THE MAN FOR A CRISIS
Serious trouble threatened the Sarradet household also--not of the sort
which impended over the Lisles, but one not less common. There was
increasing strife between father and son. Raymond's taste for pleasure
showed no sign of being sated; he took no warning from the scrape out of
which Sidney Barslow's strong arm had rescued him; he spared neither
time nor money in seeking the delights to which his youth and his
temperament inclined him. Old Mr. Sarradet was ageing; he grew more
grumpy and crusty, fonder of his hoards, less patient when he saw money
wasted, more fearful of leaving the family business at the mercy of a
spendthrift. He grumbled and scolded; he made scenes. Raymond met them
with sullen hostility, or took to avoiding them by absenting himself
from the house. If home were made uncomfortable, there were plenty of
other places to go to! The more his father would bridle him, the more he
kicked.
Marie tried to hold them together, to patch up quarrels, to arrange
truces, to persuade each of them to meet the other half-way. Her task
was the more difficult since she herself was held as a threat over her
brother's head. She should have the hoards, she should have the
business, unless Raymond would mend his ways! The old man's menace
turned her brother's anger against her; almost openly he accused her of
bad faith and hypocrisy--of aiming at stepping into his shoes. The
charge was cruel, for she loved him. But he made a stranger and at last
nearly an enemy of her. Once she had hoped to work on him through Amabel
Osling, but Amabel, slighted in favour of more recent and more gaudy
attractions, stood now on her dignity and would make no approaches to
Raymond. She came to the house still, and was as friendly as ever to
father and daughter, but distant towards the son on the rare occasions
when she found him there. Joe Halliday was no use in serious straits
like these; he took everything as it came, for others as well as for
himself; his serenely confident, "Oh, he's a young fool, of course, but
it'll come all right, you'll see," did not seem to Marie to meet the
situation. And Arthur Lisle? Her old feeling forbade the idea of
troubling Mr. Lisle with such matters; they would certainly grate on
him. Besides, he was--somehow--a little bit of a stranger now.
It was Sidney Barslow's opportunity; he was well fitted to use the
chance that circumstances gave him. The strong will which enabled him to
put a curb on his own inclinations, so soon as he had an adequate
motive, made him a man to turn to in distress. His past indulgences, in
so far as they were known or conjectured, themselves gave him authority.
He spoke of what he knew, of what he had experienced and overcome.
Seeing him, the old father could not deny that young men might pass
through a season of folly, and yet be sound at heart and able to steady
themselves after a little while. Raymond could not call him a Puritan or
an ignoramus, nor accuse him of not understanding the temptations which
beset his own path.
Sidney was honest in his efforts. He felt a genuine remorse for having
set young Raymond's feet on the primrose path along which they now raced
at such dangerous speed. About his own little excursions along the same
track he felt no such pangs of conscience; fellows were different; some
could pull up when they liked; he could. It seemed that Raymond could
not; therefore he repented of having started Raymond at all, and
recognised a duty laid on himself of stopping him if possible. And the
same motives which had enabled him to forsake the dangerous path urged
him to turn Raymond also from it. Marie's approval had been his mark in
the one case; in the other it was her gratitude; in both her favour. The
pleasure he derived from seeing her trust him and lean on him was
something quite new in his life and appealed strongly to his courageous
and masculine temper. He would not fail her, any more than he had failed
her brother in his need.
And his reward? He knew very well what he wanted--if only he could get
it. He did not deal in doubts and hesitations. He had not sacrificed his
indulgences without being quite sure of what he wanted in exchange. His
mind, if primitive and unrefined, was direct and bold. His emotions were
of the same simple and powerful type. Courting a girl was to him no
matter of dreaming, romancing, idealising, fearing, palpitating. It was
just a man seeking the mate that pleased him.
Marie was in no mood to be courted yet; her dream was too recently
dispelled, and her steady nature could not leap to sudden change. But
her eyes were on his strong qualities again; she looked at him less
through Arthur Lisle's spectacles; that side of her which liked him
could now assert itself. She turned to his aid readily, and, with her
shrewd calculation seconding the impulse of friendship, made his company
seem as welcome for its own sake as for the services it promised.
"You always bring a breath of comfort with you, Sidney," she told him
gratefully.
Sidney was honest with her. "It's not much good. He won't listen to me
any more." He shook his head in puzzle. "I can't think where he gets the
money! You tell me the old man has cut off supplies, but I know he
races, and I know he plays baccarat--and you may be sure he doesn't win
on a balance. Besides he--well, he must get through a good bit in other
ways. He must be raising the wind somehow. But it can't last."
