“That is true enough,” said his father, in a slightly softened tone. “It was of course your first duty: but—is this story she tells me true?”
“She is very little likely,” said Archie, “to tell anything that is not true; but I don’t know what she has told you.”
“She says—that she asked you to help a poor comrade of yours who is ill, and must go away to save his life, and that you refused—is that true?”
Archie stood in the vacant space formed by the recess, turning his face towards his father—pale, miserable, half-defiant, without a word to say.
“Is that true?” said Rowland, his voice pealing through the hall. It disturbed the whole party, drawing their attention from their letters. Mrs. Rowland looked up with an air half of terror, half of compassion. “James, James!” she said in a low voice.
“Let alone, Evelyn! you don’t understand. Do you hear me, sir? come forward; don’t skulk, as you are always doing. Is it true?”
Archie made a step forward, his brows bent over his eyes, his head sunk between his shoulders. He saw them all turning to him—his stepmother, with a compassionate look, which he could tolerate less than if it had been the triumph and satisfaction which he believed she felt; Rosamond raising her head from the letter she was reading with a half-contemptuous surprise; and Eddy! Eddy in the background, unseen by any, sending over their heads a look of half-amused, half-sympathetic comment, opening his eyes wide and raising his eyebrows. Eddy looked—not as if he had anything to do with it, but as if partly indignant, partly astonished, yet as good as saying—that is just as they all do.
“Yes,” said Archie, at last; “it is true.”
His father began, with an exclamation, to speak, but recalled to himself by another low but emphatic call from his wife, “James, James!” restrained himself. He gave Archie, however, a look, under which the unfortunate young man fell back, feeling as if something had struck him to his heart. Oh, the contempt in it, the indignation, as of something unworthy a word! and to know that he did not deserve it, and yet have his lips sealed and nothing to say for himself. It was almost harder to bear than any fury of reproach. Archie felt himself shamed in the way in which shame was most bitter, and in the presence of those who made his disgrace most terrible to bear—the girl whom he admired with a kind of adoration, and the woman whom he hated without knowing why. As he stood there, drawn back a step, lowering, gloomy, his eyes sunk in their sockets, he looked the picture of conscious meanness, and almost guilt. And such he appeared to his father, whose passion of disappointment and rage of offended affection was scarcely to be restrained. Rowland got up from his seat abruptly and went into the library, which was the room he used. He came back in a minute or two, holding a cheque in his hand, which he tossed at his son, as he had once tossed the twenty-pound note. “Send that,” he said, “to your aunt for your friend.” He walked back towards his place, then turned again, and adding, “By to-day’s post,” sat down with his face towards the fire.
Archie stood for a moment with the cheque lying at his feet. All the old rebellion rose within his heart. It was more bitter this time than the last. Should he leave it there lying, the wretched money, and turn his back upon his father, who even when he was kind was so in scorn, and flung the help for the friend, whom he believed Archie had refused to help, as he would have flung a bone to a dog. Should he go and leave it, and turn his back upon this house for ever? There was a moment’s struggle, very bitter and sore, in Archie’s breast: and then he remembered Colin, the pale-faced lad, whose illness, it had been no great surprise, but so overwhelming a blow to hear of, just at the moment when he had made himself incapable of helping him. Then he stooped down, and picking up the paper went to the writing-table and wrote a hasty letter, stooping over the blotting-book as he stood. “Aunt Jane,” he wrote, “you have done me a very ill turn, but I do not blame you: and my father will perhaps end by driving me desperate; and most likely you will none of you ever know the reason. But here’s the money for Colin Lamont, though it’s been flung at my head, like the time before, and though I have not even you to take my part now. Anyhow it will be good for him. His is a better case, however ill he is, than mine.—A. Rowland.”