"HAWORTH'S IS DONE WITH."
Almost at the same moment, Haworth was reading, in his room at the
Works, the letter which had been left for himself.
"I have borne as much as I can bear," it ended. "My punishment for
my folly is that I am a ruined man and a fugitive. My presence upon
the scene, when the climax comes, would be of no benefit to either
of us. Pardon me, if you can, for the wrong I have unintentionally
done you. My ill-luck was sheerly the result of circumstances. Even
yet, I cannot help thinking that there were great possibilities in
my plans. But you will not believe this and I will say no more.
In haste,
Ffrench."
When Rachel Ffrench finished reading her note she lighted a taper and
held the paper to it until it was reduced to ashes, and afterward turned
away merely a shade paler and colder than before. Haworth having
finished the reading of Ffrench's letter, sat for a few seconds staring
down at it as it lay before him on the table. Then he burst into a
brutal laugh.
After that, he sat stupefied--his elbows on the table, his head on his
hands. He did not move for half an hour.
The Works saw very little of him during the day. He remained alone in
his room, not showing himself, and one of the head clerks, coming in
from the Bank on business, went back mystified, and remarked in
confidence to a companion that "things had a queer look."
He did not leave the Works until late, and then went home. All through
the evening his mother watched him in her old tender way. She tried to
interest him with her history of the Briarley's bereavement and
unexpected good fortune. She shed tears over her recital.
"So old, my dear," she said. "Old enough to have outlived her own,--an'
her ways a little hard," wiping her eyes. "I'd like to be grieved for
more, Jem--though perhaps it's only nat'ral as it should be so. She
hadn't no son to miss her as you'll miss me. _I_ shouldn't like to be
the last, Jem."
He had been listening mechanically and he started and turned to her.
"The last?" he said. "Aye, it's a bit hard."
It was as if she had suggested a new thought to him of which he could
not rid himself at once. He kept looking at her, his eyes wandering over
her frail little figure and innocent old face, restlessly.
"But I haven't no fear," she went on, "though we never know what's to
come. But you're a strong man, and there's not like to be many more
years for me--though I'm so well an' happy."
"You might live a score," he answered in an abstracted way, his eyes
still fixed on her.
"Not without you," she returned. "It's you that's life to me--an'
strength--an' peace." The innocent tears were in her voice again, and
her eyes were bright with them.
He lay down awhile but could not lie still. He got up and came and
stood near her and talked and then moved here and there, picking up one
thing and another, holding them idly for a few seconds and then setting
them aside. At last she was going to bed and came to bid him good-night.
He laid his hand on her shoulder caressingly.
"There's never been aught like trouble between us two," he said. "I've
been a quiet enough chap, and different somehow--when I've been nigh
you. What I've done, I've done for your sake and for the best."
In the morning the Works were closed, the doors of the Bank remained
unopened, and the news spread like wildfire from house to house and from
street to street and beyond the limits of the town--until before noon it
was known through the whole country side that Ffrench had fled and Jem
Haworth was a ruined man.
It reached the public ear in the first instance in the ordinary
commonplace manner through the individuals who had suddenly descended
upon the place to take possession. A great crowd gathered about the
closed gates and murmured and stared and anathematized.
"Theer's been summat up for mony a month," said one sage. "I've seed it.
He wur na hissen, wur na Haworth."
"Nay," said another, "that he wur na. Th' chap has na been o' a decent
spree sin' Ffrench coom."
"Happen," added a third, "_that_ wur what started him on th' road
downhill. A chap is na good fur much as has na reg'lar habits."
"Aye, an' Haworth wur reg'lar enow when he set up. Good Lord! who'd ha'
thowt o' that chap i' bankrup'cy!"
At the outset the feeling manifested was not unamiable to Haworth, but
it was not very long before the closing of the Bank dawned upon the
public in a new light. It meant loss and ruin. The first man who roused
the tumult was a burly farmer who dashed into the town on a sweating
horse, spurring it as he rode and wearing a red and furious face. He
left his horse at an inn and came down to the Bank, booted and spurred
and whip in hand.
