Although she had climbed the stairs so slowly, poor Swanhild was still
out of breath when she reached the door leading into the little parlor;
she paused a moment to recover herself, and, hearing voices within,
became a degree more miserable, for she had counted upon finding
Frithiof alone. Clearly Sigrid must also have returned, and, indeed,
things were even worse than that, for as she opened the door and emerged
round the Japanese screen she saw Roy standing by the fire; for this she
had been utterly unprepared, and, indeed, it was very seldom that he
came now to the model lodgings.
“At last!” exclaimed Frithiof, “why, Swanhild, where on earth have you
been to? We were just thinking of having you cried.”
“We were preparing an advertisement to appear in all the papers
to-morrow morning,” said Roy, laughing, “and were just trying to agree
as to the description; you’ll hardly believe me, but your guardian
hadn’t the least notion what color your eyes are.”
Frithiof drew her toward him, smiling.
“Let me see now in case she is ever lost again,” he said, but noticing a
suspicious moisture in the blue eyes he no longer teased her, but made
her sit down on his knee and drew off her gloves.
“What is the matter, dear?” he said, “you look cold and tired; where
have you been to?”
“I have been to see Mr. Osmond,” said Swanhild, “you know we often go to
his church, Sigrid and I, and there was something I wanted to ask him
about. Last summer I made a promise which I think was wrong, and I
wanted to know whether I might break it.”
“What did he say?” asked Frithiof, while Sigrid and Roy listened in
silent astonishment.
“He said that a wrong promise ought to be broken, and he managed to get
me leave to speak from the person to whom I made the promise. And now I
am going to tell you about it.”
Frithiof could feel how the poor little thing was trembling.
“Don’t be frightened, darling,” he said, “just tell us everything and no
one shall interrupt you.”
She gave his hand a grateful little squeeze and went on.
“It happened just after we had come back from the sea last June. I was
coming home from school on Saturday morning when, just outside the
court-yard, I met Lady Romiaux. Just for a moment I did not know her,
but she knew me directly, and stopped me and said how she had met you
and Sigrid at a party and had ever since been so miserable to think that
we were so poor, and somehow she had found out our address, and wanted
to know all about us, only when she actually got to the door she did not
like to come in. And she said she was so glad to see me, and asked all
sorts of questions, and when she heard that you meant to pay off the
debts she looked so sad, and she said that the bankruptcy was all her
fault, and she asked how much I thought you had got toward it, and
seemed quite horrified to think what a little it was, and what years the
work would take. And then she said to me that she wanted to help, too,
just a little, only that you must never know, and she thought I could
easily pay in a five-pound note to your account at the bank, she said,
without your knowing anything about it. She made me promise to do it
secretly, and never to tell that it was from her. You can’t think how
kindly she said it all, and how dreadfully sad she looked—I don’t think
I could possibly have said ‘no’ to her. But afterward I began to see
that I couldn’t very well pay the note into your account at the
post-office, for I hadn’t got your little book that you always take, and
besides I didn’t know which office you went to. So I worried about it
all the next day, which was Sunday, and in the evening at church it
suddenly came into my head that I would put it with your other money
inside your waistcoat pocket.” Roy made an involuntary movement, Sigrid
drew a little nearer, but Frithiof never stirred. Swanhild continued:
“So the next morning, when I went into your bedroom to wake you up, I
slipped the note into your pocket, and then I thought, just supposing
you were to lose it, it seemed so light and so thin, and I pinned it to
the lining to make it quite safe. You were sleeping very soundly, and
were quite hard to wake up. At first I felt pretty happy about it, and I
thought if you asked me if I had put it there when you found it out I
should be able to say ‘yes’ and yet to keep Blanche’s secret. But you
never said a word about it, and I was sure something had troubled you
very much, and I was afraid it must be that, yet dared not speak about
it and I tried to find out from Sigrid, but she only said that you had
many troubles which I was too young to understand. It often made me very
unhappy, but I never quite understood that I had done wrong till the
night you found me reading the paper, and then I thought that I ought
not to have made the promise to Lady Romiaux. This is the note which Mr.
