house, round which a multitude of people buzzed, and held out golden wreaths to him.

In the reaction of emotion which ensued there came to him a new virility of purpose. To come so near those golden heights and miss them was a thing impossible. Once let him scale them, stand visibly triumphant—and then? Well, it would be time enough then to meditate upon the deep sad words of this old philosophic thinker which had so strangely moved him.

Nevertheless, this softened mood did not wholly leave him all this Sabbath evening. The memory of his father had evoked also the memory of his son. For the first time a faint suspicion crossed his mind that, after all, Arthur might have chosen a form of life which promised greater happiness than his own. Through all the many months of absence he had rarely mentioned Arthur's name; if he had done so, it had been with a frowning brow. Now, to the surprise of both mother and daughter, he asked for Arthur's letters, took them with him into the office, and there read them quietly.

"If he only had not gone away!" he said.

And with that thought his sense of injury returned. It was a hard thing for a father to condone the implied condemnation of that flight. And the only rehabilitation of his pride lay in some visible success which even Arthur must respect. There was a lot of good that might be done with money. It was expected nowadays of rich men that they should be public benefactors. Here was an untried field which he might conquer; and what a fine irony it would be if Arthur should return to England some day to find the name of the father he had despised mentioned with general respect as a public benefactor! It was strange that he had not thought of that before. It would afford him a new interest in life, and be an exquisite revenge.

He rose next morning full of this new plan. He had already done more than his fair share in subscribing to various charities, but from this hour he began to develop what appeared a reckless generosity. In reality it was the entire reverse of reckless; it was governed by the most deliberate strategy. He had no idea of not letting his left hand know what his right hand gave. He gave only in such a way as to attract immediate attention. His greatest act was a subscription of £10,000 to a patriotic fund for the equipment of army hospitals at the seat of war. His generosity was much applauded; the example of his public-spiritedness was quoted far and wide; it was even mentioned in a sermon preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, and in the "religious press" there were many pleasing homilies on the wise use of money. From these new forms of homage his pride drew fresh strength. He moved with a firmer step, was conscious of increased physical vigour, and became again the Masterman of the old days, eagle-eyed, daring, despotic.

"You're giving away a lot of money," said one of his friends at the club to him one day. "I suppose it's part of your policy," he added ironically.

"A man ought to give in times like this," he answered.

"I suppose so," said his friend. "There never was a time when money could buy so much. Probably because most of us have so little of it."

He did not appreciate the gibe. But in the bottom of his heart he knew what men called his generosity was, after all, just what his candid friend had called it—policy. And it was good policy too. It gave fresh prestige to the Trust. It was a good investment. To be remarked for public spirit and generosity led to all sorts of things in England. England might make pretence to many virtuous and fine ideals, but there, as in every other country, money could buy anything. It must not be done openly, of course. But it was done all the same, only a little less flagrantly than in those franker days when men sold their votes, and it was said that members of Parliament looked beneath their dinner-plates for Bank of England notes before they decided what their views were on questions of disputed legislation.

And at length he had his reward. There came one day to his office a large official envelope, containing cautious inquiries, whether, under certain circumstances, which were deftly indicated, he would be prepared to accept a knighthood. There was, of course, a grave reference to his public services, especially in his large gifts to patriotic causes, which had no doubt stimulated the generosity of the public, and had attracted the attention and gratitude of the Government.

He sat still for a long time with his eyes fixed upon the letter. So it had come at last, the long-expected, the unavoidable, the supreme prize of his existence! No: not the supreme; this was but the beginning. He meant to have more, much more than this.

He resolved that he would say not a word about it, except by way of proud hint to his family. He would surprise them with it; and he pictured himself announcing the news. The final letter which conferred the dignity would come by the morning mail most probably; he would distinguish it at once by the large official envelope; but he would be in no haste to open it. He would do what children do with sweetmeats, keep the best to the last. And then, just when Helen kissed him as he left the house, and said "Good-bye, father!" he would turn round with a grave smile, and say, "Sir Archibold Masterman, if you please." And she would say, "What new joke is this, father?" And he would answer with a calm voice, as though he spoke of a matter of the least possible importance, "It's not a joke ... read that!" And his wife would stand behind Helen, trembling a little; and, far away in Canada, Arthur would get the news, and would be sorry he had not valued such a father.... It was a delightful vision, and he thrilled to it with the ardour of a boy.

He replied at once, expressing his appreciation and his gratitude. Then he fell to wondering how long it took to get the matter settled. There were no doubt forms and preliminaries, and all that sort of thing, but surely a week would be long enough. A week passed, a month—still no answer came. He tortured himself with fears of what might have happened. Had he expressed himself foolishly in his reply, shown himself too eager perhaps, or had his letter miscarried?

He would go to Brighton. This strain of waiting was intolerable. No, he would go to Paris. The man who was to collect the oak and marbles for his projected country house lived there, and it would divert his thoughts to meet him.

He went by the afternoon express from Charing Cross. As he entered his compartment, he noticed a neatly dressed inconspicuous man who appeared to be observing him closely. The man looked at him strangely, passed by him and entered the same train. He saw him again upon the boat. When he reached the Gare du Nord the same man passed by him again, just as he was ordering a carriage, and disappeared into the crowd.

