XXIV
Elizabeth had heard her father enter and she imagined him sitting in the library, musing by the fire, finding a tired man’s comfort in that quiet little hour before dinner. Sensitive as ever to atmospheres, Elizabeth felt the coziness of the hour, and looked forward to dinner with pleasure. For days she had been under the gloom of Archie’s conviction; she had never followed a murder case before, but she had special reason for an interest in this. She had helped Marriott all she could by wishing for his success; she had felt his failure as a blow, and this, with the thought of Gusta, had caused her inexpressible depression. But by an effort she had put these thoughts from her mind, and now in her youth, her health, her wholesomeness, the effect of so much sorrow and despair was leaving her. She had finished her toilet, which, answering her mood, was bright that evening, when she heard Dick enter. Half the time of late he had not come home at all, sometimes days went by without her seeing him. She glanced at the little watch on her dressing-table; it was not yet six and Dick was home in time for dinner; perhaps he would spend the evening at home. She hoped he had not come to dress for some engagement that would take him away. Her father, she knew, would be happy in the thought of the boy’s spending an evening with him; almost pathetic in his happiness. Of late, more and more, as she noted, the father had yearned toward the son; the lightest word, a look, a smile from Dick was sufficient to make him glow with pleasure. It made Elizabeth sad to see it, and it made her angry to see how her mother fondled and caressed him, excusing him for, if not abetting him in, all his excesses. But these thoughts were interrupted just then by Dick’s voice. He was in the hall outside, and he spoke her name:
“Bess!”
The tone of the voice struck her oddly. He had pushed open the door and hesitated on the threshold, peering in cautiously. Then he entered and carefully closed the door behind him. She scented the odor of Scotch whisky, of cigarettes, in short, the odor of the club man. His face, which she had thought ruddy with the health, the exuberance, the inexhaustible vitality of youth, she saw now to be really unhealthy, its ruddy tints but the flush of his dissipations. Now, his face went white suddenly, as if a mask had been snatched from it; she saw the weakness and sensuousness that marred it.
“Dick!” she said, for some reason speaking in a whisper. “What’s the matter? Tell me!”
At first a great fear came to her, a fear that he was intoxicated. She knew by intuition that Dick must frequently have been intoxicated; but she had never seen him so, and she dreaded it; she could have borne anything better than that, she felt. He sank on to the edge of her bed and sat there, rocking miserably to and fro, his overcoat bundled about him, his hat toppling on the side of his head, a figure of utter demoralization.
“Dick!” she said, going to him, “what is it? Tell me!”
She took him by the shoulders and gave him a little shake. He continued to rock back and forth and to moan;
“Oh, my God!” he said presently. “What am I going to do!”
Elizabeth gathered herself for one of those ordeals which, in all families, there is one stronger than the rest to meet and deal with.
“Here, sit up.” She shook him. “Sit up and tell me what ails you.” The fear that he was intoxicated had left her, and there was relief in this. “And take off your hat.” She seized the hat from his head and laid it on the little mahogany stand beside her bed. “If you knew how ridiculous you look!”
He sat up at this and weakly began drawing off his gloves. When he had them off, he drew them through his hand, slapped them in his palm, and then with a weary sigh, said:
“Well, I’m ruined!”
“Oh, don’t be dramatic!” She was herself now. “Tell me what scrape you’re in, and we’ll see how to get you out of it.” She was quite composed. She drew up a chair for him and one for herself. Some silly escapade, no doubt, she thought, which in his weakness he was half glad to make the most of. He had removed his overcoat and taken the chair she had placed for him. Then he raised his face, and when she saw the expression, she felt the blood leave her cheeks; she knew that the trouble was real. She struggled an instant against a sickness that assailed her, and then, calming herself, prepared to meet it.
“Well?” she said.
“Bess,” he began fearfully, and his head dropped again. “Bess”—his voice was very strange—“it’s—the—bank.”
She shivered as if a dead cold blast had struck her. In the moment before there had swept through her mind a thousand possibilities, but never this one. She closed her eyes. There was a sharp pain in her heart, exactly as if she had suddenly crushed a finger.
“The bank!” she exclaimed in a whisper. “Oh, Dick!”
He hung his head and began to moan again, and to rock back and forth, and then suddenly he leaned over, seized his head in his two hands and began to weep violently, like a child. Strangely enough, to her own surprise, she found herself calmly and coolly watching him. She could see the convulsive movements of his back as he sobbed; she could see his fingers viciously tearing at the roots of his hair. She sat and watched him; how long she did not know. Then she said:
“Don’t cry, Dick; they’ll hear you down-stairs.”
He made an effort to control himself, and Elizabeth suddenly remembered that he had told her nothing at all.
