“Well, there’s one at twelve. We’ll get there before the bank shuts. You’ll not be able to see so much of the town.”
“I can live without that,” said Eddy.
“Well, Glasgow’s a very fine place,” said Archie gravely, not wishing to permit any disparagement of his native town: and then he rose from the table. He had already unconsciously pulled the newspaper half away, and as he rose up his movement displayed it altogether, and he could not help seeing, notwithstanding Eddy’s eager half-movement to cover it again, the cheque lying opened out upon the blotting-book underneath. He said hastily, “You were just going to send it away——”
“Yes,” said Eddy, his heart beating, not understanding the question, but seizing at it as he would have done at any means of escape.
“Then I just came in time,” said Archie, with a pleased smile.
Eddy took up the cheque, with a feeling of despair clutching at his heart. “You had better have it back,” he said.
“You can bring it up with you,” said Archie; “nobody is likely to ripe your pockets and see what’s in them in the middle of the night.”
With this enigmatical speech, which Eddy did not in the least understand, Rowland bade him a hurried good-night, and took himself away.
Ripe his pockets: what did that mean? but this problem did not occupy much of the precious time which Eddy had to give up to thinking. He found the pencil lying where he had left it, the cabalistic pencil which he had been waving over Archie’s cheque, hoping perhaps to convey thus into it the alterations which James Rowland could have made so easily, which would have cost that millionaire so little, and done Eddy such a world of advantage. A malison on all millionaires! What they might do with a sweep of the pen, without ever feeling it, without knowing that a crumb had fallen off their well-covered tables for a dog to eat! Eddy flung the pencil from him in his indignation. The fellow meant very well, he allowed that. There was advantage in keeping this little transaction quite dark, in obliterating all traces of the loan or gift given him in this way. But, confound the fellow, all the same! Eddy flung his pencil out of his hand, and it fell on the floor at the foot of the table where Archie had been sitting. The dumb articles that one throws away generally have a prompt revenge over us in having to be groped after next minute; and this was what happened to Eddy. But as he stooped to pick it up, his heart began to beat with a wild commotion which almost choked him: for there at the foot of the table, underneath the chair which Archie had pushed away, lay a long booklet in a green paper cover. There could be no doubt to the most ignorant what it was. It was Archie’s cheque book, which he had brought in, in case Eddy should, after all, have preferred his money that way, with a cheque written out for Archie’s spare fifty pounds on the first page, and a dozen more blank cheques behind. The blood mounted up to Eddy’s face. It came in such a rush that he could scarcely see for the moment; and yet he knew very well what it was, and the inconceivable opportunity which the devil—was it the devil, or that something not always benevolent which people call providence, had put into his hand?
He scarcely went to bed at all that night. Hosts, armies, legions of thoughts came up and possessed him like an invaded country, marching and counter-marching through his mind. It was not without a struggle that he yielded, it was not without many struggles. Half-a-dozen times at least he was the victor, and rejected conclusively, triumphantly, the idea set before him; and then the landscape would change, the perspective alter, and regrets, doubts, convictions that wrong was right, specious arguments to show how entirely it had always been so, would rise up and bring back the rushing tide of battle. And then there were things he had to do. He went to bed only when the morning grey had come up over the little town on the other side of the loch, bringing it out of the darkness with a curious furtive aspect, stealing into the light as if it had been lying in wait for this moment, which indeed was quite true. He tossed himself on his bed, and courted sleep ineffectually for half an hour, but after that time it came with all the force of a despot. He slept, as men or boys sleep only at twenty, till the day was bright all over the loch. At twenty! oh heavens, was that all the age he was, that haggard little grey face waking up and remembering in the great pale shining of the light.