On the evening of the same day Archie Rowland knocked at Eddy’s door. It
had been an evening of the lively order, which had now become habitual
at Rosmore. Eddy and Marion had carried all before them. After a long
discussion of the details of the ball, the decorations in which Eddy was
collaborating with Mrs. Rowland, and fertile in a thousand suggestions,
Rosamond had again struck up a waltz on the piano, and the two gayest
members of the party had immediately started off. There were present
some of Miss Eliza’s many nieces and nephews from the Burn, and in a few
minutes two or three couples had “taken the floor,” winding in and out
of the furniture, with difficulties which increased the mirth. Mr.
Rowland himself had come in from the dining-room while this lively scene
was going on, and had looked upon it benignantly for a minute or two in
the doorway, but had ended by going away, amused but perhaps a little
bored by this unreasoning invasion of his quiet, as the father of a
family not unfrequently does, not displeased that his children should
enjoy themselves, but with an odd sense of bachelorhood and detachment
as he takes refuge in his library, supposing him to have one. Evelyn had
been looking on too, still more benignant, glad that the youthful
members of the party should be occupied anyhow, ready to take her place
at the piano, and help them to keep it up, yet a little disturbed by the
withdrawal of her husband, and instantly conscious, sympathetically,
that the too-prominent and continual amusement of the young people had
its disadvantageous side. Probably had she been their mother, she would
have taken their part more warmly, and with a vague blame in her mind of
the man who could not blot himself out as she did, for what pleased the
children. Archie, to whom this evening, in the greater number of
performers, Rosamond could not offer herself as a partner, felt like his
father, a little annoyed and very much amazed with himself for feeling
annoyed. How much better, he said to himself, to be like Saumarez, able
to give himself up to what other people wished, to amuse them, and make
the evening “go off” for the guests. Archie felt that he himself would
never be up to that. He would never be able to forget himself and throw
off all his cares, and sacrifice himself on the altar of his guests. A
secret longing forced itself upon him to get rid of them all, to be
quiet, even as in the dull evenings before the arrival of the visitors.
The evenings had been very dull, but still--. As for the old life in
Glasgow, Archie somehow did not go back to that--it had retired so very
far away out of his ken. If it had been thirty years ago instead of four
months it could not have become more completely impossible, a thing got
into the abyss of the past, not to be thought of any more.
It was late when he walked softly through the dim corridor upstairs, in
which one lamp only was burning low, making a sort of darkness visible.
Everybody was asleep, or at least so it appeared from the absolute
stillness of the house. He felt as if his step now and then coming upon
a plank in the flooring which creaked, must startle the people retired
in those silent rooms like the tread of a thief in the night. Nothing
could be more unlike a thief than Archie was, stealing along in the dark
to give away all he possessed in the world to a man whom he did not by
any means love, who was his neighbour only in the broadest sense of the
word, one who wanted something which he possessed. He had made out all
his generous foolish plans, as to how it could be best done, so that
nobody need ever know that he had come to Eddy’s aid, not even a
banker’s clerk. He knocked softly at the door from underneath which
there was a glimmer of light, the only one in the long corridor where
any sign of life was to be seen. His knock was not responded to for the
first moment. He heard a little rustle and movement of paper, and then
he knocked a second time, and again after a little interval Eddy came
and opened the door.
“Oh it’s you, Rowland,” he said, admitting him instantly.
Eddy had been sitting at a writing table, with a number of papers before
him, over which he had tossed a newspaper, the first thing that came
handy, when he heard Archie’s knock. There was no reason why he should
have covered up his papers so. What he had been lost in contemplation
of, was Archie’s cheque, which was stretched out before him in his
blotting book, and which he was poring over with no doubt the grateful
sensations which a man has when a friend holds out to him, when he is
drowning, a helpful hand. He had been looking at it with his head on one
side, and a look of earnest and fixed observation, sometimes making a
visionary line with his pencil in the air, here and there. Perhaps a
little regret about that nought that was wanting might be in his mind.
Eddy was very hard pressed. The bit of paper which the money-lender had
in his possession, which he held over the unfortunate young man’s head,
demanding a ransom as cruel and extravagant as any blood-money, was
enough to ruin Eddy for ever and ever. No aid or succour from his
friends would enable him to get over it, and he dared not on account of
this examine the demand made upon him, or attempt to have it ratified.
