“You have told him, Janet?”
“No a moment too soon—just as you were coming. Let the laddie be, let him come to himself. And what was it you were doing? Did she—or you——?”
“I have given her a fright that will put a stop to that,” he said, with a strange laugh, hard and harsh: and then he flung himself into a chair, throwing off a dark cloak in which he had been wrapped from head to foot. He added after a moment with a groan, “The way of transgressors is hard!” and hid his face in his hands.
Fred had not moved nor said a word, neither had this strange intruder, save for one glance, taken any notice of him. The young man stood up against the wall, supporting himself by it in a sort of conscious swoon and suspense of being. A moment is like an hour in such a horror of discovery; the idea that was too dreadful to entertain becomes possible, certain, familiar, before you have had time to draw a second breath. His father not dead—not a shameful suicide to cheat the insurance companies as his son had once feared—but a still more shameful survivor, having cheated them, having saved his family and cleared his name by the most dreadful, the most false of frauds, the most tremendous of lies. Fred’s whole being surged up like a stormy sea in fierce and violent reaction as soon as he got command again of his stunned faculties—he who had suffered so much misery from the thought that his father had taken his own life in his despair, but who had of late become so tender of his memory, so indignant with those who forgot or were faithless to him! And lo, all his pangs were unnecessary, all his love deceived, and here was the man, living!—a swindler, and a cheat, worse than a bankrupt—having saved his reputation and the comfort of his family by a cheat, the worst of frauds, the most disgraceful. Fred had been ready to defy the world for his father when he came upstairs that evening. He turned now with loathing from the name. Father! What did the word mean?—a cheat, a swindler, the most prodigious and incredible of liars. The youth was hard, as youth is, stern and inexorable. He took nothing into account, neither the motive nor the tremendous sacrifice involved, nor least of all the thought that he himself had profited by this dreadful act. Profited?—he?—Fred? His first act must be to denounce the fraud, to offer restitution. The man should escape first—that he would allow, but no more.
Old Janet came up to him and laid her hand upon his shoulder. “Oh, Mr. Fred, are you not going to say a word to him?—not a word of kindness? Oh, Mr. Fred, your father! that has sacrificed just everything in the world.”
“I have no father,” said Fred hoarsely. “My father is dead.”
The unfortunate man raised his head from his hands, and the familiar eyes, the eyes that had smiled upon the boy’s childhood, but which smiled no more, tragic in the misery of a renunciation which was more bitter—but, alas! not honourable like death—turned towards the stern and angry boy with a strange look, not of appeal, but of surprise. The offender knew very well all that was involved to himself in what he had done. He knew that it cut him off as a living man from all knowledge of his family, from all possibility of reunion—that he was dead and worse, so far as old surroundings were concerned; but he was not prepared for his son’s stern condemnation. He had anticipated wonder, consternation—but, oh, surely some touch of pleasure in seeing him restored from the dead, some burst of welcome from Fred! He uncovered his face and looked with a ghastly astonishment at the son who thus cast him off without a word.
“Maister Freddie, for God’s sake! think what you are saying. Speak a word to him!”
“I have nothing to say,” said Fred. “I will make the truth known in a week from this time—if it is the truth. I will be no party to a fraud. I loved my father that died, and his memory, but I can be no party to a fraud. In a week’s time——”
The stranger never said a word; he sat gazing with things unutterable in his eyes, wonder above all. His boy! it was cruel, barbarous, inhuman; but—this strange visitor did not condemn the youth. He looked at him with an inconceivable surprise—his boy—Fred! He did not make any protest, but sat up, strangely awakened—wondering: even the object of his visit fading in comparison with this shock for which he was not prepared.