CHAPTER XXII.

We do not, nowadays, strike att.i.tudes, or e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e and swear when we are startled or shocked; Stafford stood perfectly still, still as a piece of Stonehenge, and gazed with an expressionless countenance at Mr. Falconer. That the man was indeed and in truth mad, occurred to him for a moment; then he thought there must be some mistake, that Mr.

Falconer had made a blunder in the name, and that it was a case of mistaking his man.

But as the moments fled, and the two elder men gazed at him, as if expecting him to speak, he remembered Howard's warning. The colour rushed to his face and his eyes dropped. Merciful Heaven! was the man speaking the truth when he said that he, Stafford, was in love with Maude Falconer? His face was hot and scarlet for a moment, then it grew pale under the shame of the thought that he should have to correct the impression; decline, so to speak, the implied honour.

Sir Stephen was the first to speak. He had sunk back in his chair, but was now leaning forward again, his hands gripping the table.

"Stafford!" he said, still thickly, but with the beginning of a note of relief in his voice. "I did not know this--you did not tell me!"

Stafford turned to him helplessly. What could he say--before Falconer, the girl's father?

"You did not tell me. But I don't complain, my boy," said Sir Stephen."

You were right to choose your own time--young people like to keep their secret to themselves as long as possible."

Falconer looked from one to the other with an impa.s.sive countenance.

"I feel that I am rather _de trop_," he said; "that I have spoken rather prematurely; but my hand was forced, Orme. I wanted to set your mind at rest, to show you that even if I hankered after revenge, it was impossible under the circ.u.mstances." He glanced at Stafford. "It's not the first time in history that the young people have played the part of peace-makers. This is a kind of Romeo and Juliet business, isn't it?

I'll leave you and Mr. Stafford to talk it over!"

He moved to the door, but, with his hand upon it, paused and looked round at them again.

"I ought to aid that, like most modern fathers, I am entirely in the hands of my daughter. I can't go so far as to say, Orme, that if I had been permitted to choose, I should have chosen a son of yours for my son-in-law, but, you see, Maude doesn't give me the option. The young people have taken the bit between their teeth and bolted, and it seems to me that the only thing we have to do is to sit tight and look as cheerful as possible. Oh, one word more," he added, in a business-like tone. "Of course I make over this concession to you, Orme; just taking the share I should have received if you had won the game and I had only stood in as proposed. That is to say, you will be in exactly the same position as if you had won all along the line--as you thought you had."

And with a nod, which included father and son, he went out.

Stafford unconsciously drew back a little, so that he was almost behind Sir Stephen, who had covered his eyes with his hands and sat perfectly motionless, like a half-stunned man looking back at some terrible danger from which he had only escaped by the skin of his teeth. Then he dropped his hands from his face and drew a long breath, the kind of breath a man draws who has been battling with the waves and finds himself on the sh.o.r.e, exhausted but still alive.

Stafford laid a hand on his shoulder, and Sir Stephen started and looked up at him as if he had forgotten his presence. A flush, as if of shame, came upon the great financier's face, and he frowned at the papers lying before him, where they had dropped from his hand.

"What an escape, Stafford!" he said, his voice still rather thick and with a tremour of excitement and even exhaustion in its usually clear and steady tone. "I am ashamed, my boy, that you should have been a witness to my defeat: it humiliates, mortifies me!"

"Don't let that worry you, father," said Stafford, scarcely knowing what he said, for the tumult in his brain, the dread at his heart.

"It is not the first defeat I have suffered in my life; like other successful men, I have known what it is to fall; and I have laughed and got up and shaken the dust off myself, so to speak, and gone at the fight again, all the harder and more determined because of the reverse.

But this--this would have crushed me utterly and forever."

"Do you mean that it would have ruined you completely, father?" said Stafford.

"Completely!" replied Sir Stephen in a low voice, his head drooping. "I had staked everything on this venture, had staked even more than I possessed. I cannot explain all the details, the ramifications, of the scheme which I have been working. You could not understand them if I were to talk to you for a week. Suffice it, that if I had failed to get this concession, I should have been an utterly ruined man, should have had to go through the bankruptcy court, should have been left without a penny. And not only that: I should have dragged a great many of the men, of the friends who had trusted to my ability, who have believed in me, into the same pit; not only such men as Griffenberg and Wirsch and the Beltons, but the Plaistows, the Clansdales, and the Fitzharfords.

They would have suffered with me, would have, considered themselves betrayed."

Stafford drew a long breath. There seemed to him still a chance of saving himself, the girl he loved, above all--his honour.

"But even if it were so, father," he said; "other men have failed, other men have been defeated, ruined, and left penniless, and yet have risen and shaken the dust from them and fought their way again to the heights. You're not an old man, you are strong and clever, and you are not alone." he said, in a lower voice. "I'm not much use, I know. But I'll try and help you all I can. I've often felt ashamed of myself for living such an idle, useless life; often felt that I ought to do something to justify my existence. There's a chance now; at any rate, there's an occasion, a necessity for my waking up and stepping into the ring to do a little fighting on my own account. We may be beaten by Mr.

Falconer; but don't say we're utterly crushed. That doesn't sound like you, sir; and I don't understand why you should chuck up the sponge so quickly."

Sir Stephen raised his head and looked at Stafford with a curious expression of mingled surprise and apprehension.

"What is it you are saying, Stafford?" he asked. "What is it you mean?

I don't understand. We're not beaten; Ralph Falconer has offered to make the concession over to me; and no one need know that I have failed, that he had stolen the march on me. You heard what he said: that you were in love with his daughter Maude, and that of course he could not injure his future son-in-law. Stafford!" He sprang to his feet and began to pace up and down the room. "I know that this has touched your pride--I can give a pretty good guess as to how proud you are--but, for G.o.d's sake! don't let your pride stand in the way of this arrangement."