He must pay it or he himself must sink to the very pit of social
annihilation. Eddy was very well known to be a little _mauvais sujet_,
as his father had been before him. Still that was a thing which society
could ignore: it could even have permitted him to marry an heiress,
with a sensation of pleasure in having him so well disposed of; but the
bit of paper in the usurer’s hand was a different matter. That was a
thing which could not be admitted, and could not be forgotten. At all
hazards, at all costs, that must be got rid of. If there only had been
that other nought, if only a _t_ had been prefixed to the _h_ of the
hundred, and sundry other unimportant alterations made! It was
impossible not to think of this, not to see how easy it would have been,
had Mr. Rowland been possessed by so good an idea. What a pity! what a
pity! Eddy with all his thinking could not imagine a plan by which
Rowland could be made to do that: and yet how easy it would be! He threw
the Glasgow paper over it when he heard the knock at the door.
“Oh, is it you, Rowland? Come in. I was just looking at the--paper
before I went to bed.”
“Its little interest it can have for you--a Glasgow paper,” said Archie
with a smile. And then he said, “I’ve come to speak about what we were
saying this afternoon on the hill.”
“Yes?” said Eddy. He has repented already, he said to himself with a
deep drawn breath.
Archie stammered and hesitated, and blushed as he sat down at the table.
He began to rustle and pluck at the corner of the paper unconsciously
with those awkward fingers which he never knew what to do with. “I’ve
been thinking,” he said, and could get out no more.
“Look here,” said Eddy nervously, “if you’ve been thinking, Rowland, as
would be quite natural, that you were taken by surprise to-day on the
hill, that you handed over that cheque to me in a moment of weakness,
and that now on thinking it over you felt that you had been a fool, and
that my troubles were no concern of yours--don’t beat about the bush. I
have been thinking just the same myself. Its monstrous you should be put
out about a fellow’s concerns whom you had never seen a month ago, and
never may see again. Say it out, there’s a good fellow; don’t hesitate
and spare my feelings. I agree beforehand in every word you say.”
Archie stood open-mouthed while his companion delivered very rapidly
this little oration, in which there was a great deal of genuine feeling:
for Eddy thought it was almost inevitable that such a rash piece of
generosity should be repented of, and yet was in so much mental
excitement concerning the matter altogether, that his mind was full of
impatient resentment against the man whose action (mentally) he
approved, and whom he believed to be doing the most natural thing in the
world.
“I suppose,” said Archie, “it’s the natural thing, because a man is a
little behind in his company manners, and all that, and can’t ride, or
shoot, or dance, or anything as well as you; that you should make sure
he is a cad all round, as you say.”
“What do you mean?” cried Eddy, with his sharp eyes doing all he knew to
read a face, to him altogether inscrutable in the simplicity of its
single-mindedness.
“So long as you don’t ask me to discuss what _you_ mean,” said Archie,
with a careless disdain which stung the other: for, indeed, the lad was
desperate in the feeling of being unable to get himself understood,
whether from one side or another. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “the
best way of getting that money without compromising--any person. It’s a
transaction between ourselves that nobody has anything to do with. My
father might ask to see my bank book. I am perhaps doing him the same
injustice that I think you are doing me; but he might, for my own good,
if he thought I was spending too much. Now, I don’t want him to poke
into this, and find perhaps your name, or---- Therefore I was thinking,
suppose we go up to Glasgow, you and me? There’s these things that you
want for the ball--that would be a very good excuse. And then I can draw
out the money myself, in notes or gold, or whatever you please, which
will leave no record on the books, so that I will be in it alone if
there should be any remarks, and not you. Do you see? Here’s the cheque
for the other fifty pounds. You can have it that way if you like, of
course; but I can’t help thinking it would be better my way.”
“Rowland,” said Eddy, giving him one glance, then withdrawing his eyes
quickly, as from an inspection he could not bear; “do you do all this
for my sake?”
“I don’t know that it’s for any one’s sake. It’s just the easiest
way--not to compromise any one. If I’m asked for an explanation, I can
give it in my own way--about myself. But if I am asked for an
explanation about you, I neither could give it, nor would I: you see
the difference. It’s just a plain business view.”
“It is not a common kind of business,” said Eddy; “it’s the first time I
ever heard that sort of thing called business. You’re a queer fellow,
Rowland; but I think you must be about the best fellow I ever knew.”
“Nothing of the sort,” said Archie. “I have something I don’t want, and
you want something you haven’t got. We niffer, that’s all. Oh, I suppose
you don’t understand that word, it’s Scotch. We exchange, that’s what it
means.”
“And what do I give in exchange?” said Eddy. The question was asked
rather of himself than of Archie, who made no reply, except a little
shame-faced laugh. Young Saumarez reflected a little, with working
eyebrows and twitching mouth. He said at last, “I’ll take you at your
word, Rowland; this will make it a debt of honour. I’ll take you at your
word. A thing that’s got no evidence, that you couldn’t recover, is the
only thing that presses on a man’s conscience. I’ll take you at your
word.”
