"No matter," cried Dodd. "Come! My money! I must and will have it."
Hardie drew himself up majestically; and Dodd said, "Well, I beg your
pardon, but I can't help it!"
The banker's mind went into a whirl. It was death to part with this
money and get nothing by it. He made excuses. Dodd eyed him sternly, and
said quietly, "So you can't give me my money because your cashier has
carried it away. It is not in this room, then?"
"No."
"What, not in that safe there?"
"Certainly not," said Hardie stoutly.
"My money! My money!" cried David fiercely. "No more words. I know you
now. I _saw_ you put it in that safe. You want to steal my children's
money. My money, ye pirate, or I'll strangle you!"
While Hardie unlocked the safe with trembling hands, Dodd stood like a
man petrified; the next moment his teeth gnashed loudly together, and he
fell headlong on the floor in a fit. So the £14,000 remained with the
banker.
Not many days after this a crowd stood in front of the old bank, looking
at the shutters, and a piece of paper announcing a suspension, only for
a month or so.
Many things now came to Alfred Hardie's knowledge till he began to
shudder at his own father, and was troubled with dark, mysterious
surmises, and wandered alone, or sat brooding and dejected. Richard
Hardie's anxiety to know whether David Dodd was to live or die
increased. He was now resolved to fly to the United States with his
booty, and cheat his son with the rest. On his putting a smooth inquiry
to Alfred, his face flushed with shame or anger, and he gave a very
short, obscure reply. So he invited the doctor to dinner, and elicited
the information that David's life indeed was saved, but he was a maniac;
and his sister, a sensible, resolute woman, had signed the certificate,
and he was now in a private asylum.
Mr. Hardie smiled, and sipped his tea luxuriously; he would not have to
go to a foreign land after all. Who would believe a lunatic? He said, "I
presume, Alfred, you are not so far gone as to insist on propagating
insanity by a marriage with Captain Dodd's daughter now?"
Alfred ground his teeth, and replied that his father should be the last
man to congratulate himself on the affliction that had fallen on that
family he aspired to enter, all the more now they had calamities for him
to share.
"More fool you," put in Mr. Hardie calmly.
"For I much fear you are the cause of that calamity."
"I really don't know what you allude to."
The son fixed his eyes on his father, and said, "The fourteen thousand
pounds, sir!"
One unguarded look confirmed Alfred's suspicions; he could not bear to
go on exposing his father, and wandered out, sore perplexed and nobly
wretched, into the night.
_III.--Alfred in Confinement_
At last Alfred decided that justice _must_ be done, and confided his
suspicions to the Dodds. Edward's good commonsense at once settled that,
as the man who married Julia would be the greatest sufferer by Hardie
senior's fraud, Hardie junior should settle his own £10,000 on her, and
marry her as soon as he came of age. Alfred joyfully agreed, privately
arranging that the money should be settled on Julia's parents, and
preparations went on apace.
But on the wedding-day the bridal party waited in vain for the
bridegroom, and Edward ran to his lodgings to fetch him.
He came back alone, white with wrath, hurried the insulted bride and her
mother into the carriage, and they went home as if from a funeral. Aye,
and a funeral it was; for the sweetest girl in England buried her hopes,
her laugh, her May of youth that day.
As soon as possible this heartbroken trio removed to London, where Mrs.
Dodd became a dressmaker, and Edward a fireman.
It was true Alfred _had_ received a letter in a female hand, but it was
from a discharged servant of his father's, offering information about
the £14,000 if he would come to a house about ten miles off the next
morning. He calculated he could do so, and still be in the church in
time, and drove there with all his luggage, only to find himself shut up
in a lunatic asylum.
He made a desperate resistance, but was soon overpowered and left
handcuffed, hobbled, and strapped down, more helpless than a swaddled
infant. He lay mute as death in his gloomy cell; deeper horror grew and
grew, gusts of rage swept over him, gusts of despair. What would his
Julia think? He shouted, he screamed, he prayed. He saw her, lovelier
than ever, all in white, waiting for him, with sweet concern in her
peerless face. Half-past ten struck. He struggled, he writhed, he made
the very room shake, and lacerated his flesh, but that was all. No
answer, no help, no hope.
By-and-by his good wit told him his only chance was calmness; they could
not long confine him as a madman, being sane. But all his efforts to
convince his keepers that he was sane were useless; his letters seemed
to go, but he got no answers; his appeals to visiting justices were in
vain. The responsibility rested with the people who signed the
certificates, and he could not even find out who they were. After months
of softening hearts and buying consciences, he was on the point of
escape, when he was moved to another asylum. Here there was no
brutality, but constant watchfulness; and he had almost prevailed on the
doctor to declare him cured when he was again moved to a still more
brutal place, if possible, than the first.
One day he found himself locked in his room. This was unusual, for
though they called him a lunatic in words, they called him sane by all
their acts. He thought the commissioners must be in the house; had he
known who really was in the house he would have beaten himself to pieces
against the door.
At dinner there was a new patient, very mild and silent, with a
beautiful mild brown eye like some gentle animal's. Alfred contrived to
say some kind word to him; and the newcomer handled his forelock, and
announced himself as William Thompson, adding, with simple pride, "Able
seaman, just come aboard, your honour."