Osmond brought me from her.”
Frithiof took the little crumpled sheet and read it.
“DEAR SWANHILD: You are quite free to speak about that five-pound note,
I never ought to have made you promise secrecy, and indeed, gave the
money just by a sudden impulse. It was a foolish thing to do, as I see
now, but I meant it well. I hope you will all forgive me. Yours
affectionately,
“BLANCHE.”
Then Roy and Sigrid read the note together, and Roy grasped Frithiof’s
hand.
“Will you ever forgive me?” he said. “Cecil was right, and I ought to
have known that this miserable affair would one day be explained.”
Frithiof still looked half-stunned, he could not realize that the cloud
had at last dispersed, he was so taken up with the thought of the
extraordinary explanation of the mystery—of the childish, silly, little
plan that had brought about such strange results.
“Oh, Swanhild!” cried Sigrid, “if only you had spoken sooner how much
pain might have been saved.”
“Don’t say that,” said Frithiof, rousing himself, “she has chosen the
right time, depend upon it. I can hardly believe it at all yet. But, oh!
to think of having one’s honor once more unstained—and this death in
life over!”
“What do you mean? What do you mean?” sobbed poor little Swanhild,
utterly perplexed by the way in which her confession had been received.
“Tell her,” said Sigrid, glancing at Roy.
So he told her exactly what had happened in the shop on that Monday in
June.
“We kept it from you,” said Frithiof, “because I liked to feel that
there was at any rate one person unharmed by my disgrace, and because
you seemed so young to be troubled with such things.”
“But how can it have happened?” said Swanhild; “who took the note really
from the till?”
“It must have been Darnell,” said Roy. “He was present when Sardoni got
the change, he saw James Horner put away the note, he must have managed
during the time that you two were alone in the shop to take it out, and
no doubt if he had been searched first the other five-pound note would
have been found on him. What a blackguard the man must be to have let
you suffer for him! I’ll have the truth out of him before I’m a day
older.”
“Oh! Frithiof, Frithiof! I’m so dreadfully sorry,” sobbed poor Swanhild.
“I thought it would have helped you, and it has done nothing but harm.”
But Frithiof stooped down and silenced her with a kiss “You see the harm
it has done,” he said, “but you don’t see the good. Come, stop crying,
and let us have tea, for your news has given me an appetite, and I’m
sure you are tired and hungry after all this.”
“But could it ever have entered any one’s head that such an improbable
thing should actually happen?” said Roy, as he mused over the story. “To
think that Sardoni should get change for his note, and Darnell steal it
on the very day that Swanhild had given you that unlucky contribution to
the debt-fund!”
“It is just one of those extraordinary coincidences which do happen in
life,” said Sigrid. “I believe if every one could be induced to tell all
the strange things of the kind that had happened we should see that they
are after all pretty common things.”
“I wonder if there is a train to Plymouth to-night?” said Roy. “I shall
not rest till I have seen Darnell. For nothing less than his confession
signed and sealed will satisfy James Horner. Do you happen to have a
Bradshaw?”
“No, but we have something better,” said Sigrid, smiling; “on the next
landing there is Owen, one of the Great Western guards. I know he is at
home, for I passed him just now on the stairs, and he will tell you
about the trains.”
“What a thing it is to live in model lodgings!” said Roy, smiling. “You
seem to me to keep all the professions on the premises. Come, Frithiof,
do go and interview this guard and ask him how soon I can get down to
Plymouth and back again.”
Frithiof went out, there was still a strange look of abstraction in his
face. “I scarcely realized before how much he had felt this,” said Roy.