"Some pressman, I suppose. Well, he'll know me again," he said to himself, and thought no more about it.

The next day he met the dealer he had come to see. He proved to be a most interesting fellow, shrewd, adroit, and a master in the art of persuasion. One thing led to another, and a couple of days passed in the inspection of the stock. Each night he came back quite tired out to the hotel. Each morning he began his quest for art treasures with renewed ardour. He had no other occupation. He had left no address at the office, and no mail reached him. It was a new and delightful method of taking a holiday, and he wondered he had not thought of it before.

As he left the dealer's one day for lunch, he saw the same neatly dressed inconspicuous man crossing the street just ahead of him. The man turned back, stopped at a shop-window, and, as he passed, looked him squarely in the face. When he reached his hotel that night the same man was sitting quietly reading in the foyer. This time the man did not look at him.

On the fourth day he had completed his business with the dealer. The longed-for letter must have come by this time. He resolved to return to London by the nine o'clock train next morning.

In the evening, as he was packing his valise, there was a knock at the bedroom door. He opened it, and found the man standing outside.

"You are Mr. Masterman, I believe?"

"Yes, my name is Masterman."

"I want a word with you, if you please."

"You must be quick then. I'm busy—I leave to-morrow morning for London."

"I also leave to-morrow morning. We might travel together."

"What do you mean, sir? I don't know you, and I don't in the least desire your company."

"Very few people do," said the man, with a quiet smile. There was something in that smile indefinitely stealthy, hostile, menacing; it sent an icy thrill through the heart and curdled the marrow in the bones. "Mr. Masterman," the man went on, in a low, firm voice, "I'm sorry to cause you personal inconvenience. You will understand that I have a duty to perform. You must go with me, sir."

"Why, what ... what ... do you mean you arrest me?"

"That is my duty, sir. There are grave charges against you, which I for one shall be glad if you can disprove, for I've heard of lots of good you've done. Mr. Scales was arrested two days ago. I take it you'll come quietly."

"Scales arrested? For what, pray?"

"The charge is fraud. I am not at liberty to say more."

"Ah! And so——" But speech failed him. He appeared to be losing his grip upon reality as he had done on that Sunday evening when he saw The Fear.... There was a sound of organ music, rolling in soft surges, faint, solemn, sad—"Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day."

And a figure with dark wings that trailed the dust, and hooded head, very silent. The hood slowly lifted, and he saw the face at last—a face with a quiet smile, authoritative, inscrutable, indefinitely hostile. He had seen it at Charing Cross; it had followed him through the streets of Paris; he saw it now, a kind of white patch on the darkness, the hard whiteness of flame which nothing could quench.

Then the phantasm faded out, as it had done before. The horrible truth went crashing through his brain. He knew now why his letter had not been answered.... So they had heard things ... and never, never now would he be Sir Archibold Masterman. They had heard things ... and, while he waited for honour, they were plotting his dishonour. God! how they must have laughed! It was the supreme irony.

A wave of bitter laughter began to rise in his own heart; but something warned him, if he laughed just then, he would go mad.

He clutched at his leaping nerves as a man might clutch the reins of a runaway horse. All at once he attained complete sad composure. He was walking on a bleak high tableland among the stars, from which he looked down, and saw the world and all that was therein as a very little thing. Honour, dishonour, wealth, poverty—all were alike trifles, the blowing up and down of a little dust.... "As a ship that passeth over the waves of the water, which, when it is gone by, the trace thereof cannot be found."

He was quite calm now. He turned toward the man, who still stood with his inscrutable quiet smile, unavoidable as destiny, watching him narrowly.

"I will go with you," he said. "I give you my word, I will go quietly."

XX

THE RETURN

Through the soft summer seas the great ship moved into the mouth of the English Channel. The early dawn had revealed the faint mist-folded promontories of the Cornish coast well to westward. Red-sailed fishing-boats hung like a flight of birds upon the lucid floors of ocean; coasting steamers snorted past with an air of insular importance; here and there a white-sailed brig glimmered in the early sunlight; and, coming after the long loneliness of open seas, these signs of life impressed the mind like the stir and tumult of a city. Plymouth would be reached by noon.

Letters, telegrams, and papers had already come aboard with the pilot—the first friendly overtures of a land slowly rising out of the thinning morning bank. Men and women, with laughing eyes and gladdened faces, stood in little groups reading their correspondence, exchanging jests, commenting upon scraps of news which they had gathered from the papers. It seemed the tide of war had turned at last. It was to a madly joyous land the great ship made its slow approach. Suddenly upon the deck the band clashed with the animating music of the National Anthem. The English stood uncovered as the first familiar bar vibrated on the quiet air; the Americans watched them with a half-sympathetic amusement; even the steerage passengers, foreigners for the most part, without part or lot in British victories, smiled cheerfully. So joyous was the hour that private grief appeared a contradiction, an impertinence.

There was neither telegram nor letter for Arthur, and he had been unable to secure a paper. To him England extended no welcome.

