RODNEY ELMORE THE FIRST
That was a curious dinner party. Elmore quite expected that when he
had rid himself of his daughter his uncle would come and tell him that
he was not to regard the invitation as having been seriously intended,
and that he was not to present himself in Russell Square. But nothing
of the sort occurred. He saw and heard no more of Mr. Patterson until
he quitted the office, and just before a quarter to eight he entered
the drawing-room at No. 90. Miss Patterson, who was its sole occupant,
rose as he entered.
"It's very good of you," she said, while she continued to allow her
hand to remain in his, "to take the hint, and come early. Dad never
shows till dinner's served, so that I shall have a chance of finding
out before he comes what is the meaning of the extraordinary attitude
he is taking up towards you. He simply poses as the father who has got
to be obeyed, and as that sort of thing appears to be ridiculous, as I
ventured to tell him, I expect you to tell me all about it."
He told her all he had to tell, which was very little, in such fashion
that inside fifteen minutes they were on terms almost of intimacy. He
was one of those men who have a natural attraction for contrasting
types of women; emphatically for that type of which Gladys Patterson
was an example. The master of the house did not enter till dinner was
served, and by the time they were seated at table Elmore was already
aware that his cousin offered a pleasant and promising field for such
experiments as he might choose to devise.
Conversation was almost entirely confined to the two younger members
of the party, the initiative being taken by Gladys, Elmore acting as a
sort of chorus. The meal was of the solid, plentiful, well-cooked
order, which one felt would appeal to the host. Beyond replying
shortly to an occasional inquiry addressed to him by his daughter, Mr.
Patterson's whole attention was given to his food, and wine. When
dessert was on the table his daughter asked him:
"Going out to-night, dad--as usual?"
"No," he responded briefly, "I'm not."
The young woman looked at her cousin with a twinkle in her eyes.
"Dad follows the good old-fashioned custom of sitting over his wine.
He thinks that a glass of port gives a proper finish to a meal. If you
don't think so you can come into the drawing-room with me."
"He'll stay here," observed the sire succinctly.
But the damsel was equal to the occasion.
"Very well, dad; then I'll stay too. And since this table really is
too big for three, I think, Rodney, it would be more comfy if I were
to bring my chair closer to yours. Are you fond of the theatre?"
Having brought her chair to within a foot of Elmore's she entered with
him into an animated discussion on the subject of favourite plays and
players, while the host, practically speechless, sat at the head of
his board drinking more port than was good for him. Elmore, who could
be abstemious enough when he liked, had followed his cousin's lead,
and drank nothing but mineral water. At last the young lady used his
self-denial as a pivot to gain her own ends.
"Really, dad, as Rodney won't join you in drinking, it's absurd our
stopping here, especially as I want some music, so please, sir, will
you come with me at once into the drawing-room?"
Before the slow-witted host, whose brains had not been rendered more
active by his libations, had awoke to the meaning of his daughter's
proposition, she had borne the guest with her from the room. They were
alone together in the drawing-room for more than half an hour. If the
music of which Gladys had spoken was not much in evidence, their
acquaintance moved at a rate which was only possible in the case of a
young man who was willing--nay, eager--to take advantage of the
peculiarities of a young woman's temperament. So that when his uncle
did appear, with eyes a little dulled and feet a little unsteady,
Rodney was quite ready to make his adieux and his cousin to excuse
him.
The acquaintance, thus commenced, not only continued, but advanced by
leaps and bounds. Mr. Patterson's habits being those of a bachelor of
a not too strait-laced kind rather than those of a family man, he did
not find his daughter's society so congenial and satisfying as he
might have done. Being desirous of doing as he liked, he left her with
more freedom than he himself was perhaps aware of. She would even have
not been without justification had she chosen to regard herself as
neglected. But for what seemed to her to be sufficient reasons, she
was content that her parent should amuse himself as he liked, though
his doing so resulted in his practically overlooking her altogether.
