Harry Fenimore's Principles

by Isabel Thompson Hopkins

CHAPTER XXX.

The clouds that had made the night so dark were all gone the next morning, and the sun shone brightly as Aleck called at the doctor’s to get Thorndyke over to the store early; he wanted to look over some papers preparatory to the new business arrangement, and he knew evening was no time for Thorndyke to undertake extra work.

Old Joan’s face glowed with pride and delight at what was going on, but she tried her best to conceal it.

“It’s no favorin’ the wee bairn,” she said, “to fling a’ the doors wide, and tak him into the very heart o’ the establishment. Ilka customer that casts a shadow inside kens he has been the heart and soul o’ it a’ for years, an’ it’s only acknowledging the truth before the world, to put his name where a’ can read it. And I’m persuaded it is ower muckle to bring upon a pair o’ shoulders like his the whole burden o’ sic a house, wi’ the lives and health o’ half the city, and a’ the wisest o’ the doctors dependin’ on him to fill their needs, and Mr. Aleck steppin’ aside, and offerin’ nae muir help, whatever the pinch may be!”

“Well, well, Joan, his head will make up for his shoulders, you know that very well, and he must have all the help he needs, let Aleck go when he will. Perhaps he’ll be picking up a junior partner for himself after he comes to be owner of the whole thing, and that wont take so many years either, eh, little man?” and the doctor gave Thorndyke a look that wasn’t at all ashamed to show how he felt about the matter, at least.

Business hours were early at the Fenimores’, too, and Tom was at his post as usual, other people would have said, but for himself, he could hardly have been sure whether he was there or not; he seemed to be walking in a maze, some terrible dream of perplexity and desperate resolve, and it grew darker and heavier as the hours wore on.

“Mixed up” with Davis and his associates? One of them to all intents and purposes? Did Davis dare say that? And if Davis could pretend to a claim on him he would push it to the utmost, Tom knew.

Then why shouldn’t he let them have the signature if they wanted it, and if that was the only way out of trouble on every side? A whole life in that store was worse than a hundred deaths, and if Davis should give him shares in a “handsome thing,” as he called it, he might go to the ends of the earth, and have money to send back to those that needed it. And after all, could a real thief feel much more miserable and low than Hal had always kept him since they first came together?

He passed heavily by the counting-room as the hours drew to a close, and started as he heard the senior Fenimore’s voice calling “Haggarty!”

Was the truth discovered? Was there any way in which Davis would dare play him false and betray him as “mixed up” with his own companions?

“Why, what is the matter with you?” asked Mr. Fenimore, as Tom’s white face answered the summons. “Are you sick to-day?”

“No, I am not sick,” said Tom. “I was up rather late last night, it is true.”

“Well, take care of yourself to-night, then; you don’t look right; but just step in here a moment, if you please. I want to be out for perhaps a quarter of an hour, if you can remain here. Perhaps you can finish looking over these letters, and make some minutes of them.”

Tom sat down and leaned his head upon his hands. What was the matter with it? It throbbed and whirled strangely.

“Yes, I can do it,” he said drearily, as if trying to rouse himself. “I should despise myself for ever; but I have always had somebody to despise me. I wonder if it would be a very different thing.”

He glanced at a scrap of paper fallen near him, on which “Fenimore & Co.” had been trying a new pen half a dozen times. He looked at it again, and then started wildly to his feet.

“Yes, it would be a different thing! They cannot make me do it, Hal Fenimore and the whole set of them together! I haven’t the stuff to make a man of in me, of course, or Hal would never have twitted and crowded me all my life as he has; but I’ve always been able to declare to myself he lied when he said I did not do my best, and I always will! But oh, why do I have to fight like a man, and a brave one too, if I never was given the soul of one to begin with?”

He seized the letters and began to look them over. Black, white, or gray were they? He could not tell. He only saw one question written all over them. Would Davis dare, would he be able to get him into trouble? He had meant that ugly phrase “mixed up” as a threat, Tom knew very well; could he manage to bring it to the ears of Fenimore & Co.? It would be an end to the partnership, drawing pretty near now, if he should. And what then?

A sudden thought flashed into his mind. If any mercy, even in a dark disguise, should set him free from Fenimore’s, there was Carter! He had heard Aleck talk of what Carter was to the meanest man he had on board. He would go before the mast with him, if he could but find him. Thorndyke always knew when he came in. He would ask Thorndyke.

“I wont keep you any longer, Haggarty,” said Mr. Fenimore’s voice behind him; “and indeed I would advise you to call hours ended and take care of yourself. You’re not well to-day, I am sure.”

Tom turned and left the store. He would go to Halliday’s. The sooner he got a promise from Thorndyke to let him know when Carter came in, the better.

Halliday’s was a place where every one seemed to like an excuse to drop in; there was always some one there enjoying the light and warmth and comfortable feeling he could hardly have explained to himself.

The early twilight had fallen, and the outside air was bitterly cold as Tom opened the door, and the feeling of comfort reached even his heavy heart for an instant, as he stepped inside.

Thorndyke was busy with a solitary customer, and two heavy-coated policemen stood with their backs to Tom, taking a moment’s respite from the cold outside, and “warming up” for the next hour’s duty.

“Anything lively in your beat to-day?” asked one of them listlessly, as he stretched his hands toward the glowing fire.