During the long trans-continental journey, and the longer ocean voyage, he had beaten out all the conditions of his situation with an iteration that had finally exhausted the possibilities of vehement emotion. It is happily not within the power of the human organism to feel and suffer intensely except for short periods; agony begets lethargy. It is one of the mercies of pain that it thus dies of its own excess, that in its intensity it becomes coma. Arthur had reached the point of moral coma. The red-hot iron had ploughed through his soul, but it had also seared it into brief insensibility.

In his first extremity of consternation it had seemed a thing impossible to survive the horror that possessed him. The image of his father rose before him, sad-browed, accusing, spent with mortal struggle, pale with immortal defeat—it travelled with him like a face painted in the air. It evoked in him an anguish of commiseration, and even of remorse. He remembered every slighting thought that he had cherished, as men recollect wrongs done to the dead, magnifying errors into cruelties, faults into crimes. With a sudden burning of the blood he had realised how singular and strong is that bond of flesh which unites the parent to the child, how sacred and how incapable of all annulment. At the root of his own life lay a force stronger than justice, stronger than religion, a thing bare, irrational, primeval—the awful sanctity of kinship. And he knew in that moment that, for good or ill, his place was beside his father. There he must needs stand, even though it were at the gallows' foot. Whatever burden crushed those strong shoulders he must share, even though the load were shameful. From that obligation there was no discharge.

From New York he had cabled both to his father and to Bundy, but no reply had come from either. He had had to wait two days for the sailing of a ship, the first of which was a day of infinite misery, aimless wandering, languid revisitation of familiar scenes. On the second day he met Horner. He found the little artist re-established in his studio, and from him received a boisterous welcome.

"Have you seen my book?" he cried.

"What book?"

"Well, I like that. Didn't you write it for me? And don't you recollect we were to share profits? Look at those"—and he pushed toward him an immense bundle of press-cuttings.

From these it appeared that the book had achieved notoriety, if not fame.

"You didn't let me know where you went, and you've never written me, or I would have posted these things to you. Ripping, aren't they?"

"They appear excellent."

"And there's something else that's still better. Read that!"

It was a letter bearing the well-known office address of Mr. Wilbur M. Legion, and enclosing a substantial cheque.

"It only came yesterday. I guess we'll cash it. Half of it is yours, you know, and if you're going to England it may come in handy."

Arthur looked up at that, fixing his eyes on Horner's cheerful face with a long, searching gaze.

Did Horner know the miserable truth about his father? But of course he did. It was being shouted round the world. And this reference to the money being handy on a voyage to England was no doubt the little artist's indirect, and indeed delicate, way of communicating his knowledge.

"O Horner!" he cried. "I am very miserable!" And he bowed his head upon his hands, and wept the first tears he had shed since the blow had fallen on him.

There was a kindly arm round his shoulders in a moment. "Why, look 'ere, what's the matter?" And before he knew it he was telling Horner everything.

"Well," said Horner, when he finished. "I guess things aren't as bad as you think. They never are, you know."

"They couldn't be much worse."

"Oh yes, they could," he went on philosophically. "The jury hasn't convicted yet, and perhaps they won't. But that's neither here nor there. The thing you've got to do is to buck up. And look 'ere, about this cheque—you take it all. I don't want it. I'm in funds. And, besides, there's more to come."

"No, I can't do that."

"Yes, you can, and you will. Call the half of it a loan, if you like, but you've got to take it. You know my motto, 'Englishmen ought to help each other,' and you've just got to let me help you."

Once before in his extremity Horner had saved him from starvation; now he saved him from despair. The little artist was not a person of exacting virtues, he made no pretence to religion, and would have appeared a strange sheep indeed in the folds of the elect; but he possessed a simple faith in kindness not always found among persons of immaculate behaviour, and, what is more, he practised his belief. He filled the studio with the echoes of his cheerful laughter, waited on Arthur with a watchful tenderness that was almost womanly, refused encouragement to grief, and finally insisted on a good dinner at Delmonico's, in the pious hope which is common to all Englishmen that the ugliest troubles of the brain are erased by due attention to the stomach. It was Horner who insisted that this should be no second-class voyage on a slow boat; it was he who engaged a berth on a famous liner, drove with Arthur to the dock, and waved a cheerful hand to him as the great ship swung off upon the gray water. When the true apocalyptic books, which record the unknown kindnesses of man, are opened, it is not impossible that the name of this little hare-brained artist may stand higher than the name of kings and conquerors—perhaps also than the names of certain saints, who in their earthly days were less remarkable for warm sympathies than for icy propriety, and a strict attention to the main chance.

And now the voyage was done; the white shaft of the Eddystone lay astern, and the exquisite green bosom of Mount Edgecumbe swelled from the sun-flecked water. The passengers streamed down into the tender, and a few minutes later he stood in the long Custom House sheds of Plymouth.

Here at last he got a daily paper, and the first thing that met his eye was a long account of the Masterman trial.

At the same moment a telegraph-boy went shouting through the crowd, "Masterman! Any one of the name of Masterman?"