Rodney Elmore never went again to the house in Russell Square as his
uncle's guest, but he went there more than once as his daughter's, and
that sometimes at hours and under circumstances which were, to say the
least, unconventional. More frequently their meetings were not in
the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury. Mr. Patterson had a fondness for
week-ending, without informing his daughter with whom he spent his
time or where. It was not strange if, during such absences, his
daughter did her best to avoid being too much alone. More than one
such Sunday she and Rodney spent together from quite an early hour to
quite a late one. Before long they were on terms which certainly could
not have been more intimate had they been an engaged couple. But they
were not, on that point they supposed that they understood each other
thoroughly. Gladys had less than two hundred a year of her own, left
her by her mother; and Rodney was pretty sure that if she married him
her means would not be materially increased for many a day to come--if
ever. He was by no means sure that he cared for her enough to marry
her if all he got with her in marriage was her person; no one could be
clearer than he was that she would not make the sort of wife who would
be likely to be in any way whatever of assistance to a struggling
husband. Her attitude was almost equally practical. That she liked him
much more than he liked her was sure; there was hardly anything he
could ask of her which she would not be willing to give. She believed
in him much more than he believed in her; in her eyes he was nearly a
hero. But, not being quite blind, she realised that, as things were,
marriage for them was out of the question. She knew her father, and
was aware that while up to a certain point she could do with him as
she liked, if on a matter of capital importance he bade her not to do
such and such a thing, and she did it, he would cut her as completely
out of his life as if she had not been in it, and never miss her. She
was conscious that she was as unfitted for love in a cottage as Elmore
was; was, perhaps, even dimly alive to the fact that in such a
position her plight would be worse than his was. So that their
association was based on that quite up-to-date article of faith which
sets forth that though a young man and a young woman can never be
husband and wife, they may still be "pals."
Elmore's position in the office was not improved by the incident of
his having been a guest in Russell Square. Though his uncle never
spoke to him upon the subject--nor, indeed, if he could help it, on
any other--his nephew's acute perception realised that he had not
grown to like him any more. As time went on a doubt began to grow up
within him as to whether his uncle had not some inkling of the
relations which existed between him and his daughter. That his doubt
was well founded he was ultimately to learn. One morning, soon after
his uncle's arrival, a request came to him to go to him at once in his
room. When he went in he was struck, not by any means for the first
time, by certain points about his uncle's appearance. He felt
convinced that his relative's was not, from the insurance point of
view, a good life. Rodney Elmore knew little of medicine, yet he
hazarded a private opinion that Graham Patterson was a promising
subject for an apoplectic stroke--the kind of man who, at any moment
of undue stress, might have cerebral trouble from which he might not
find it easy to recover. He caught himself wondering whether if, by
any mischance, his uncle became the victim of such a catastrophe, it
might not be worth his while to marry his cousin, if, indeed, that
would not be the lady's own point of view. Were Graham Patterson to
have such a stroke, it was at least within the range of possibility
that he might never again be in a condition to manage his own affairs;
in which case who would be so likely to be appointed administrator as
the husband of his only child?
While such gruesome imaginings occupied his mind, the subject of them
continued to regard him with a stolid silence which at last struck him
as singular.
"I was told, sir, that you wished to speak to me."
He said this with the little air of pleasant deference of which he was
such a master and which became him so well. His uncle still said
nothing, but continued to glare at him with his bloodshot eyes as if
he were some strange object in an exhibition. He really looked so odd
that Rodney began to wonder if that stroke was already in the air. He
tried again to move him to speech.
"I trust, sir, that nothing disagreeable has happened."
Yet some seconds passed before his uncle did speak. When he did it was
with a hard sort of ferocity which his listener felt accorded well
with the singularity of his appearance.
"You took my daughter to the Palace Theatre last night."
Rodney wondered from whom he had learned the fact, being convinced
that it was not from his daughter. However, since he could scarcely
ask, he tried another line, one which he was conscious went close to
the verge of insolence.
"I hope, sir, that the Palace is not a theatre to which you object.
Just now it has one of the best entertainments in London."
Only in a very narrow sense could his uncle's response be regarded as
a reply to his words.
"You're an infernal young scoundrel!"
Rodney did not attempt to feign resentment he did not feel. His
quickly-moving wits told him that he was at last brought face to face
with a position which he had for some time foreseen, and that for him
the best attitude would probably be one of modest humility--at least,
to begin with.
"I don't think, sir, you are entitled to use such language to me on
such slight grounds."
"Don't you? You--you--beauty!"
Obviously Mr. Patterson had substituted a different word for the one
he had intended to use. Taking a slip of paper out of the drawer of
the writing-table at which he was seated, he held it out towards
Rodney.
"You see that?"
"I do, sir."
"You know what it is?"
"It appears to be a cheque."
"You know what cheque it is."
"If you will allow me to examine it more closely I shall perhaps be
able to say."
"You can examine it as closely as you please so long as it is in my
hands. I wouldn't trust it in your hands for a good deal."
"Why do you say that?"
"You impudent young blackguard!"
