ORMSBY REFUSES
Ormsby greeted Dick's mother with marked coldness. He extended to her the
politeness accorded to an enemy before a duel. He motioned her to a seat
near his desk, and took up a position on the hearthrug. His pale face was
hard set, and his dark eyes gleamed. His hands were clenched behind his
back, and his whole attitude was that of a man holding himself in check.
The very mention of the name of Swinton was enough to fill his brain with
madness.
"I have come to pay you some money," said Mrs. Swinton quietly, as she
unfastened the catch of her muff bag. "Here is a check for seven thousand
dollars. It is the sum required by you to make good the discrepancy in my
father's account with your bank. He is an old man in his dotage; and, as
he repudiates his checks, you must not be the loser." She spoke in a dull
voice--a monotone--as though repeating a lesson learnt by heart.
Ormsby was rather staggered. How Mrs. Swinton could raise seven thousand
dollars without getting it from Herresford was a mystery, and he had
never expected the miser to disgorge.
"May I ask you why you bring this money?" he demanded, at last.
"I have explained."
"I hope you don't think, Mrs. Swinton, that we are going to compound a
felony, just because the criminal's family pursues the proper course, and
reimburses our bank."
"Of course I do. When the money is paid, my family affairs are no
business of yours."
"A warrant is out for your son's arrest, Mrs. Swinton, and we shall have
him to-night. It pains me exceedingly to have to take this course,
but--"
"You hypocrite!" she cried, starting up. "You are taking an unfair
advantage of your position. You are playing a mean, contemptible trick.
You are jealous of my son. Your action is not that of a man, but of a
coward. Are you not satisfied with having robbed him of his wife that you
must hound him down?"
"On the contrary, your son has robbed me of the woman I love," said
Ormsby, with cutting emphasis, "and he shall not have her. She may not
marry me, but she shall not mate with a felon."
"If it is money you want, you shall have more."
"You insult me, Mrs. Swinton. It is not the money I care about. It is the
principle. Your son insulted me publicly--struck me like a drunken
brawler--and worked upon the feelings of a pure and innocent woman, who
will break her father's heart if she persists in the mad course she has
adopted. But she'll change her mind, when she sees your son in
handcuffs."
"It must not be! It must not be!" cried the guilty woman. "If you were a
man and a gentleman, you would not let personal spite and jealousy come
into a matter like this. You would not ruin my son for life, and break my
heart, because you cannot have the girl, who pledged herself to Dick
before you had any chance with her. You'll be cut by every decent person.
Every door will be shut against you. If you do what you threaten,
everyone shall know the truth--"
"The whole world may shut its doors--there is only one door that must
open to me, the door of Colonel Dundas's house, where, until to-day, I
was sure of a welcome, and almost sure of a wife. I am sorry for you,
because it is obviously painful for a mother to contemplate the downfall
of her son. You naturally strive to screen him by every means in your
power. It is the common instinct of humanity. But I tell you"--and here
he raised his fist with unwonted emphasis--"I'll kill him, hound him
down, make his life unbearable. The country will be too hot to hold him.
First a felon, then a convict, then an outcast, a marked man, a
wastrel--"
"I beg of you--I beseech you! You don't understand--everything. If I
could tell you, you would at least have a different point of view of
Dick's honor. It's I who--who--"
"Honor! Don't talk to me about honor! How is it he's alive? Why isn't he
beside his comrade, Jack Lorrimer, who died rather than betray his
country? It is easy to see how he escaped the bullets of the firing
party. He told his secret, and heaven alone knows how many dead men lie
at his door as the result of that treachery."
"It is false!"
"If I err, Mrs. Swinton, it is because I believe that a forger is always
a sneak and a thief. I judge men as I find them. I speculate upon their
unseen acts by what has gone before. A brave man is always a brave man, a
coward always a coward, a thief always a thief, because it is his natural
bent. It is useless to prolong this interview. You lose your son; I gain
a wife. The world will be well rid of a dangerous citizen. Allow me to
open the side door for you. It is the quickest way."
Of what avail was her sudden avalanche of wealth? It could not move the
determination of this remorseless man. If she confessed the truth--it was
on her lips a dozen times to cry aloud her sin--he would only transfer
his animosity to her, because it would hurt Dick the more. Next to
humiliating his rival, to humble the wife of the rector of St. Botolph's
would be a triumph for Ormsby. She took refuge in a last frantic lie.
"My father signed the checks for those amounts. The alterations were made
in his presence--by me. I saw him sign them. He knew very well what he
was doing then. But, since, he has forgotten. His denial is folly. Dick
is innocent. I can swear to it."
Ormsby smiled sardonically as he opened the door. "It does great credit
to your imagination, Mrs. Swinton. Your statement, on the face of it, is
false. Unless Mr. Herresford made that avowal with his own lips, no one
would take the slightest notice of it. It would only be adding folly to
crime. I wish you good-day."
He held the door wide open, still smiling with an evil light in his eyes.
As she passed out, she was almost tempted to strike him, so great was her
mortification.
"You are as bad as my father," she cried. "Nothing pleases you men of
money more than to wound and lacerate women's hearts. Dora is well saved
from such a cur."
