For the remainder of that night the young man committed himself to the
much-dreaded darkness of the streets. He was endeavouring to harden
his heart to seek for the miracle. And in the course of that day upon
which he was now entered the power was vouchsafed to him miraculously
to obtain that which he sought.
* * * * *
William Jordan, Junior, presented himself at the counting-house of
Crumpett and Hawker at the usual hour. Throughout the forenoon he
performed his duties with that intense, but incompetent assiduity for
which he had long been notorious. About twelve o’clock Mr. Walkinshaw
summoned him to his table, and requested him to carry some papers to
the room of Mr. Octavius Crumpett.
William Jordan proceeded to do this. Knocking at the closed door, he
received the assurance from James Dodson, who was ensconced near by,
that Mr. Octavius had gone out. Thereupon the young man entered the
empty room and placed the papers upon the table of his master.
In the act of so doing he beheld, with surprise and bewilderment, and
with a start of horror, that upon the table were two piles of gold
pieces. With trembling fingers, yet with horror increasing its grip
upon his heart, the young man took up the pieces of gold and proceeded
to count them. With a sense of stupefaction the idea percolated slowly
through his being that the miracle had happened. The pieces of gold
were twenty in number, no more, and no less.
The miracle had come to pass. The presence of twenty gold pieces could
have but one interpretation. It only remained for him to act. Muttering
words of despair and terror, he placed the twenty pieces of gold in his
pocket and left the room.
All through the afternoon William Jordan assiduously fulfilled his
duties. Yet his whole being was enveloped in a kind of entrancement. He
scarcely knew what he did or where he was.
When at last the hour came in which he was relieved from the labours of
the day, he returned to the little room. Within him was the exaltation
of one who ascends the scaffold for an idea. The miracle had become
consummated. In his pockets he bore twenty pieces of gold. The white
hairs of his aged father would remain inviolate. Yet as soon as he
crossed the threshold of the little room, he was met by the joyous eyes
of the old man. A miracle had happened to him also.
It seemed that in the course of that eventful day an infrequent
purchaser had made his appearance in the shop. And when he had come to
examine the musty old tomes upon the shelves, had discovered one among
them for which he had paid the fabulous sum of three hundred pounds.
Therefore the little room was now doubly secure. Yet both these
occurrences left the young man untouched by gratitude. Even that which
made his father’s eyes so radiant could not release his mind from
the thrall of an indescribable torment which made it bleed. Better a
thousand times to have lain in the streets of the great city, better a
thousand times that his father and himself had been trampled lifeless
by the relentless hordes of street-persons, than that he should have
hardened his heart for the consummation of such a miracle as that.
As he paced the darkness that night in the throes of newer, and more
sinister, and totally undreamt-of torments which his ill-starred
attempt at action had imposed upon him, he could discern only one
course to pursue. He must derive the power to make restitution.
Still, the mere act of restitution could not efface the deed. In
whatever form he made amendment, there was still the foul stain that
nothing could expunge. However, on the following morning, as he
entered the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker, the determination
was strong within him to make all the reparation that lay in his power.
As he crossed the threshold of the outer office he was surprised to see
the undersized figure of James Dodson ascending the staircase, although
the time was a full hour before his usual appearance at the office. His
mentor looked back over his shoulder.
“Morning, Luney,” he said in a rather forlorn manner, and passed on his
way up the stairs.
William Jordan, in his bewilderment, in his strange self-amaze, in his
dim uncertainty of the course of action he must now pursue, passed
half-an-hour in the counting-house below. In that time he not only
indulged in desperate, terrified self-intercourse, but, further,
he sought the resolution to walk up-stairs, to enter the room of
his confiding master, and to restore that which he had stolen. The
conviction was being slowly evolved in his heart that some ampler form
of reparation was demanded of him, yet the precise shape it must assume
was not as yet vouchsafed to him. At last, spurred by the knowledge
that if he let the hour of action pass it could never return, he slowly
ascended the stairs.
Stealthily he crept up them, hardly knowing why he walked so softly.
