Then Athelstan Arundel became completely forgotten. His old friends, the young men with whom he had played and sported, only remembered him from time to time as a fellow who had come to some unknown grief, and had gone away. There is always some young fellow in every set of young fellows who gets into some scrape, and so leaves the circle, and is no more seen or heard of. We go on just the same without him: very seldom is such a man remembered long: it is the way of the world: we cannot stop to lament over the fallen: we must push on: others fall: close up the ranks: push on: Time drives: the memory of the fallen swiftly waxes dim.
Fours years or so after the mysterious business of Edmund Gray, Mr. Dering received a letter with an American stamp marked 'Private and Confidential.' He laid this aside until he had got through the business letters; then he opened it. He turned first to the signature. 'Ha!' he said, 'Athelstan Arundel. At last. Now we shall see. We shall see.'
He expected a full confession of the crime. We should never expect, says the Sage, what we desire, because we never obtain what we expect. It would have made Mr. Dering more comfortable in his mind had the letter contained a confession. Of course, Athelstan had done it. Nobody else could have done it. Yet when he thought about the business at all, there always arose in his mind an uneasy feeling that perhaps the boy had been treated unwisely. It might have been more prudent to have kept the facts from him, although they pointed so strongly in his direction, until proof positive was obtained. It might, again, have been better had the facts been put before him with a few words of confidence, even though that confidence did not exist. Time only strengthened Mr. Dering's suspicions against the young man. The thing must have been done by Checkley or by him. Now, Checkley was not able, if he had wished, to imitate any handwriting. No! It was done by Athelstan. Why he did it, what he got by it, seeing that those notes had never been presented, no one could explain. But he did it—he did it. That was certain.
Mr. Dering therefore began to read the letter with interest. Its commencement was without any opening words of respect or friendliness. And it was not by any means the letter of a wicked man turning away from his wickedness. Not a word of repentance from beginning to end.
'Four years ago,' Mr. Dering read, 'you drove me from your place and changed my whole life, by a suspicion—amounting to a charge—of the gravest kind. You assumed, without explanation or examination, that because certain facts seemed to point in a certain direction, I had been guilty of an enormous crime, that I had robbed my father's oldest friend, my mother's Trustee, my own guardian, my employer, of a great sum of money. You never asked yourself if this suspicion was justified by any conduct of mine—you jumped at it.'
'Quite wrong. Wilfully wrong,' said Mr. Dering. 'I laid the facts before him. Nothing but the facts. I brought no charge.'
'I daresay that by this time the criminal has been long since detected. Had I remained, I would have brought the thing home to him. For of course it could be none other than your clerk. I have thought over the case thousands of times. The man who forged the cheque must have been one of two—either your clerk—the man Checkley—or myself. It did not take you long, I apprehend, to learn the truth. You would discover it through the presentation of the notes.'—'This is a very crafty letter,' said Mr. Dering; 'when he never presented any of the notes. Very crafty.' He resumed the letter—'Enough said about that. I daresay, however, that I shall some day or other—before you are dead, I hope—return in order to receive some expression of sorrow from you if you can feel shame.'—'Certainly not,' said Mr. Dering with decision.—'Meantime, there is a service which I must ask of you for the sake of my people. There is no one else whom I can ask. It is the reason of my writing this letter.
'I came away with ten pounds—all I had in the world—in my pocket. Not seven hundred and twenty pounds, as you imagined or suspected. Ten pounds. With that slender capital I got across the Atlantic. I have now made twelve thousand pounds. I made it in a very short time by extraordinary good luck.' Mr. Dering laid down the letter and considered. Twelve thousand pounds might be made—perhaps—by great good luck—with a start of seven hundred and twenty, but hardly with ten pounds. A silver reef—or more likely a gambling table, or a second crime, or a series of crimes. It will be observed that his opinion of the young man was now very bad indeed: otherwise, he would have reflected that as none of those notes had been presented, none of them had been used. Even if an English ten-pound note is converted into American dollars, the note comes home before ten years. 'Extraordinary good luck.' He read the words again, and shook his head. 'Now, I want you to take charge of this money, to say nothing at all about it, to keep the matter a profound secret, to invest it or put it in some place of safety, where confidential clerks with a taste for forgery cannot get at it, and to give it, on her twenty-first birthday, to my sister Elsie. Do not tell her or anybody from whom the money comes. Do not tell anybody that you have heard from me. When I came away, she was the only one of all my friends and people who declared that she believed in me. I now strip myself of my whole possessions in order to show this mark of my love and gratitude towards her. In sending you this money I go back to the ten pounds with which I started.'
Mr. Dering laid the letter down. The words, somehow, seemed to ring true. Could the boy—after all——? He shook his head, and went on. 'You will give Elsie this money on her twenty-first birthday, to be settled on her for herself.'
'Athelstan Arundel.'