CHAPTER III.
THE SIN OF THE FATHER.
"It's a lie!"
The word flew through Harry's teeth as in another century his swordmight have flown from its sheath; and so blind was he with rage andhorror that he scarcely appreciated its effect on Gordon Lowndes. Neverwas gross insult more mildly taken. The elder man did certainly changecolour for an instant; in another he had turned away with a shrug, andin yet another he was round again with a sad half-smile. Harry glaredat him in a growing terror. He saw that he was forgiven; a blow haddisconcerted him less.
"I expected you to jump down my throat," observed Lowndes, with acertain twitching of the sharp nose which came and went with theintermittent twinkle in his eyes.
"It is lucky you are not a younger man, or you would have got even morethan you expected!"
"For telling you the truth? Well, well, I admire your spirit,Ringrose."
"It is not the truth," said Harry doggedly, his chest heaving, and acold sweat starting from his skin.
"I wish to God it were not!"
"You mean to tell me my father absconded?"
"That is the word I should have used."
"With ten thousand pounds that did not belong to him?"
"Not exactly that; the money was lent to him, but for another purpose.He has misapplied rather than misappropriated it."
Harry felt his head swimming. Disaster he might bear--but disasterrooted in disgrace! He gazed in mute misery upon the stripped but stillfamiliar room; he breathed hard, and the stale odour of his father'scheroots became a sudden agony in his dilated nostrils. Something toldhim that what he had heard was true. That did not make it easier tobelieve--on the bare word of a perfect stranger.
"Proofs!" he gasped. "What proofs have you? Have you any?"
Lowndes produced a pocket-book and extracted a number of newspapercuttings.
"Yes," sighed he, "I have almost everything that has appeared about itin the papers. It will be cruel reading for you, Ringrose; but you maytake it better so than from anybody's lips. The accounts in the localpress--the creditors' meetings and so forth--are, however, rather long.Hadn't you better wait until we're on our way back to town?"
"Wait? No, show me something now! I apologise for what I said; I madeuse of an unpardonable word; but--I don't believe it yet!"
"Here, then," said Lowndes, "if you insist. Here's a single shortparagraph from the _P.M.G._ It would appear about the last day inMarch."
"The day I sailed!" groaned Harry. He took the cutting and read asfollows:--
THE MISSING IRONMASTER.
The Press Association states that nothing further has been ascertained with regard to the whereabouts of Mr. Henry J. Ringrose, the Westmoreland ironmaster, who was last seen on Easter Eve. He has been traced, however, as already reported in these columns, to the Cafe Suisse in Dieppe, though no further. The people at the cafe persist in stating that their visitor only remained a few hours, so that he would appear to have walked thence into thin air. The police, as usual, are extremely reticent; but inquiry at Scotland Yard has elicited the fact that considerable doubt exists as to whether the missing man's chief creditors will, or can, owing to the character of their claim, take further action in the matter.
"Who are the chief creditors?" asked Harry, returning the cutting withan ashy face.
"Four business friends of your father's, from whom I raised the moneyin his name."
"Here in the neighbourhood?"
"No, in London; they advanced two thousand five hundred each."
"It was no good, you say?"
"No; the bank was not satisfied."
"So my father ran away with their money and left the works to go toblazes--and my mother to starve?"
Lowndes shrugged his shoulders.
"I apologise again for insulting you, Mr. Lowndes," said the boy,holding out his hand. "You have been a good friend to my poor father, Ican see, and I know that you firmly believe what you say. But I neverwill! No; not if all his friends, and every newspaper in the kingdom,told me it was true!"
"Then what are you to believe?"
"That there has been foul play!"
The elder man turned away with another shrug, and it was some momentsbefore Harry saw his face; when he did it was grave and sympathetic asbefore, and exhibited no trace of the irritation which it had cost anapparent effort to suppress.
"I am not surprised at that entering your head, Ringrose."
"Has it never entered yours?"
"Everything has; but one weeds out the impossibilities."
"Why is it impossible?" Harry burst out. "It is a good deal likelierthan that my father would have done what it's said he did! There's animpossibility, if you like; and you would say so, too, if you had knownhim better."
Mr. Lowndes shook his head, and smiled sadly as he watched the boy'sflaming face through his spectacles.
"You may have known your father, Ringrose, but you don't know humannature, or you wouldn't talk like that. Nothing is impossible--nocrime--not even to the best of us--when the strain becomes more than wecan bear. It is a pure question of strain and strength: which is thegreater of the two. Every man has his breaking-point; your father wasat his for years; it's a mystery to me how he held out so long. Youmust look at it sensibly, Ringrose. No thinking man will blame him, forthe simple reason that every man who thinks knows very well that hemight have done the same thing himself under the same pressure.Besides--give him a chance! With ten thousand pounds in his pocket----"
"You're sure he had it in his pocket?" interrupted Harry. Thesearguments only galled his wounds.