Archie again gave vent to a little laugh of embarrassment, and confused
relief. He did not enter into the reasoning. Debts of honour, or debts
of any kind, were unknown to him. It had driven him almost distracted to
think how he was to pay for the two little puppies from Rankin--the
doggies which he always thought of with a little bitterness, who had
abandoned him and gone over to the enemy. No more than Eddy could have
understood that difficulty, could Archie understand how it might be
supposed he was securing himself against loss by astutely giving the
character of a debt of honour to the money he was bestowing upon his
fellow-creature who was in need. He said simply, “We will consider this
as settled, then; and we’ll run up to Glasgow to-morrow. I can show you
the place: it is not like London, perhaps; but there’s things in it you
couldn’t see in London. There’s a boat about ten o’clock.”
“Oh, I say! that means getting up in the middle of the night.”
“Well, there’s one at twelve. We’ll get there before the bank shuts.
You’ll not be able to see so much of the town.”
“I can live without that,” said Eddy.
“Well, Glasgow’s a very fine place,” said Archie gravely, not wishing to
permit any disparagement of his native town: and then he rose from the
table. He had already unconsciously pulled the newspaper half away, and
as he rose up his movement displayed it altogether, and he could not
help seeing, notwithstanding Eddy’s eager half-movement to cover it
again, the cheque lying opened out upon the blotting-book underneath. He
said hastily, “You were just going to send it away----”
“Yes,” said Eddy, his heart beating, not understanding the question, but
seizing at it as he would have done at any means of escape.
“Then I just came in time,” said Archie, with a pleased smile.
Eddy took up the cheque, with a feeling of despair clutching at his
heart. “You had better have it back,” he said.
“You can bring it up with you,” said Archie; “nobody is likely to ripe
your pockets and see what’s in them in the middle of the night.”
With this enigmatical speech, which Eddy did not in the least
understand, Rowland bade him a hurried good-night, and took himself
away.
Ripe his pockets: what did that mean? but this problem did not occupy
much of the precious time which Eddy had to give up to thinking. He
found the pencil lying where he had left it, the cabalistic pencil which
he had been waving over Archie’s cheque, hoping perhaps to convey thus
into it the alterations which James Rowland could have made so easily,
which would have cost that millionaire so little, and done Eddy such a
world of advantage. A malison on all millionaires! What they might do
with a sweep of the pen, without ever feeling it, without knowing that a
crumb had fallen off their well-covered tables for a dog to eat! Eddy
flung the pencil from him in his indignation. The fellow meant very
well, he allowed that. There was advantage in keeping this little
transaction quite dark, in obliterating all traces of the loan or gift
given him in this way. But, confound the fellow, all the same! Eddy
flung his pencil out of his hand, and it fell on the floor at the foot
of the table where Archie had been sitting. The dumb articles that one
throws away generally have a prompt revenge over us in having to be
groped after next minute; and this was what happened to Eddy. But as he
stooped to pick it up, his heart began to beat with a wild commotion
which almost choked him: for there at the foot of the table, underneath
the chair which Archie had pushed away, lay a long booklet in a green
paper cover. There could be no doubt to the most ignorant what it was.
It was Archie’s cheque book, which he had brought in, in case Eddy
should, after all, have preferred his money that way, with a cheque
written out for Archie’s spare fifty pounds on the first page, and a
dozen more blank cheques behind. The blood mounted up to Eddy’s face. It
came in such a rush that he could scarcely see for the moment; and yet
he knew very well what it was, and the inconceivable opportunity which
the devil--was it the devil, or that something not always benevolent
which people call providence, had put into his hand?
He scarcely went to bed at all that night. Hosts, armies, legions of
thoughts came up and possessed him like an invaded country, marching and
counter-marching through his mind. It was not without a struggle that he
yielded, it was not without many struggles. Half-a-dozen times at least
he was the victor, and rejected conclusively, triumphantly, the idea set
before him; and then the landscape would change, the perspective alter,
and regrets, doubts, convictions that wrong was right, specious
arguments to show how entirely it had always been so, would rise up and
bring back the rushing tide of battle. And then there were things he had
to do. He went to bed only when the morning grey had come up over the
little town on the other side of the loch, bringing it out of the
darkness with a curious furtive aspect, stealing into the light as if
it had been lying in wait for this moment, which indeed was quite true.
He tossed himself on his bed, and courted sleep ineffectually for half
an hour, but after that time it came with all the force of a despot. He
slept, as men or boys sleep only at twenty, till the day was bright all
over the loch. At twenty! oh heavens, was that all the age he was, that
haggard little grey face waking up and remembering in the great pale
shining of the light.