"Wheer's Ffrench?" he shouted to the smaller crowd attracted there, and
whose views as to the ultimate settlement of things were extremely
vague. "Wheer's Ffrench an' wheer's Haworth?"
Half a dozen voices volunteered information regarding Ffrench, but no
one knew anything of Haworth. He might be in a dozen places, but no one
had yet seen him or heard of his whereabouts. The man began to push his
way toward the building, swearing hotly. He mounted the steps and struck
violently on the door with his whip.
"I'll mak' him hear if he's shut hissen i' here," he cried. "Th' shifty
villain's got ivvery shillin' o' brass I've been savin' for my little
wench for th' last ten year. I'll ha' it back, if it's to be gotten."
"Tha'lt ne'er see it again," shouted a voice in the crowd. "Tha'dst
better ha' stuck to th' owd stockin', lad."
Then the uproar began. One luckless depositor after another was added to
the crowd. They might easily be known among the rest by their pale
faces. Some of them were stunned into silence, but the greater portion
of them were loud and passionate in their outcry. A few women hung on
the outskirts, wiping their eyes every now and then with their aprons,
and sometimes bursting into audible fits of weeping.
"I've been goin' out charrin' for four year," said one, "to buy silks
an' satins fur th' gentry. Yo' nivver seed _her_ i' owt else."
And all knew whom she meant, and joined in shouts of rage.
Sometimes it was Ffrench against whom their anger was most
violent--Ffrench, who had been born among them a gentleman, and who
should have been gentleman enough not to plunder and deceive them. And
again it was Haworth--Haworth, who had lived as hard as any of them and
knew what their poverty was, and should have done fairly by them, if
ever man should.
In the course of the afternoon Murdoch, gathering no news of Haworth
elsewhere, went to his house. A panic-stricken servant let him in and
led him into the great room where he had spent his first evening, long
ago. Despite its splendor, it looked empty and lifeless, but when he
entered, there rose from a carved and satin upholstered chair in one
corner a little old figure in a black dress--Jem Haworth's mother, who
came to him with a white but calm face.
"Sir," were her greeting words, "where is he?"
"I came to see him," he answered, "I thought----"
"No," she interrupted, "he is not here. He has not been here since
morning."
She began to tremble, but she shed no tears.
"There's been a good many to ask for him," she went on. "Gentlemen, an'
them as was rough, an' didn't mind me bein' a woman an' old. They were
harder than you'd think, an'--troubled as I've been, I was glad he was
not here to see 'em. But I'd be more comfortable if I could rightly
understand."
"I can only tell you what I know," he said. "It isn't much. I have only
gathered it from people on the streets."
He led her back to her chair, and did not loosen his light grasp on her
hand while he told her the story as he had heard it. His own mood was so
subdued that it was easier than he had thought to use words which would
lighten the first weight of the blow.
She asked no questions after his explanation was over.
"He's a poor man," she said at last,--"a poor man, but--we was poor
before."
Suddenly her tears burst forth.
"They've said hard things to me to-day," she cried. "I don't believe
'em, Jem, my dear--now less than ever."
He comforted her as best he could. He could easily understand what they
had told her, how much of the truth and how much of angry falsehood.
"When he comes back," she said, "I shall be here to meet him. Wherever
he is, an' however much he's broke down with trouble, he knows that.
He'll come here to-night, an' I shall be here."
Before he went away he asked if he might send Christian or his mother to
her. But though she thanked him, she refused.
"I know how good they'd be," she said, "an' what a comfort in the
lonesomeness, but when he comes he'll want to be alone, an' a unfamiliar
face might trouble him."
But he did not come back. The day went on, and the excitement increased
and waned by turns. The crowd grew and surged about the Bank and shouted
itself hoarse, and would have broken a few windows if it had not been
restrained by the police force, who appeared upon the field; and there
were yells for Haworth and for Ffrench, but by this time Mr. Ffrench had
reached Rotterdam and Haworth was--no one knew where, since he had not
been seen at all. And when at length dusk fell upon the town, the crowd
had dwindled away and gone home by ones and twos, and in Jem Haworth's
house sat his mother, watching and waiting, and straining her ears to
catch every passing sound.
