The gloom of irreparable ruin had fallen on the house of Vernon. The
deeper its business affairs became investigated the more ghastly
appeared the inevitable finish.
At first people were doubtful as to whether the result of the failure
would be this or that or the other, in connection with Mr. Vernon's
social position. Now it seemed there was no longer any room for
speculation. Bankruptcy of the worst kind would be the end.
All at once a still more startling rumour got abroad. At first people
whispered it only in quiet places, and only to confidential friends.
Then gradually a murmur arose. Finally, within a month of the failure
of the bank, and before yet the accounts had been fully investigated,
people had been heard to say openly that William Vernon ought to be
made the object of a criminal prosecution and put in the dock.
The panic of fear which had kept people's mouths shut, upon this
suggestion, disappeared at once; and where there had been, a few hours
before, but hints and faint whispers, and timid words of acquiescence,
there was now a loud, clear, articulate demand for the impeachment of
William Vernon.
There was, on the day of the bank's failure, scarcely less talk of
that disaster than there was now of the passionate desire that this
fraudulent speculator should suffer at the hands of the law.
An evening paper hinted that steps of the kind ought to be taken at
once.
Next morning, Mr. William Vernon was not to be found. He had left
Dublin--Ireland--for some place unknown abroad--Mexico it was
supposed.
A few days after the flight of Vernon, the accountants, in whose hands
the bank affairs had been placed, made a report, and upon this report
was based the first call. It was not a heavy one. It ruined only a few
people, and drove only one man mad.
James O'Donnell met this call promptly and cheerfully. It did not
strain him in the least. He had put most of his savings into Vernon's
bank, but then he was a man of large prudence, and held a considerable
reserve of ready money. Indeed, after he had paid the first call he
had still at command what people in moderate circumstances would
consider a very large sum. When he got the acknowledgment from Dublin,
he showed it to his wife with a buoyant laugh, and said: "You see,
Mary, I am not yet quite a bankrupt. Up to this I have met every
engagement, this included, and, please God, I shall be able to meet
all."
Although it had been hoped that there would have been no delay to the
marriage of Eugene and Nellie, a variety of circumstances made it
desirable that a postponement of about a month should take place. In
the present posture of affairs it would have been impossible for Mr.
O'Donnell to settle money on his son; or, indeed, to give him anything
worth speaking of, beyond the salary he drew in connection with the
firm.
When Eugene had recovered sufficient strength to bear the shock, he
had been told of the misfortune which had overtaken his father in
business.
When he heard it he made little of it. He thought little of everything
except his approaching marriage. It was Nellie who broke the news to
him. She had been timid, fearful, as she approached the subject. She
had prepared the way by saying that all those people who were dear to
him were in good health and spirits, but that a certain unpleasant
thing had occurred--a very unpleasant thing--a terribly unpleasant
thing of a purely business nature; in fact, his father had lost a vast
sum of money--all his savings.
The young man looked grave, and said he was very sorry for the poor
old man; but that--as long as the business held they should be more
than comfortable, and that he was sure Nellie did not want riches such
as would be his if this misfortune had not arisen. What exactly had
happened?
She told him all.
He was serious, and said it was too bad--too hard on the governor, who
was the best of men.
In an interview later with his father, the latter told him that for
the present he was not in a position to make any settlement whatever,
but that if his son was contented to marry on his present salary,
there would be no opposition.
The son said he would be more than contented; that he had no
extravagant habits or expensive tastes, and that he and Nellie could
manage very well on the five hundred pounds a year his father allowed
him.
The old man said he had felt quite sure his son would be satisfied;
but what would Nellie say, in the face of former promises he, the
father, had made?
The young man laughed a strong, joyous, wholesome laugh, and told his
father that Nellie would marry him on a pound a week. "For you know,
sir," he said, "she is not used to luxuries. She does not want them,
and she is the most sensible, as she is the best, girl in the world."
Then Eugene's father told his son of what Lavirotte had promised.
"I am not surprised, father, to hear he has offered to help us. I
always told you he was true as steel." At the word steel he winced,
but recovered himself instantly. "People here don't like him, because
they can't understand his quick southern ways. But the longer you know
him the better you like him, and the more you'll trust him."
When Eugene spoke to Nellie on the subject of his father's
conversation with him, she confirmed his anticipations, and said: "You
know, Eugene, that five hundred pounds a year is a great deal more
than a girl like me could ever reasonably have hoped for. Why, it's a
small fortune to one who has been a poor governess, and who never knew
what it was to have even one hundred pounds a year."
He took her in his arms and kissed her, and called her his own true,
loyal darling, his best of girls, his wisest sweetheart, his only
sweetheart. "And if the worst comes to the worst, Nellie, even
supposing that the Lavirotte affair never turns up, you know I am
young and once more strong, and if we had to go to America, love, I
could hoe a field, or split rails, or conduct a car, or heave on a
winch, or get a crust for the two of us somehow; and if the two of us
mean, above all things, to be together, what are all other things to
us compared to our being together?"
She was of the same opinion, and so it was settled that at the end of
the month to which the marriage had been postponed, it should take
place as quietly as possible, but otherwise as though no trouble had
overtaken the house of O'Donnell.
