“The Bank of Scotland, sir, is not like your Glasgow Banks,” said the visitor, with some severity, for he was an east country man. He paused a little, and then he took from the breast pocket of his overcoat a case, and from that a piece of paper. “Will you tell me if this is your signature?” he said.
It was a cheque for a thousand pounds—a cheque crumpled and refolded in diverse ways, as if it had already passed through several hands. Rowland took it with great surprise, and held it to the light.
“My signature?” he said.
It was mere bewilderment, not intuition, which kept him silent as he examined the writing; and then there sprang a sudden flutter and dart of anguish through his heart, which he neither understood nor could account for.
“It looks like my signature—why do you ask such a question?”
He said this, scarcely knowing why, to gain time: though he could not have told why he wanted to gain time.
“God be thanked!” said the stranger. “You lift a load from my mind. It was paid yesterday by one of our young clerks; but our attention was not called to it till to-day. On comparing it with your usual signature, we felt a doubt; and the cheque itself was unlike you. It was not crossed—it was drawn to nobody’s order; and it’s a considerable sum, Mr. Rowland—nothing to you—but to most people a considerable sum. If you say it’s all right, you will lift a load from my mind. It was young Farquhar that paid it—a fine young fellow. And his career would be spoiled——”
These words came in a sort of strange mist to Rowland’s mind. He was standing all the time with the cheque in his hands, holding it to the light. Everything external was in a mist to him, both what he saw and what he heard. The very cheque, with that signature “James Rowland” sprawling on it as his own signature sprawled, seemed to float in the air. But within his mind, everything was acute and clear—a great anguish rending him as with a serpent’s fangs—a dart through all his veins, dull in his heart like a stone, violent in his head, as if all the blood had gone there to throb and knell in his ears, and beat like a hammer in his temples. All the time he was standing with his back to the ill-omened messenger, holding the cheque as if he were examining it, in his hands.
His voice, when he spoke, had a dull and thick sound, and he did not turn round, but remained as if fixed in that position, with the cheque stretched out in both his hands, and his head bent to get the light upon it.
“I needn’t trouble you any more,” he said; “the cheque’s—all right. It was drawn for a special purpose; it is nothing to me, as you say.”