She had kept up her courage bravely through the first part of the day,
but the strangers who came one after the other, and sometimes even two
or three together, to demand her son with loud words and denunciations
and even threats, were a sore trial to her. Some of them flung their
evil stories at her without remorse, taking it for granted that they
were nothing new to her ears, and even those who had some compunction
muttered among themselves and hinted angrily at what the others spoke
outright. Her strength began to give way, and she quailed and trembled
before them, but she never let their words pass without a desperate
effort to defend her boy. Then they stared or laughed at her, or went
away in sullen silence, and she was left to struggle with her grief and
terror alone until some new call was made upon her, and she must bear
all again. When the twilight came she was still alone, and sat in the
darkened room battling against a dread which had crept slowly upon her.
Of all those who had come none had known where he was. They did not know
in the town, and he had not come back.
"He might go," she whispered, "but he'd not go without me. He's been
true and fond of his mother, let them say what they will. He'd never
leave me here alone."
Her thoughts went back over the long years from his birth to the day of
his highest success. She remembered how he had fought with fate, and
made his way and refused to be conquered. She thought of the wealth he
had won, the power, the popularity, and of his boast that he had never
been beaten, and she began to sob in the shadow of her corner.
"He's lost it all," she cried. "An' he won it with his own hands an'
worked for it an' bore up agen a world! An' it's gone!"
It was when she came to this point that her terror seized on her as it
had never done before. She got up, shaking in every limb.
"I'll go to him myself," she said. "Who should go to him but his mother?
Who should find him an' be a help to him if I can't? Jem--Jem, my dear,
it's me that's comin' to you--_me_!"
He had been sitting in a small back office in the Bank all through the
day when they had been calling and searching for him. He had got in
early and locked the door and waited, knowing well enough all that was
to come. It was no feeling of fear that made him keep hidden; he had
done with fear--if, indeed, he had ever felt it in his life. He knew
what he was going to do and he laid his plans coolly. He was to stay
here and do the work that lay before him and leave things as straight as
he could, and then at night when all was quiet he would make his way out
in the dark and go to the Works. It was only a fancy, this, of going to
the Works, but he clung to it persistently.
He had never been clearer-headed in his life--only, sometimes as he was
making a calculation or writing a letter he would dash down his work and
fall to cursing.
"There's not another chap in England that had done it," he would say.
"And it's gone!--it's gone!--it's gone!"
Then again he would break into a short laugh, remembering the M. P. and
his speech and poor Ffrench's stumbling, overwhelmed reply to it. When
he heard the crowd shouting and hooting at the front, he went into a
room facing the street and watched them through a chink in the shutter.
He heard the red-faced farmer's anathemas, and swore a little himself,
knowing his story was true.
"Tha shalt have all Haworth can give, chaps," he muttered, "an' welcome.
He'll tak' nowt with him."
He laughed again but suddenly stopped, and walked back into the little
office silently, and waited there.
At nightfall he went out of a back door and slipped through unfrequented
by-ways, feeling his heart beat with heavy thuds as he went. Nothing
stood in his way and he got in, as he believed he should. The instant
his foot crossed the threshold a change came upon him. He forgot all
else but what lay before him. He was less calm, and in some little
hurry.
He reached his room and lighted the gas dimly--only so that he could see
to move about. Then he went to his desk and opened it and took out one
of a pair of pistols, speaking aloud as he did so.
"Here," he said, "is the end of Jem Haworth."
He knew where to aim, the heavy thuds marked the spot for him.
"I'll count three," he said, "and then----"
He began slowly, steadily, but in a voice that fell with a hollow sound
upon the dead stillness.
"One," he said. "Two!" and his hand dropped at his side with his weapon
in it, for at the door stood his mother. In an instant she had fallen
upon her knees and dragged herself toward him and was clinging to his
hand.
"No--Jem!" she panted. "No, not that, my dear--God forbid!"
He staggered back though she still clung to him.
"How," he faltered,--"how did you come here?"
"The Lord led me," she sobbed. "He put it into my heart and showed me
the way, an' you had forgot the door, Jem--thank God!"