“What a fool I was to be so positive that my own view of the case was
right! Looking at it from my own point of view I couldn’t realize how
humiliating it must all have been to him—how exasperating to know that
you were in the right yet not to be able to convince any one.”
“It has been like a great weight on him all through the autumn,” said
Sigrid, “and yet I know what he meant when he told Swanhild, that it had
done him good as well as harm. Don’t you remember how at one time he
cared for nothing but clearing off the debts? Well, now, though he works
hard at that, yet he cares for other people’s troubles too—that is no
longer his one idea.”
And then because she knew that Roy was thinking of the hope that this
change had brought into their lives, and because her cheeks grew
provokingly hot, she talked fast and continuously, afraid to face her
own thoughts, yet all the time conscious of such happiness as she had
not known for many months.
Before long Frithiof returned.
“I don’t think you can do it,” he said. “Owen tells me there is a train
from Paddington at 9.50 this evening, but it isn’t a direct one and you
wont get to Plymouth till 9.28 to-morrow morning. A most unconscionable
time, you see.”
“Why not write to Darnell?” suggested Sigrid.
“No, no, he would get out of it in some mean way. I intend to pounce on
him unexpectedly, and in that way to get at the truth,” replied Roy.
“This train will do very well. I shall sleep on the way, but I must just
go to Regent Street and get the fellow’s address.”
This, however, Frithiof was able to tell him, and they lingered long
over the tea-table, till at length Roy remembered that it might be as
well to see his father and let him know what had happened before
starting for Devonshire. Very reluctantly he left the little parlor, but
he took away with him the grateful pressure of Sigrid’s hand, the sweet,
bright glance of her blue eyes, and the echo of her last words, spoken
softly and sweetly in her native language.
“_Farvel! Tak skal De have._” (Farewell! Thanks you shall have.) Why had
she spoken to him in Norse? Was it perhaps because she wished him to
feel that he was no foreigner, but one of themselves? Whatever her
reason, it touched him and pleased him that she had spoken just in that
way, and it was with a very light heart that he made his way to Rowan
Tree House.
The lamp was not lighted in the drawing-room, but there was a blazing
fire, and on the hearth-rug sat Cecil with Lance nestled close to her,
listening with all his ears to one of the hero stories which she always
told him on Sunday evenings.
“Has father gone to chapel?” asked Roy.
“Yes, some time ago,” replied Cecil. “Is anything the matter?”
Something told her that Roy’s unexpected appearance was connected with
Frithiof, and, accustomed always to fear for him, her heart almost stood
still.
“Don’t look so frightened,” said Roy, as the firelight showed him her
dilated eyes. “Nothing is the matter—I have brought home some very good
news. Frithiof is cleared, and that wretched business of the five-pound
note fully explained.”
“At last!” she exclaimed. “What a relief! But how? Do tell me all.”
He repeated Swanhild’s story, and then, hoping to catch his father in
the vestry before the service began, he hurried off, leaving Cecil to
the only companionship she could have borne in her great happiness—that
of little Lance.
But Roy found himself too late to catch his father, there was nothing
for it but to wait, and, anxious to speak to him at the earliest
opportunity, he made his way into the chapel that he might get hold of
him when the service was over, for otherwise there was no saying how
long he might not linger talking with the other deacons, who invariably
wanted to ask his advice about a hundred and one things.
He was at this moment giving out the hymn, and Roy liked to hear him do
this once more; it carried him back to his boyhood—to the times when
there had been no difference of opinion between them. He sighed just a
little, for there is a sadness in all division because it reminds us
that we are still in the days of school-time, that life is as yet
imperfect, and that by different ways, not as we should wish all in the
same way, we are being trained and fitted for a perfect unity elsewhere.
Mr. Boniface was one of those men who are everywhere the same; he
carried his own atmosphere about with him, and sitting now in the
deacon’s seat beneath the pulpit he looked precisely as he did in his
home or in his shop. It was the same quiet dignity, that was noticeable
in him, the same kindly spirit, the same delightful freedom from all
self-importance. One could hardly look at him without remembering the
fine old saying, “A Christian is God Almighty’s gentleman.”