As he came noiselessly to his master’s door, and proceeded to open it,
it suddenly gave a loud creak. It was as if it sought to rebuke his
unworthy fear that it should do so. Before the young man could enter
the room his friend and mentor had come out of the room adjoining, and
was standing at his side.
“Come in here,” he said forlornly. “I was expecting you would give
yourself away.”
James Dodson led the way into his own small room, and as William Jordan
entered he closed the door.
“I don’t know what to say about it, Luney, I don’t indeed,” said Dodson
dismally. “I have been thinking about it all night; and I don’t seem to
get any nearer towards the wise and the straight thing.”
“I--I intend to make all the reparation that lies in my power,” said
the young man, whose face was that of a ghost.
“Yes; somehow I expected you would do that,” said his mentor, “but if
you do you will be found out.”
“I think I would choose to have it so,” said the young man, with gaunt
eyes.
“No, my son,” said his mentor firmly, “that is just what you can’t
afford. If you are found out there is no saying what will happen to
you. You see Octavius is a very good chap; makes a god of what he
calls honour, and so on, and that makes him a bit of a fanatic in some
things. I really don’t know where this would land you if you were found
out. I’ve lied about it already; I am absolutely up to the neck in
lies. I dare say he half suspects me; and in any case I am quite likely
to lose my billet. But one thing he can’t do, Luney, he can’t bring it
home to me. And now, my son, we have got to take care that he doesn’t
bring it home to you.”
“I--I think, Jimmy, the courage will be given to me to accept the
entire responsibility of my action,” said the young man.
“Well, you see,” said James Dodson, with an odd look in his face,
“you are such an extraordinary chap altogether, that I’m thinking the
consequences might be too much for you. In any case you would have to
go from here; and if you once go from here you will never get another
billet--not as long as you live will you ever get another billet. And
Octavius being, as I say, a bit of a fanatic in some things, it might
even be worse for you than that.”
“But,” said William Jordan, “I--I think the power will be furnished to
me to submit to the consequences of my action.”
“I don’t quite know what you mean,” said James Dodson, “you have such
an odd way of expressing yourself. But I am going to give you my advice
in plain English. Mum is the word. I defy anything to be proved against
you if you keep your mouth shut. If you do I won’t deny that James
Dodson may lose his billet. But in any case he has it about him to get
another; while, as I say, if you come to lose yours you are done for
altogether. No, Luney, whatever you do you must not appear in this.
The consequences may be so much more than you know; and you are not a
chap who can stand up against them. If you will give the money to me
I will restore it; but I shall use my own judgment as to how and when
to put it back. You see I have already half persuaded Octavius that he
has left the money somewhere else; that he has mislaid it, or that he
has never had it. You see he is such an absent-minded sort of blighter,
that by a bit of firm and judicious handling he might be persuaded
that the money never existed. And I will do him this credit, my son;
he would far rather it never had existed than that a thing like this
should have happened in the house of Crumpett and Hawker.”
The immediate result of this curious and unlooked-for intervention
was that the unhappy young man, although declining to incriminate
his mentor by handing the money over to him to be restored at his
discretion, also refrained, for the time being, from replacing it
himself, because such a course, in Jimmy Dodson’s opinion, would tell
heavily against himself.
“You see I’ve told such lies to Octavius,” said Jimmy Dodson, “that he
might easily come to believe that the money was not there at all. But
if it returns to the exact spot where he thinks he left it, he will
naturally come to suspect me as having some sort of a hand in it, and
he will know then--like the d----d old fool that he is--that I have
been trying to argue him clean out of his own reason.”
“T-the p-power will be furnished to me to make reparation,” the young
man muttered, “t-the p-power will be furnished to me to confess my
crime.”
“There must be none of that talk, my son,” said his mentor sternly.
“This is not a case for high falutin’! It will not help at all. Either
the money was there or it was not there. _I_ believe it was not there;
Octavius is going to believe so too. You see a chap like Octavius
doesn’t care a bit about the brass. It is the principle he cares about;
and he is such a fanatic in some things, if he found you out there is
no saying to what lengths he might go.”
