Young Mr. Barter's Repentance Part 7

'You won't find her hard to persuade, I'm sure,' said Steinberg. 'Come, now, I'll talk business to you. I'll take ten of 'em for it, and cry quits, and I wouldn't do that for anybody but a friend.'

The frank admission of the value of his own friends.h.i.+p was plainly legible in that gargoyle smile, and the unhappy Barter read it clearly.

'I'll--I'll see what I can do with her,' he said, with a face and voice of pure misery.

'Do, my boy,' said Steinberg, rising, and swinging the key of his chambers upon his forefinger, 'see what you can do with her. I shan't send any notification to the Committee before nine o'clock, old chap.

You can trust me for that. You go off at once, old fellow, and see what you can do for her.'

The fraudulent possessor of the notes felt their burthen more than ever insupportable. He rose, and went his way with remorse and rage and the bitterness of baffled stratagem in his heart. His wounded mind soared to so lofty a height of egotism in its struggles that he positively found the impudence to curse Bom-maney for having dropped the notes in his office. Then he cursed himself for having taken them, and cursed Steinberg for robbing him, and so moved off in a condition quite pitiable to one who could find the understanding and the heart to pity him.

Steinberg stopped behind, and smoked smilingly. He was the successful scoundrel, and found the transaction as sweet as the young Barter found it bitter.

'I don't think h.e.l.l have much trouble with her,' he said to himself; and he enjoyed that little jest so much that he caught himself smiling at it a hundred times in the course of the afternoon and evening.

VII

Old Brown, who was one of the sunniest-natured of men, went gloomy when the news of his old friend's dreadful fall came to his ears. It does him no more than justice to say that he mourned Bommaney senior infinitely more than the money. He liked to trust people, and had all his life long been eager to find excuses for defaulters. He could find no excuse here.

The theft was barefaced, insolent, dastardly. He puzzled over it, and grew more cynical and bitter in his thoughts of the world at large than he could have imagined himself. But then, when Bommaney junior came home, and insisted on the restoration of the missing eight thousand from his own small fortune, old Brown brightened up again. There was such a thing as honesty in the world, after all. The restoration warmed his heart anew. At first he fought against it, and would have none of it--the mere candid and honest offer of it was enough for him; but Philip was more resolute than himself, and the stronger man won. Phil should never have cause to repent his goodness, the old fellow declared to himself a thousand times. He should reap the proper reward of his own honour. Brown admired and loved Phil out of bounds for this little bit of natural honesty and justice. He thought there had never been a finer fellow in the world, and his heart warmed to him as if he had been a son of his own. As for that rascal of a father--and when he got so far in his thoughts he fumed so with wrath that he dared go no farther, and was compelled, for the sake of his own peace, to banish the friend of his schooldays from his mind a thousand times a week.

It was about a year later than the disgrace of the house of Bommaney that old Brown, to his daughter's perplexity and grief, began to show signs of trouble almost as marked as those he had displayed after his old friend's defection. The old boy's newspaper no longer interested him of a morning. He began to be lax about that morning ride which he had once regarded as being absolutely necessary to the preservation of health in London. He had been impa.s.sioned with the theatre, and had become a diligent attendant at first-night performances. Even these ceased to have any joy for him, and he neglected, in fine, all his old sources of amus.e.m.e.nt He went about sorrowful and grumpy, expressing the dolefullest opinions about everything. There was going to be war, stocks were going down, trade was crumbling, there was no virtue in man.

Patty tried her best to coax him from these pessimistic moods, but the old boy was not to be persuaded. On fine evenings, when there was nothing better to be done, he had loved greatly, between the quiet old-fas.h.i.+oned tea and the quiet old-fas.h.i.+oned supper, to dress for out of doors, and with Patty on his arm to wander into Regent's Park, and there inhale the best imitation of country atmosphere that London could afford. He dropped this amiable and affectionate habit, and took to rambling out alone, coming home late, and haggard, and not infrequently, at such times, staring at his daughter with an aspect so sorrowing and wretched that she knew not what to make of him.

The girl, watching him with a constantly increasing solicitude, could at last endure this condition of affairs no longer. He came home one night, leaving neither his stick nor hat in the outer hall, and sat down in the dining-room, m.u.f.fled and great-coated, the picture of dejection. Patty, kneeling before him, removed his hat, smoothed his hair, and began to unb.u.t.ton his overcoat.

'Papa!' she cried suddenly, 'what _is_ the matter with you? Why are you so changed?'

He breathed a great sigh, and laid his hand upon her head. Then he turned his face away from her--to hide his eyes, she fancied.

'You are in trouble,' she went on. 'It is not kind to keep it from me.

Is it anything that I have done, or anything I could do.'

'No, no, my darling,' he said softly, laying his hand upon her head again.

'Is it money, dear?'

'No, no. It isn't money. Don't talk about it, my dear. Don't talk about it.'

'Now, papa, you make me think it very grave indeed.'

'There,' he said, rising, 'you shan't see any more of it, and we'll say no more about it Well be gay and bright again, and well hope that things will turn out for the best.'

The attempt to be gay and bright again resulted in most mournful failure, and the girl grew frightened. She had nursed her fears for many days, and had hidden them.

'Papa!' she said, trembling ever so little, 'you must let me know what it is. Let us bear it together, dear. Whatever it may be it can't matter very much if it leaves us two together--and----'

'Ah! 'said old Brown, looking at her with a pitying smile.

