'That is a secret. Mr. Dering refuses to tell me. I wish I knew.'

'I wouldn't wish if I were you. Grat.i.tude is at all times a burden and a worry. Besides, he might be a vulgar person without aspirates or aspirations. Much better not inquire after him. Thirteen thousand pounds at three and a half per cent. means four hundred and fifty pounds a year. A nice little addition to your income. I congratulate you, Elsie; and this evening we will drink the health of the una.s.suming benefactor; the retiring and nameless recogniser of maidenly worth. Bless him!'

'And now, Athelstan, begin your adventures. Tell me everything: from the day you left us till now. You cannot tell me too much or talk too long.

Before you begin, ask any questions about my mother and Hilda that you want to ask. Then we can go on undisturbed.'

'I have no questions to ask about either. I have already ascertained from George that both are in good health, and that Hilda has married a man with an immense fortune. That is happiness enough for her, I hope.--Now, Elsie, I shall be tedious, I am afraid; but you shall hear everything.'

He began. It was such a narrative as thousands of young Englishmen have been able to tell during the last five-and-twenty years. The story of the young man with a few pounds in his pocket, no friends, no recommendations, and no trade. Athelstan landed at New York in this condition. He looked about for employment and found none. He hastened out of the crowded city: he went West, and got work in the business open to every sharp and clever man--that of journalism. He worked for one paper after another, getting gradually more and more West, until he found himself in San Francisco, where he was taken on by a great paper, which had now sent him over here as its London correspondent. That was all the story; but there were so many episodes in it, so many adventures, so many men whom he remembered, so many anecdotes cropping up, in this eight years' history of a man with an eye, a brain, and a memory, that it was long past luncheon-time when Athelstan stopped and said that he must carry on the next chapter at another time.

'That pile of dollars that you made over the silver mine, Athelstan--what became of them?'

'What became of them? Well, you see, Elsie, in some parts of the United States money vanishes as fast as it is made. All these dollars dropped into a deep hole of the earth, and were hopelessly lost.'

She laughed. 'You will tell me some day--when you please--how you lost that fortune. Oh! what a thing it is to be a man and to have all these adventures!--Now, Athelstan, consider--if it had not been for your bad fortune, you would never have had all this good fortune.'

'True. Yet the bad fortune came in such an ugly shape. There has been a black side to my history. How was I to tell people why I left my own country? I could make no friends. At the first appearance of friendship, I had to become cold, lest they should ask me where I came from and why I left home.'

Elsie was silent.

They carried out part of their programme. They went to see the pictures--it was eight years since Athelstan had seen a picture--and after the pictures they walked in the Park. Then they went home and waited for George, who presently appeared. Then they went to one of the Regent Street restaurants and made a little feast. After this, Elsie asked them to come home and spend a quiet evening talking about things.

By common consent they avoided one topic. Edmund Gray was not so much as mentioned, nor was the malignity of Checkley alluded to. They talked of old days, when Athelstan was a big boy and George a little boy and Elsie a child. They talked of the long engagement, and the hopeless time, when it seemed as if they were going to marry on two hundred pounds a year: and of that day of miracle and marvel when Mr. Dering gave to one of them a fortune, and to the other a partnership. They talked of their honeymoon and the tour they were going to make, and the beautiful places they would see. Tours and Blois, Chenonceaux and Amboise; Angouleme and Poitiers and La Roch.e.l.le; and of their return, and the lovely flat, where the friends would be made so welcome. Athelstan was a person of some sympathy. Elsie talked as freely to him as she could to George.

They talked till midnight.

Then Elsie got up. 'Whatever happens, Athelstan,' she said, 'mind--whatever happens, you shall give me away on the 12th.'

'Now she has left us,' said George, 'you may tell me why she refused to stay at home.'

'Well--I suppose you ought to know. Much for the same reason that I refused to stay at home. They then chose to jump at the conclusion that at one step I had become, from a man of honour, a stupid and clumsy forger. They now choose--I am ashamed to say--my mother and sister choose--to believe that you and I together have devised and invented this elaborate scheme of forgery. With this end in view, it has been found necessary to contrive certain little fabrications--as that I have been living in London on my wits--that is to say, by the exercise of cheatery--for the last eight years; and that, being in rags and penniless, I persuaded you to join me in this neat little buccaneering job.'