When, by and by, he listened to Roy’s story, told graphically enough as
they walked home together, his regret for having misjudged Frithiof was
unbounded. He was almost as impatient to get hold of Darnell as his son
was.
“Still,” he observed, “you will not gain much by going to-night, why not
start to-morrow by the first train?”
“If I go now,” said Roy, “I shall be home quite early to-morrow evening,
and Tuesday is Christmas eve—a wretched day for traveling. Besides, I
can’t wait.”
Both father and mother knew well enough that it was the thought of
Sigrid that had lent him wings, and Mr. Boniface said no more, only
stipulating that he should be just and generous to the offender.
“Don’t visit your own annoyance on him, and don’t speak too hotly,” he
said. “Promise him that he shall not be prosecuted or robbed of his
character if only he will make full confession, and see what it was that
led him to do such a thing, I can’t at all understand it. He always
seemed to me a most steady, respectable man.”
Roy being young and having suffered severely himself through Darnell’s
wrong-doing, felt anything but judicial as he traveled westward on that
cold December night; he vowed that horsewhipping would be too good for
such a scoundrel, and rehearsed interviews in which his attack was
brilliant and Darnell’s defense most feeble. Then he dozed a little,
dreamed of Sigrid, woke cold and depressed to find that he must change
carriages at Bristol, and finally after many vicissitudes was landed at
Plymouth at half-past nine on a damp and cheerless winter morning.
Now that he was actually there he began to dislike the thought of the
work before him, and to doubt whether after all his attack would be as
brilliant in reality as in imagination. Rather dismally he made a hasty
breakfast and then set off through the wet, dingy streets to the shop
where Darnell was at present employed. To his relief he found that it
was not a very large one, and, on entering, discovered the man he
sought, behind the counter and quite alone. As he approached him he
watched his face keenly; Darnell was a rather good-looking man, dark,
pale, eminently respectable; he looked up civilly at the supposed
customer,—then, catching sight of Roy, he turned a shade paler and gave
an involuntary start of surprise.
“Mr. Robert!” he stammered.
“Yes, Darnell; I see you know what I have come for,” said Roy quietly.
“It was certainly a very strange, a most extraordinary coincidence that
Mr. Falck should, unknown to himself, have had another five-pound note
in his pocket that day last June, but it has been fully explained. Now I
want your explanation.”
“Sir!” gasped Darnell; “I don’t understand you; I—I am at a loss—”
“Come, don’t tell any more lies about it,” said Roy impatiently. “We
knew now that you must have taken it, for no one else was present. Only
confess the truth and you shall not be prosecuted; you shall not lose
your situation here. What induced you to do it?”
“Don’t be hard on me, sir,” stammered the man. “I assure you I’ve
bitterly regretted it many a time.”
“Then why did you not make a clean breast of it to my father?” said Roy.
“You might have known that he would never be hard on you.”
“I wish I had,” said Darnell, in great distress; “I wish to God I had,
sir, for it’s been a miserable business from first to last. But I was in
debt, and there was nothing but ruin before me, and I thought of my wife
who was ill, and I knew that the disgrace would kill her.”
“So you went and disgraced yourself still more,” said Roy hotly. “You
tried to ruin another man instead of yourself.”
“But he wasn’t turned off,” said Darnell. “And they put it all on his
illness, and it seemed as if, after all, it would not hurt him so much.
It was a great temptation, and when I had once given way to it there
seemed no turning back.”
“Tell me just how you took it,” said Roy, getting rather more calm and
judicial in his manner.
“I saw Mr. Horner give Signor Sardoni the change, sir, and I saw him put
the note in the till; and I was just desperate with being in debt and
not knowing how to get straight again.”
“But wait a minute—how had you got into such difficulties?” interrupted
Roy. “And how could a five-pound note help you out again?”