"Or else in a bag; it comes to the same thing."
"In what shape would he have the money?"
"Big notes and some gold."
"Yet foul play's an impossibility!"
"The numbers of the notes are known. Not one of them has turned up."
"I care nothing about that," cried the boy wildly, "though it shows hehasn't spent them himself. Listen to me, Mr. Lowndes. I believe myfather is dead, I believe he has been murdered: and I would rather thatthan what you say! But you claim to have been his friend? You raisedthis money for him? Very well; take my hand--here in his room--where Ican see him now, all the time I'm talking to you--and swear that youwill help me to clear this mystery up! We'll inspan the best detectivein town, and take him with us to Dieppe, and never leave him till weget at the truth. I mean to live for nothing else. Swear that you willhelp me ... swear it here ... in his own room."
The wild voice had come down to a broken whisper. Next moment it hadrisen again: the man hesitated.
"Swear it! Swear it! Or you may have been my father's friend, but youare none from this hour to my mother and me."
Lowndes spread his hands in an indulgent gesture.
"Very well! I swear to help you to clear up this--mystery--as long asyou think it is one."
"That is all I want. Now tell me when the next train starts for town.It used to be nine-twenty?"
"It is still."
"You are returning to London yourself?"
"Yes, by that train."
"Then let us meet at the station. It is now eight. I--I want to bealone here for an hour or two. No, it will do me good, it will calm me.I feel I have been very rude to you, sir, but I have hardly known whatI said. I am beside myself--beside myself!" And Harry Ringrose rushedfrom the room, and up the bare and sounding stairs of his empty home:it was from his own old bedroom that he heard Lowndes leave the house,and saw a dejected figure climbing the sloping drive with heavy steps.
That hour of leave-taking is not to be described. How the boy harrowedhimself wilfully by going into every room and thinking of somethingthat had happened there, and seeing it all again through scaldingtears, is a thing to be understood by some, but pitied rather thancommended. There was, however, another and a sounder side to HarryRingrose, and the prayers he prayed, and the vows he vowed, these werebrave, and he meant them all that bitter b
irthday morning, that was tohave been the happiest of all his life. Then his heart was broken butstill heroic: there came many a brighter day he would gladly haveexchanged for that black one, for the sake of its high resolves, itspure impulses, its noble and undaunted aspirations.
He had one more rencontre before he got away: in the garden he espiedtheir old gardener. It was impossible not to go up and speak to him;and Harry left the old man crying like a child; but he himself had notears.
"I am glad they left you your job: you will care for things," he hadsaid, as he was going.
"Ay, ay, for the master's sake: he was the best master a man ever had,say what they will."
"But you don't believe what they say?"
The gardener looked blank.
"Do you dare to tell me," cried Harry, "that you believe what theybelieve?"
It was at this the man broke down; but Harry strode away with bitterresentment in his heart, and so back to the town, with a defiant facefor every passer; but this time there were none he knew. At the spotwhere his old companion had cut him, that affront was recalled for thefirst time; its meaning was plain enough now; and plain the strangeconduct of the railway-porter, who kept out of his way when Harryreappeared at the station.
Lowndes was there waiting for him, and had not only taken the tickets,but also telegraphed to Mrs. Ringrose; and this moved poor Harry to ashame-faced confession of his improvidence on the way down, and itsawful results, in the midst of which the other burst out laughing inhis face. Harry was a boy after his own heart; it was a treat to meetanybody who declined to count the odds in the day of battle; but, inany case, Mr. Lowndes claimed the rest of the day as "his funeral." AsHarry listened, and thanked his new friend, he had a keen and hostileeye for any old ones; but the train left without his seeing another.
"The works look the same as ever," groaned Harry, as he gazed out onthem once more. "I thought they seemed to be doing so splendidly, withall four furnaces in blast."
"They are doing better than for some years past: iron's looking up: thecreditors may get their money back yet."
"Thank God for that!"
Lowndes opened his eyes, and the sharp nose twitched amusement.
"If I were in your place that would be the worst part of all. I have nosympathy with creditors as a class."
"I want to be even with them," said Harry through his teeth. "I willbe, too, before I die: with every man of them. Hallo! why, this is afirst-class carriage! How does that happen? I never looked where we gotin; I followed you."
"And I chose that we should travel first."
