Tommy's soul became a frozen mass, numb, immobile. Then a flame smote him full in the face, so intense that he put up his hands to protect it. He stared unseeingly at his father. There flashed before him ten thousand cinematograph nightmares that fleeted by before he could grasp the details. He felt a slight nausea. He feared to breathe, because he was afraid to find himself alive.
“Father!” he gasped.
Mr. Leigh's face was livid. He said, sternly, “I have kept my promise to her!”
“But why did you—why did you—keep me at college? Why didn't you tell me you had no money?”
“I did as she wished me to do. Believe me, my son, I am not sorry. But it need not go on.”
“No!” shouted Tommy. “No!” Then he added, feverishly: “Certainly not! Certainly not!” He shook his head furiously. His brain was filled with fragments of thoughts, shreds of fears, syncopated emotions that did not quite crystallize, but were replaced by others again and again. But uppermost in the boy's mind, not because he was selfish but because he was young and, therefore, without the defensive weapons that experience supplies, was this: I am the son of a thief!
Then came the poignant realization that all that he had got from life had been obtained under false pretenses. The systematic stealing for years had gone to pay for his friendships and his good times. The tradesmen's bills had been settled with other people's money. He was innocent of any crime, but he had been the beneficiary of one. And the boy for whom a father had done this asked himself why his father had done it. And his only answer was that he now was the son of a thief.
As the confusion in his mind grew less explosive, fear entered Tommy's soul—the oldest of all civilized fears, the fear of discovery! He began to read the newspaper head-lines of the inevitable to-morrow. He found himself looking into the horror-stricken faces of those whom he loved best, the warm-hearted companions of his later life, whose opinions became more awful than the wrath of his Maker and more desirable than His mercy.
He would give his life, everything, if only discovery were averted until he could return the money. If fate only waited! Where could he get the money? Where was the source of money?
His father was the natural person from whom to ask, from whom the answer would come, and the habit of a lifetime could not be shaken off in an instant. It was exquisite agony to be deprived abruptly of what had become almost an instinct.