It could not. One day old Sarradet came home from business almost
collapsed. Men had come to his shop--his cherished City shop, hoary with
the respectability of a hundred-and-fifty years, parading the 'Royal
Warrant' of a third successive Sovereign--asking where his son was,
brandishing writs, truculently presuming that Mr. Sarradet would "set
the matter right." One more vicious than the rest, a jeweller, talked of
false pretences and illegal pawning--not of a writ or a settlement, but
of a summons or a warrant. He had been very savage, and the old man,
ashamed and terrified, had pushed him into his own private room and
there heard his ultimatum--the ring and the bangle, or their value, in
twenty-four hours, or an application to a magistrate. And where was
Raymond? He had not been home the night before. He was not at the West
End shop. The poor old fellow babbled lamentations and threats--he would
not pay, he had done with the scoundrel, here was a pretty end to an
honourable life! When Marie knelt by him and put her arms about him, he
fairly burst into tears.
The world of reckless living and dishonest shifts--both father and
daughter were strangers to it. At her wits' end Marie telephoned for
Sidney Barslow. By the time he came, she had got the old man to go to
bed, weeping for his son, for himself, for his money, utterly aghast at
doings so mad and disastrous. A pitiful sight! She met Sidney with tears
in her eyes, full of the dismal story. "What are we to do?" she wailed,
quite bereft of her usual composure and courage. The thing was too
difficult, too dreadful.
"The first thing is to find him," said Sidney in his quick decisive way.
He looked at his watch. "It's a bit too early now; in a couple of hours'
time I may be able to lay my hands on him."
"Can you really? How? Oh, I was sure you'd be able to help!"
"Well, you see, Marie, I--er--know the ropes. I think I can find him--or
somebody who'll put me on his track."
"Yes, that's where you're such a help." How she was pardoning those past
indulgences! In her heart she was thanking heaven for them, almost
admiring them! Wrong as they were, they taught a man things which made
him ever so useful to women in distress about prodigal sons and
brothers, "And what will you do when you do find him?"
"Frighten him pretty well to death, if I can," Sidney answered grimly.
"I fancy our friend the jeweller may turn out a blessing in disguise.
The news of criminal proceedings will be a bit of a soberer. The young
ass!" Because it was so easy to enjoy yourself without being involved in
criminal proceedings! "But, I say, you know," he went on, "the
governor'll have to pay up."
"You must persuade him. I don't believe I can, Sidney."
"Oh, you can do that right enough. After all, I don't suppose it'll
break him exactly. I daresay, though, the young 'un has run into a tidy
lot. Still we can square 'em, I expect. Don't look so awfully cut up,
Marie."
"I was just off my head till you came." She held out both her hands for
him to grasp. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sidney!"
"That's all right, Marie. And, look here, if I find him, I shan't bring
him here. I expect he and the old man get on one another's nerves.
There's a room at my place. I'll take him there. You put some things in
a bag for him, and I'll take it."
"Will you? It would be better they shouldn't meet--with father as he
is."
"And you may be sure that when I've got him, I won't let him go. And
we'll see about the money to-morrow."
She was infinitely comforted, immensely grateful. If he had sown wild
oats, what wisdom he had gleaned from the crop! A meeting between father
and son just now might be the end of all things, finally fatal! She
packed the bag and gave it to her trusted emissary. "What should we have
done without you!" was her cry again.
"Just leave it to me," he told her, his strong thick lips set
resolutely.
With the knowledge acquired in folly but tamed now to the service of
wisdom, morality, and the interests of the Sarradet business, he found
young Raymond without much difficulty--and found him just in time. More
than money was giving out, more than strict attention to financial
ethics was in jeopardy. The little excitable fellow was pretty well at
the end of his tether physically also. His nerves were at breaking
strain. Pleasure had become a narcotic against thought; if that alone
would not serve, drink was called in as an ally. On the verge of a
collapse, he was desperately postponing it by the surest way to make it
in the end complete.
Sidney, robust of body and mind, beheld him with mingled pity and
contempt. He himself could have lived the life for years with faculties
and powers unimpaired, really not the worse for it, save in his pocket
and his morals; only prudential considerations and newly awakened hopes
had, on a cool calculation, turned him from it. But Raymond, if he did
not land in jail first, would land in hospital speedily. Amidst the
jeers and sneers of the hardier denizens of those regions, Sidney
carried him to his own flat and put him to bed like a naughty worn-out
child.
In the morning came the lecture. "No end of a jawing! I pitched it in
hot and strong, I can tell you," Sidney subsequently reported to Marie.
Poor Raymond lay in bed with a racking headache and trembling hands, and
heard his sins rehearsed and (worse still) his feebleness exhibited.
"You're not the chap for this kind of thing," Sidney told him. "Chuck
it, my boy! Seek milder delights. Oh, I know it's a bit my fault in the
beginning. But I thought you'd a head on your shoulders and some sense
in it. I'm not against a bust now and then; but this sort of rot----!
And what's this fool's business about a ring and a bangle? You're in a
pretty tight place there, young fellow."