"You--saw--what I was going to do?"
"What you _was_ goin' to do, but what you'll never do, Jem, an' me to
live an' suffer when it's done--me as you've been so good an' such a
comfort to."
In the dim light she knelt sobbing at his feet.
"Let me sit down," he said. "And sit down nigh me. I've summat to tell
you."
But though he sank into the chair she would not get up, but kept her
place in spite of him and went on.
"To-day there have been black tales told you?" he said.
"Yes," she cried, "but----"
"They're true," he said, "th' worst on 'em."
"No--no!"
He stopped her by going on monotonously as if she had not spoken.
"Think of the worst you've ever known--you've not known much--and then
say to yourself, 'He's worse a hundred times'; think of the blackest you
have ever known to be done, and then say to yourself, 'What he's done's
blacker yet.' If any chap has told you I've stood at naught until there
was next to naught I'd left undone, he spoke true. If there was any one
told you I set th' decent ones by the ears and laughed 'em in the face,
he spoke true. If any o' 'em said I was a dread and a byword, they spoke
true, too. The night you came there were men and women in th' house
that couldn't look you in th' face, and that felt shame for th' first
time in their lives--mayhap--because you didn't know what they were, an'
took 'em to be as innocent as yourself. There's not a sin I haven't
tasted, nor a wrong I've not done. I've had murder in my mind, an'
planned it. I've been mad for a woman not worth even what Jem Haworth
had to give her--and I've won all I'd swore I'd win--an' lost it! Now
tell me if there's aught else to do but what I've set my mind on?"
She clung to his heavy hand as she had not clung to it before, and laid
her withered cheek upon it and kissed it. Bruised and crushed as she was
with the blows he had dealt, she would not let it go free yet. Her words
came from her lips a broken cry, with piteous sobs between them. But she
had her answer ready.
"That as I've thanked God for all my life," she said, "He'll surely give
me in the end. He couldn't hold it back--I've so believed an' been
grateful to Him. If there hadn't been in you what would make a good man,
my dear, I couldn't have been so deceived an' so happy. No--not
deceived--that aint the word, Jem--the good was there. You've lived two
lives, may be,--but one was good, thank God! You've been a good son to
me. You've never hurt me, an' it was your love as hid from me the wrong
you did. You did love me, Jem--I won't give that up--never. There's
nothing you've done as can stand agen that, with her as is your mother.
You loved me an' was my own son--my boy as was a comfort an' a pride to
me from the first."
He watched her with a stunned look.
"You didn't believe _them_," he said hoarsely, "and you don't believe
_me_?"
She put her hand to her heart and almost smiled.
"It hasn't come home to me yet," she said. "I don't think it ever will."
He looked helplessly toward the pistol on the table. He knew it was all
over and he should not use it.
"What must I do?" he said, in the same hoarse voice.
"Get up," she said, "an' come with me. I'm a old woman but my heart's
strong, an' we've been poor before. We'll go away together an' leave it
all behind--all the sorrow of it an' the sin an' the shame. The life I
_thought_ you lived, my dear, is to be lived yet. Theer's places where
they wont know us an' where we can begin again. Get up and come with
me."
He scarcely grasped what she meant.
"With you!" he repeated. "You want me to go now?"
"Yes," she answered, "for Christ's sake, my dear, now."
He began to see the meaning and possibility of her simple, woman's plan,
and got up, ready to follow her. And then he found that the want of food
and the long day had worn upon him so that he was weak. She put her arm
beneath his and tried to support him.
"Lean on me, my dear," she said. "I'm stronger than you think."
They went out, leaving the empty room and the pistol on the table and
the dim light burning. And then they had locked the gate and were
outside with the few stars shining above and the great black Works
looming up before them.
He stopped a moment to look back and up and remembered the key. Suddenly
he raised it in his hand and flung it across the top of the locked
gate; they heard it fall inside upon the pavement with a clang.
"They'll wonder how it came there," he said. "They'll take down the name
to-morrow. 'Haworth's' is done with!"
He turned to her and said, "Come." His voice was a little stronger. They
went down the lane together, and were lost in the darkness.