He took the telegram in silence, conscious of many eyes suddenly turned toward him. It was from Bundy, and read, "Will meet you at Paddington." He was eager to take immediate refuge in the railway carriage. He was conscious that even the telegraph-boy was looking at him curiously. Suddenly he saw moving toward him through the crowd another figure that he thought he recognized—O joy! it was Vickars!

"Vickars!"

"Yes, I learned from Bundy by what boat you'd come. I've a compartment reserved for you. Let us get into it at once."

"O Vickars! that we should meet like this!"

"Come, come, my fellow—no hysterics. You were always brave. Be brave now."

He put his arm through Arthur's, and moved through the crowd with erect head. They were scarcely seated in the carriage when the train began to move.

"And now," said Vickars, "we can talk. In the first place, let me ask you how much do you know of this unhappy business?"

"Nothing but what the papers tell me. I see the trial is to-day."

"This is the third day. By the time we reach London the verdict may be expected."

Arthur turned eagerly, with a flushed face, to the pile of papers he had purchased.

"I wouldn't trouble over those just now, if I were you," said Vickars. "Suppose you just let me tell you all about it. That is what I came for, you know."

He spoke with such entire calmness that it might have been supposed that what he had to say was of no importance. And this note of calm communicated itself to Arthur, as he meant it should. He knew that the great thing just now was to invigorate the boy's strength, and this must be done by the suppression of active sympathy.

"Very well," said Arthur, "I am ready."

And then Vickars told his story, to the soft thudding accompaniment of the rushing wheels.

The substance of the story was this. The strong point made by the defence was that Masterman had not been aware of the frauds committed by Scales. There was no doubt whatever that Scales would be convicted; but, since the trial began, a great deal of public sympathy had gone out to Masterman. It was proved that he had been too ill to have any knowledge of what Scales was doing. This might be called criminal negligence; it would depend largely on what view the judge took. It was proved that he had not absconded, as was at first supposed; his flight to Paris was an accident. From the hour of his arrest, those who were most inclined to judge him harshly could not but admit a certain magnanimity in his behaviour. He had sacrificed his entire private fortune to his creditors, and as for the Brick Trust, it was very likely indeed that it would weather the gale. The near close of the war was creating a boom in all business. And then, amid the general joyousness, there was perhaps a tendency to lenient judgment; even jurymen were not wholly insensitive to such a tendency.

"Then you don't think father will be convicted?"

"I don't think so. But of course he will be ruined. You know what I have thought of your father's business methods, and my opinion is unchanged. But I have learned more charitable judgments than I used to have. I see now that men may be criminals without the least suspicion that they are acting criminally. When a man has done wrong for a long course of years, he gets to believe that his wrong is right—the light that is in him becomes darkness. He simply steers his life by an untrue compass, and no one is more amazed than himself when shipwreck happens. That is your father's case, I honestly believe. He is the victim of the force that he has helped to create."

"But you say he has not been dishonest in this affair?"

"No, not explicitly—perhaps not implicitly. That is something which no one will ever know. The fault lies deeper. It lies in greed. A man wants more than he has a just right to have, is not content with honest returns for honest work, becomes unscrupulous, comes to believe that business is warfare, in which the spoils are for the victor, and by the time he reaches this point his sense of right and wrong is fatally confused. He does not really know what is his and what is another's. And the worst of it is that the world in which he moves is no wiser. He finds himself applauded for acts which in a juster system of society would cover him with shame. Ah, Arthur! 'beware of covetousness'—no deeper word than that was ever uttered."

He spoke with a certain sad quietness, very different from his old clamant vehemence. Arthur could not but notice it, and he found himself looking with a kind of wonder on the face of his friend. The face seemed to have taken on a new aspect. It was paler and thinner, with an increased loftiness of brow; there were new lines round the mouth, deeper shadows underneath the eyes, and the lock of hair that fell across the forehead was almost white; but the most striking thing was that a certain subtle fire that once lit the face had disappeared. The keen prophetic look was still there, but it was veiled, dulled, no longer edged with expectancy; a prophet's face, but no more the face of a prophet who saw the morning. And in the slow, quiet voice there was an accent of wearied hope, almost of despair.

Vickars caught the look of wonder on Arthur's face, and said, "Ah! I see you are surprised that I should speak so tolerantly. I used to say that I could make the world a paradise if I were sole despot of the world for a single year, didn't I?

"And now?"

"Now I see that I spoke foolishly. The world is not so easily transformed."

"Is it you that are transformed?"

"Yes. I used to hate men for being evil; and the only weapon I had to attack them with was hatred. I have come to see that hatred is the wrong weapon. You must love men, if you are to change them. You must love even the vile, and those most bitterly opposed to you. You cannot even understand them unless you love them. I hated your father once, because I did not understand the kind of temptations he endured. Now I have come to understand these temptations, and I find it in my heart to pity him."

"O Vickars!" cried Arthur. "You are teaching me a hard lesson. I also have hated.... I have never made allowances. I have indulged contempt, I have behaved like the worst kind of prig. But do you know, since this happened ... well, how can I put it? ... I have seen my father in a new light. And now it seems to me a wonderful thing that he is as good as he is."