At night Alfred dreamed he heard Julia's sweet, mellow voice speaking to
him; and lo, it was the able seaman. He slept no more, but lay sighing.
The matron told him this was David Dodd, Alfred redoubled his efforts to
escape, and at last one of the keepers consented to help him off. He was
sitting on his bed full dressed, full of hope, his money in his pocket,
waiting for his liberator. Every moment he expected to hear the key in
the door.
Then came a smell of burning, and feet ran up and down. "Fire!" rang
from men's voices. Fire cracked above his head; he sprang up at the
window, and dashed his hand through it, and fell back. He sprang again,
and caught the woodwork; it gave way, and he fell back, nearly stunning
himself. The flames roared fearfully now, and David, thinking it was a
tempest, shouted appropriate orders. Alfred implored him, and got him to
kneel down with him, and prayed. He gave up all hope, and prepared to
die.
Crash! As if discharged from a cannon, came bursting through the window
a helmeted figure, rope in hand, and alighted erect and commanding on
the floor. All three faces came together, and Edward recognised his
father and Alfred Hardie. Edward clawed his rope to the bed, and hauled
up a rope ladder, crying, "Now, men, quick for your lives!" But poor
David called that deserting the ship, and demurred, till Alfred assured
him the captain had ordered it. He then touched his forelock to Edward,
and went down the ladder. Alfred followed.
They were at once overpowered with curiosity and sympathy, and had to
shake a hundred hands.
"Gently, good friends; don't part us," said Alfred.
"He's the keeper," said one of the crowd, and all helped them to the
back door.
Alfred ran off across country for bare life. To his horror, David
followed him, shouting cheerily, "Go ahead, messmate, I smell blue
water."
"Come on, then!" cried Alfred, half mad himself; and the pair ran
furiously the livelong night. Free!
_IV.--Into Smooth Waters_
Exhilarated by freedom, Alfred began to nurse aspiring projects; he
would indict his own father and the doctor, and wipe off the stigma they
had cast on him. Meantime, he would cure David and restore him to his
family. They bowled along towards blue water with a perfect sense of
security. But at Folkestone, David disappeared, and Alfred, hearing as
he ran wildly all over the place that there was "another party on the
same lay"--the mad gentleman's wife--took the first train to London,
dispirited and mortified. David was in good hands, however, and Alfred
had glorious work on hand--love and justice.
He at once put his affairs into a lawyer's hands, and thought of love
alone. After a violent encounter with his late keepers and a narrow
escape from capture, in the midst of Elysium with Julia, her mother
returned in despair. David had completely disappeared. Again these
lovers were separated, and again Edward's commonsense came to the
rescue. Alfred went back to Oxford to read for his first class, and
Julia to her district visiting, while the terrible delays of the law
went on. Alfred had begun to believe trial by jury would never be
allowed him, and when at last, after many postponements, the trial did
come on, he was being examined in the schools, and refused to come till
his counsel had actually opened the case. Mr. Thomas Hardie, Alfred's
uncle, was the defendant, for it was proved he had authorised Alfred's
arrest.
A detective had been employed to find Mr. Barkington, a little man in
Julia's district, whom the lawyers suspected might be useful; and when
the trial was half over, he led them all in great excitement to the back
slums of Westminster. Mr. Barkington, _alias_ Noah Skinner, was wanted
by another client of his.
The room was full of an acrid vapour, and a mummified figure sat at the
table, dead this many a day of charcoal fumes; in his hand a banker's
receipt to David Dodd, Esq., for £14,000. The lawyer was handing it to
Julia, having just found a will bequeathing all Skinner had in the world
to her, with his blessing, when a solemn voice said: "No; it is mine."
A keen cry from Julia's heart, and in an instant she was clinging round
her father's neck. Edward could only get at his hand. Instinct told them
Heaven had given them back their father, mind and all.
Alfred Hardie slipped out, and ran like a deer to tell Mrs. Dodd.
Husband and wife met alone in Mrs. Dodd's room. No eyes ventured to
witness a scene so strange, so sacred.
They all thought in their innocence that Hardie _v_. Hardie was now at
an end, with Captain Dodd ready to prove Alfred's sanity; but the lawyer
advised them not to put the captain to the agitation of the witness-box.
Mr. Thomas Hardie, the defendant, won the case for Alfred by admitting
in the witness-box that his brother Richard had declared that "if you
don't put Alfred in a madhouse, I will put you in one."
The jury found for the plaintiff, Alfred Hardie, and gave the damages at
£3,000. The verdict was received with acclamation by the people, and in
the midst of this Alfred's lawyer announced that the plaintiff had just
gained his first class at Oxford.
Mr. Richard Hardie restored the £14,000, and a few years later died a
monomaniac, believing himself penniless when he possessed £60,000.
Alfred married Julia, and, with the consent of his wife, took his father
to live with them. Then Alfred determined to pay in full all who had
been ruined by the bank failure, and in time the old bank was reopened
with Edward Dodd as managing partner. In the end, no creditor of Richard
Hardie was left unpaid. Alfred went in for politics and became an M.P.
for Barkington; whence to dislodge him I pity anyone who tries.
* * * * *