'Oh! it is too absurd! But I suspected something. Well--it is perfectly easy to put a stop to that.'

'Yes, it is easy. At the same time, it will be well to put a stop to it as soon as possible, before the thing a.s.sumes serious proportions, and becomes a horrid thing, that may stick to you all your life. You have got to do with a malignant man--perhaps a desperate man. He will spread abroad the suspicion as diligently as he can. Let us work, therefore.'

'Well--but what can we do, that we have not done? How can we fix the thing upon Checkley?'

'I don't know. We must think--we must find out something, somehow. Let us all three work together. Elsie will make the best detective in the world. And let us work in secret. I am very glad--very glad indeed--that Elsie came.'

CHAPTER XIX

THE WHISPER OF CALUMNY

Whispered words are ever more potent than words proclaimed aloud upon the house-top. If the envious man from the house-top denounces a man of reputation as a thief, a gambler, a patricide, a sororicide, amicocide, no man regardeth his voice, though he call out with the voice of Stentor: people only stare: these are the words of a madman or a malignant. But whisper these charges in the ear of your neighbour: whisper them with bated breath: say that, as yet, the thing is a profound secret. Then that rumour swiftly flies abroad, until every burgess in the town regards that man askance; and when the time for voting comes, he votes for another man, and will not have him as beadle, s.e.xton, verger, schoolmaster, turnc.o.c.k, policeman, parish doctor, workhouse chaplain, common-councilman, alderman, Mayor, or Member of Parliament. And all for a whisper.

It was Checkley who set going the whisper, which at this moment was running up and down the office, agitating all hearts, occupying all minds, the basis of all conversation.

King Midas's servant, when he was irresistibly impelled to whisper, dug a hole in the ground and placed his whisper at the bottom of that hole.

But the gra.s.ses grew up and sighed the words to the pa.s.sing breeze, so that the market women heard them on their way: 'The King's ears are the ears of an a.s.s--the ears of an a.s.s--the ears of an a.s.s.' The old and trusty servant of Dering and Son buried his secret in the leaves of his Copying-book. Here it was found by the boy who worked the Copying-press.

As he turned over the pages, he became conscious of a sibilant, malignant, revengeful murmur: 'Who stole the bonds? The new Partner.--Who forged the letters? The new Partner.--Who robbed the safe?

The new Partner.' Here was a pretty thing for a pretty innocent office boy to hear! Naturally, his very soul became aflame: when the dinner hour arrived, he told another boy as a profound secret what he had heard. That boy told an older boy, who told another still older, who told another, and so up the long official ladder, until everybody in the place knew that the new Partner--actually the new Partner--the most fortunate of all young men that ever pa.s.sed his Exam.--who had stepped at a bound from two hundred to a thousand, at least--this young man, of all young men in the world, had forged his partner's name, robbed his partner's safe, made away with his partner's property. Who after this can trust anybody?

But others there were who refused to believe this thing. They pointed out that the new Partner continued--apparently--on the best of terms with the old Partner: they argued that when such things are done, friendships are killed and partnerships are dissolved. They even went so far, though members of the great profession which believes in no man's goodness, as to declare their belief that the new Partner could not possibly by any temptation do such things. And there were others who pointed to the fact that the whisper came from the boy of the Copying-press: that he heard it whispered by the fluttering leaves: and that it was imparted to those leaves by Checkley--old Checkley--whose hatred towards the new Partner was notorious to all men: not on account of any personal qualities or private injuries, but out of the jealousy which made him regard the Chief as his own property: and because he had been deprived of his power in the office--the power of appointment and disappointment and the raising of screw, which he had previously possessed. Checkley was dethroned. Therefore, Checkley spread this rumour. Others, again, said that if the rumour was really started by Checkley, which could not be proved, seeing that, like all whispers or rumours, the origin was unknown, and perhaps supernatural, then Checkley must have very strong grounds for starting such a thing.

Thus divided in opinion, the office looked on, expectant. Expectancy is a thing which gets into the air: it fills every room with whispers: it makes a conspirator or a partisan or a confederate of every one: it divides a peaceful office into camps: it is the cause of inventions, lies, and exaggerations. There were two parties in this office--one which whispered accusations, and the other which whispered denials.

Between these hovered the wobblers or mugwumps, who whispered that while on the one hand--on the other hand--and that while they readily admitted--so they were free to confess----Everybody knows the wobbler.