“Well, not a great deal,” replied the other. “We came down on a nest of pretty dark-feathered birds, up in —— street, but we’ve had an eye on them for some time.”

“Do they belong here?” asked the first.

“No, not more than one of them at least, but there’s a young shoot of one of the best houses in the city that I’ve had my suspicions they were trying to make friends with, of late. Can’t quite vouch for it, though, and wouldn’t if I could, for I don’t think they’ve got any harm out of him yet, and doubt if they ever would.”

The policemen left the fire, and passed out by an opposite door, the customer followed, and Thorndyke looked up at Tom. One look was enough. Tom’s face had told Thorndyke the secret, and Tom knew he had read it.

“For heaven’s sake, Tom,” said Thorndyke, “don’t stand there looking like that! There will be some one in in another moment. Here, come into my office, there’s some one coming this instant. See if this glass of water will make you look like a live man again, and wait there till I come.”

The customer wanted a prescription that took time; hours the minutes seemed to Tom, and then Thorndyke came. Tom looked up at him with a white, hopeless face.

“You will despise me now,” he said slowly. “Of course you never thought much of me; you couldn’t, kind as you were, though I did mean to do as well as I could. But you were kind, and I had rather all the world knew I had disgraced myself, than that you should have found it out.”

“Tom,” said Thorndyke, in a low pitying tone that thrilled him through, “tell me what is the matter here! Are you in trouble about money?”

“No,” said Tom, “or at least, not much; it is worse than that! Those fellows seemed to be friends, they wanted me with them, and I wanted friends so much! They never let me see any harm, and it always seemed so light-hearted and gay when they were; but I knew there was harm, and I ought to have loathed it all, as I really did in my soul all the time! They wanted me to forge Fenimore & Co.’s name for them; that was all their friendliness was aimed at from the beginning, I suppose. They did not get it, thank Heaven, but they came too near it, nearer than I ever dreamed they could. And now, if they’ve got into trouble themselves, and my name is going to be whispered along with theirs, who is ever going to know how far I went with them? Who’s going to believe that they kept me half-blinded till the last moment, and that then I had determined to refuse what they wanted, though I couldn’t see a bright spot before me for half my life in any other track!”

“Oh why didn’t you come to me?” cried Thorndyke bitterly, and then, with a sudden check upon himself—“but, Tom, you never would have turned to friends like these if you hadn’t been in trouble to begin with. Something has gone wrong with you longer than that, for I have seen it.”

Tom looked in his face with a troubled cry.

“Hal Fenimore drove me desperate!” he said. “Of course he wouldn’t have dared if I had had the man in me the rest of you had. I suppose I hadn’t. I don’t know, but I had to stand up like one, and try to fill my father’s place, and he never could say I didn’t before; but now he will know this, and all the rest of the world will hear it from him.”

“How will he know this?” said Thorndyke, a sharp look of pain passing over his face. “Do you think I would tell him or any other one on the face of the earth?”

“You wont?” and Tom looked wonderingly but still drearily at him.

“Get into that easy chair,” said Thorndyke. “Don’t stand leaning against the wall as if a blow had struck you.”

Tom stepped mechanically towards the chair, and sat down in it. Thorndyke stood before him a moment, and then came closer and put his arms round his shoulders with a yearning tenderness that sent another thrill through Tom’s heart.

“Tom,” he said, “Come into my store to-morrow! I want you, and have wanted you a long time, but I couldn’t say so before. I’ve seen how things were going with you and Hal, and have longed to put something between you, if I only could. Of course I couldn’t, so long as you were with him, but it is time for you to leave there now. Come to me, and you shall find out whether you are a man! I tell you, Tom, there isn’t one in a thousand who would have stuck to the ship, and fought as you have, all these years; and not one in all the thousands I know who could help me as you can. I need you, and the Fenimores have enough without you. It will be hard for you to begin all over again, but if you learn as fast as you did at the professor’s, you shall have your share in the business at the end of the year. And I’ll see that you have all you need to keep things easy at home, from the day you come. Only Tom, why, oh why, couldn’t you have trusted me long ago?”

Changes seem very rapid to passers who only give a glance now and then, as they hurry by, and the customers at Halliday’s remarked that “the young people seemed to be rushing things a little,” as they saw Aleck less and less in the store and Tom behind the counter; then Aleck sent sometimes in Dr. Thorndyke’s place to a patient, and at last the name of “Dr. Halliday” making its appearance just below the bell handle over which “Dr. Thorndyke” had been read so long, and the sign of Halliday & Thorndyke, which they still considered new, coming down to make room for “Halliday, Thorndyke & Co.”

“Rushing things!” repeated Tom to Thorndyke one day with a laugh. “Why it seems to me as if my life at Fenimore’s was somewhere away back in the dark ages! There’s been more peace and comfort, in these later days, more steady standing up with the feeling that I was a man, in every one of them, than I’d had in my whole life together before. But even peace and comfort don’t tell the whole of it. There’s more blessedness than that, by a long shot, in feeling that I have got a close hold on a fellow like you and another like Aleck. There’s no use saying much about it, though. Words don’t seem to do the business.”

No, they do not. And Thorndyke only gave Tom a look in reply; but that said “God bless you, old fellow, as you’ve blessed us a thousand times;” and then Thorndyke himself said, “There goes Aleck again with that fine turnout of his. He’s getting more practice than he knows how to turn his hand to, already!”