"Yes, that is precisely true, and not only of your father, but of all men. The truly divine thing about man is that he is always better than you might expect him to be. It is not the depravity of human nature that is its outstanding feature—it is the goodness. And you find the goodness in the very heart of the depravity, like the pearl in the oyster. But I'm preaching—it's an old habit of mine: forgive me."

"It's a sermon I much needed," said Arthur humbly.

"We all need it, and those who think themselves the best need it most." And then, with a touch of the old whimsical humour, he added, "Whenever you hear a man preaching very earnestly against a vice, you may be sure he has it. I am a case in point."

After that there was little said for a long time. Arthur sat gazing from the window at the flying scroll of country, the dear desirable green land, with its ancient parks, clear shallow streams, trim cottages, level lawns, and wealth of flowers—all so different from that majestic, half-barbaric vastness which he had left. The tears filled his eyes, as they have filled the eyes of many a returning exile. Why did men ever leave it, this land which in every detail was a finished picture, created by the art of centuries? Where else could they expect to find such "haunts of ancient peace," dreamy nooks, gray towers and spires, leisurely, modest happiness, infinite, calm security? And, as he looked, there came to him again the old thought that the only life worth living was one remote from cities. Had his father lived here, earning modest competence, how different the story! It was the city that had snared him, killed the best in him, infected him with its fierce, unnatural greed. O damnable, dreadful London! how many hast thou slain, thou Harlot of the Nations, with thy skirts full of blood! And yet men went on building new and even worse Londons, undeterred by past warnings—New York, with its roaring tides of greed and clang of gold; Chicago, with its naked barbarism, the pure seas evermore polluted, the fair landscapes blackened, the skies stained with pestilence. O! it was horrible! If he could but save his father from this—it might not yet be too late. And there sprang up in his mind that pathetic fallacy, so often asserted by religion, but so seldom true, that all suffering purifies; that from wounded pride and overthrown ambition there must needs come the nobler heart: whereas every one knows that suffering more often has its issue in bitter stoicism, and injured pride clamours for revenge, and there is no more deadly force than defeated ambition, which draws a new strength from rage.

It was a hard problem for a youth of twenty-three to grapple: no wonder that he failed.

But that desirable green land spoke its message all the same. "Man walketh in a vain show and disquieteth himself in vain"—so ran the message. Even Vickars had found that message true. He had beaten himself weary against the strong bastions of the world, and in vain. Had he also learned the difficult lesson that the most one man can do is to live his own life the best way he can, satisfied that nothing really perishes in the vast sum of things, content if he can add his insignificant unit of effort to a growing righteousness? Perhaps he had. Perhaps also that was the only real lesson life had to teach us.

He was aroused from his reverie by the hand of Vickars on his shoulder.

"My dear fellow," he said, "there's something else I have to say to you, something I find it very difficult to say."

"About my father?"

"No; I have told you all there is to tell. Believe me, I have kept nothing back."

"What then?"

"Have you thought of what this calamity has meant for others beside your father? Have you thought what effect it might have upon your mother?"

"She is not ill?"

"No," said Vickars solemnly, "she is not ill. She is ill no longer. She is at rest."

"O Vickars!—not dead?"

"Let us use a better word—at rest. She is where she has wished to be these many weary years."

"And I did not know it. O mother!—mother!"

Vickars turned his face away from that sacred grief. After a few moments he said, "Can you bear that I should tell you about it?"

"Yes. Tell me."

"I think she was never the same after you left, Arthur. I told you she came to see us, didn't I? After that first visit she came often. She honoured us with her confidence. Little by little we learned her story—the story of a saintly heart at war with circumstance. I believe the one supreme force that enabled her to live was the purpose to redeem you from the kind of life that threatened you. She summed herself up in that purpose. When it was once achieved, her hold on life gradually relaxed. She had no wish to live longer, composed herself for the grave, and spoke cheerfully of her departure. Let this be your great comfort, my dear boy—she was absolutely sure of you, of your ability, I mean, to live the high life she had always coveted for you. Her joy in dying was that you were safe."

"When ... when did it happen?"

"On the day your father was arrested. She never knew that, God be thanked. She went quite quietly, without pain. She simply slept, and woke—somewhere else."

"O my poor father!"

"Yes. It is right you should think of him. All his life fell at one blow. There is a sweetness in your grief—you had been the one happiness of her closing years; but think of the bitterness that was in his."

"Why was I not told?" he cried fiercely.

"You had enough to bear. We knew you would come home, and we waited."

"But you terrify me. How much more are you keeping back? Is Elizabeth safe? Is there any other cup that I must drink?"

"Hush! hush! I give you my word I have told you everything. Don't make it hard for me, Arthur. It sounds a poor thing to say that I have acted for the best, but it is the only thing left to say."

"Forgive me. I know you have."