"But--" Stafford began; for he felt that he could not longer keep back the truth, that his father must be told not only that there was nothing between Maude and himself, but that he loved Ida Heron.

But before he could utter another word Sir Stephen stopped before him, and with hands thrown out appealingly, and with a look of terror and agony in his face, cried in broken accents:

"If you going to raise any obstacle, Stafford, prompted by your pride, for G.o.d's sake, don't say the word! You don't know, you don't understand! You speak of ruin as if it meant only the loss of money, the loss of every penny." He laughed almost hysterically, and his lips twitched. "Do you think I should care for that, except for your sake?

No, a thousand times, no! I'm young still, I could begin the world again! Yes, and conquer it as I have done before; but"--his voice sank, and he look round the room with a stealthy glance which shocked and startled Stafford--"the ruin Ralph Falconer threatens me with means more than the loss of money. It means the loss of everything! Of friends, of good name--of hope!"

Stafford started, and his face grew a trifle hard; and Sir Stephen saw it and made a despairing, appealing gesture with his hand.

"For G.o.d's sake don't turn away from me, my boy; don't judge me harshly. You can't judge me fairly from your standpoint; your life has been a totally different one from mine, has been lived under different circ.u.mstances. You have never known the temptations to which I have been subjected. Your life has been an easy one surrounded by honour, while mine has been spent half the time grubbing in the dust and the mire for gold, and the rest fighting--sometimes with one hand tied behind me!--against the men who would have robbed me of it. I have had to fight them with their own weapons--sometimes they haven't been clean--sometimes it has been necessary to do--to do things!--G.o.d!

Stafford, don't turn away from me! I would have kept this from you if I could, but I am obliged to tell you now. Ralph Falconer knows all the details of my past, he knows of things which--which, if they were known to the world, would stain the name I have raised to honour, would make it necessary for me to hide my head in a suicide's grave."

A low cry burst from Stafford's lips, and he sank into a chair, and bowed his head upon his hands.

Sir Stephen stood a little way off and looked at him for a minute, then he advanced slowly, half timidly and ashamedly, and laid a trembling hand on Stafford's shoulder.

"Forgive me, Stafford!" he said, in a low, broken voice. "I was obliged to tell you. I'd have kept it from you--you would never have known--but Falconer has forced my hand; I was bound to show you how necessary it was that we should have him as friend instead of foe. You are not--ashamed of me, my boy; you won't go back on me?"

In the stress and strain of his emotion the old digger's slang came readily to his lips.

Stafford took one hand from his face and held it out, and his father grasped it, clinging to it as a drowning man clings to a rock.

"G.o.d bless you, my boy!" he said. "I might have known you wouldn't turn your back upon me; I might have known that you'd remember that I wasn't fighting for myself only, but for the son I'm so proud of."

"I know, I know, sir," said Stafford, almost inaudibly.

Sir Stephen hung his hand, released it, and paced up and down the room again, fighting for composure, and facing the situation after the manner of his kind. Like all successful adventurers, he was always ready to look on the bright side. He came back to Stafford and patted him gently on the shoulder.

"Try and forget what I said, about--about the past, Stafford," he said.

"Let us look at the future--your future. After all, we're not beaten!

It's a compromise, it's an alliance!" His voice grew more cheerful, his eyes began to brighten with something of their wonted fire. "And it's a bright future, Staff! You've chosen a beautiful girl, a singularly beautiful and distinguished-looking girl--it's true she's only Ralph Falconer's daughter, and that I'd loftier ideas for you, but let that pa.s.s! Maude is a young lady who can hold her own against the best and the highest. Falconer must be rich, or he would not have been able to have managed this thing, would not have been able to beat me. With your money and hers, you can go as far as you please!"

He took a turn up and down the room again, a flush on the face that had been pallid only a minute or two ago, his finely shaped head thrown back.

"Yes, Stafford, I should like you to have married into the n.o.bility. In my eyes, there is no one too high in rank for you. But no matter! The t.i.tle will come. They cannot do less than offer me a peerage. This railway will be of too much service to the government for them to pa.s.s me over. The peerage must come; there is no chance of my losing it.

Why, yes! The future is as bright as the sunlight on a June morning!

You will have the girl you love, I shall have the peerage to leave to you. I shall have not lived and struggled and fought in vain. I shall have left a name unstained, unsullied, to the son I love!"

There was a catch in his voice, and it broke as he turned suddenly with outstretched hand.

"Why, G.o.d forgive me, Stafford, my boy! I'm talking of what I've done for you and what I'm meaning to do as if I were forgetting what you are doing for me! Stafford, a father often finds that he has worked for his children only to meet with ingrat.i.tude and to be repaid by indifference; but you have returned my affection--Oh, I've seen it, felt it, my boy! And now, as fate would have it, you are actually saving my honour, shielding my good name, coming between me and utter ruin! G.o.d bless you, Stafford! G.o.d bless you and send you all the happiness you deserve and I wish you!"

A silence fell. Into the room there floated the soft, languorous strains of a waltz, the murmur of voices, the laughter of some of the people in the conservatory. Stafford sat, his head still upon his hands, as if her were half stupefied. And indeed he was. He felt like a man who has been seized by the tentacles of an octopus, unable to struggle, unable to move, dumb-stricken, and incapable even of protest.

Sir Stephen had spoken of fate: Fate held Stafford under its iron heel, and the mockery of Fate's laughter mingled with the strains of the waltz, the murmur of voices. Unconsciously he rose and looked round as if half dazed, and Sir Stephen came to him and laid both hands on his shoulders.