She reached the rectory in a state bordering on despair. Money could do
nothing. She was powerless to evade the consequences of her folly. It was
the more maddening because she had only robbed her father of a little,
whereas he had defrauded her of much--oh, so much!
One sentence let fall by Ormsby remained vividly in her memory. "Unless
Mr. Herresford made that avowal with his own lips, no one would take the
slightest notice of it."
He should make the avowal; she would force it from him. The irony of the
situation was fantastic in its horror.
She found her husband at home, looking whiter and more bloodless than
ever.
"What news, Mary?" he asked awkwardly, avoiding her glance.
"The strangest, John--the strangest of all! My father is the biggest
thief in America."
"Mary, Mary, this perpetual abuse of your father, whom we have wronged,
will not help us in the least."
He led her into the study.
"John, John, you don't understand what I mean. I've been to Mr. Jevons,
and he says that my mother left me more than half-a-million dollars,
which my father has stolen--stolen! He has kept us beggars ever since our
marriage, by a trick. My mother left me twenty thousand a year; and--you
know what we've had from him."
"Mary, what wild things are you saying?"
"Ah, it's hard to believe; but it's true. He'll have to disgorge, or Mr.
Jevons will take the business into court. He gave me the seven thousand
dollars I wanted on the spot, and promised to get the rest for me, and
give me as much more as I wanted. I've seen Ormsby, and paid him the
money; but he's obdurate. The jealous wretch is bent upon ruining Dick.
Nothing will move him."
"It is our sin crying for atonement, Mary. Money cannot buy absolution."
"No, but father can say the word that will save us all. He must swear he
made a mistake--that he did sign those checks for the amounts drawn from
the bank. That will paralyze Ormsby, and leave him powerless."
"Lies! lies!--we are wallowing in lies!" groaned the rector.
"When a lie can hurt no one, and can avert a terrible calamity, perjury
can be no sin. God knows I have been punished enough." Then, with a
sudden anger and a burst of violence so unusual in his wife that it
horrified the rector, she began to abuse her father, calling him every
terrible, foolish name that came to her tongue.
"He shall pay the penalty of his fraud," she cried. "Thief he calls
me--well, it's bred in the bone. Set a thief to catch a thief. I've run
him to earth. He'll have to lose hundreds of thousands, and more. It
will send him wild with terror. Think what that'll mean! Think how he'll
cringe and whine and implore! It'll be like plucking out his heart. I
have the whip-hand of him now, and he shall dance to my tune. I shouldn't
be surprised if compulsory honesty and the restoration of ill-gotten
wealth were to kill him."
"Mary, Mary, be calm!"
"I'm going to him now," she cried. "We'll see who will be worsted in the
fight. I'll silence his taunts. There'll be no more chuckling over his
daughter's misery--no more insults and abuse of you, John."
"My dear Mary, you mustn't think of going now. You're unsprung, overcome.
You'll do something rash. Let us be satisfied for the present with this
great change of fortune. One ghost at least is laid--the terror of
poverty. The way lies open now for our honorable confession. You see
that, don't you?" he pleaded. "We can delay no longer. There is no
excuse. By the return of our boy, the ground was cut from beneath our
feet. What does it matter what the world says of us, when we have made
things right with our God, when we have done justice by our brave son?"
"Oh, no--think of Netty."
"Ah, Netty is in trouble, dearest. She's had bad news to-day. Harry Bent
talks of canceling his engagement. The scandal has reached the ears of
his family, and his money-affairs are dependent on his mother, whom he
can't offend. You see, darling, the sins of the fathers have begun to
descend on the children--Dick and Netty both stricken. We must
confess!--confess!"
"I can't, John, I can't--I can't. Dick won't hear of it."
"Dick has no voice in the matter at all. It is the voice of God that
calls."
"Yes, yes, I know, John, but--wait till I've seen father once more. I
won't listen to you, I won't eat, I won't sleep, until I've seen him.
I'll go to him at once."
"I must come, too," urged the rector weakly. Yet, the thought of facing
the miser's taunts at such a time filled him with unspeakable dread. And
he could not tell her that Dick's arrest was imminent.
"Have some food, dearest, and go afterward."
"I couldn't eat. It would choke me," Mrs. Swinton said, rebelliously.
Netty, hearing her mother's voice, came into the room, her eyes red with
weeping.
"You've heard, mother?" she cried, plaintively.
"I've heard, Netty. To-morrow Mrs. Bent will be sorry. We're no longer
paupers, Netty."
"Why, grandfather isn't dead?"
"No, but we are rich. He's a thief. We've always been rich. Your
grandfather has robbed us of hundreds of thousands--all my mother's
fortune. I've only just found it out to-day from a lawyer."
"Oh, the villain!" cried Netty. "But I shall be jilted all the same. Dick
has ruined and disgraced us all. I'm snubbed--jilted--thrown over,
because my brother is a felon."
"Silence, Netty. There are other people in the world beside yourself to
think of," cried the rector.
"Well, nobody ever thinks of me," sobbed the girl, angrily.
There was a loud rattling at the front door. The rector started, and
listened in terror.
"Too late!" he groaned, dropping into a chair. "It's the police!"
"John, you have betrayed me--after all!" screamed his wife, looking
wildly around like a hunted thing.
He bowed his head in assent. He misunderstood her meaning. "Ormsby has
been here. He found out--by a slip of the tongue."