A DIFFICULT POSITION
There was no rest for John Swinton that night. After the first rush of
sorrow, he began to rebel against the injustice of his Master, who seemed
to heap trouble upon him with both hands, and reward his untiring efforts
in the cause of good by a crushing load of worry. His was a temperament
generally summed up by the world in the simple phrase, good-natured. He
was soft-hearted, and weaker of spirit than he knew. Those in trouble
always found in him a sympathetic listener; and the distress and poverty
among his people often pained him more acutely than it did the actual
sufferers born in, and inured to, hardship and privation.
His energy was tremendous where a noble end was to be achieved; but he
loved the good things of life, and hated its trivial worries, the keeping
of accounts, the payment of cash on the spot, and the attendance of
committee meetings, where men met together to talk of doing what he could
accomplish single-handed while they were deliberating. He was worldly
enough to know that a great deal could be done by money, and his hand was
always in his pocket to help those less fortunate than himself. The
influence of a wife that had no sympathy with plain, common people who
wore the wrong clothes, and said the wrong things, and desired to be
guided in their ridiculous, trivial affairs, had more to do with his
failure than he knew.
He was always drawn between two desires, the one to be a great and
beloved divine, the other to be a country gentleman, living in
refinement, and in surroundings sympathetic to his emotional artistic
temperament. The early promise of his youth, unfulfilled in his middle
age, had disappointed him. But there was always one consolation. His son
would endure no privation and limitation such as hampered a man without
private means, like himself. As the heir to Herresford's great wealth,
Dick's future prospects had seemed to be assured. But the lad himself,
careless of his own interests, like his father, ran wild at an awkward
period when his grandfather, breaking in mind and body, developed those
eccentricities which became the marked feature of his latter days. The
animosity of the old man was aroused, and once an enemy was always an
enemy with him. He cared nothing for his daughter. Indeed, he cherished a
positive hatred of her at times; and never lost an opportunity of
humiliating the rector and making him feel that he gained nothing by
marrying the daughter against her father's wishes.
It was bad enough to have troubles coming upon him in battalions without
this final blow--the charge of forgery against Dick.
The wife, unable to rest, arose and paced the house in the small hours.
She dreaded to ask for further particulars of the charge brought by the
bank against poor Dick, for fear she should be tempted to confess to her
husband that she had robbed her own father. The horrible truth stood out
now in its full light, naked and terrifying. With any other father, there
might have been a chance of mercy. But there was none with this one. The
malevolent old miser's nature had ever been at war with her own. From her
birth, he had taunted her with being like her mother--a shallow,
worthless, social creature, incapable of straight dealing and plain
economy. From her childhood, she had deceived him, even in the matter of
pennies. She had lied to him when she left home to elope with John
Swinton; and it was only by threatening him with lawyers and a public
scandal that she had been able to make him disgorge a part of the income
derived from her dead mother's fortune, which had been absorbed by the
miser through a legal technicality at his wife's death.
He would not scruple to prosecute his own child for theft. He would
certainly make her smart for her folly. The bad end, which he always
prophesied for anyone who did not conform to his arrogant decrees, loomed
imminent and forbidding. He was little better than a monster, with no
more paternal instinct than the wild-cat. He would only chuckle and rub
his hands in glee at the thought of her humiliation in the eyes of her
friends. He might accuse the rector of complicity in her fraud. He would
spread ruin around, rather than lose his dollars.
In the morning, half-an-hour after the bank opened, Mr. Barnby appeared
again at the rectory, impelled by a strict sense of duty once more to
enter the house of sorrow, on what was surely the most unpleasant errand
ever undertaken by a man at his employer's bidding. The news of Dick's
death had already spread over the town; and those who knew of the affair
at the club dinner and the taunt of cowardice did not fail to comment on
the glorious end of the brave young officer who had died a hero. A
splendid coward they called him, ironically.
Mr. Barnby asked to see her ladyship, and not the rector. The
recollection of John Swinton's haggard face had kept him awake half the
night. The more he thought of the forgery, the more he was inclined to
believe that Mrs. Swinton could explain the mystery of the checks. He
knew, by referring to several banking-accounts, that she had recently
been paying away large sums of money to tradesmen, and the amounts paid
by Dick Swinton were not particularly large.
Mrs. Swinton stood outside the drawing-room door with her hand on her
heart for a full minute, before she dared enter to meet the visitor.
Then, assuming her most self-possessed manner, with a slight touch of
hauteur, she advanced to greet the newcomer.
He arose awkwardly, and she gave him a distant bow.
"You wish to see me, I understand, and you come from some bank, I
believe?"
