There was a momentary pause; and then William Barrett broke forth again.
‘What’s the use of talking of motives and reasons and why you did it? Evidently you did do it, and there’s an end of the matter.’
‘And of our connection,’ said his father. ‘A young man that’s so false to his employers can have no more to do in our works or our office.’
‘As you please, sir,’ said John. He had made a pause of indignation, staring at his accusers, dumb with the passion of a thousand things he had to say—but what was the use? He shut his lips close, growing crimson with the strong effort of self-restraint. ‘I am sorry this should be the end,’ he said, controlling himself desperately, ‘but, of course, if that is your opinion, I have nothing to say. Good-bye, sir,’ the young man cried, unable to keep back that Parthian arrow, ‘it must be a pleasure to you that I have justified your certainty, and gone to the bad at the end.’
‘Sandford!’ said William Barrett, as John hurried out; but the young man was too much excited to pay any attention. The junior partner followed him to the door of the office calling after him, ‘Sandford—I say Sandford—Sandford!’
But John paid no attention. He rushed downstairs two or three steps at a time, and over the threshold which he had crossed so often with the familiarity of every day life. His feet spurned it now. He seemed to be shaking the dust from him as the rejected messengers were to do in the Gospel. No better servant had ever been, no more dutiful pupil, and he was conscious of this. He had never been without a thought indeed of advancement in his own person, of carrying out a work of his own: but all his knowledge, the knowledge acquired out of their limits in the privacy of his own self-denying and studious youth, had been at the service of his masters and teachers unreservedly at all times. He had never thought of sparing himself, of doing as little as was possible, which was the way of many of his fellow-pupils. He had done always as much as was in him, freely and with devotion. And as the climax of so many faithful years, he had brought to them this first fruits of his maturing thought, this plan so long cogitated, which had been to him what a poem is to a poet—the work in which all his faculties, not only of calculation and practical reason, but of thought and imagination had been concentrated. It was to be the climax, and now it was the end. Instead of sharing his honours with them and bringing them substantial profit, as he intended, he was sent forth with shame as a traitor, a false servant, a disloyal man. John’s heart burned within him as, holding his head high, and spurning the very ground, he marched out of that familiar place.
The sting of injustice was sharp in his soul. He said to himself that he would offer no further defence, that he would not attempt to prove the deception that had been put upon him, or how it was that he had been robbed at once of his scheme and honour. If it could be believed for a moment by people who had known him for years that he was so guilty, he would make no attempt to explain. If ever an accusation was unlikely, unreasonable, inconsistent with every law, it was this.
CHAPTER IV.
DEFEATED AND WRONGED.
He had walked a long way before he came to himself out of those whirling circles of thought in which the mind gets involved when it is suddenly stung by a great wrong, or startled by a poignant incident. With this strong pressure upon him, he had gone right away into the Strand, and along that busy line of streets into the din and crowds of the city, feeling, like a deaf man, that the noise around made it more possible to hear the voice of his own thoughts, and to endure the clangour of his heart beating in his ears. He walked fast, not turning to the right nor to the left, straight through the bewildering throng in which every man had his own little world of incident, of sentiment, and feeling undisturbed by the contact of others on every side.
At first it had been the keen tooth of that wrong, the undeserved disgrace that had fallen upon him, which had occupied all his sensations. But by degrees other thoughts came in. He had left Edgeley in haste to strike his blow for fortune and reputation, though he was so young, to qualify himself for a new phase of life, to put himself nearer at least to the level of Elly, to justify his own pretensions to her. The scene in Mrs. Egerton’s room suddenly flashed before him as he walked, adding another and yet sharper blow to that which he had already received. He had said that he would succeed, that he should be rich, that he had the ball at his foot. This morning when he came out of his lodgings he had felt the ball at his foot. How could it be otherwise? He knew the value of his own work. It was a work much wanted, upon which the comfort of a district, the value of the property in it, and the lives of its inhabitants might depend. And he felt convinced that he had hit upon the right way of remedying this fault of nature which had given so much trouble and cost so much suffering. What hours and hours he had thought of it and turned it over! What quires of paper he had covered with his calculations! It did not perhaps seem romantic work; but all the poetry in John’s nature had gone into it. It had been Elly’s work, too, though Elly could not have done one of all those endless mathematical exercises. It had occupied his mind for two at least of those early lovely years in which imagination is so sweet: and his imaginations had been sweet, though they had to do, you would have said, with things not lovely, cuttings and embankments, and drawings, and figures upon figures, armies of them, calculations without end. His very walks and the exercise he took, the boating which was his favourite recreation when he had any time, had all been inspired and accompanied by this. While he waited outside a lock, he was busy calculating its fall, and the weight and force of the water, and studying the banks high or low, for his purpose. He had grown learned in the formations of the district, in its geology and its productions with the same motive. He had marked unconsciously where wood could be got at and bricks made for the future works, and when his eye travelled over the river flats to the line of cottages with dull lines upon their lower storey, showing the flood-mark to which the water had risen, there rose in him a fine fervour as he thought that by-and-by all such dangers should come to an end. Thoughts frivolous and unworthy, the light and trifling mental dissipations that beguile young minds, and the insidious curiosities and temptations with which they play, were all crowded out by these imaginations, which were so practical, so professional, so enthusiastic, so full of the poetry of reality. This was the way in which many months had been occupied. And now——!