“Well, sir, I had been unlucky in a betting transaction, but I thought I
could right myself if only I could get something to try again with; but
there wasn’t a soul I could borrow from. I thought I should get straight
again at once if only I had five pounds in hand, and so I did, sir; I
was on my feet again the very next day.”
“I might have known it was betting that had ruined you,” said Roy. “Now
go back and tell me when you took the note.”
“I kept on thinking and planning through the afternoon, sir, and then,
presently, all was quiet, and only Mr. Falck with me in the shop, and I
was just wondering how to get rid of him, when Mr. Horner opened the
door of Mr. Boniface’s room and called to me. Then I said, ‘Do go, Mr.
Falck, for I have an order to write to catch the post.’ And he went for
me, and I hurried across to his counter while he was gone, and took the
note out of his till and put it inside my boot; and when he came back he
found me writing at my desk just as he had left me. He came up looking a
little put out, as if Mr. Horner had rubbed him the wrong way, and he
says to me, ‘It’s no use; you must go yourself, after all.’ So I went to
Mr. Horner, leaving Mr. Falck alone in the shop.”
“Were you not afraid lest he should open the till and find out that the
note was gone?”
“Yes, I was very much afraid. But all went well, and I intended to go
out quickly at tea-time—it was close upon it then—and do what I could to
get it straight again. I thought I could invent an excuse for not
returning to the shop that night; say I’d been taken suddenly ill or
something of that sort. It was Mr. Falck’s turn to go first; and while
he was out, as ill-luck would have it, Mr. Horner came to take change
from the till, and then all the row began. I made sure I was ruined, and
no one was more surprised than myself at the turn that affairs took.”
“But,” exclaimed Roy, “when you were once more out of debt, how was it
that you did not confess, and do what you could to make up for your
shameful conduct?”
“Well, sir, I hadn’t the courage. Sometimes I thought I would; and then,
again, I couldn’t make up my mind to; and I got to hate Mr. Falck, and I
hated him more because he behaved well about it; and I got into the way
of spiting him and making the place disagreeable to him; and I hoped
that he would leave. But he stuck to his post through it all; and I
began to think that it would be safer that I should leave, for I felt
afraid of him somehow. So at Michaelmas I took this situation. And oh!
sir, for my wife’s sake don’t ruin me; don’t expose all this to my
employer!”
“I promised you just now that you should not be exposed; but you must
write a few words of confession to my father; and be quick about it, for
I want to catch the express to London.”
Darnell, who was still pale and agitated, seized pen and paper, and
wrote a few words of apology and a clear confession. To write was hard,
but he was in such terror lest his employers should return and discover
his miserable secret that he dared not hesitate—dared not beat about the
bush.
Roy watched him with some curiosity, wondering now that he had not
suspected the man sooner. But, as a matter of fact, Darnell had been
perfectly self-possessed until his guilt was discovered; it was the
exposure that filled him with shame and confusion, not the actual
dishonesty.
“I don’t know how to thank you enough, sir, for your leniency,” he said,
when he had written, in as few words as possible, the statement of the
facts.
“Well, just let the affair be a lesson to you,” said Roy. “There’s a
great deal said about drunkenness being the national sin, but I believe
it is betting that is at the root of half the evils of the day.
Fortunately, things are now set straight as far as may be, yet remember
that you have wronged and perhaps irrevocably injured a perfectly
innocent man.”
“I bitterly regret it, sir; I do, indeed,” said Darnell.
“I hope you do,” said Roy; “I am sure you ought to.”
And while Darnell still reiterated thanks, and apologies, and abject
regrets, Roy stalked out of the shop and made his way back to the
station.
“To think that I believed in that cur, and doubted Falck!” he said to
himself with disgust. “And yet, could any one have seemed more
respectable than Darnell? more thoroughly trustworthy? And how could I
disbelieve the evidence that was so dead against Frithiof? Sigrid and
Cecil trusted him, and I ought to have done so too, I suppose; but women
seem to me to have a faculty for that sort of thing which we are quite
without.”