"But I can't, I won't!" cried Harry, excitedly. "It was monstrous of melast night, but it would be criminal this morning. You sit where youare. I can change into a third at the next station."
"I have a first-class ticket for you," rejoined Lowndes. "You may aswell make use of it."
"But when shall I pay you back?"
"Never, my boy! I tell you this is my funeral till I deliver you overto your mother, so don't _you_ begin counting the odds; you've nothingto do with them. Besides, you came up like a rocket, and I won't haveyou go down altogether like the stick!"
Nor did he; and Harry soon saw that his companion was not to be judgedby his shabby top-hat and his shiny frock-coat; he was evidently a veryrich man. Where the boy had flung half-crowns overnight--wherehalf-a-crown was more than ample--his elder now scatteredhalf-sovereigns, and they had an engaged carriage the whole way. AtPreston an extravagant luncheon-basket was taken in, with a bottle ofchampagne and some of the best obtainable cigars, for the quality ofboth of which Gordon Lowndes made profuse apologies. But Harry felt anew being after his meal, for grief and excitement had been his breadall day, and the wine warmed his heart to the strange man with whom hehad been thrown in such dramatic contact. Better company, in happiercircumstances, it would have been difficult to imagine; and it wasclear that, with quip and anecdote, he was doing his utmost to amuseHarry and to take him out of his trouble. But to no purpose: the boywas perforce a bad listener, and at last confessed it in as many words.
"My mind is so full of my father," added Harry, "that I have hardlygiven my dear mother a thought; but my life is hers from to-day. Yousaid she was in Kensington; in lodgings, I suppose?"
"No, in a flat. It's very small, but there's a room for you, and it'sbeen ready for weeks."
"What is she living on?"
"Less than half her private income by marriage settlement; that was allthere was left, and five-eighths of it she would insist on making overto the men who advanced the ten thousand. She is paying themtwo-and-a-half per cent. on their money and attempting to live on ahundred and fifty a year!"
"I'll double it before long!"
"Then she'll pay them five."
"They shall have every farthing one day; and the other creditors, theyshall have their twenty shillings in the pound if I live long enough.Now let me have the rest of those cuttings. I want to know just how westand--and what they say."
Out came the pocket-book once more. They were an hour's run nearer townwhen Harry spoke again.
"May I keep them?" he said.
"Surely."
"Thank you. I take it the bank's all right--and thank God the otherliabilities up there are not large. As to the flight with that tenthousand--I don't believe it yet. There has been foul play. You mark mywords."
Lowndes looked out at the flying fields.
"Which of you saw him last?" continued Harry.
"Your mother, when he left for town."
"When was that?"
"The morning after Good Friday."
"When did he cross?"
"That night."
"Did he write to anybody?"
"Not that I know of."
"Not to my mother?"
Lowndes leant forward across the compartment: there was a shrewd lookin the spectacled eyes.
"Not that I know of," he said again, but with a different intonation."I have often wondered!"
"Did you ask her?"
"Yes; she said not."
"Then what do you mean?" cried Harry indignantly. "Do you think mymother would tell you a lie?"
"Your mother is the most loyal little woman in England," was the reply."I certainly think that she would keep her end up in the day ofbattle."
Harry ground his teeth. He could have struck the florid able face whoseevery look showed a calm assumption of his father's infamy.
"You take it all for granted!" he fumed; "you, who say you were hisfriend. How am I to believe in such friendship? True friends are not soready to believe the worst. Oh! it makes my blood boil to hear youtalk; it makes me hate myself for accepting kindness at your hands. Youhave been very kind, I know," added Harry in a breaking voice;"but--but for God's sake don't let us speak about it any more!" And heflung up a newspaper to hide his quivering lips; for now he was hopingagainst hope and believing against belief.
Was it not in black and white in all the papers? How could it beotherwise than true? Rightly or wrongly, the world had found his fatherguilty; and was he to insult all and sundry who failed to repudiate theverdict of the world?
Harry was one who could not endure to be in the wrong with anybody: hisweakness in every quarrel was an incongruous hankering for the goodopinion of the enemy, and this was intensified in the case of one whowas obviously anxious to be his friend. To appear ungracious orungrateful was equally repugnant to Harry Ringrose, and no sooner washe master of his emotion than he lowered the paper in order to add afew words which should remove any such impression.
Gordon Lowndes sat dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief that hemade haste to put away, as though it was his eyes he had been wiping,which indeed was Harry's first belief. But the gold-rimmed glasses werenot displaced, and, so far from a tear, there was an expression behindthem for which Harry could not then find the name; nevertheless, itmade him hold his tongue after all.