Almost amid sobs the story of these unfortunate articles of
jewellery--bought on credit and pawned, by and with the advice and
consent of the donee, a few days later--came out. Sidney brandished the
terrors of the law; the figure of the justly irate tradesman took on
terrifying proportions. If only that dread apparition, with its
suggestion of policemen, of locked doors and bolts shot home, of Black
Maria and picking oakum--if only that apparition could be exorcised,
there was nothing Raymond would not do, promise, and abjure. Sidney
jeered while he threatened and grinned while he preached, but he did
both to good purpose, with all the convincing knowledge and experience
of a reformed criminal at a revivalist meeting, with all the zeal of a
doctor whose reputation is staked upon a cure.
Then the thorough-going long-headed man went off to his own employers
and arranged to begin his approaching summer holiday immediately. That
done, he tackled the writ-bearers and the fearful apparition with the
aid of a sharp lawyer of his acquaintance. With threats of giving as
much trouble as possible in one hand, and promises of a composition in
"spot cash" in the other, the lawyer and he succeeded in reducing the
claims to manageable proportions; the pawnbroker, himself a little
uneasy under the lawyer's searching questions, accepted a compromise.
Things could be arranged--at a price.
But the pain of that price to old Sarradet's thrifty soul! To have to
subtract from his hoards instead of adding to them, sell stock instead
of buying, to count himself so much the poorer instead of so much the
richer--the old merchant hated it. It was Marie's task to wring the
money out of him. And even when he had been brought to the point of
ransoming his son, he ceased not to bewail the prospects of his beloved
business.
"I won't leave it to him, I won't," he declared querulously. "I'll leave
it to you, Marie."
"Oh, but I couldn't possibly manage the business, Pops," she protested,
half in dismay, half laughing at the idea.
"Then you must get a husband who can."
"Never mind my husband just now. There are more pressing things than
that."
An idea struck the old fellow. "I'll make it into a company. I'll clip
Master Raymond's wings for him!" He pondered over this way of salvation,
and, in light of its possibilities, gradually grew a little calmer.
At last the wrench was over, the money paid. It was judged to be safe
for father and son to meet. Sidney brought the rescued sinner to
Regent's Park. Compunction seized them at the sight of one another; the
boy was so pale, shaken, and contrite; the old man was thinner, aged,
and feeble. The old tenderness between them revived; each tried to
console the other. Quite resolved to protect his business, Mr. Sarradet
consented to forgive his son. Humbled to his soul, Raymond asked no more
than to be received back into favour on any terms. Marie and Sidney
stood by, helping, favouring, and exchanging glances of
self-congratulation.
"I'm off for my holiday to-morrow, Mr. Sarradet," Sidney announced.
The old man looked up in sudden alarm. It was as if the anchor announced
to the ship that it proposed to take a holiday.
"No, no, that's all right! I'm going for a walking tour in Wales, and
Raymond's coming with me. Twenty miles a day, open air all day! Three
weeks of that, and he'll be as right as rain, and ready to tackle his
work like a Hercules!"
This clever fellow had a plan to meet every emergency! Surely he would
have a plan to save the beloved business too? Mr. Sarradet determined to
consult him about it when he came back from Wales. Meanwhile he grew
much more cheerful, and even went so far as to indulge in some hints of
a giddy youth of his own--hints based (in cold truth be it said) on a
very slender foundation, but showing a desire to make excuses for his
son.
"Yes, and your bit of fun didn't do you any harm, Mr. Sarradet, did it?"
asked Sidney.
No more had his bit--though quite a large bit--done Sidney harm. There
was reason then to hope that even Raymond's formidable bit might not in
the end do Raymond any harm. He might turn out as good a man of business
as his father yet. Still no risks should be run. The old gentleman
hugged the idea of his company--and he had someone in his eye for
Managing Director.
So with skill and courage, with good heart and kindliness, with ambition
and cunning, Sidney Barslow bound the Sarradet family to his chariot
wheels. He was the friend-in-need, the rescuer, the saviour. He was like
to become the sheet-anchor, the arbiter, the referee. Between father and
son--her weak old man and her weaker young one--Marie could not carry
the whole load herself. She was strong and self-reliant, but she was not
strong enough for that. She too would take the strong man's orders,
though she might take them with a smile, when what had been and what
might have been came to her remembrance.
He gave her an order now, when they said good night.
"Look here, when I bring him back from Wales, you mustn't let him mope
or be bored. If I were you, I'd get Amabel to come and stay here a bit."
"Really you think of everything," she told him in a merry wonder. "I'll
ask her, of course."
"I think of a good many things," he said, venturing a bold glance in her
eyes.
"Don't think of too many at a time, Sidney," she warned him with a
smile.
"No, no, each in its proper place! One done, t'other come on, you know!"
He stood looking down on her with a jovial confident smile--and she
liked it. His bold glance of admiration did not displease or alarm her.
She was quite ready to be told what the glance said; but she was not
ready to say anything in reply yet. But it was evident that some day she
would be asked for a reply.
And it seemed evident too in what direction the current of her life was
setting. With a smile for this and a sigh for that, and a wrinkle of the
brow over this-and-that, she went back to the drawing-room and gave old
Sarradet his gin-and-water.