Sir Francis Bendibow, the last of his race, and once held to be the
greatest and most successful banker in England, was meanwhile lying on a
bed in a small room, in a house not his own, and with no traces of
luxury about him. The bed, indeed, was an easy bed enough, though it was
not made of mahogany, nor draped with damask curtains: and the room was
by no means a dungeon, though the furniture and fittings were of the
plainest and most economical description, and Sir Francis would not have
been at liberty to open the door and go out, had he wished to do so. It
is not probable, however, that he wished to do anything of the kind:
nor, had he been as free as the sparrow that was twittering on the eaves
outside the narrow window, could he have found strength to rise from his
bed and walk across the room. His physical resources were at an end: and
the physician who had felt his pulse that morning had admitted (in
response to the urgent demand of the baronet) that the chances were
against his surviving many hours longer. Sentence of death, come it how
it may, generally produces a notable impression on the recipient. Sir
Francis said nothing: he fixed his eyes curiously upon the doctor’s face
for a few moments; then let his gaze wander slowly round the room,
taking note of every object in it. Finally, he settled himself
comfortably in the bed, and appeared to give himself up to his
meditations, in the midst of which the doctor left him, feeling some
surprise at the baronet’s sang-froid and equanimity. “Must have a
tolerable clean conscience, after all,” he remarked to Fillmore, outside
the door. “Dare say others were more to blame for the smash than he.
Seems always to have been unlucky in his friends.”
Sir Francis, in fact, appeared rather cheerful than otherwise. The
symptoms of harassment, suspense, and irritation which had beset him for
several months past, were no longer visible. He lay there as one who
composedly awaits some agreeable event, and, meanwhile, occupies himself
with passing in review before his mind the incidents of a pleasant and
successful career. After an hour or so of this, however, he signed to
Fillmore to approach the bedside, and spoke to him earnestly, though in
a low tone, for several moments. After a little discussion, the lawyer
left the room. He did not return for five or six hours, during which
time Sir Francis lay quite alone, save for an occasional momentary visit
from the attendant on duty. At last there was another step in the
passage: the door opened and Fillmore came in.
“She has come,” he said, walking up to the bed, and looking keenly down
at the other. “Are you still of the same mind?”
The baronet nodded, and said: “Lose no time.”
Fillmore went back to the door, and immediately returned with Marion
Lancaster on his arm. He led her to the bedside, and the baronet greeted
her with a movement of the hand and arm, and a slight bend of the head,
which, feeble though they were, somehow recalled the grand obeisances
that Sir Francis Bendibow was wont to make in the days of his prosperity
and renown.
“Sit down, my dear,” he said, indicating the chair at his side. “Very
kind of you to come. You look fatigued.”
So indeed she did, with a fatigue that was more than bodily. “I am well
enough,” she said looking at him gravely; and she sat down.
“Fillmore,” said the baronet, “will you remain outside a bit? Mrs.
Lancaster and I are going to have a little private chat together.”
When the lawyer had withdrawn, Sir Francis altered his position so as to
face Marion more fully, and said, “I had an odd impression the other
day. I was at a place--Vauxhall, in fact--on business; and something
happened there that upset me. I was senseless for a while, or nearly so:
but I had an impression that I saw your face, and heard your voice. And
afterwards, for a time, I fancied I heard and saw you again at
intervals. It was in a room at an inn, somewhere, at last. That must
have been all a fancy of mine--eh?”
“No, I was with you,” Marion replied. “I saw you when you fell: and I
got a carriage and took you to an inn. I should have taken you to your
own house: but a gentleman whom I happened to meet, and who assisted me,
seemed to think it best not to do that.”
“Quite right of him, whoever he was,” said the baronet; “though, as
things are to-day, it doesn’t make much difference, either. So ’twas
really you? The gentleman was your husband, of course?”
“No: my husband knew nothing of my going there. I went there to meet
you, Sir Francis.”
The baronet looked surprised.
“I never thought to have the opportunity to tell you this,” Marion
continued. “I wanted to ask you something, which nobody but you could
tell me. I heard you were living in Twickenham, but, when I went there,
they told me you would see no one. But, as I was going away, one of your
servants said that you would be, at a certain hour, at Vauxhall.”
“Catnip, for a thousand pounds!” interjected the dying man, with some
animation.
“I think that was his name,” said Marion. “My husband happened to be
away from home that night, so I made up my mind to go. But for a long
time I could not find you anywhere. At last, just as I was going away,
there was a disturbance in the crowd, and I saw you. But you were not
able to speak then.”
“Upon my soul!” said the baronet, with a feeble grimace, “I should have
felt honored, madame, had I been aware.... Well, I’m rather far gone for
gallantry, now. But what could I have told you, eh?”
“I wanted to know about Mr. Grant. Whether he were really your friend
Grantley.”