"And that, sir?"
"I say it, you brazen young hypocrite, because that cheque happens to
be a forgery, and you are the man who forged it."
"Sir! I know that you are used to allow yourself a large license in
the way of language, but this time, although you are my uncle, you go
too far."
"I intend to go much farther before I've done--and don't you throw the
fact that I'm your uncle in my face, the most decent men have
blackguards for relatives. This cheque was originally made out for
eight pounds. I told you to ask young Metcalf to get cash for it.
Between this room and Metcalf's desk you altered it to eighty pounds.
It was easily done--especially by an expert like you. He brought you
eighty pounds; you gave me eight, and kept seventy-two. You were aware
that Metcalf was leaving the office that day to join his brother in
Canada; you calculated that probably before the thing was discovered
he would be on the high seas, and that, therefore, since everyone
knew how much he was in want of cash, I should lay the guilt at his
door--you dirty cur! But I didn't, never for one instant; the instant
I saw the cheque I recognised your hand."
"You recognised my hand? What do you mean by that, sir?"
Mr. Patterson took something else out of his writing-table drawer,
which, this time, he handed to his nephew.
"Look at that."
It was a portrait--the photograph of a man in the early prime of life.
"Don't you think it might be yours?"
Rodney felt that, allowing for the changes made by a few superimposed
years, the resemblance to himself was striking, so striking that it
was startling. The eyes looked at him out of the portrait with an
expression which he recognised as so like his own that it bewildered
him.
"That's the portrait of your father. You don't remember him?"
"Not at all."
"I knew him all his life. You are so like what he was at your age that
more than once when I have looked at you I have had an uncomfortable
feeling that he had come back again to haunt me. Never was son more
like his father, in all things."
Rodney winced, scarcely knowing why. His uncle went on.
"Your mother never spoke to you of him?"
"Never."
"She had what she supposed to be sufficient reasons for her reticence;
she wished to hide from you, if possible, the knowledge of what manner
of man your father was, thinking that the knowledge of the heritage of
shame which he had left behind might drive you to walk in his
footsteps. I was of a different opinion. I held that if you had in you
any of the makings of a decent man, the knowledge of the sort of man
your father was would serve you as a warning to keep off the path he'd
followed. However, you were your mother's child, not mine, thank God;
she had her way, though I warned her that the time would probably come
when I should have to tell you the story she would rather have bitten
off her tongue than tell."
Mr. Patterson paused, keeping his eyes fixed on the young man in front
of him. There was a quality in his gaze which made Rodney conscious of
a sense of discomfort to which he had been hitherto a stranger.
"You are so like your father that you even have his Christian name.
Rodney Elmore the first was one of those creatures who sometimes come
into the world, who could not run straight if they tried--and they
never try. He was one of Nature's thieves; a born scamp; a lifelong
blackguard. Your mother was my only sister; the only relative I had. I
did not understand him so well before she married him as I did
afterwards, but I understood him well enough to have kept her from
marrying him if I could. But he was one of those hounds who, if they
cannot get what they want by fair means, will not hesitate to get it
by foul; he even won his wife by foul means, taking advantage of her
girlish innocence so that she had to become his wife to save her good
name. She lived for six years with him in hell. Then he was detected
in a series of frauds which would probably have resulted in his being
sent to penal servitude for life. Rather than face the music, he
committed suicide."
Again Mr. Patterson paused, and his nephew, on his side, kept still.
It seemed to him that his uncle's voice was the voice of doom; he was
aware of a sensation of actual physical pain as he listened, as if
sentence had not only been pronounced, but punishment also begun. He
had wondered vaguely more than once what manner of man his father was,
and, since she had volunteered no information, had put questions on
the subject to his mother. But she had staved them off in a fashion
which suggested--since even in the days of his boyhood his mental
processes were sufficiently acute--that there was not much to be told
about him which redounded to his credit. So, as years brought wisdom,
his curiosity became less and less; a feeling grew up in his bosom
that perhaps the less he knew about his father the better it might be.
Never, however, had his most pessimistic imaginings come near the
reality as portrayed by his uncle. He, the son of a lifelong rogue,
who had only escaped the penalty of his misdeeds by self-destruction!
He began to apprehend the meaning of the attitude his uncle had taken
up towards him. His uncle did his best to assist him to a clearer
comprehension.