So that inner voice which had told him that he would see his mother's face no more had spoken truly. How vividly he recalled that night of moonlight, that earnest pleading voice, that solemn farewell! But, as the anguish of the shock subsided, he found nothing left but softened thought, and the beginnings of a sad pathetic gratitude. She had never known the worst, for which he, too, could say, "God be thanked!" One significant phrase of Vickars vibrated through his mind like a chord of music—"she composed herself for the grave." He could see the tired hands meekly folded, the threads of life dropping one by one from the weary fingers, a holy softness on her face, the first wave of the Eternal peace rippling round the heart. That was not death—no, mere rest. And there came to him, too, like a sudden revelation, a thought which he was never to forget, the divine essential sacrifice in the lives of all good women. To live not only for others but in others, to toil and be forgotten, to be content that something fashioned from her own mind and flesh by prayer and tears and humble renunciation would live when she was gone, a flower drawing strength and loveliness from her own buried life—that was woman's lot, a thing divine as the Cross itself, and like the Cross, the expression of the eternal sacrifice of self.

"God help me to be worthy of such a sacrifice," he prayed. "But there never yet lived a man who was worthy of what a mother does for him. God help me to remember, and to see in all women something holy, for her dear sake."

The train was rapidly nearing Paddington. The blue sky was tinged with smoky grayness, the green fields were discoloured, and long rows of mean, shabby houses took the place of white cottages under hanging woods.

"And now, pull yourself together," Vickars said. "God help you in the next few hours."

"I think He will," said Arthur simply.

"I forgot to tell you, Bundy expects you to stay with him. He has a kind of palace somewhere in Kensington, I believe."

"I don't think I can do that."

"No, I don't think I would. You should be with your father to-night."

"If..." and the rest he dared not utter.

"You mustn't think of that. I feel morally sure that he will be acquitted. And then he will want you badly. You understand?"

"Yes. I understand."

The train glided into Paddington. Bundy saw him at once as he stepped from the train. His honest face was flushed, his eyes bright with excitement.

"I have a carriage ready!" he cried. "Be quick!"

"Where are we going?"

"To the Old Bailey. The jury are now considering their verdict. If we drive fast, we shall be just in time."

XXI

THE VERDICT

The carriage rolled out of Paddington into the familiar London streets. The gaiety of summer clothed the city. High white clouds sailed in a sea of blue, houses were gay with window flowers, women in bright clothing, themselves like flowers, gave colour to the streets. In Oxford Street flags were flying, the signals of a recent victory in Africa. There was an indescribable sense of resurrection in the air, as if not alone the earth, but the hearts of men and women had won release from some deep grave of fear. Arthur watched the scene with dull, unseeing eyes; and to his morbid sensitiveness it seemed as though London laughed in mockery of his grief.

Vickars sat beside him in silence; Bundy watched the two anxiously, his eyes full of tears. He wished to say something comforting; and from time to time made some casual remark, but uttered it hesitatingly, with an apologetic smile. It was precisely like the action of a good friendly dog, who lays his warm head on his master's unresponsive hand, and watches him with wistful eyes, delicately fearful of intrusion on a grief he cannot comprehend. It was evident, however, that Bundy had something which he really wished to say, and at last it came.

"You'll be wondering, after what I said to you in New York, why I haven't helped your father?"

"No. I've never thought about it, except to know you would be as good as your word."

"And so I would have been. But——"

"You needn't explain. There is too much love between us for that."

"But I must. And I would rather do it at once and get it over. Your father refused all help. You, know his pride, and he's prouder now than ever he was. One might almost suppose it pleased him to stand alone, to fight with his back to the wall, to defy the world to do its worst on him. And I believe that is what he really does feel."

"I think I can understand."

"Then you'll understand why I could not help him, why no one could. I offered him anything he liked to ask, and this is what he said: 'No, Bundy; I've brewed the cup, and I'll drink it. I don't want any sugar in it. No one shall ever say that Archibold Masterman was a coward.' That was what he said to me, and he said it like a fallen emperor. It was foolish, but there was something great in it too. I felt that it was great."

"I think so too."

"It was great." The phrase was a portrait—vital, indubitable, convincing. During all these miserable days and nights Arthur had laboured to fashion some portrait of his father. He had seen him bent, shame-stricken, prematurely aged; had imagined him leaning on his young strength for succour, acknowledging his errors, voluble in explanation, perhaps fierce in accusation of those who had failed him or betrayed him; had, in fact, seen him in every attitude but the real one; and now, as though a curtain lifted, he saw his father painted at a touch, with an instinctive penetration, an absolute veracity. He was a fighter, and would fight to the last. His pride fed upon defeat. Calamity had given him nerves of steel. He would drink the cup that he had brewed, and drink it with a smile. "No sugar"—that phrase said everything. Pity, sympathy, help, consolation—he was above them, beyond them, indifferent to them; a man who bared his breast to the flight of arrows, thrust his hand in the flame without a shudder, challenged the thunderbolt, upheld while the flame consumed him by a scorn more potent than his anguish. Yes, it was great—a Promethean greatness, which defies the heart-eating vulture. He might have known so much, if he had thought about it. In a sense, he had always known it, for he had always, even as a boy, felt the element of greatness in his father. But now, for the first time, he really measured it, and his heart quailed before it, foreseeing elements in this imminent meeting with his father which he had not so much as guessed.

