“That’s it.”
“Good! See you soon. Good-bye!” And well pleased with himself, chuckling a little—for Clement’s discomfiture had not escaped him—Arthur hurried away.
And Clement went his way. But reality had touched his golden dreams, and they had melted. The sun still shone, but it did not shine for him, and he no longer walked with his head in the air. It was not only that, by resigning the money and entrusting its return to another, he had lost the advantage on which he had counted, but he had been worsted. He had failed, in the contest of wits and wills, and, abuse his ill-luck as he might, he owed the failure to himself—to his own weakness. He saw it.
It was possible that Arthur had acted in innocence. But Clement doubted this, and he doubted it the more the longer he thought of it. He fancied that he recognized a thing which had happened before: that this was not the first time that Arthur had taken the upper hand with him and jockeyed him into the worse position. As he crossed the threshold of the bank, his self-confidence fell from him, he felt himself slip into the old atmosphere, he became once more the inefficient.
Nor was it any comfort to him that his father saw the matter in the same light, and after listening with an appreciative face and some surprise to his earlier adventures, made no effort to hide the chagrin that he felt at the dénouement. “But why—why in the world did you do that?” he exclaimed. “Give up the money after you had done the work? And to Bourdillon, who had no more right to it than you had? Good heavens, lad, it was the act of a fool! I’d not be surprised if old Griffin never heard your name in connection with it!”
“Oh, I don’t think Arthur——”
“Well, I do.” The banker was vexed. “It’s clear that Arthur is a deal sharper than you. As for the Squire, I hear that he is only half-conscious, and what he hears, if he ever hears the tale at all, will make little impression on him. Now if he had seen you, and you’d handed over the money—if he had seen you, then the bank and you would have got the credit.”
“Still, Clem did recover it,” Betty said.
“Ay, but who will ever know that he did?”
“Still he did, and I believe that he’ll get a message from Garth to-morrow. Now, see if you don’t, Clem. Or the next day.”