'Is it anything----?' She stopped short, and really found no courage to complete the question.

'My darling,' he answered, folding her in his arms, and staring sadly over her shoulder. She felt the hands that embraced her quiver, and she knew he had understood her half-expressed query. This frightened her so much that it gave her boldness.

'There is something the matter with Phil,' she said, pus.h.i.+ng the old man away, and holding him at arm's length. 'Tell me what it is.'

'My dear,' he answered, 'you shouldn't leap at conclusions in that way.'

But the disclaimer was altogether too feeble to deceive her. Philip was the mysterious cause of her father's trouble. Her wandering, pained eyes, her parted lips, the terror and inquiry in her face, frightened the old man. 'No, no,' he cried, 'you must not think it too bad. I'm not sure of anything. I don't suppose it's at all a matter of consequence. I daresay he's an old fool. I hope I am.'

These hints and innuendoes were about the last thing in the world to satisfy a girl who had been made anxious about her lover.

'Tell me,' she commanded. 'I have a right to know. What has happened?'

She was no more inclined to be jealous than girls who are in love commonly are. She had, indeed, a native fund of confidence, and her trust in Phil's loyalty had been of the unquestioning sort, quite profound and settled. Yet for a moment there rose before her mental vision the dim picture of some possible rival, and at the mere hint of this she grew ashamed, and flamed into indignation against herself.

'Tell me,' she said; 'I insist on knowing.'

'Well, my dear,' said the old man miserably and reluctantly, I've been told that his father hastened his own ruin with dice and cards.' It was the first time he had mentioned Bommaney senior in his daughter's hearing for a year. She looked at him with eyes still intent, but somehow milder and less alarmed. 'Phil,' the old boy continued, 'I'm afraid that Phil is travelling in his father's steps.'

'Phil a gambler!' she said, with an honest scorn of conviction. 'I know better. What makes you think it?'

'There are a lot of beastly clubs at the West End,' said the old man, beginning to struggle with his overcoat, partly because he wished to avoid the girl's look, and partly because the motion was a relief to him. 'Gambling-places. Places where men meet for no other earthly purpose than to cheat one another. I'm as fond of a rubber at whist as anybody; but no honest man would put his head into one of those holes of infamy if he knew its character.'

'Are you speaking of Phil, papa?' she asked. Her voice was low and tremulous, and there was almost a note of threatening in it. The gentlest creature will fight for her own--a fact for which some of us have reason to be grateful.

'Yes, my dear,' her father answered with a kind of sullen sadness; 'I'm talking about Phil. He's a member of the vilest crowd of the whole lot, and he's there night after night.' He dashed his overcoat into an arm-chair with despairing anger, and went marching up and down the room.

'I saw him one night by accident as he was going in. I knew the place.

You might have knocked me down with a feather. I've watched him there night after night. Don't tell me I hadn't the right to watch him. I had the right My little girl shan't marry a gambler. I won't have my fortune wasted by a gambler, and my child's heart broken. I took a room,' he pursued wrathfully, 'opposite the place. I've sat there in the dark with the window open, and caught the d---- worst cold I ever had in my life watching for him. I've seen him go in again and again. He's a lost man, I tell you,' he cried in answer to his daughter's look and gesture; 'the man who has that vice in his blood is lost!'

He was storming loudly, for he was one of those in whom emotion must have expression in noise, but a sudden loud peal at the bell cut short his harangue, and he and Patty stood in silence to know who it might be who called so late. As it happened, it was no other than the lost man himself. He was shown in according to wont and usage without previous announcement, and entered gay and smiling, elate and tender.

As he looked from one to the other the expression of his face changed.

He moved quickly towards Patty, and took her hands in his.

'There's something the matter,' he said gently. 'You're in trouble!'

The old boy, glaring at him, growled, 'We are,' and s.n.a.t.c.hing up his overcoat, threw it over his arm, and slipped his hat upon his head with a gesture which Philip took for one of defiance. As a matter of fact it expressed no more than wrathful grief, but then gesture and expression are hard to read unless you have the key to them.

'We'd better have it out, Phil,' said the old man, 'here and now. You've turned gambler, and I've found you out.'

'No,' Phil answered, with an odd smile; 'I haven't turned gambler, I a.s.sure you. You've heard that I've joined the Pigeon Trap? That's what they call it in the City. I prefer to call it the Hawks' Roost. There are too few pigeons go there to be plucked to justify the other t.i.tle, and I give you my word of honour, Mr. Brown, that I'm not one of them.'

The young man's air was candid and amused. There was an underlying gravity beneath the smile, and for people who had believed in him as devoutly as his two listeners it was hard to disbelieve him now.

'You've gone into the infernal hole,' said old Brown, more than half abandoning suspicion, and yet inclined to leave it growlingly, as a dog might surrender a bone he conceived himself to have a right to. 'What do you want there?'

'I want to do a very important stroke of business there, sir,' Philip answered. The smile quite disappeared from his eyes at this moment, and he looked very grimly resolute. 'I will tell you this much,' he added, 'because you have a right to know it. I am in pursuit of a brace of scoundrels there. I think I've salted the tail of one of 'em already.

I believe with all my heart, sir, that I'm going to clear my father's character, and I would go into worse places than the Pigeon Trap if I saw my way to doing that.'