They had driven fast. The carriage passed rapidly by the old Church of St. Sepulchre, and under the walls of Newgate, stopping at last at the mean, insignificant doors of the Old Bailey.

The pavements were thronged. From the court a great crowd was pouring out. And already, from the neighbouring newspaper offices, men and boys were racing breathlessly, shouting "Verdict!" Above the clamour of the street the shrill cry rose, "Verdict! Verdict!"

Bundy leapt from the carriage, and plunged into the throng. He came back a moment later, waving an evening paper.

"What is it?"

"Scales five years; Masterman acquitted!"

"Thank God!"

And then the tension broke. Arthur found himself sobbing, with the arm of Vickars round his neck.

"Take me to my father at once," he said. "I wish to go home with him."

"Very well," said Bundy. "Wait here till I find him."

The crowd rapidly thinned, till, in a few moments, where a roaring torrent of life had run, but an insignificant ripple flowed and eddied. The tragic bubble, so long watched by thousands of eager eyes, had burst; it was a thing of the past, to be speedily forgotten. The carriage moved unimpeded now to the doors of the court. A few stragglers still hung around, in the hope of seeing once more the protagonists in the finished drama.

A long black van with a grated door at the back drew up against the curb. Two policemen came out of the court-house, looked warily up and down the street, and disappeared again. The man who drove the van nodded to them, and went on reading his evening paper.

The policemen reappeared, with a man walking between them. The man's head was bowed, his coat-collar turned up, his hat drawn down over his eyes.

Arthur had a brief glimpse of a face yellow as wax, a pair of shifty, bloodshot eyes, and he shuddered. It was Scales. The door of the van closed, and, through the barred window, that yellow, awful face looked out, in a last glimpse at liberty. A long, terrible look, gathering up and flashing to the memory things that would be seen no more, unforgetable things that would become the torture of sleep and dreams, little things, such as sunlight flashing on a pool of water, sparrows in the gutter, a broken flower lying in the road, a girl's languorous face turned toward her lover, a beggar gazing into the window of a cook-shop—and then the lids fell upon the bloodshot eyes, and the van rolled away.

"And that might have been my father," thought Arthur. And with the thought came a pang of pity for the man in the black van. Not a good man, not even a lovable man; without grace, without charm, inherently mean-natured—yet, were he a thousandfold worse than he was, to be pitied as a creature going to the torture. And, after all, who should judge even a Scales with justice, who declare how far he was a victim of the evil system which had inflamed his avarice—the victim, too, perhaps of some potency of evil in his own blood, some ghostly hand stretched out of the illimitable past, from whose predestined clutch he could not escape? Ah, God! who should judge?

And now at last he saw him—his father. Archibold Masterman stood in the doorway of the court-house. He came down the steps with a firm tread, looking up and down the street with a calm, defiant glance, his lips compressed in scornful challenge. Yet scorn could not conceal the ravage wrought in him by his misfortunes. The face had lost its colour, it was drawn and haggard, and the hair was nearly white. He was talking with Bundy, and he smiled as he talked. He drew near the waiting carriage, opened the door, and stepped in.

"Father!"

"Ah, Arthur!"—no other word.

There was a hard grip of the hand, a sudden heat that flushed the haggard face, and then iron-cold composure.

"Won't you come to my house, Masterman? If only for to-night," pleaded Bundy.

"No; I want to go home.... To such a home as I've got," he added bitterly.

"Well, God bless you, my friend!" said Bundy softly.

"I'm not asking anything of God that I know of, and you needn't ask anything for me. I reckon I can look after myself. Tell the driver, Eagle House, Highbourne Gardens."

And the carriage moved off.

They reached the house, and entered it in silence. Masterman went at once to his room—the room in which his wife had died—and remained there. What memories, what remorses met him there, who can say? Arthur, passing that closed door at midnight, could hear his father walking up and down like a caged lion. He stood listening to that slow, continuous footfall; but he dared not knock upon the door. He went downstairs again, knowing sleep impossible, and sat in the deserted dining-room, still pursued by that inevitable footfall. A dreadful thought possessed his mind—his father might be contemplating suicide. When, for an instant, the footfall ceased the sweat of fear stood upon his forehead and his flesh crept. When it commenced again he drew a long breath of relief. So the brief summer night passed, sleepless for both father and son, and at last, through the unshuttered window, the first ray of dawn stole in.

The house appeared both deserted and dismantled. The pictures and much of the furniture had disappeared. Instead of the array of smiling servants, a single sour old woman occupied the kitchen. From her, Arthur learned that the pictures and the more valuable furniture had been sold at some auction rooms in the city; and that Helen had left the house upon the day of her mother's funeral, and had not returned. Did she know where she had gone? To some friend—so she said. But no one knew.

The father and son met at breakfast next morning. It was a miserable meal, ill-cooked and coarsely served—very different from the generous luxury of other days. The cloth was stained and torn, the china broken, the food wretched. Masterman appeared to notice none of these things. He drank the straw-coloured tea and ate the burned toast with complete indifference. He seemed indifferent even to the presence of his son.

When the meal was over, he said, with a mocking abruptness, "So you've come home to pity me, I suppose? Well, you and me have got to have an explanation. As well now as later."

