“Oh,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, “how am I to tell him? Oh, how am I to tell him? Frank, we have always said, when we came into the Scotch money, all would be well. I thought it was such a fine sum, that we should throw off all our debts, and be really rich as you say. Oh, that is only a dream, Frank, like so many things we have trusted in! There will be scarcely any money. You may well start and stare at me. Oh, Frank, I that thought as soon as it came, all our difficulties would be over, and we should be quite right.”
“What difficulties?” said Frank, “what difficulties, mother? I always thought we were well off.”
“This has been the aim of my life,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “that you should never find out any difficulties, that everything should go as if it were on velvet; and then when the Scotch money came, that all would be right. I did not think then that all Mr. Anderson’s fine fortune had been frittered away—I did not tell you that, Frank—by defaulters.”
She liked the word: there was something vague and large in it: it meant something more than debtors: “defaulters,” she said again, and shook her head.
“What in the world do you mean, mother? Who are the defaulters, and what have they to do with me?”
“Mr. Anderson’s money has been frittered away,” she said. “He lent it to everybody; and instead of preserving their notes, or their bills, or whatever it was, he threw them into the fire, I suppose. And nobody paid. I believe half St. Rule’s is built on old Mr. Anderson’s money, the money that ought to be yours. But he never kept the papers, and none of them have been so honourable as to pay.”
Frank stared at his mother with a bewildered face. He had never managed his own affairs. For a year or two past, he had begun to think that this was foolish, and that he might perhaps, if he tried, learn to understand business as well as his mother; but he had never had the strength of mind to assert himself. He had received an ample allowance from her hands, and he had tacitly agreed that until the Scotch property became his, everything should go on as before. But it had always been understood, that when he attained his Scotch majority, there was to be a change. His Scotch majority was to be a great day. All the hoards of his old uncle were then to come into his hands. Retarded manhood, independence, and wealth were all to be his. And now what was this he heard, that these hoards of money were frittered away? He could not at once understand or grasp what it meant. He stared at his mother with bewildered eyes.
“I wish you would tell me what you mean,” he said. “What has happened? Is it something you have found out? Is there anything that can be done? I cannot believe that all the property is lost.”
“There is one thing that can be done, Frank. If we can find out the defaulters, we can still make them pay up. But we must make haste, for in another year the Statute of Limitations will come in, and they will be beyond our reach.”
“What is the Statute of Limitations? and how can we make them pay up? And what does it mean altogether?” said the disturbed young man. “Mother, you should not have let me go on like this, knowing nothing about it. I ought to have known. And how am I to find them out and make them pay up? You that have always managed everything, you ought to have done it.”