“Aye? What did you want to know that for?”
“Because he had bequeathed some money to his nearest of kin. If he were
Mr. Grantley, the money would have come to my husband: but not so, if he
were some one else. And no one could tell me but you.”
“Ha! Well, twenty thousand pounds is worth running some risk for,” said
the baronet; “and ’twas some risk to run, begad, going alone to Vauxhall
at midnight, my dear! But who withholds the bequest from you? And why
didn’t you send your husband or your lawyer to make the inquiry?”
“Because there were reasons why I did not wish my husband to receive the
legacy; and there was no way to prevent it, except to know that Mr.
Grant was not the person he was supposed to be.”
Sir Francis seemed not to understand this explanation: it was hardly to
be expected he should do so; but, with the indifference to minor
inconsistencies natural to his condition, he passed it over; and, after
a short pause, he said, reverting to his former idea, “The legacy is
safe enough, my dear. Grant was Grantley--that is all the matter with
him. If he’d been any one else, I’d not be lying here to-day. Your
husband may keep his twenty thousand pounds, and much good may it do
him! There’s not much worth having in this world, but money’s the best
worth having of what there is.” He stopped for a few moments. “It just
happens,” he continued, “that ’twas about this same Grantley I wanted to
speak to you. ’Tis not worth while, perhaps; but when a man’s going to
die, a secret is of no good to him--all the more if it’s a secret that
has been bothering him all his life. I’ve been the slave of more secrets
than one, and they’ve never shown me any mercy: but ’tis my turn now;
for I can reveal ’em, and they can do me no harm! I can laugh at ’em,
begad! and not be a penny the worse for it. But for all that, my dear, I
wouldn’t have told ’em to any one but you. There’s something about
you--always was--different from any other creature I ever met. Your
husband’s a lucky fellow; and if he’s not the happiest fellow, and the
best, that ever breathed, then stifle me if he isn’t a fool and a
villain!”
“You misjudge me and him,” said Marion, speaking between her set teeth.
“I am ready to hear about Mr. Grant, Sir Francis.” But at this point her
self-command gave way, and she burst into a passion of tears--the first
she had shed since her quarrel with Philip the morning before. The
baronet, who could not suppose that anything he had said had given
occasion for this outbreak, allowed himself the flattery of believing
that it was compassion for his own state that moved her--a delusion that
did neither of them any harm; and possibly it was not so entirely a
delusion that some such sentiment may not have added itself to Marion’s
deeper causes of unhappiness. At all events, by the time she had
regained control of herself, the feeling between the two had become
gentler and more sympathetic.
“ ’Tis somewhat late in the day to find a friend who can be sorry for
me,” remarked the baronet ruefully: “and there have been times when I
might have looked for it more than I do now. Grantley and I were
friends; but affairs turned out so, that one or other of us had to give
up everything: and he was the one to do it. It looks pretty bad, in one
way; but the amount of it was that I cared more for myself than I did
for him; and there’s not many men who might not confess to as much as
that. Besides, I had more to lose than he had: I was the head of the
house, and the name and the existence of the business would go with me.
But ’twas a damned gentlemanly thing of him to do what he did, and I’m
free to confess I wouldn’t have done it in his place. ’Tis bad enough to
suffer for your own fault, but it must be a hard business to go down for
the fault of another man--though that’s what often happens in this
world, whether we want it or not. You see, my dear, there was always a
bit of the gambler in me, and I used to have wonderful luck. When I was
quite a young fellow, I used to sit up night after night at the clubs,
and it struck me that since where one fortune was made and kept, ten to
a score were lost, it would be a good plan to arrange matters so that
what so many lost, one should win--and I that one. One thing led to
another, and the end of it was that I set up a place called
Raffett’s--though only two or three men knew that I had anything to do
with it; and all I need say about it now is, that more money came to us
by that quiet little place, than by the bank itself: aye, a good deal
more, begad!
“A hundred times I might have sold out for enough to buy half Old Jewry
with: but I liked the fun of the thing, and there seemed no chance of
losing. We did lose, at last, though, and by wholesale, too. There was
no accounting for it: ’twas more like a special miracle than anything I
ever knew of. I knew the luck must change some time, so I kept putting
in to fill up the hole, until I put in all of my own that I had in the
world. Then I took from the bank: hadn’t any business to do it, of
course; but it was sure to come all right in the end, if nobody found it
out. That was the weak point: somebody did find it out; and Grantley was
the man. He came straight to me, and asked me what I was about. I tried
to stop him off; but it wouldn’t do. He forced me to own up: and then
the question came, What was to happen next? I was a ruined man, and the
bank was as good as gone, if the truth came out. Grantley was a careful
fellow, and he had saved a vast deal of money; and I asked him to help
me out of the scrape. We looked into the thing--he cared a great deal
for me in those days, and as much, maybe, for the credit of the
bank--and found that it would take all he’d got to make good only what
was gone from the bank, not to speak of the rest of it; and to make it
worse, there was no way of putting the money back without betraying that
it had been taken out irregularly.