"I came home to help you, father—if I could."

"Ah! did you?" he sneered. "Well, let me tell you I want no man's pity and no man's help. You think I'm done for, don't you? So does everybody. But I'm not. The world has cheated me, but I'm going to get even with the world. I'm going to get my revenge. I've years of work in me—years of work—and I've a dozen schemes for success."

And then he began to talk in a loud, scornful, hectoring voice. Failure? Only fools talked of failure, and they failed themselves because they were fools. He was going to start again. He would start that very day. No sensible man would think the worse of him for what had happened. There were scores of men in the city who had come much nearer a prison than he had; and what were they now? They were rich, honoured, respected. They had succeeded, and no one reminded them of past misfortunes. The very men who had tried to ruin them were now licking their boots. Well, he'd have the world licking his boots, too, before he died. Only he'd kick their lying faces in when the time came, that's what he'd do. He'd teach them. He'd let them know what kind of man Archibold Masterman was.

There was much more of the same kind, a loud outrageous monologue, to which Arthur listened with a sinking heart. It was obviously useless to interrupt or interfere. It was the fierce outcry of a man in torment, the immedicable torment of an injured pride. And, as Arthur looked upon that coldly furious face, he began to suspect, what was indeed the truth, that his father's mind hung upon the verge of madness.

And this impression was confirmed when, without warning, the gust of rage ceased, and was replaced by a pathetic weak humility.

"I somehow don't feel well this morning. I didn't sleep last night. Perhaps I'd better wait a day or two and get my strength built up. O Arthur! I've had lots to try me. I've had a hard life, with very little in it but toil and trouble. And I'm a man that's had sorrows. Your mother's dead. They buried her while I was in gaol. They wouldn't give me bail at first. Did I tell you that? When they let me out on bail, she'd gone. They'd buried her in Highbourne Cemetery. They showed me her grave. And Helen wasn't pleased with me. I did everything I could to please the girl. And yet, when my trouble came, she flew at me like a cat. And she's gone away too—I don't know where. I reckon she thinks me a poor kind of father. Well—well—I'm a man that's had sorrows. And I suppose you'll be going away too? Eh?"

"Father, father, you know I won't go away. I love you, and you used to love me. Don't you love me still?"

"Well, I don't know, Arthur. I don't know that I love any one. It doesn't seem much good loving people, does it? They always go away. Well—well——"

And then he relapsed into a gloomy silence, from which nothing could arouse him. So he sat for hours, gazing out of window, until he fell asleep in his chair.

This scene was but a sample of many similar scenes. Sometimes he would rouse himself, dress, and go down into the city, full of all kinds of schemes to rehabilitate his fortunes. From these excursions he would return late at night, weary, but full of impossible hopes. He would try the Stock Exchange. That was where fortunes were made. Hard work didn't pay; it was the gambler who got both the luck and the money. He had had a tip from some one who knew; such and such a stock was bound to rise. And then, with pen and paper, he would work out his illusory profits, his hands trembling, his face glowing, and reach the most surprising and incredible conclusions.

"If I only had the money!" he would cry. "I would buy upon a margin. Bruce and Whitson would be proud to do business for me, for old times' sake. Masterman isn't forgotten in the city, I can tell you. Not by a long chalk. All I want is a chance, just a little money to begin with."

"I have a hundred pounds, father," Arthur replied to one of these appeals. "You can have that."

"A hundred pounds! Yes, that would be enough." And then, with a sudden flare of the old pride, he exclaimed, "No, no. That wouldn't do at all. I'm not sunk so low as to be a pensioner upon my children. I'll get what I want out of the world yet, and I'll get it by myself. I'm not very well yet, but wait till I get my nerve back, and I'll show you. Don't you be afraid about me. I'm playing a waiting game, and I'm going to win—you mind that!"

So a month passed, marked by tragic incalculable alternations of temper in his father. No one came near the house. Bundy had called twice, but Masterman had refused to see him. The church people appeared to have forgotten his existence. When the Sundays came, Masterman drew down the blinds, and sat alone in his office. If Arthur left the house it was but for the briefest absence. He would go round to Lonsdale Road, exchange a few words with Vickars, taste a raptured moment with Elizabeth, and return in haste and often in fear. For he could not calculate his father's moods, he did not know what he might be tempted to do, and he dared not leave him solitary.

And yet, all the time, Masterman's mind was slowly recovering its poise. His anger still burned, but it was now with smouldering rather than with active flame. His boastfulness declined. There were moments, not only of humility, but of extreme gentleness, like the gentleness of a sick child. They were but moments, often followed by gusts of bitter speech. In the bitter moments Arthur was to him the prodigal son who had deserted him; in the tender moments the only human creature on whose love he might repose. It was Arthur's lot to listen in silence to a hundred hurting comments on his conduct, uttered with sardonic scorn, and all the talent for invective which a disordered brain and wounded heart could contrive. And then, just when he was goaded almost beyond endurance, the mood would change, the black squall of rage would pass, and an inimitable softness, like the softness of a rain-washed sky, succeed it.