He is really, if he knew it, the master of the situation; but, because he is a wobbler, he cannot use his strength. When he is called upon to act, he falls into two pieces, each of which begins to wobble and to fall into other two pieces of its own accord. The whole process of a Presidential Election--except the final voting--was going on in that office of half-a-dozen rooms, but in whispers, without a single procession, and not one German band. And all unconscious of the tumult that raged about him--a tumult in whispers--a civil war in silence--the object of this was going on his way unconscious and undisturbed.

Now, however, having learned that the old clerk was actually seeking to fix this charge upon him, George perceived the whispering and understood the charge. When he pa.s.sed through the first or outer office in the morning, he perceived that the clerks all looked at him curiously, and that they pretended not to be looking at him, and plied their pens with zeal. On the stairs he met an articled clerk, who blushed a rosy red with consciousness of the thing: on his way to his own room through his own clerks' room, he felt them looking after him curiously as he pa.s.sed; and he felt them, when his own door was closed, whispering about him.

This made him extremely angry. Yet, for a whisper, one cannot suffer wrath to become visible. That would only please the whisperers. There is only one thing worse than to be suspected rightly; it is to be suspected wrongly; for the latter makes a man mad. What? That he--even he--the man of principle and rule, should be suspected! Does nothing, then--no amount of character, no blamelessness of record, avail? Is the world coming to an end?

George then shut his door and sat down to his table in a very wrathful and savage frame of mind. And while he was just beginning to nurse and nourish this wrath, coaxing it from a red glow to a roaring flame, a card was brought to him.

'I will see Sir Samuel at once,' he said.

It is as well that we do not hear the remarks of the clerks' room and the servants' hall. The Service, in fact, is a body of critics whose judgments would, if we only heard them, cause us to reconsider our self-respect. Great Philanthropist, great Statesman, saintly Preacher--if you only knew what they say of you--down below!

The clerks, as Sir Samuel Dering--his face composed to the solemnity of a mute--walked into the new Partner's room, whispered to each other: 'He's going to finish him. There'll be a bolt to-night.--He won't dare face it out.--He _have_ got a nerve!!!--The game's up at last.--They won't prosecute; you see if they do. If it was one of us, now.--Sir Samuel's come to warn him--now you'll see.' With other exchanges and surmises.

Sir Samuel, big and important, coldly inclined his head and took a chair. 'A few words,' he said--'a few serious words, if you please, sir.'

'Pray, go on.' George sat up and listened, his upper lip stiffened. He knew what was coming. The thing which Sir Samuel proposed to say, apparently became difficult. He turned red and stammered. In fact, it is very difficult to inform a highly respectable young man in a highly respectable position that he is going to be charged with a crime of peculiar atrocity.

'I am here,' he said, after two or three false starts, 'without my brother's knowledge. This is a private and unofficial visit. I come to advise. My visit must be regarded as without prejudice.'

'Is it not well to ask first of all if your advice is invited?'

'In such a case as this, I venture to obtrude advice,' Sir Samuel replied with dignity. 'There are occasions on which a man should speak--he is bound to speak. You will remember that I was to have been your brother-in-law----'

'You are to be my brother-in-law. Well, Sir Samuel, go on. I will hear what you have to say.'

'You are, as no doubt you suspect and fear, about to be charged in company with another, with complicity in this long series of forgeries.'

'Really? I heard last night from Elsie that there was some talk of such a charge. Now, Sir Samuel, a man of your experience must be aware that it is not enough for a foolish old clerk to suggest a charge; but there must be some connection between the accused person and the crime.'

'Connection? Good Heavens! There is a solid chain of evidence, without a single weak point.'

'Is there indeed? Well, we will not ask for the production of your chain. Let us take it for granted. Go on to the next point.'

'I wish, young gentleman, I wish most sincerely, for the credit of yourself, and for the happiness of the unfortunate girl who has given you her heart, that my chain was of gla.s.s, to fly into a thousand fragments. But it is not. Everything is complete. The motive: the tempter: the conspiracy: the working out: the apparent success--everything complete. The motive--want of money.'

'Want of money? Well, I was pretty badly off. That cannot be denied. Go on.'

'You wanted money--both of you--wanted money. In ninety cases out of a hundred, this is the cause--wanted money. So you went and did it. Always the way in the City--they want money--and so they go and do it--go and do it.'