“Of course, we all thought,” continued the colonel, “that you had put yourself into a tight corner on purpose, that you might respectably creep out of your difficulties by dying and troubling nobody. And we respected you for that. Everybody knew that you were up to your eyes in debt, and at loggerheads with your grandfather, that the old man 216 had disinherited you, and all that. But surely you didn’t owe seven thousand dollars!”
“Are you talking about the checks my mother gave me before I went away?” Dick asked, quietly.
“Of course I am. You know the circumstances better than I do. It’s no good playing the fool with me, and I don’t intend to have my daughter upset by telegrams and surreptitious communications. So, now, you know. You’ve done for yourself, my lad, and you’d better face it and remain dead.”
“But my mother—she has explained?”
“Of course, she has, and it’s nearly broken her heart. Think of her awful position, to have to confess that her son altered her checks—checks actually drawn in her name—and the money filched from the bank by a dirty trick! The bank’s got to lose it. Your grandfather won’t pay a cent.”
“But my mother—?” faltered Dick again, leaning forward heavily on the table, and gazing at the colonel with eyes so full of horror that the elder man wondered whether suffering had not turned Dick’s brain.
“Ah, you may well ask about your mother. She tried to do her best, I believe, to get your grandfather to pay up; but the shame of the thing is what I look at. That’s why I came to you here, to-day. If your mother knows no more than Dora and all the rest—if they still think you’re dead—well, 217 why not remain dead? It’s only charity—it’s only kind. Your father and mother think that you died a hero’s death, and, naturally, aren’t disposed to look upon your crime quite in the same light as other people. Why, in heaven’s name, when you got a chance of slipping out of life, and out of the old set, and making a fresh start, didn’t you seize it?”
“You mean, why didn’t I get shot?” asked Dick, slowly.
“Well, not exactly that. You know as well as I do that lots of chaps go to the front to get officially shot, and have their names on the list of the killed—men who really mean to turn over a new leaf, and get a fresh lease of life in another country, under another name, when the war is over. Others get put right out of the way, because they haven’t the courage to do it themselves.”
“But my mother could have explained!” cried Dick, huskily. He was so weak that he was unable to cope with agitation.