“Mary, Mary, this perpetual abuse of your father, whom we have wronged, will not help us in the least.”
He led her into the study.
“John, John, you don’t understand what I mean. I’ve been to Mr. Jevons, and he says that my mother left me more than half-a-million dollars, which my father has stolen—stolen! He has kept us beggars ever since our marriage, by a trick. My mother left me twenty thousand a year; and—you know what we’ve had from him.”
“Mary, what wild things are you saying?” 303
“Ah, it’s hard to believe; but it’s true. He’ll have to disgorge, or Mr. Jevons will take the business into court. He gave me the seven thousand dollars I wanted on the spot, and promised to get the rest for me, and give me as much more as I wanted. I’ve seen Ormsby, and paid him the money; but he’s obdurate. The jealous wretch is bent upon ruining Dick. Nothing will move him.”
“It is our sin crying for atonement, Mary. Money cannot buy absolution.”
“No, but father can say the word that will save us all. He must swear he made a mistake—that he did sign those checks for the amounts drawn from the bank. That will paralyze Ormsby, and leave him powerless.”
“Lies! lies!—we are wallowing in lies!” groaned the rector.
“When a lie can hurt no one, and can avert a terrible calamity, perjury can be no sin. God knows I have been punished enough.” Then, with a sudden anger and a burst of violence so unusual in his wife that it horrified the rector, she began to abuse her father, calling him every terrible, foolish name that came to her tongue.
“He shall pay the penalty of his fraud,” she cried. “Thief he calls me—well, it’s bred in the bone. Set a thief to catch a thief. I’ve run him to earth. He’ll have to lose hundreds of thousands, and more. 304 It will send him wild with terror. Think what that’ll mean! Think how he’ll cringe and whine and implore! It’ll be like plucking out his heart. I have the whip-hand of him now, and he shall dance to my tune. I shouldn’t be surprised if compulsory honesty and the restoration of ill-gotten wealth were to kill him.”