Part 59 (2/2)
”It is like your effrontery,” said Mr. Hardie: ”I wonder you are not ashamed to look your father in the face.”
”Having wronged n.o.body I can look anybody in the face,” replied Alfred, looking him in the face point-blank.
At this swift rejoinder, Mr. Hardie felt like a too confident swordsman, who, attacking in a pa.s.sion suddenly receives a p.r.i.c.k that shows him his antagonist is not one to be trifled with. He was on his guard directly, and said coldly, ”You have been belying me to my very clerk.”
”No, sir: you are mistaken; I have never mentioned your name to your clerk.”
Mr. Hardie reflected on what Skinner had told him, and found he had made another false move. He tried again: ”Nor to the Dodds?” with an incredulous sneer.
”Nor to the Dodds,” replied Alfred calmly.
”What, not to Miss Julia Dodd?”
”No, sir, I have seen her but once, since--I discovered about the fourteen thousand pounds.”
”What fourteen thousand pounds?” inquired Mr. Hardie innocently.
”What fourteen thousand pounds!” repeated the young man disdainfully.
Then suddenly turning on his father, with red brow and flas.h.i.+ng eyes: ”The fourteen thousand pounds Captain Dodd brought home from India: the fourteen thousand pounds I heard him claim of you with curses: ay, miserable son, and miserable man, that I am, I heard my own father called a villain; and what did my father reply? Did you hurl the words back into your accuser's throat? No: you whispered, 'Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+ I'll bring it you down.' Oh, what a h.e.l.l Shame is!”
Mr. Hardie turned pale, and almost sick: with these words of Alfred's fled all hope of ever deceiving him.
”There, there,” said the young man, lowering his voice from rage to profound sorrow: ”I don't come here to quarrel with my father, nor to insult him, G.o.d knows: and I entreat you for both our sakes not to try my temper too hard by these childish attempts to blind me: and, sir, pray dismiss from your mind the notion that I have disclosed to any living soul my knowledge of this horrible secret: on the contrary, I have kept it gnawing my heart and almost maddening me at times. For my own personal satisfaction I have applied a test both to you and Skinner; but that is all I have done: I have not told dear Julia, nor any of her family; and now, if you will only listen to me, and do what I entreat you to do, she shall never know; oh, never.”
”Oho!” thought Mr. Hardie, ”he comes with a proposal: I'll hear it, anyway.”
He then took a line well known to artful men: he encouraged Alfred to show his hand; maintaining a complete reserve as to his own; ”You say you did not communicate your illusion about this fourteen thousand pounds to Julia Dodd that night: May I ask then (without indiscretion) what did pa.s.s between you two?”
”I will tell you, sir. She saw me standing there, and asked me in her own soft angel voice if I was unhappy. I told her I must be a poor creature if I could be happy. Then she asked me, with some hesitation I thought, why I was unhappy. I said, because I could not see the path of honour and duty clear: that at least was the purport. Then she told me that in all difficulties she had found the best way was to pray to G.o.d to guide her; and she begged me to lay my care before Him and ask His counsel. And then I thanked her; and bade her good-night, and she me; and that was all that pa.s.sed between us two unhappy lovers, whom you have made miserable; and even cool to one another; but not hostile to you. And you played the spy on us, sir; and misunderstood us, as spies generally do. Ah, sir! a few months ago you would not have condescended to that.”
Mr. Hardie coloured, but did not reply. He had pa.s.sed from the irritable into the quietly vindictive stage.
Alfred then deprecated further discussion of what was past, and said abruptly, ”I have an offer to make you: in a very short time I shall have ten thousand pounds; I will not resign my whole fortune; that would be unjust to myself, and my wife; and I loathe and despise Injustice in all its forms, however romantic or plausible. But, if you will give the Dodds their L. 14,000, I will share my little fortune equally with you: and thank you, and bless you. Consider, sir, with your abilities and experience five thousand pounds may yet be the nucleus of a fortune; a fortune built on an honourable foundation. I know you will thrive with my five thousand pounds ten times more than with their fourteen thousand; and enjoy the blessing of blessings, a clear conscience.”
Now this offer was no sooner made than Mr. Hardie shut his face, and went to mental arithmetic, like one doing a sum behind a thick door. He would have taken ten thousand: but five thousand did not much tempt him: besides, would it be five thousand clear? He already owed Alfred two thousand five hundred. It flashed through him that a young man who loathed and despised Injustice--even to himself--would not consent to be diddled by him out of one sum while making him a present of another: and then there was Skinner's thousand to be reimbursed. He therefore declined in these terms:
”This offer shows me you are sincere in these strange notions you have taken up. I am sorry for it: it looks like insanity. These nocturnal illusions, these imaginary sights and sounds, come of brooding on a single idea, and often usher in a calamity one trembles to think of. You have made me a proposal: I make you one: take a couple of hundred pounds (I'll get it from your trustees) and travel the Continent for four months; enlarge and amuse your mind with the contemplation of nature and manners and customs; and if that does not clear this phantom L. 14,000 out of your head, I am much mistaken.”
Alfred replied that foreign travel was his dream: but he could not leave Barkington while there was an act of justice to be done.
”Then do me justice, boy,” said Mr. Hardie, with wonderful dignity, all things considered. ”Instead of brooding on your one fantastical idea, and shutting out all rational evidence to the contrary, take the trouble to look through my books: and they will reveal to you a fortune, not of fourteen thousand, but of eighty thousand pounds, honourably sacrificed in the vain struggle to fulfil my engagements: who, do you think, will believe, against such evidence, the preposterous tale you have concocted against your poor father? Already the tide is turning, and all who have seen the accounts of the Bank pity me; they will pity me still more if ever they hear my own flesh and blood insults me in the moment of my fall; sees me ruined by my honesty and living in a hovel, yet comes into that poor but honest abode, and stabs me to the heart by accusing me of stealing fourteen thousand pounds: a sum that would have saved me, if I could only have laid my hands on it.”
He hid his face, to conceal its incongruous expression: and heaved a deep sigh.
Alfred turned his head away and groaned.
After a while he rose from his seat and went to the door; but seemed reluctant to go: he cast a longing, lingering look on his father, and said beseechingly: ”Oh think! you are not my flesh and blood more than I am yours; is all the love to be on my side? Have I no influence even when right is on my side?” Then he suddenly turned and threw himself impetuously on his knees: ”Your father was the soul of honour; your son loathed fraud and injustice from his cradle; you stand between two generations of Hardies, and belong to neither; do but reflect one moment how bright a thing honour is, how short and uncertain a thing life is, how sure a thing retribution is, in this world or the next: it is your guardian angel that kneels before you now, and not your son: oh, for Christ's sake, for my mother's sake, listen to my last appeal. You don't know me: I cannot compound with injustice. Pity me, pity her I love, pity yourself!”
”You young viper!” cried the father, stung with remorse, but not touched with penitence. ”Get away, you amorous young hypocrite; get out of my house, get out of my sight, or I shall spurn you and curse you at my feet.”
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