This thought had made him severe to John, though not so severe as his father: and more open to conviction. His mind was at all times more open to conviction than that of his father: and when John had burst out of the office, in the first rage of his indignation, refusing to defend himself, Mr. William, as has been said, followed him to the door, calling him back, with a compunction which he could not get rid of. This compunction did nothing but go on increasing in the blank which followed that fiery scene. And the atmosphere in the pupil’s room affected Mr. William, too, though he was not aware of it. He had a consciousness that the lads were saying among themselves, in the slang of which all elder persons disapprove, that the bosses had made a thundering mistake. Had they made a mistake? He was, in his heart, of the same opinion as the pupil-room. He did not think that John Sandford had done this thing. Now that the flurry of discovery was over, he asked himself was it likely? had the young fellow ever done anything that looked the least like it? Had he not always been as steady as a rock, always honest and true, never neglecting his employers’ interests, carrying out their orders, as good a worker as could be? Was it likely he should turn round all at once? This thought worked in his mind silently, while those boys entertained each other with saying that the bosses had made a mistake: and it was greatly stimulated by the exasperating suggestion that Spender & Diggs might reap all the profit, and might go far ahead of Barretts in the struggle for fortune and fame. Would they go ahead of Barretts? He began to remember John’s start of surprise, his question as to who it was that had carried his papers to the other office, his look of enlightenment. If they had been stolen from him, and the papers which he had flung down on the table, were, as he had said, his original scheme, Spender & Diggs might not find it so easy to shoot ahead of Barretts. On the whole, thinking it over, it was more likely that Spender & Diggs had cheated than John. It would not be the first time. They might have put one of their men up to it, to find out what the young fellow was working at. Of course it soon got abroad among the lads what one was doing—and what more likely than that the rival firm, old hands at that sort of thing, people far more used to picking the brains of other people’s pupils than to developing talent among their own, what if they had secured possession of the copy of John’s scheme by one of the underhand ways with which they were familiar? On the whole, that was really more likely than that Sandford, a lad against whom nobody had a word to say, who had always behaved well, should have gone over, without rhyme or reason, to the enemy.
By dint of long-continued reasonings like this, William Barrett worked himself up by the time he left the office to seek another interview with John. He said to himself that he would put his pride in his pocket, and go after the young fellow, who no doubt was miserable, though he had so much pluck he would not show it. His heart smote him that he had not taken all these things into consideration before, and he had visions of young Sandford’s misery and despair, which affected even the middle-aged imagination of a man quite unused to anything heroical. He felt that his father had been unkind to John, which gave him at once an impulse and a motive for seeking the young man out—for, though he respected his father, the junior partner was generally more or less in opposition to him. All these things together made him determine to go after John, and have it out with him. He got his address almost stealthily, as not wishing anyone in the office to know until he saw what would come of it, and set out from the office a little earlier than usual that no time might be lost. He found the door open when he came to the house, and being himself somewhat excited, and beyond the rule of common laws, went in without ringing the bell; and, hearing voices in the first sitting-room he came to, knocked at the door. He was thus brought into the very midst of the agitated group which we have attempted to set before the reader at the climax of their excitement. The voices ceased, after a moment, but no attention was paid to Mr. Barrett’s knock. Something of the excitement that was in the air communicated itself to him.
‘Sandford,’ said William Barrett, putting his head in at the door.
They were all silent, staring at each other full of confused trouble, suspicion, and uncertainty. Even John felt vaguely, when the original question rose up before him in the sudden apparition of Mr. William Barrett’s grave face, that another matter had since arisen which swallowed up the first. The intruder who came in without invitation, feeling somehow that here was a crisis above conventional rules found that the interest centred like the high light in a picture in the countenance of the man who sat at the table, leaning on it, his whole person quivering with a tremulous movement like palsy, his face turned, pale, with a half-anxious, half-fatuous beseeching smile upon it to the other man standing opposite to him, who on his side looked from John to the new-comer and back again with a look of amazement and confusion. John himself stood half-stupefied between them, giving no more than a glance of recognition to his employer, occupied with more urgent affairs; and yet Mr. Barrett had good reason to know that his own mission to this youth who was so strangely daring his fate, was in one sense life and death.
‘Whom do you mean by John May? John May’s not a common name, neither is Sandford. Montressor, you’re stirring up all my life, and you know it. Most things I can bear well enough. I’ve gone through a great deal. I’m hardened to most things—but not—not—to my little boy’s name. You’ve got a child of your own, and you ought to know. I’ve not seen that little chap for fourteen years. I don’t know where he is now, if he’s living or if he’s dead, and yet once he was the apple of my eye. Montressor, what do you mean with your play-acting and your stage tricks, bandying about what was the name of my little boy?’
John Sandford stood listening to these words which came out, with pauses between, in a voice which was full of real feeling, a voice so different from the easy sophistry, the humorous self-contempt, the confused philosophy which were its usual utterance—with sensations indescribable, and something like a moral overturn of his whole being: vague recollections, suggestions from the past, horrible fears, doubts, certainties, confusion, rose up in him, enveloping him like a mist. He cared no more for William Barrett than if he had been an office-boy; he forgot all the question about the Thames Valley. These things, though he had felt them half-an-hour ago to be the most momentous in the world, departed from him as if they had never been. He stood, scarcely able to see for the haze of feverish excitement that had got into his eyes, staring blindly, with all his faculties concentrated in that of hearing, listening for what would come next.
‘Sir,’ said Montressor, ‘ye do me wrong. The drama is the drama, and I love it; but stage business is not, as ye say, for common life. Me own name I don’t deny, if all were laid bare, is perhaps not Montressor. But the poor player is likewise a man. Had I any stage effect in me mind when I told ye there was one of your own name I would recommend ye to? here he stands, and a young fellow any man might be proud of. The first time I set eyes on him he saved me chyild’s life—judge if I was likely to forget his name. This, me poor friend, is John May.’
‘That’s nonsense as I can testify,’ said William Barrett, breaking in bluntly. ‘I don’t know who your friends are, Sandford, and perhaps I ought to beg your pardon for interfering; but you’re very young though you’re not perhaps aware of it. Come, gentlemen, if you’ve got any hold upon this young man I shall be glad to answer your questions about him, and let him attend to his business. He is in fact my pupil, and it’s not to my interest his mind should be disturbed from his work. Whatever stories you may have heard I must know more about him than you do. His name is Sandford. He was placed by his mother in our hands.’
‘Sir,’ said Montressor, with dignity, ‘these are me friends, both the young man and the old. I do not turn to strangers to ask for information concerning me friends. Ye may be well meaning, but ye are ignorant—and I find ye intrusive,’ said the actor, turning away with a wave of his hand.
‘Sandford!’ cried William Barrett. Capitals could not do justice to the injured majesty of this cry. Intrusive! In the rooms of a pupil taken without a premium (that even he remembered in the shock of the indignity), such a word to be applied to him!