“Oh, my friend Johnson! the beast—to call that fellow my friend!” cried Eddy in a more audible parenthesis.
“Eddy,” said Evelyn gravely, “in that respect you were very much to blame.”
“Oh, in every respect I am much to blame!” cried the young man, springing from his chair. The vehemence of his motion was such that Evelyn had to put up her hand to save the table against which he kicked in his rapid movement. He went across the room, and stood with his back to her, his shoulders up to his ears, his hands in his pockets, absorbed in his thoughts. And they were not pleasant thoughts: and they ranged over the widest space, the whole course of the future through which that cloud might ever be ready to fall: the horror of the consequences should they overtake him, the ruin of name and fame, the scandal and the catastrophe. It was not a thing which could be lived down, or which people could forget. All those arguments which are of so little use in the face of temptation, are of tremendous force when the deed is done, and nothing remains but the penalty to pay. His lively, quick intelligence, roused to rapid action, made its calculations with lightning speed: not unmoved by the thought of Archie in the strange jumble of selfish and unselfish motives—not untouched by the misery which had been produced on all sides.
He turned round again at the end of a few minutes, which seemed to Evelyn like so many years.
“Mr. Rowland has the cheque?” he said. “Would he give it to you, and could you burn it?”
“Eddy?”
“Do you think I am going out of my senses? But I am not. If he will give you the cheque and let you burn it, I will—clear it all up,” said Eddy with a gasp; “and make Archie’s innocence as clear as the day.”
“Eddy! Eddy!”
“Ah, you speak to me in a different tone now: your voice sounds like a blessing. But wait till you know, Mrs. Rowland; perhaps it will change again. I will not take your kind hand till after. I am not going to cheat you out of your sympathy. Look here,” he said, standing by her, “this is what you must do. Telegraph at once, ‘If you will give me cheque to destroy, full information will be given from quite different quarter.’ There,” he said, “that’s as concise as it can be made. I will come to your hotel at five, when you will have your answer, and bring—all that you want.”
“The proof,” she said, “that it was not Archie?”