“I am the culprit, John. I altered them.”
“You?”
“Yes, John. Don’t look at me like that. Father was outrageous. There was no money to be got from him, and I had no other course. Your bankruptcy would have meant your downfall. That dressmaker woman was inexorable. You would have been sued by your stock-broker, and—who knows what wretchedness was awaiting us?—perhaps absolute beggary in obscure lodgings, and our daily bread purchased with money begged from our friends. You know what father is: you know how he hates both you and me, how he would rub salt into our wounds, and gloat over our humiliation. If—if Dick hadn’t gone to the front—”
“Mary, Mary, what are you saying! You have robbed your father of money instead of facing the result of our follies bravely? You have sent our boy to the war—with money filched by a felony! 153 Don’t touch me! Stand away! No; I thought you were a good woman!”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t realize.”
“You are not a child, without knowledge of the ways of the world. You must have known what you were doing.”
“I thought that father would never know,” she faltered, chokingly. “He hoards his money, and a few thousands more or less would make no difference to him. There was every chance that he would never discover the loss. It was as much mine as his. He has thousands that belonged to my mother, which he cheated me out of. I added words and figures to the checks, like the fool that I was, not using the same ink that father used for the signatures, and—and the bank found out.”
“Horrible! horrible! But what has this to do with poor Dick? Why do people turn away from me and stammer at the mention of his name, as though they were ashamed? He, poor boy, knew nothing of all this.”
“John, John, you don’t understand yet!” she whispered, creeping nearer to him, with extended hands, ready to entwine her arms about his neck. He retreated, white-faced and terrified, thinking of the serpent in Eden and the woman who tempted. She was tempting him now, coming nearer to wind her soft arms about him and hold him close, so that 154 he would be powerless, as he always was when her breath was on his cheek, and her eyes pleading for a bending of his stern principles before her more-worldly needs.
She held him tight-clasped to her until he could feel the beating of her heart and the heaving of her bosom against his breast. It was thus that she had often cajoled him to buy things that he could not afford, to entertain people that he would rather not see, to indulge his children in vanities and follies against his better judgment, to desert his plain duty to his Church in favor of some social inanity. She was always tempting, caressing, and charming him with playful banter when he would be serious, weakening him when he would be strong, coaxing him to play when he would have worked. He had been as wax in her hands; but hitherto her sins had been little ones, and chiefly sins of omission.