Sevenoaks: A Story of Today

by J. G. Holland

Mr. Belcher saw the change in her, but was too gross in his nature, too blind in his passion, and too vain in his imagined power, to comprehend it. She was a woman, and had her whims, he thought. Whims were evanescent, and this particular whim would pass away. He was vexed by seeing the boy so constantly with her. He met them walking together in the street, or straying in the park, hand in hand, or caught the lad looking at him from her window. He could not doubt that all this intimacy was approved by Mr. Balfour. Was she playing a deep game? Could she play it for anybody but himself—the man who had taken her heart by storm? Her actions, however, even when interpreted by his self-conceit, gave him uneasiness. She had grown to be very kind and considerate toward Mrs. Belcher. Had this friendship moved her to crush the passion for her husband? Ah! if she could only know how true he was to her in his untruthfulness!—how faithful he was to her in his perjury!—how he had saved himself for the ever-vanishing opportunity!

Many a time the old self-pity came back to the successful scoundrel. Many a time he wondered why the fate which had been so kind to him in other things would not open the door to his wishes in this. With this unrewarded passion gnawing at his heart, and with the necessity of treating the wife of his youth with constantly increasing consideration, in order to cover it from her sight, the General was anything but a satisfied and happy man. The more he thought upon it, the more morbid he grew, until it seemed to him that his wife must look through his hypocritical eyes into his guilty heart. He grew more and more guarded in his speech. If he mentioned Mrs. Dillingham's name, he always did it incidentally, and then only for the purpose of showing that he had no reason to avoid the mention of it.

There was another thought that preyed upon him. He was consciously a forger. He had not used the document he had forged, but he had determined to do so. Law had not laid its finger upon him, but its finger was over him. He had not yet crossed the line that made him legally a criminal, but the line was drawn before him, and only another step would be necessary to place him beyond it. A brood of fears was gathering around him. They stood back, glaring upon him from the distance; but they only waited another act in his career of dishonor to crowd in and surround him with menace. Sometimes he shrank from his purpose, but the shame of being impoverished and beaten spurred him renewedly to determination. He became conscious that what there was of bravery in him was sinking into bravado. His self-conceit, and what little he possessed of self-respect, were suffering. He dimly apprehended the fact that he was a rascal, and it made him uncomfortable. It ceased to be enough for him to assure himself that he was no more a rascal than those around him. He reached out on every side for means to maintain his self-respect. What good thing could he do to counterbalance his bad deeds? How could he shore himself up by public praise, by respectable associations, by the obligations of the public for deeds of beneficence? It is the most natural thing in the world for the dishonest steward, who cheats his lord, to undertake to win consideration against contingencies with his lord's money.

On the same evening in which the gathering at the Sevenoaks tavern occurred, preceding Jim's wedding, Mr. Belcher sat in his library, looking over the document which nominally conveyed to him the right and title of Paul Benedict to his inventions. He had done this many times since he had forged three of the signatures, and secured a fraudulent addition to the number from the hand of Phipps. He had brought himself to believe, to a certain extent, in their genuineness, and was wholly sure that they were employed on behalf of justice. The inventions had cost Benedict little or no money, and he, Mr. Belcher, had developed them at his own risk. Without his money and his enterprise they would have amounted to nothing. If Benedict had not lost his reason, the document would have been legally signed. The cause of Benedict's lapse from sanity did not occur to him. He only knew that if the inventor had not become insane, he should have secured his signature at some wretched price, and out of this conviction he reared his self-justification.

"It's right!" said Mr. Belcher. "The State prison may be in it, but it's right!"

And then, confirming his foul determination by an oath, he added:

"I'll stand by it."

Then he rang his bell, and called for Phipps.

"Phipps," said he, as his faithful and plastic servitor appeared, "come in, and close the door."

When Phipps, with a question in his face, walked up to where Mr. Belcher was sitting at his desk, with the forged document before him, the latter said: