MRS. SWINTON GOES HOME
Mrs. Swinton returned to the rector, who was waiting in the library, with
set face and clenched hands, pacing up and down like a caged beast. The
increased whiteness of his hair and the extreme pallor of his skin gave
to his sorrow-shadowed eyes an extraordinary brilliancy. His lips moved
incessantly as thoughts, surging in his brain, demanded physical
utterance. At intervals, he would wring his hands and look upward
appealingly, like a man struggling in the toils of a temptation too great
to be mastered. A long period of worry and embarrassment had broken his
spirit. He was fated with the first real calamity that had ever overtaken
him. With money difficulties, he was familiar. They scarcely touched his
conscience. But, in this matter of his son's honor, the divergent roads
of right and wrong were clearly defined; unhappily, he was not strong
enough fearlessly to tread the path of virtue.
His wife's arguments seemed unanswerable. Indeed, whenever she was near,
he hopelessly surrendered himself to her guidance. He knew perfectly well
that the only proper course for a man of God was to go forth into the
market-place and proclaim his son's innocence, to the shame of his wife,
of himself, and of his daughter. It was not a question of precise
justice. It was a plain issue between God and the devil. But Mary had
pursued the policy of throwing dust in his eyes, and led him blindly
along the road where he was bound to sink deeper and deeper into the
mire.
When the love of wife conflicts with the love of child, a father is
between the horns of a dilemma. The woman was living; the boy dead. The
arguments were overpoweringly plausible. Mrs. Swinton had her life to
live through; whereas Dick's trials were ended. And would a suspicious
world believe he shared his wife's plunder without knowing how it was
obtained? In addition, Netty's future would certainly be overshadowed to
a cruel extent.
The arguments of the woman were, indeed, unanswerable: the misery of it
was that the whole thing resolved itself into a simple question of right
and wrong. As a clergyman of the church he could not countenance a lie,
live a lie, and stand idly by while Herresford compelled the bank to
refund the money stolen from them by his wife.
He had naturally argued the matter out with her, in love, in anger, in
piteous appeal. It always came around to the same thing in the end--a
compromise. The seven thousand dollars must be paid to the miser, if it
took the rest of their lives to raise it; if they starved, and denied
themselves common necessities. And Herresford must say that he drew the
checks for innocent Dick.
His wife agreed with him on these points; but on the question of
confessing their sin--their joint sin it had become now--she was
obdurate. She had yielded to his entreaties so far as to face the ordeal
of an interview with her father, she agreed to the most painful
economies; but further she would not go.
If Herresford consented to add lie to lie, and to exonerate Dick by
acknowledging the checks, all might yet be well.
Now, when his wife came in, with flushed face and lips working in anger,
he cried out, tremulously:
"Well, Mary?"
"It is useless, worse than useless!" she answered. "He is quite
impossible, as I told you."
"Then, he will not lend us the money?"
"No, indeed, no. Worse, John, he knows."
"Knows what?"
"That I did it. He understood Dick well enough, in spite of his wicked
abuse of him, and he had made him his heir. He accused me of altering the
checks, and--I couldn't deny it."
"Mary! Mary! You have ruined all. He will denounce us."
"No, he doesn't intend to do that, John. He knows the torture we are
enduring, and he wants it to go on. He means to let the bank lose the
money."
"Then, the burden of the guilt still rests on the shoulders of our dead
son."
"Oh, don't, John--don't put it like that! I've borne enough--I can't bear
much more. I think I'm going mad. My brain throbs, everything goes dim
before my sight, and my heart leaps, and shooting pains--"
She tottered forward into her husband's arms. He clasped her close,
drawing her to him and pressing kisses on her cheeks.
"My darling, my darling, be strong. It is not ended yet."
"Take me home, John--take me home!" she sobbed.
"No, I'll see the old man myself."
"John! John! It'll do no good--I beseech you! I cannot trust you out of
my sight. I never know what you may do or what you will say. I know it's
hard for you to go against your principles; but you mustn't absolutely
kill me. I should die, John, if you played traitor to me, your wife, and
allowed me to be sent to jail."
"Don't Mary--don't!" he groaned.
"When a man leaves his father and mother, he cleaves unto his wife: and,
when I left my home, John, I was faithful and true to you. It was for
you that I stooped to the trick which I now realize was a crime which my
father uses as a whip to lash me with. We must live it down, John. The
bank people are rich. It won't hurt them much--whereas confession would
annihilate us."
"The money must be paid back," he cried resolutely, striking the air with
his clenched fist, while he held her to him with the other arm.
"It's impossible, John, impossible. We cannot pay back without explaining
why."
"We must atone--for Dick's sake. No man shall say that our son robbed him
of money without compensation from us, his parents. Let us go home, Mary,
and begin from to-day. The rectory must be given up. It must be let
furnished, and the servants dismissed. We must go into some cheap
place."
"Yes, let us go home, John. You'll talk more reasonably there, and see
things in another light."
The man listened, and allowed himself to be led. This was as it had been
always; but it could not go on forever. Deep down in John Swinton's
vacillating nature, there was the spirit of a martyr.