“What do you mean,” she asked, “by the bank?”
“I mean,” he said without uncovering his face, and his hands muffled his words, “that I’m—into it.”
Ah, yes! This was the dim, unposited thought, the numb, aching dread, the half-formed, unnamed, unadmitted fear that had lurked beneath the thought of all these months—underneath the father’s thought and hers; this was what they had meant when they exchanged glances, when now and then with dread they approached the subject in obscure, mystic words, meaningless of themselves, yet pregnant with a dreadful and terrible import. And now—it had come!
“How much?” she forced herself to ask.
He nodded.
“It’s big. Several—”
“What?”
“Hundreds.”
“Hundreds?”
He hesitated, and then,
“Thousands,” he said, tearing the word from him.
“How many thousands?” she asked, when she could find the courage.
Again he cowered before the truth. She grew impatient.
“Tell me!” she commanded. “Don’t be a coward.” He winced. “Sit up and face this thing and tell me. How many thousands have you stolen?”
She said it in a hard, cold voice. He suddenly looked up, his eyes flashed an instant. He saw his sister sitting there, her hands held calmly in her lap, her head inclined a little, her chin thrust out, her lips tightly compressed, and he could not meet her; he collapsed again, and she heard him say pitifully, “Don’t use that word.” Then he began to weep, and as he sobbed, he repeated:
“Oh, they’ll send me to the penitentiary—the penitentiary—the penitentiary!”
The word struck Elizabeth; her gray eyes began to fill.
“How much, Dick?” she asked gently.
“Five—a—”
“More?”
He nodded
“How much more?”
“Twice as much.”
“Ten, then?”
He said nothing; he ceased sobbing. Then suddenly he looked up and met her glance.
“Bess,” he said, “it’s twenty-three thousand!”
She stared at him until her tears had dried. In the silence she could hear her little watch ticking away on the dressing-table. The lights in the room blazed with a fierce glare.
“Does Mr. Hunter know?”
“Yes.”
“When did he find out?”
“This morning. He called me in this afternoon.”
“Does any one else know?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Dick hung his head and began to fumble his watch-chain.
“Who, Dick?”
“One other man.”
“Who? Tell me.”
“Eades.”
She closed her eyes and leaned back; she dropped her arms to her sides and clutched her chair for support. For a long while they did not speak. It was Dick at last who spoke. He seemed to have regained his faculties and his command.
“Bess,” he said, “Eades will have no mercy on me. You know that.”
She admitted it with a slow nod of her head, her eyes still closed.
“Something must be done. Father—he must be told. Will—will you tell him?”
She sat a moment—it seemed a long moment—without moving, without opening her eyes; and Dick sat there and watched her. Some of the color had come to his face. His eyes were contracting; his face was lined with new scheming.
“Will you tell him, Bess?”
She moved, opened her eyes slowly, wearily, and sighed:
“Yes.”
She got up.
“You’re not going to tell him now?”
He stretched out a hand as if to detain her.
“Yes, now. Why not?” She rose with difficulty, paused, swayed a little and then went toward the door. Dick watched her without a word. His hand was in the pocket of his coat. He drew out a cigarette.
She went down the stairs holding the baluster tightly; her palm, moist from her nervousness, squeaked on the rail as she slid it along. She paused in the library door. Her father was lounging in his chair under the reading-lamp, his legs stretched toward the fire. She could just see the top of his head over the chair, the light falling on his gray hair.
“That you, Betsy?”
The cheer and warmth of his tone smote her; again her eyes closed in pain.
“Yes, it’s I,” she said, trying for a natural tone, and succeeding, at least, in putting into her voice a great love—and a great pity. She bent over the back of the chair, and laid her hands on his head, gazing into the fire. The touch of her hands sent a delicious thrill through Ward; he did not move or speak, wishing to prolong the sensation.
“Dear,” she said, “I have something to tell you.”
The delicious sensation left him instantly.
“Can you bear some bad news—some bad, bad news?”
His heart sank. He had expected something like this—the day would come, he knew, when she would leave him. But was it not unusual? Should not Eades have spoken—should not he have asked him first? Her arms were stealing about his neck.
“Some bad news—some evil news. Something very—”
She had slipped around beside him and leaned over as if to protect him from the blow she was about to deliver. Her voice suddenly grew unnatural, tragic, sending a shudder through him as she finished her sentence with the one word:
“Horrible!”
“What is it?” he whispered.
“Be strong, dear, and brave; it’s going to hurt you.”
“Tell me, Bess,” he said, sitting up now, his man’s armor on.
“It’s about Dick.”
“Dick!”
“Yes, Dick—and the bank!”
“Oh-h!” he groaned, and, in his knowledge of his own world, he knew it all.