By this time Lavirotte was established in London. Lionel Crawford had
taken lodgings for Dora in Charterhouse Square, and Lavirotte lived in
one of the streets leading from the Strand towards the river.
John Cassidy was now regularly installed in his London situation, and
had taken a genteel lodging in Bloomsbury. His fellow clerks did not,
as a rule, live so near the great centre of London. They had rooms in
Peckham, Islington, Kennington, and such ungenteel neighbourhoods.
But no man with any pretensions to be handsome, a gentleman, and a
lady-killer, could condescend to associate his name with such haunts
of rabble London as Peckham, Islington, and Kennington.
Up to this he had not been able to devote much time to what he was
pleased to call "the Lavirotte mystery." A variety of other matters
claimed his most careful attention.
On his arrival in London, he found that his coats, and collars, and
ties, and socks, although the very best that his money would allow him
to get in Rathclare, were not at all the right things for a man of his
antecedents in the matter of the fair sex. His clothes were, it is
true, equal if not superior to those worn by the mere common, ordinary
clerks with whom he was bound to associate, and whose coarse and
ungenteel ways he was for a portion of the day obliged to endure. But
then the clothes, which in Rathclare had been those of a man of
distinguished fashion, were, to his chagrin, in London no more than
those proper to a mere common clerk. This was a terrible revelation to
a sensitive soul.
Of course it could be remedied in the future; but how terribly the
fact reflected upon the past, and fancy the figure he should have made
in Rathclare if he, when there, had only known as much as he did now.
Imagine how ladies would have stared and admired if he had but
appeared in a costume such as he was now hastening to assume. Dainty
shoes, clocked socks, trousers that fitted the limb as the daintiest
of gloves fit the hands of the daintiest of duchesses, coat and
waistcoat which could only be put on before meals and when the lungs
were empty, collars and scarfs designed by Royal Academicians and
tenderly executed by tradespeople who might, if they would, have
written sartorial epics; such were the splendours now preparing for
his exquisite person.
Apart from the cares born of his tailor and outfitter, certain
other little matters had to be arranged about his room. A Japanese
letter-rack had to be purchased and hung up for the reception of his
prospective love-letters. Open work, china dishes of elegant hues,
although of cheap manufacture, had to be obtained and set forth for
the reception of rose-leaves, photographs, and cards. The portraits of
celebrated beauties had to be hung up, so that, should an acquaintance
drop into his room, he might have an opportunity of showing his
visitor the counterpart of his dearest friends.
His fellow-clerks were coarse enough to consider him a humbug. His
superiors at the office did not know whether he was an ass or not;
but the clerks and the superiors agreed that he had two priceless
virtues--he could tot all day long without making an error, and there
was not a spot of extraneous ink on any folio of his books.
By this time Lavirotte was thoroughly restored to health. Daily he
paid a visit to Dora. The course of their true love was running with
idyllic smoothness. No suitor could be more tender, enthusiastic,
constant-minded than he. Dora's life was one long daydream. Her former
solitary life in London now seemed to her like a dreary unreality,
forced upon her imagination merely that her present life might stand
out in glory against so gray and sad a background. Since Lavirotte
left London of old, the place had grown dull and dismal around her.
Now the whole city was bright and joyous once again. Instead of being
a vast chasm filled with unfamiliar things and unfriendly forms, and
dark with her inner solitude, the buildings now were full of vital
beauty, and the people of courteous friendliness. Although she looked
forward with pleasant anticipations to the time when she would not be
even temporarily separated from Dominique, she could not persuade
herself that the future would be more happy than the present. She
seemed to want nothing now beyond just a little more of his society.
Meanwhile Lavirotte had availed himself of Lionel Crawford's offer and
taken the money, and was getting lessons. But, in addition to these,
he was now busy in another way. The idea of the treasure mastered
him as completely as it had the old man. He seemed to take but a
second-rate interest in his own affairs, and every hour he could spare
from the lessons and Dora was devoted to helping Crawford in his work
at St. Prisca's Tower.
He had said to Crawford: "There is no knowing when these poor
O'Donnells will want the money. You said we should have it in six to
eighteen months. We must have it sooner, much sooner, as soon as ever
we possibly can."
And so he bent himself to the work as he did to any other work he took
in hand--wholly, passionately, fiercely. The old man said he would
kill himself. He swore he did not care so long as he might succeed.
Now that he had entered fully into the scheme of Crawford, and was
actively helping him, he, too, felt the wild pleasure of the search;
the inexorable determination of not sharing the secret with anyone.
No; it was their secret, and they two, unassisted by anyone who might
betray them, should alone reach the golden goal.
So absorbed was he in the work at the tower that he could think of
little else, and felt rather put out when one morning he received a
letter from Eugene O'Donnell, saying that he and Nellie were to be
married on Wednesday next week, and asking him to come over a day or
two beforehand, as became a best man.
About this time Mr. John Cassidy found himself arrayed according to
his taste, with his room in order for the reception of anyone he might
care to ask in, and with his hands free to follow up the Lavirotte
mystery.