The frail barque, chartless, aimless in mid ocean, was obedient to
the will of the wind. William Jordan crept again down the stairs, his
resolution unfulfilled. The pieces of gold were still in his pocket;
his crime was still unconfessed.
During the luncheon hour, as he sat in the empty counting-house,
with his paper of bread-and-butter untouched, and his head buried in
desolation in his weak and nerveless hands, he was startled back to
sensibility by feeling a hand laid suddenly upon his shoulder. It was
that of James Dodson. His mentor’s forlorn aspect, of a few hours
before, had yielded place to a kind of jubilation.
“What do you think, my son?” said this consummate man of action, “what
do you think, old boy? I have positively persuaded that silly old
cuckoo that he never left the money there at all.”
William Jordan gave a gasp.
“I--I d-don’t think it m-matters,” he stammered.
“You don’t think if matters!” said Jimmy Dodson. “Why, my good
Christian boy, you must be up the pole. Don’t you realize what an
escape it has been for us both? But I must have the devil’s own tongue
on me; if J. Dodson doesn’t end his days with a peerage in Grosvenor
Square, I don’t know what two and two make, that’s all. I never
understood, until to-day, how easy it is to argue some chaps clean
out of their own reason. I’ve always despised the old fool; but even
I never realized what a nincompoop he was until this blessed morning.
He arrived about ten, as he always does, and when he rang for me and I
came in, I thought, ‘Hullo, old friend, you look uncommonly sorry for
yourself, you do.’ Well, the old boy blew his nose very violently, and
cocked his glass in his right eye very fiercely, and he bleated like a
kid of three, ‘Mr. Dodson, this affair is preying upon me. This great
establishment was founded by my ancestor, Octavius Crumpett, in 1701.
This house has published Dryden and Pope, Swift and Fielding, and all
the foremost names in the literary history of this country until the
present time. And I think, Mr. Dodson, I am justified in saying that an
incident of this kind is quite without precedent in its annals. Such a
reflection as is cast upon its personnel by this deplorable occurrence
is--is, well, Mr. Dodson, more than I can contemplate.’ And that is
where I came in again, my son. ‘Well, sir,’ I said, ‘you must forgive
me if I repeat what I said yesterday afternoon, that you have not made
it ab-so-lutely clear to my mind that the money was actually there. I
don’t know whether you have noticed it, sir, but what you might call
hallucinations are constantly occurring. How often, sir, do we persuade
ourselves that we have not done a thing when we have done it, and _vice
versa_! And you’ll pardon me, sir, but these scientific people say it
is the same with disease. You can think you have got a disease until
you get it; or, again, if you can persuade yourself you have not got a
disease you have got, why, sir, in the course of time you find you have
not got it after all.’
“Well now, my son, I could see I was pressing with both feet on the
loud pedal. ‘Mr. Dodson,’ said the old mug, ‘I would pay a thousand
pounds to a charitable institution if I could really persuade myself
that I did not leave that wretched money upon my table.’ Well, after
that, Luney, I went in to win. Since I buttered him up over his
Homer--the d---- silliest production, I understand, that ever was
perpetrated--he has always listened to me with what he calls ‘respect.’
He considers me ‘a scholar and a gentleman’; he likes to consider
everybody in this old-established house, from Pa to the ex-caretaker’s
widow, who feeds the cat, to be ‘a scholar and a gentleman.’ Well, I
went for the gloves; I gave him five minutes of regular John Bright,
and wound up with a bit of dissertation on self-deception. And, would
you believe it, Luney? the silly old cormorant wrung me warmly by the
hand, and said if only for his own peace of mind he must admit that he
had deceived himself. The money could not possibly have been there; he
must have left it in his hansom; it must have fallen from his pocket
in Saint James’s Square; in fact, there must be a hideous mistake
somewhere; on no account must I mention it in the office. I must treat
all the circumstances exactly as though they had never occurred.
“Now, what do you say to that, my son? Of course it was all pretty
useful work on the part of J. D. You see I guessed from the first that
like all these ultra-pious church-and-chapel coves he was forcing
himself to swallow that which he knew he had no right to swallow; and
in the end he was able to convince himself it was ‘the right thing’ to
swallow it rather than to admit the cold-drawn truth.”
