It was a long time before John had sufficiently calmed himself down, and got the mastery of those whirling circles of ever-recurring thought which almost maddened him at first, to face the situation as it now stood. At first, and for a long time, it appeared to him that ruin as complete as it was undeserved had overwhelmed him; his good fame seemed to be gone, and the bitterness of the thought that people who knew him, and knew him so well, and who had years of experience of his integrity and faithful service, should have at once believed him guilty of such treachery, seemed to drown him in a hopeless flood; for how should he convince strangers of his honour if they had no faith in it? or how attempt to clear himself professionally when two of the chief authorities in his profession believed him to have behaved so? Would it be the best way, the only way, to shake the dust from off his feet and rush away to the end of the world where a man could work, if it were the roughest navvy work, and be free from false accusation and the horror of seeing himself falsely condemned. But, then, Elly! John plunged again deeper than ever into that blackness of darkness. He had boasted in his self-confidence of the success which was awaiting him, of the certainty of his prospects. He remembered now how Mrs. Egerton had shaken her head. And now here he stood with his success turned into failure, his confidence into despair; the people who knew him best refusing to hear him. He had no fear that Elly would refuse to hear him; but who else would believe? They would not, indeed, believe that he had been treacherous, or played a villain’s part, as the Barretts did; but they would think that he had mistaken his own powers, that he was not what he imagined, that his account of himself was a boy’s brag, and not a sober estimate of what he knew he could do. And how convince them, how remedy the evil? Was it possible that any remedy would ever be found?
He had gained a little calm when he began to ask himself this question. Out of the whirl of painful thoughts and passionate entanglement of all the perplexities round him, he suddenly came to a clear spot from which he could look behind and after. He found himself on the bridge crossing the river, having got there he scarcely knew how, coming back in the direction of the office and of his lodgings after a feverish round through all the noise of London. As he walked across the bridge, there suddenly came to him a recollection of his first beginning—how he had paused there with the letter in his hand with which he had been sent to the Messrs. Barrett by his mother. He had paused, angry and wounded and sore, and looked down upon the outward-bound ships, and for a moment had thought of forsaking this cold, unkindly world in which he had no longer any home or anyone who loved him, of tossing the letter into the river and going his own way, and taking upon himself the responsibility of his own life. He had not carried out that wild resolution. He had swallowed all his repugnances, his pride, his rebellious feelings, and accepted the more dutiful way: and till now he had never repented that decision. He paused again, and before him lay the same great stream leading out into the unknown, the same ships ready to carry him thither, into a world all strange, where nobody would know John Sandford had ever been accused of falsehood. The repetition of this scene and suggestion gave him a certain shock, and brought him back sharply to himself. John Sandford, John May—he had not then been sure which he was—his heart had risen against the woman who was his mother, who had distrusted him and taken from him his father’s name. Now he was more or less ashamed of the boyish rashness which had set him against her decision in this respect. He was John Sandford now, beyond any question. What if, perhaps, this fever of indignation and despair which was in his veins might die down and pass away, as the other had done?
This brought him back to more particular questions. He had felt no doubt from the first moment as to what had really happened: that the man whom he had so foolishly trusted, whom he had no reason to trust, had played him false, and carried off the copy which John had given him to do, out of what had appeared to him pure benevolence, Christian charity—to the rival firm. That was perfectly clear to him, though in his indignation and fury he would not pause to explain. If it was explained ever so, it would not restore the scheme thus betrayed to its original importance, or place it, as he had intended, in all its novelty and originality and ingeniousness, in the hands best able to carry it out. In any case, his secret was broken, his ideas exposed to curious and eager competitors who might, and probably would, take instant advantage of them. John still felt that he was ruined, however it might turn out. And yet he might clear his honour at least, and show how he had been himself betrayed. He had begun to acknowledge this possibility, to breathe more freely, to feel the fumes of passion dispersing, and the real landscape, chilled and grey with all the rosy illusions of hope disappearing, yet still real and solid under his feet, once more coming into his sight, when he became suddenly aware of an approaching figure, very unwelcome, most undesirable to meet at such a moment, yet not to be ignored. Why should he turn up precisely now, that chance acquaintance to whom John had committed himself in the impatience of his boyhood, and with whom he had a sort of irregular, fictitious intercourse, more congenial to Montressor’s profession and ways than to his own? It brought a sort of ludicrous element into his trouble to meet this man, to whom he was not himself but another, a being who had never existed save for that one night on which he had enacted a sort of little single-scene tragic-comedy as John May. Montressor was not a person to be eluded: he came forward with his hands stretched out, his shiny hat bearing down over the heads of the other passengers upon John, as if it had been a flag carried aloft, with the directest and straightest impulse.
‘Me dear young friend,’ he said, ‘me brave boy! how glad I am to see ye.’
Montressor was a little better dressed than usual. The shiny hat was new, or almost new, though it had somehow caught the characteristics of the old one. His coat was good, his well-brushed aspect no longer giving so distinct an accentuation to his shabbiness. He put his arm within John’s in the fervour of having much to say.
‘Fate’s been good to me,’ he said, ‘and when it’s so in great things ’tis also in small. Here have I been watching for ye, wondering would ye pass hereabouts, to tell ye, me young friend, that once again good luck has come Montressor’s way.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said John; but what he felt was only a sort of dull half pang additional, a sense that good luck might now come in anyone’s way save his, which was closed to it for evermore.
‘That I’m sure of,’ said the actor, ‘it isn’t very much we’ve seen of ye, John May, and I don’t even know where to find ye. To tell the truth, in me shabbiness and me poverty I didn’t care to know: for meeting you in the street is one thing and pursuing you to your lodging is another. No. Montressor was not one to shame his friends, even though ’twas virtuous poverty. But rejoice with me, me young friend—that phase is over, never, I hope, to come me way again.’
‘Have you got an engagement?’ asked John, wondering and reflecting upon the shabbiness which was as pronounced as ever one short week before.
‘Better than that,’ said the actor. He put his hand to his eyes with a mixture of fiction yet reality. ‘Me eyes are full and so’s my heart. Pardon me, young man. Once you saved her life—never knowing that small thing was the future Rachel, the future Siddons. Me dear friend! it is Edie that has an engagement. Edie, me chyild!’