“What can you expect, Saunders, after a ball? You can tell Mrs. Rowland I would like to see her as soon as she has a moment to spare.”
It was so then; without remedy. Archie had gone—gone—not fled; that could never be said of him; gone to wait for the police coming to arrest him for forgery, as if that would ever be. God! his boy—Mary’s boy—the only son; whom the ladies had been praising so for his conduct last night; whom Lady Jean, they said—Lady Jean who was so ill to please, who was not an easy person—and he was gone. Rowland felt his heart in his breast as heavy as a stone. It had been beating very irregularly, sometimes loudly, sometimes quieted down for a moment, now it seemed to stop and lie heavy, like a stone. He waited till he heard the ladies’ voices die away, the men come out to the door where Roderick was awaiting them, and saw the start from his window, himself unseen, feeling a kind of contempt in his misery for the men who are so easily amused. Old men, too: Sir John, as old as himself, so easily amused! but then, perhaps, there was no son in this case to make his father’s life a burden to him. “Has he daughters?” old Lear said, as if a man had no right to be mad who had not. As for Sir John, tramping along in his knickerbockers, an older man than Rowland, he had no son; and yet the father, unhappy, felt a sort of contempt for him so easily amused, while others were too sick at heart to bear the light. He went out of his room when the coast was clear, and went to Archie’s room, which lay in the disorder it had been found in by the servant who went to call him in the morning: the drawers all open, the things thrown about. Nothing could be more dismal than the aspect of the room in this abandonment. It is terrible at all times to enter the empty room of any one whom we love, especially when its owner is sick or in trouble. The unused bed cold, as if it were never to be employed more; the air of vacancy; the emptiness and silence, have an effect of suggestion more overwhelming than any simple fact. And Archie’s room was not only empty, it was abandoned. His father turned over the things upon the table in the miserable preoccupation of his mind, not knowing what he did, and then lifted a handful of papers, including Archie’s cheque-book, which was lying there. How careless of Archie, he said, mechanically, as he carried them away. There was no real intention of carrying them away. He had not, indeed, thought on the subject at all, but took them up almost unawares.
Evelyn put her hand within his arm as he crossed the hall to his room, and accompanied him there. She told him that Archie had gone, but in what temper and disposition, softened, as she thought and hoped, and he listened with his head bent down, saying nothing. He was angry, yet he was soothed that she should be on Archie’s side. “You take his part against your husband,” he said roughly, but he loved her better for it than if she had taken his part against his son. There are artifices of the heart which it is well to know. And he sat heavily thinking for some time after she had ended her tale. Then he said abruptly, “I gave you yon cheque to keep. Give it me back, please.”
Evelyn opened the drawer of a little ornamental escritoire, in which she had locked that fatal paper, and gave it to her husband. Rowland was a strong man, and he was not emotional, but the sight of the two round marks which were on the paper with broken edges, when the tears had pleaded unawares with their weight of saltness and bitterness the rage and horror of the boy accused, was more than he could bear. He put it down hastily on the table, and for a moment covered his face with his hands. Those tears which anguish and shame had forced from his boy’s eyes—who could have seen them unmoved? There was a relenting, a melting, a thawing of horrible ice about his heart. “If he was guilty,” he said, in a faltering voice. “Evelyn, if he was guilty, do you think——”
She went and stood behind him, drawing his head against her breast. “You could but forgive him,” she said, very low; “at the worst—at the worst.”
“Come,” he said, after that moment of emotion; “it is just a question of business after all. This was never taken from any book of mine. You see the difference—.” He opened a drawer and drew out his cheque-book, pointing to her the numbers. The cheque was numbered in much more advanced numerals than Mr. Rowland’s book. “That’s nothing in itself,” he added, “for I might have borrowed a cheque from some one, or got it at the bank, if I had been wanting for money then. I might have got it from—anybody that banks there. Archie—I might have got it from Archie.” As he spoke his eye fell suddenly upon his son’s cheque-book which he had brought from the empty room. He took it up and opened it almost with a smile. But the first glance struck him with a strange alarm. He gave a frightened look up at her, throwing back his head for a moment, then began slowly to turn over the pages. What an office that was! Evelyn stood behind, looking over his shoulder, feeling that the moment of intolerable crisis had come.
The smile was fixed upon his face; it changed its character, and got to be the cynical smile of a demon upon that honest face. Over and over went the quivering long leaves of the pink cheques in his trembling fingers, and then——
“James, James!”
He put it in the place from which it had been torn, a scrap of the perforated line had been left on the side of the foil, and fitted with the horrible precision of such things. He laid it there exact, rag to rag, then gave her a triumphant glance, and broke into a fit of dry and awful laughter, such as the trembling woman, whom he pushed away from him, had never heard before.
“There!” he said, “there! and what do you think of that, and your brave young hero now?”