She spoke in a manner indicating that her visitor was a person of whose
existence she had just become aware.
"Your husband has not informed you of the purport of my visit last night,
Mrs. Swinton?" asked Mr. Barnby.
"He spoke of some silly blunder about checks. Why have you come to me
this morning--at a time of sorrow? Surely your wretched business can
wait?"
"It cannot wait," replied Mr. Barnby, with growing coolness. He saw a
terrified look in her eyes, and his own sparkled with triumph. It was
easier to settle matters of business with a woman in this mood than with
a tearful mother.
"I shall be as brief as possible, Mrs. Swinton. I only come to ask you a
plain question. Did you recently receive from your father, Mr.
Herresford, a check for two dollars?"
"I--I did. Yes, I believe so. I can't remember."
"Did you receive one from him for two thousand dollars?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Because the check for two dollars appears to have been altered into two
thousand."
"Let me see it," she demanded with the greatest _sang froid_.
He produced the check, and she took it; but her hand trembled.
"This is certainly a check for two thousand dollars, but I know nothing
of it."
"It was presented at the bank by your son, and cashed."
"I tell you I know nothing of it. My son is dead, and cannot be
questioned now."
"I have another check here for five thousand dollars, made out to your
son and cashed by him also. You will see that the ink has changed color
in one part, and that the five has been altered to five thousand. The
body of the check is in your handwriting, I believe."
"Yes, that is my handwriting."
"The additions were very cleverly made," ventured Mr. Barnby. "The forger
must have imitated your handwriting wonderfully."
"Yes, it is wonderfully like," she replied, huskily.
"This check was also presented by your son, and honored by us. Both
checks are repudiated by your father, who will only allow us to debit his
account with seven dollars. Therefore, we are six thousand, nine hundred
and ninety-three dollars to the bad. Mr. Ormsby, our managing director,
says we must recover the money somehow. Your son is dead, and cannot
explain, as you have already reminded me. Unfortunately, a warrant has
been applied for, for his arrest for forgery."
"You mean to insinuate that my son is a criminal?" she cried, with mock
rage, drawing herself up, and acting her part very badly.
"If you say those checks were not altered by you, there can be little
doubt of the identity of the guilty person."
"My son is dead. How dare you bring such a charge against him. I refuse
to listen to you, or to discuss money matters at such a time. My father
must pay the money."
"He refuses, absolutely. And he says he will prosecute the offender,
even if the forger be his own child."
"He has the wickedness and audacity to suggest that I--?"
"I merely repeat his words."
She rang the bell, sweeping across the room in her haughtiest manner, and
drawing herself up to her full height. The summons was answered
instantly.
"Show this gentleman to the door."
"Madam, I will convey the result of this interview to Mr. Ormsby."
The old man bowed himself out with a dignity that was more real than
hers, and it had, as well, a touch of contempt in it.
The moment the door closed behind him, Mrs. Swinton dropped into a chair,
white and haggard, gasping for breath, with her heart beating great
hammer-strokes that sent the blood to her brain. The room whirled around,
the windows danced before her eyes, she clutched the back of a chair to
prevent herself from fainting.
"God help me!" she cried. "There was no other way. The disgrace, the
exposure, the scandal would be awful. I should be cut by everybody--my
husband pointed at in the streets and denounced as a partner in my
guilt--for he has shared the money. It was to pay his debts as well, to
save Dick and the whole household from ruin--for Netty's sake, too--how
could Harry Bent marry a bankrupt clergyman's daughter? But it wasn't
really my doing, it was his, his! He's no father at all. He's a miser, a
beast of prey, a murderer of souls! From my birth, he's hated and cheated
me. He has checked every good impulse, and made me regard his money as
something to be got by trickery and misrepresentation and lies. And, now,
I have lied on paper, and they suspect poor, dead Dick, who was the soul
of honor. Oh, Dick, Dick! But they can't do anything to you, Dick--you're
dead. Better to accuse you than ruin all of us. Your father couldn't hold
up his head again, or preach a sermon from the pulpit. We should be
beggars. I couldn't live that kind of a life. I should die. I have only
one child now, and she must be my care. I've not been a proper mother to
her, I fear, but I'll make up for it--yes, I'll make up for it. If I
spoiled her life now, she would never forgive me--never! She is like me:
she must have the good things of life, the things that need money. And,
after all, it was my own money I took. It was no theft at all. It's only
the wretched law that gives a miser the power to crush his own child for
scrawling a few words on a piece of paper."
Then came the worst danger of all. How was she to explain to her
husband--how make him see her point of view--how face his condemnation of
her guilty act, and secure his consent to the damnable sin of dishonoring
her dead son's name to save the family from ruin.