To the surprise of the triumphant Mr. Dodson, this description of the
further miracle that had been wrought in his favour brought no kind of
relief to the unhappy William Jordan.
“T-there is still my shame,” he muttered.
“You just put that out of your mind, my son,” said the philosopher.
“Throw the money down a drain, and pretend, like Octavius, that the
whole thing never occurred. Of course, if Octavius or any other of
the ultra-pious sect were to overhear me, they would swear I was as
guilty as you are. And so I am; I expect I am far the worse of the
two. Because I don’t call you guilty. You are odd, weak, you have a
tile or two loose, but I could never look on a chap like you as having
deliberate guile. And I mean to stand by you, although I don’t know why
I should. I have nothing to gain; in fact I have everything to lose by
taking up with a chap like you. I don’t recognize J. D., who intends
to get on in the world, no matter what it costs him, in my dealings
with you. But there they are. As I say, my son, you are against my
principles altogether; but the fact remains, Luney, that since I have
come to take up with you, I don’t seem, somehow, as though I can let
you go.”
“I--I f-foresee the hour when you will have to deny me,” said the young
man, in his difficult speech.
“You must get out of this habit of being low-spirited,” said James
Dodson, to whom this speech was incoherent. “It might help to give you
away. And I can’t impress it upon you too strongly that if Octavius
should ever come at the truth--kind-hearted old duffer as he is--he
will be only too ready to do what he calls his duty. As for me, I say
right here, that whatever you did, Luney, having known you so long, and
having come to know you so well, James Dodson could never look upon
you as a wrong ’un. I’ll tell you, my son, in what light I have come
to regard you, although it has taken me years to come at the truth.
You are one of those fine mathematical instruments which can register
things that ordinary instruments know nothing about. You are no earthly
use for straight-forward, common, practical, two-and-two-makes-four
sort of life, but it has begun to dawn on me lately, that you must
have a wonderful mind for some things. It is only lately that I
have begun to notice it. But now and then you seem to come out with
something that is--well, that is downright marvellous for a chap like
you. In odd out-of-the-way subjects, that are not a ha’porth of use to
anybody, you have a knack of saying things that chaps like John Dobbs
and Joe Cox can’t even understand. My own private opinion is that you
_can’t_ be such a fool as you seem. I believe, Luney, that you ought
to be kept under a glass case in a box lined with felt, because the
slightest thing, even a change in the weather, is enough to throw you
off your balance.”
Having thus delivered himself, and at an unexampled length, Mr. Dodson
left his distracted friend to continue in that phase of remorse whose
effect upon him was so dire.
Throughout the long hours of the afternoon the need for immediate
action never left his mind. Already he had let the golden moment pass;
every hour that followed would increase the likelihood that he would
fail to derive the courage for his task. Even his brave, but misguided,
friend, whose counsels were so subtle and so specious, had come to seem
in his power to put a gloss on the cruellest of temptations, to be
neither more nor less than the embodiment of evil.
Worn out in mind and body he went back that evening to the little room.
Yet here there was no surcease to be had. Wherever he carried his guilt
he could find nought to assuage it. When he turned to the ancient
authors their unceasing demand of Action, Action, Action seemed to make
his vacillating weakness turn to a gangrene in his flesh. Yet was not
this dreadful shibboleth of theirs the rock upon which the frail vessel
had been shattered! With the modern authors he fared no better. Their
cynicism became a callous mockery that had no power to heal. And when
he turned to the Book of the Ages, his mind was coloured by so dark
a horror that he failed to decipher a single word inscribed upon its
leaves. They were as so many red blurs void of form and meaning.
During the long hours of the night the aged man, his father, sat with
the passage before him in which was expressed the deep truth that
miracles would continue to happen to those who had the courage to be
credulous.
“Tell me, my father,” cried the young man at last in his despair, “what
must happen to those who are too frail for action, too craven for
belief?”
“Even these must fulfil their destiny, beloved one,” said the
white-haired man.