He was silent for an instant, pondering this thing, while joy and sorrow mingled on his countenance. Then he answered me.
“I’ll write your cheque the first moment I get back to the office. You were right. There is more good advice given than bad. I’ve proved it too. If I’d done half what I was told to-day, I——”
Here our respective guardians separated us, and we marched to our destination in silence; but about five or six minutes later we sat side by side in a police-station, and were permitted to renew our conversation.
“You’ve had a stirring day, no doubt,” Bellamy began, while he scraped mud off himself. “Tell me your yarn, then I’ll tell you mine. But how is it, if somebody advised you to go and hang yourself, that you are here now? You’ll have to explain that first as a matter of honour.”
I explained, and it must be confessed that my words sounded weak. It is certain, at any rate, that they did not convince Bellamy.
“I withdraw the promise to write a cheque,” he said shortly. “On your own showing you dallied and dawdled and fooled about upon the top of that arch. You temporised. If you had followed that advice with promptitude and like a man, you wouldn’t be here. This is paltry and dishonest. I certainly shan’t pay you a farthing.”
I told him that I felt no desire to take his money, and he was going into the question of how far he might be said to have won mine when we were summoned before the magistrate. Here fate at last befriended me, for the justice proved to be master of my lodge of Freemasons and an old personal friend. Finding that no high crime was laid at the door of Bellamy, and, very properly, refusing to believe that I had been arrested in an attempt on my own life, he rebuked my policeman and restored to us our liberty. Whereupon we departed in a hansom-cab, after putting two guineas apiece into the poor-box. This, I need hardly say, was my idea.
Then, as we drove to a hatter’s at the wish of Norton Bellamy, he threw some light on the sort of morning he himself had spent. The man was reserved and laconic to a ridiculous degree under the circumstances, therefore I shall never know all that he endured; but I gathered enough to guess at the rest, and feel more resigned in the contemplation of my own experiences. He hated to utter his confession, yet the memory of that day rankled so deep within him that he had not the heart to make light of it.
“A foretaste of the hereafter,” began Bellamy—“that’s what I have had. And if such a fiendish morning isn’t enough to drive a man to good works and a better way of life, I’d like to see what is. You say your trouble began in the railway-carriage coming to town. So did mine. But whereas your part was passive, and, by the mere putty-like and plastic virtue of ready obedience to everybody you finally found yourself face to face with death, I reached the same position through a more active and terrible sort of way.”
“Nevertheless,” said I, “taking into consideration the difference between my character and yours—remembering that by nature you are aggressive, I retiring—nothing you can say will make me believe that you have suffered more than I. Physically perhaps, but not mentally.”