“Even admitting all this,” began Otto, feeling his unwilling way, “you are not really liable. The law does not recognize gambling liabilities. They are not recoverable.” He stumbled over his sentences, thinking aloud.
“Law!” exclaimed Gerard. “Law! I was thinking of the other extreme—honor.”
“And you were a minor at the time, besides. Neither legally, nor should I say morally, responsible. It must been an act of madness.” He gazed in front of him, troubled, questioning, full of incertitude.
“I thought you understood,” said Gerard, haughtily, “that it was an affair between gentlemen. It has nothing to do with moral or legal responsibility.” He stood still. “I bound myself to meet this claim, if able, when called upon. The trust is a sacred one. By accepting it I saved my dead friend’s life.” Even amid the deep seriousness of his mood he smiled at the Irishism, just as his father would have done. “I am not going to desert him now.”
“Gerard, God knows I don’t want you to do anything ungentlemanly,” cried Otto, despairingly. “I am only thinking. Let me think. You say the sum is an enormous one. What do you call enormous?” His voice trembled with apprehension.
“It’s ninety thousand florins, if you want to know,” replied Gerard, in a moody murmur. The sombre room grew very silent. Outside the window nearest them a sparrow was pecking, pertly, at the sill.
“I thought so,” said Otto, scornfully, “I thought you had ruined yourself; it seemed so natural. I understood it at once, and that made me look round for the tiniest loophole of possible escape. Gerard, it seems to me you have but the choice of dishonors. Against the memory of your friend I pit that of your father. You cannot possibly do justice to both.” He was desperate, feeling the hopelessness of compromise.
“The will is absurd!” burst out Gerard—“absurd! He cannot have meant it absolutely, only as far as was practicable. Do you really want to make out that he intended both of us to starve, in the midst of our acres of corn-fields? I won’t believe it; and if he did, why, poor father must have been under some momentary delusion! Wills are always taken to be binding so far as circumstances will allow. Our father meant us not to sell more of the land than was absolutely necessary. He meant us—”
Otto faced round. “I understand perfectly what our father meant,” he said, and there was a roll of suppressed thunder through his patient words. “To me his aspirations do not seem unreasonable or absurd. They are my own.”