“THE receipt? Oh, is that all? _You_ have got that,” said Skinner very
coolly.
“What makes you think so?” inquired the other keenly. He instantly
suspected Skinner of having it.
“Why, sir, I saw it in his hand.”
“Then it has got to Albion Villa, and we are ruined.”
“No, no, sir; you won't hear me: I am sure I saw it fall out of his hand
when he was taken ill; and I think, but I won't be sure, he fell on it.
Anyway, there was nothing in his hands when I delivered him at Albion
Villa; so it must be here. I daresay you have thrown it into a drawer or
somewhere, promiscuously.”
“No, no, Skinner,” said Mr. Hardie, with increasing alarm: “it is
useless for us to deceive ourselves. I was not three minutes in the
room, and thought of nothing but getting to town and cashing the bills.”
He rang the bell sharply, and on Betty coming in, asked her what she had
done with that paper that was on the floor.
“Took it up and put it on the table, sir. This was it, I think.” And she
had her finger upon a paper.
“No! no!” said Mr. Hardie. “The one I mean was much smaller than that.”
“What” said she, with that astonishing memory for trifles people have
who never read, “was it a little crumpled up paper lying by the basket?”
“Yes! yes! that sounds like it.”
“Oh, I put that _into_ the basket.”
Mr. Hardie's eye fell directly on the basket, but it was empty. She
caught his glance, and told him she had emptied it in the dust-hole as
usual. Mr. Hardie uttered an angry exclamation. Betty, an old servant
of his wife's, resented it with due dignity by tossing her head as she
retired.
“There is no help for it,” said Mr. Hardie bitterly; “we must go and
grub in the dust-hole now.”
“Why, sir, your name is not on it, after all.”
“What does that matter? A man is bound by the act of his agent; besides,
it is my form, and my initials on the back. Come, let us put a good face
on the thing.” And he led the way to the kitchen, and got up a little
laugh, and asked the scullery-maid if she could show Mr. Skinner and him
the dust-hole. She stared, but obeyed, and the pair followed her, making
merry.
The dust-hole was empty.
The girl explained: “It is the dustman's day: he came at eleven o'clock
in the morning and carried all the dust away: and grumbled at the paper
and the bones, he did. So I told him beggars musn't be choosers: just
like his impudence! when he gets it for nothing, and sells it for a mint
outside the town.” The unwonted visitors left her in dead silence almost
before she had finished her sentence.
Mr. Hardie sat down in his parlour thoroughly discomposed; Skinner
watched him furtively.
At last the former broke out: “This is the devil's doing: the devil in
person. No intelligence nor ability can resist such luck. I almost wish
we had never meddled with it: we shall never feel safe, never be safe.”
Skinner made light of the matter, treated the receipt as thrown into the
sea. “Why, sir,” said he, “by this time it will have found its way to
that monstrous heap of ashes on the London Road; and who will ever look
for it there, or notice it if they find it?” Hardie shook his head:
“That monstrous heap is all sold every year to the farmers. That
receipt, worth L. 14,000 to me, will be strewed on the soil for
manure; then some farmer's man, or some farmer's boy that goes to the
Sunday-school, will read it, see Captain Dodd's name, and bring it to
Albion Villa, in hopes of a sixpence: a sixpence! Heaven help the man
who does a doubtful act and leaves damnatory evidence on paper kicking
about the world.”
From that hour the cash Hardie carried in his bosom, without a right to
it, began to blister.
He thought of telling the dustman he had lost a paper, and setting him
to examine the mountain of ashes on the London Road; but here caution
stepped in: how could he describe the paper without awakening curiosity
and defeating his own end? He gave that up. It was better to let the
sleeping dog lie.
Finally, he resolved to buy security in a world where after all one has
to buy everything: so he employed an adroit agent, and quietly purchased
that mountain, the refuse of all Barkington. But he felt so ill-used, he
paid for it in his own notes: by this means the treaty reverted to the
primitive form of barter*--ashes for rags.
* Or exchange of commodities without the aid of money: see
Homer, and Welsh Villages, _passim._
This transaction he concealed from his confederate.
When he had completed it he was not yet secure; for another day had
passed and Captain Dodd alive still. Men often recover from apoplexy,
especially when they survive the first twenty-four hours. Should he
live, he would not now come into any friendly arrangement with the man
who had so nearly caused his death. So then good-bye to the matrimonial
combination Hardie had at first relied on to patch his debt to Alfred
and his broken fortunes. Then as to keeping the money and defying
Dodd, that would be very difficult and dangerous. Mercantile bills
are traceable things, and criminal prosecutions awkward ones. He found
himself in a situation he could not see his way through by any mental
effort; there were so many objections to every course, and so many to
its opposite. “He walked among fires,” as the Latins say. But the more
he pondered on the course to be taken should Dodd live, the plainer did
this dilemma stare him in the fade: either he must refund or fly the
country with another man's money, and leave behind him the name of a
thief. Parental love and the remains of self-respect writhed at this
thought; and with these combined a sentiment less genuine, but by no
means feeble: the love of reputation. So it was with a reluctant and
sick heart he went to the shipping office, and peered at the posters to
see when the next ship sailed for the United States. Still, he did go.
Intent on his own schemes, and expecting every day to be struck in
front, he did not observe that a man in a rusty velveteen coat followed
him, and observed this act, and indeed all his visible acts.
Another perplexity was, when he should break? There were objections to
doing it immediately, and objections to putting it off.
With all this the man was in a ferment: by day he sat waiting and
fearing, by night he lay sleepless and thinking; and, though his stoical
countenance retained its composure, the furrows deepened in it, and the
iron nerves began to twitch at times, from strain of mind and want of
sleep, and that rack, suspense. Not a night that he did not awaken a
dozen times from his brief dozes with a start, and a dread of exposure
by some mysterious, unforeseen means.
It is remarkable how truths sometimes flash on men at night in hours of
nervous excitement; it was in one of these nightly reveries David Dodd's
pocket-book flashed back upon Mr. Hardie. He saw it before his eyes
quite plain, and on the inside of the leather cover a slip of paper
pasted, and written on in pencil or pale ink, he could not recall which.
What was that writing? It might be the numbers of the notes, the
description of the bills. Why had he not taken it out of the dying man's
pocket? “Fool! fool!” he groaned, “to do anything by halves.”
Another night he got a far severer shock. Lying in his bed dozing and
muttering as usual, he was suddenly startled out of that uneasy slumber
by three tremendous knocks at the street door.
He sprang out of bed, and in his confusion made sure the officers of
justice were come for him: he began to huddle on his clothes with a
vague notion of flight.
He had got on his trousers and slippers, and was looking under his
pillow for the fatal Cash, when he heard himself called loudly and
repeatedly by name; but this time the sound came from the garden into
which his bedroom looked. He opened it very softly, in trepidation and
wonder, which were speedily doubled by what met his eyes; for there,
right in front of his window, stood an unearthly figure, corresponding
in every particular to that notion of a ghost in which we are reared,
and which, when our nerves are healthy, we can ridicule as it deserves;
but somehow it is never cleaned out of our imagination so thoroughly as
it is out of our judgment.
The figure was white as a sheet and seemed supernaturally tall; and it
cried out in a voice like a wounded lion's, “You villain! you Hardie!
give me back my money: my fourteen thousand pounds. Give me my
children's money, or may your children die before your eyes: give me my
darlings' money, or may the eternal curse of God light on you and yours,
you scoundrel!”
And the figure kneeled on the grass, and repeated the terrible
imprecation almost in the same words, with such energy that Hardie
shrank back, and, resolute as he was, cowered, with superstitious awe.
But this sentiment soon gave way to vulgar fears; the man would alarm
the town. And in fact Mr. Hardie, in the midst of his agitation, was
dimly conscious of hearing a window open softly not very far from him.
But it was a dark night. He put his head out in great agitation, and
whispered, “Hush! hush! I'll bring it you down directly.”
Internally cursing his hard fate, he got the fatal Cash, put on his
coat, hunted for the key of the bank parlour, and, having found it,
went softly down the stairs, unlocked the door, and went to open the
shutters.
At this moment his ear caught a murmur, a low buzzing of voices in the
garden.
He naturally thought that Captain Dodd was exposing him to some of the
townspeople. He was puzzled what to do, and, like a cautious man as he
was, remained passive but on the watch.
Presently the voices were quiet, and he heard footsteps come very slowly
towards the window at which he stood, and then make for the little gate.
On this he slipped into the kitchen, which faced the street and got to a
window there, and listened. His only idea was to catch their intentions
if possible, and meet them accordingly. He dared not open the window;
for about him on the pavement he saw a female figure half standing, half
crouching: but soon that figure rushed wildly out of his sight to meet
the footsteps, and then he ventured to open the window, and listening,
heard cries of despair, and a young heart-broken voice say her father
was dead.
“Ah!! that is all right,” muttered Hardie.
Still, even this profound egotist was not yet so hardened but that he
felt one chill of horror at himself for the thought--a passing chill.
He listened and listened, and by-and-bye he heard the slow feet
recommence their journey, amidst sobs and sights; and those sorrowful
feet, and the sobs and sighs of his causing, got fainter, and fainter,
retreated, and left him in quiet possession of the L. 14,000 he had
brought down to give it up: two minutes ago it was not worth as many
pence to him.
He drew a long breath of relief. “It is mine; I am to keep it. It is the
will of Heaven.”
Poor Heaven!
He went to his bed again, and by a resolute effort composed himself and
determined to sheep. And in fact he was just dropping off, when suddenly
he started wide awake again: for it recurred to him vividly that a
window in his house had opened while David was cursing him and demanding
his children's money.
Whose window?
Half-a-dozen people and more slept on that side of the house.
Whose window could it be?
He walked among fires.