“But at last he got an idea, and I give him credit for it. ‘It must
become known, Frank,’ he said to me, ‘that the bank has been robbed by
somebody. You are the bank, and it stands or falls with you. It won’t
make so much difference about me. You may have what I’ve got, and I’ll
leave the country. Let ’em think I took it, and that you replaced it. I
can make my own way, somewhere else, under another name; and the concern
will be saved. Take care of my wife and child: it won’t do to take them
with me, but maybe I can send for them after a bit. And do you let
gambling alone for the future.’
“It was a good offer, and I took it, as most men would have done in my
place. I’m not sure, now, but I might as well have let it alone. At any
rate, off he went, and that was the last I heard from him for twenty
years, except when I sent him word, a little while after, that his wife
had died. He wrote back asking me to educate the child, and do the best
I could for her: where he was, was no place for her. Meanwhile, I was
contriving to keep along, but no more: we never had any luck after he
left. That confounded Raffett’s kept draining me: I had ceased to be the
owner of the place, as I had promised him; but the other men had a hold
on me, by threatening to expose me if I didn’t let ’em have what they
wanted; and they wanted more than I could find of my own to give ’em.
So, what with one thing and another, when he came back under his assumed
name last year, he found things pretty nearly in as bad a way as when he
went off.
“I may have been mistaken,” continued the baronet, speaking in a more
uncertain tone; “but I had been worried so much, and had so much
underhand fighting to do, that I thought Grantley meant me no good. He
had in his possession some papers--letters that had passed between us,
and other things--that enabled him, if he chose, to turn me out of house
and home and into jail at a day’s notice. I might have stood it for
myself; but there was my boy Tom: and I felt that I could sooner kill
Grantley than let Tom know I hadn’t been what they call an honest man.
There was Perdita, too: he would be sure to make himself known to his
own daughter if to nobody else; and he wouldn’t be likely to do that
without letting her know that he was not the man who robbed the bank.
And if Perdita knew it, all London would know it, for she never was a
friend of mine, and would jump at a chance to ruin me.”
“You are wrong,” said Marion, who was sitting with her hands tightly
clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed with a sad sternness upon the
narrator: “Madame Desmoines has had the papers within her reach for six
months, and has never opened them until, perhaps, yesterday.”
“Well, right or wrong makes no difference now. I tried to make Grantley
give me back the papers, by fair means: and when he refused, I was more
than ever persuaded he meant mischief; so I resolved to get them in
spite of him. I found he always carried them about with him: and then I
thought there was no way for it but to hire a footpad to rob him. But it
was too risky a job to trust to any one....”
Marion rose, and stood, with one trembling hand grasping the back of her
chair. She could bear it no longer.
“Don’t tell me any more!” she exclaimed, in a low, almost threatening
voice. “I know the rest. You did it yourself, Sir Francis. You killed
him--you murdered him in the dark: and he was the noblest, sweetest,
most generous of men, and never harmed a human being! Can nothing make
you feel that you have been wicked? And you tried to kill him once
before--yes! that night of the thunderstorm. A man like you has no right
to die! You ought to live forever, and have no rest!”
“Well, my dear,” said the baronet, not seeming to feel much emotion,
“Providence is more merciful than you are, though not so just, I dare
say: it doesn’t give a man earthly immortality on account of his sins.
You see, I can’t feel as shocked at myself as you do; I’ve known myself
so long, I’ve got used to it. And if you would think over my crimes,
quietly, for the next twenty years or so, maybe you’d not be so anxious
to have me damned. We are what we are, and some of us have bad luck into
the bargain. That’s all! I’m glad you found me out, however you did it;
for I don’t believe I should have had the pluck to confess I killed him,
when it came to the point. It was a dirty piece of business; and if it
hadn’t been for ... one thing, I was just as likely to put the bullet
into my own heart as his. But,” continued the dying man, by a great
effort raising himself in his bed, and lifting his arms, while the blood
rushed to his face, making it dark and lurid, “but when I knew that in
taking his life I had been led on to take the life of my own darling
boy--that I loved a thousand times more than I hated anybody else--by
the living God, I could have murdered Grantley over again, out of
revenge!”
These are the last words known to have been uttered by Sir Francis
Bendibow. He became unconscious soon after, and died the same afternoon.
They were terrible words; and yet, when Marion recalled them long
afterwards, it seemed to her that there might be, perhaps, something in
them indicative of a moral state less abjectly depraved than was
suggested by his previous half-complacent apathy.