He went into Archie’s room on his way downstairs and put back the cheque
book which he had found. Archie had breakfasted an hour before, and
explained to the family that he was going to Glasgow by the mid-day
boat, and Saumarez with him, to see after those things for the ball.
“You seem to be getting great friends with Eddy,” Mrs. Rowland said in
the pause which followed this speech. The words were simple enough, but
they went with a wave of interest round the table.
“Well, no harm Evelyn, no harm,” said Rowland, pleased that his boy was
making friends in what the poor man in his heart called “our own
position.”
Marion put on a little conscious look, blushed a little and smiled a
little, as if she knew the private cause of this friendship--while
Rosamond opened a little wider her steady eyes, and turned them with an
inquiry upon Archie. He did not shrink from the attention thus attracted
towards him: his heart was soft to Eddy, to whom he was about to do so
great a service. It is a wonderfully softening process to be very good
to any one, and makes us think better of the objects of our kindness.
Eddy had become more interesting to Archie than he had ever thought it
possible he would find him; and this not for any one’s sake, not even
for Rosamond’s but for his own. The only effect, curiously enough, of
this incident was to deepen his dislike to his stepmother. She was the
one to question and object, he thought. Perhaps she thought him not good
enough for Eddy--most likely, as Eddy was of her own kind. Eddy, though
so late that the party had all dispersed from the table, except Mrs.
Rowland herself, who was reading her letters, and Marion, who was making
pretence of looking over the fashion papers in order to wait for his
appearance, was in great spirits and full of the expedition he was about
to make.
“Rowland is going to show me everything,” he said. He made a very bad
breakfast, eating nothing, but he was full of talk and apparent
enjoyment, and begged the ladies to give him commissions. “Archie may
forget, but I will not forget.” He insisted that Marion and his sister
should walk down to the pier to see them off.
“Come along, Rose,” he called to her as they all came out on the
colonnade, “don’t you see I am going out sight-seeing. I am a British
tourist. I am not sure that I am not a Tripper--and Rowland is taking
care of me. Come and see me safe into the boat.” He continued in an
extremely cheerful condition all the way to the ferry, keeping up a fire
of banter.
“The laddie’s fey, I think,” said old Saunders on the pier, who resented
too much liberty.
“And Eddy, I don’t think you are well. I think you are feverish,” said
Rosamond.
“You don’t say those sisterly things,” said Eddy to Marion.
“Oh,” cried the girl, “I just never mind. What would I do if I were to
make myself uneasy about everything? It is time enough when there is any
occasion. And Archie would never mind what I said.”
“But I should mind always,” said Eddy, lowering his voice.
“You! but you would not like me to ask you if you were feverish.”
“I should tell you I was always feverish--with rage, when I saw you
wasting your attention listening to fellows like that nephew. It is that
that has made my head ache,” cried Eddy. “I thirst for his blood.”
“He has never done you any harm,” said Marion demurely.
“Thank heaven no one is coming to-night. I shall have you all to myself
to-night. There will be no nephews about. I shall make Archie take me to
where you used to live.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t like that at all,” said Marion. “It’s not a place to
see. We were put there when we were little children, when it didn’t
matter where we lived. Don’t go to any such place. There’s nothing to
see.”
“There would always be some trace of you,” said Eddy, making great use
of his eyes. And then they both burst into a laugh.
“You’re so silly that one doesn’t know how to speak to you,” said
Marion, “but for all that don’t go there.”
Rosamond walked along with her long tread in stately seriousness after
them. She said, “You are very kind to take Eddy in hand. He wants so
much to be steadied, and get a little solidity. I would much rather have
him with you than with more----” She paused a moment, and looked her
companion over with her steady gaze.
“How? You mean better company,” he said.
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean--people in the world: he is so much
better out of the world, and seeing nobody he ever knew before.”
“Among the natives,” said Archie with a laugh.
Rosamond did not contradict him or look as if he had made any mistake.
She said with a sigh, “Eddy wants a great deal of looking after. I wish
I could find some one to pay a little attention to him. He will be good
for a few days, and then he will go all wrong, as if he had never pulled
up before.” She sighed, and added, “keep him safe for me to-day. Don’t
let him go and roam about spending money.”
“I will do my best.”
“Are you a man that spends money yourself, Mr. Rowland. People don’t do
that in Scotland, do they? They are different.”
“They cannot do that,” said Archie, with a laugh, “when they have
nothing in their pockets to spend.”
“I beg your pardon. I thought you had quantities of money,” Rosamond
said.