"I never would have anything to do with you. I had suffered too much
from your father to be willing by any overt act to acknowledge your
existence, especially as a relative of mine. I resented your
existence. I am not more superstitious than the average man, but I had
a strong conviction that with you it would be a case of like father
like son. The paternal qualities were too strong, too ingrained, too
much the very essence of his being not to be transmitted. When your
mother came and begged me to take you into my office I asked her
point-blank if you were not your father's son. She denied it. I
believed then that she lied; now I know it. I have no doubt that she
had detected you over and over again in acts which recalled your
father."
Rodney wondered if that really was the case. She had never hinted
anything of the sort to him. He understood now why, with her dying
breath, she had entreated him to be honest. Did she realise at the
very portals of death what a broken reed his promise was? He shivered
at the thought.
"So soon as you came into this office I knew that I had been right,
and that you were every inch your father's son. You are clever; don't
suppose that I don't appreciate the fact. I am not so clever, which
fact you have taken rather too much for granted. You have overlooked
one quality I have, and that is--a nose for a thief. I owe to it a
good deal of such success as I have had--in a sense, I can smell a
thief so soon as he comes near me. Of course, in your case I had your
father's record to help me; but I think that, without it, I should
have scented you, your odour was so pungent. You had not been in the
place a month before you began to play your little tricks. I do not
flatter myself that I found you out in all of them, but I did in a
good many. I said nothing, but I made a note of each, and have the
complete record in a certain volume which will possibly be produced
one day in a court of assize. Then there came the incident of the
cheque--the eight pounds which you turned into eighty. When I saw that
cheque I realised that immunity had given you courage, and that you
were beginning to fly at higher game. I am, as I believe you and other
gentlemen in the office are aware, a regular old fogey, a dray-horse
sort of man. I never, if I can help it, arrive at a hasty decision. I
put that cheque aside and waited; you see, although you live to the
age of Methuselah, a thing like this is always up against you--you can
never get away from it. I was in no hurry."
Again Mr. Patterson paused. Leaning back in his chair, he smiled.
Rodney told himself that he resembled an ogre who was enjoying, in
anticipation, the meal he proposed to make of him.
"After all, my lad, although you are so clever, you're a fool--indeed,
your cleverness is folly. If you had to be dishonest, hadn't you sense
enough to gratify your instincts on less dangerous lines? You have
made a serious mistake in underrating me; perhaps that's because your
experience of men is small. I've been watching you; you've been living
in a fool's paradise--your conscience has never pinched you because
you have never feared discovery. Yet, if you had troubled yourself to
think, you must have known that, sooner or later, discovery was bound
to come, and that, when it did, I had you. You were a fool, my lad, a
fool."
The speaker's smile grew more pronounced. To his nephew's thinking it
became more and more like an ogre's grin. But when he went on it not
only vanished, but its place was taken by something which was
unpleasantly like a snarl.
"Then my daughter came on the scene. There, again, you were at fault,
because it so happens that I understand my daughter almost as well as
you do. She may think herself romantic, but she isn't--there's no more
romance about her than there is about me. She's a healthy, vigorous
female animal, with her father's blood in her veins, and her father's
fondness for the good things of this life of all sorts and kinds.
She's seen little of men, especially young men, and I quite appreciate
the fact that you're just the sort of young man at whose head she
would fling herself--with a little delicate encouragement from you.
But she won't, don't you make any mistake, my lad. I haven't forgotten
how your father won your mother; and I promise you you shan't win my
daughter in the same way. On the day on which I suspected you of any
such intention you'd be branded as a gaol bird, and for the whole
remainder of your life you'd be passing in and out of prison gates.
I'm asking for no promise, being aware that you're one of Nature's
liars, I know that not the least reliance is to be placed on any word
you utter, but I'm giving you a promise. You can make any excuse to
her you like--I'm sure you're a whale at excuses; if you ever speak to
her again, even to tell her that you're not to speak; if you ever
write to her; if you ever hold any communication with her whatever,
you'll pass into the hands of the police, and I'll tell her your story
and your father's. My girl has another thing in common with her
father--she's honest, she hates a rogue. And if she knew that you were
a common kennel thief, as your father was before you, she'd have no
more truck with you if you were twenty times her husband, and I don't
believe she'd move a finger to save you from penal servitude. I'm not
going to turn you away; you're going to continue to occupy your
present position in my office, so that I can keep my eye on you, so
don't you try to turn tail and run. Now we understand each other. I
have my morning letters to attend to, but I thought I'd better have
this little explanation with you first. Now you can go; take my
advice--if you can--steal no more. If you keep along the same path
you'll find at the end what your father found, he was no more anxious
to find it than you are--suicide."