Then, after a time, he remembered that the last barrier that parted him
from Sigrid was broken down; and it was just as well that he had the
railway carriage to himself, for he began to sing so jubilantly that the
people in the next compartment took him for a school-boy returning for
his Christmas holidays.
It had been arranged that if he could catch the express from Plymouth he
should meet his father at the shop, and arriving at Paddington at
half-past six he sprang into a hansom and drove as quickly as possible
to Regent Street.
Frithiof just glanced at him inquiringly as he passed through the shop,
then, reassured by the expression of his face, turned once more to the
fidgety and impatient singing-master who, for the last quarter of an
hour, had been keeping him hard at work in hunting up every conceivable
song that was difficult to find, and which, when found, was sure to
prove unsatisfactory.
He wondered much what had passed at Plymouth, and when at last he had
got rid of his customer, Roy returned to the shop with such evident
excitement and triumph in his manner that old Foster thought he must be
taking leave of his senses.
“My father wants to speak to you, Frithiof,” he said.
And Frithiof followed him into the little inner room which had been the
scene of such disagreeable interviews in the past. A strange, dreamlike
feeling came over him as he recalled the wretched summer day when the
detective had searched him, and in horrible, bewildered misery he had
seen the five-pound note, lying on that same leather-covered table, an
inexplicable mystery and a damning evidence against him.
But visions of the past faded as Mr. Boniface grasped his hand. “How can
I ever apologize enough to you, Frithiof!” he said. “Roy has brought
back a full confession from Darnell, and the mystery is entirely cleared
up. You must forgive me for the explanation of the affair that I was
content with last summer—I can’t tell you how I regret all that you have
had to suffer.”
“Here is Darnell’s letter,” said Roy, handing it to him.
And Frithiof read it eagerly, and asked the details of his friend’s
visit to Plymouth.
“Will this satisfy Mr. Horner, do you think?” he said, when Roy had told
him all about his interview with Darnell.
“It cannot fail to convince every one,” said Mr. Boniface. “It is proof
positive that you are free from all blame and that we owe you every
possible apology and reparation.”
“You think that Mr. Horner will be content, and will really sign the
fresh deed of partnership?” said Frithiof.
“He will be forced to see that your honor is entirely vindicated,” said
Mr. Boniface. “But I shall not renew the offer of partnership to him. He
has behaved very ill to you, he has been insolent to me, and I am glad
that, as far as business goes, our connection is at an end. All that is
quite settled. And now we have a proposal to make to you. We want you,
if nothing better has turned up, to accept a junior partnership in our
firm.”
Frithiof was so staggered by the unexpectedness of this offer that for a
moment or two he could not say a word.
“You are very good,” he said at length. “Far, far too good and kind to
me. But how can I let you do so much for me—how can I let you take as
partner a man who has no capital to bring into the business?”
“My dear boy, money is not the only thing wanted in business,” said Mr.
Boniface, laying his hand on Frithiof’s shoulder. “If you bring no
capital with you bring good abilities, a great capacity for hard work,
and a high sense of honor; and you will bring too, what I value very
much—a keen sympathy with those employed by you, and a real knowledge of
their position and its difficulties.”
“I dare not refuse your offer,” said Frithiof. “I can’t do anything but
gratefully accept it, but I have done nothing to deserve such kindness
from you.”
“It will be a comfort to me,” said Mr. Boniface, “to feel that Roy has
some one with whom he can work comfortably. I am growing old, and shall
not be sorry to do a little less, and to put some of my burden on to
younger shoulders.”
And then, after entering a little more into detail as to the proposed
plan, the three parted, and Frithiof hurried home eager to tell Sigrid
and Swanhild of the great change that had some over their affairs.