letter of a wicked man turning away from his wickedness. Not a word of repentance from beginning to end.
'Four years ago,' Mr. Dering read, 'you drove me from your place and changed my whole life, by a suspicion – amounting to a charge – of the gravest kind. You assumed, without explanation or examination, that because certain facts seemed to point in a certain direction, I had been guilty of an enormous crime, that I had robbed my father's oldest friend, my mother's Trustee, my own guardian, my employer, of a great sum of money. You never asked yourself if this suspicion was justified by any conduct of mine – you jumped at it.'
'Quite wrong. Wilfully wrong,' said Mr. Dering. 'I laid the facts before him. Nothing but the facts. I brought no charge.'
'I daresay that by this time the criminal has been long since detected. Had I remained, I would have brought the thing home to him. For of course it could be none other than your clerk. I have thought over the case thousands of times. The man who forged the cheque must have been one of two – either your clerk – the man Checkley – or myself. It did not take you long, I apprehend, to learn the truth. You would discover it through the presentation of the notes.' – 'This is a very crafty letter,' said Mr. Dering; 'when he never presented any of the notes. Very crafty.' He resumed the letter – 'Enough said about that. I daresay, however, that I shall some day or other – before you are dead, I hope – return in order to receive some expression of sorrow from you if you can feel shame.' – 'Certainly not,' said Mr. Dering with decision. – 'Meantime, there is a service which I must ask of you for the sake of my people. There is no one else whom I can ask. It is the reason of my writing this letter.
'I came away with ten pounds – all I had in the world – in my pocket. Not seven hundred and twenty pounds, as you imagined or suspected. Ten pounds. With that slender capital I got across the Atlantic. I have now made twelve thousand pounds. I made it in a very short time by extraordinary good luck.' Mr. Dering laid down the letter and considered. Twelve thousand pounds might be made – perhaps – by great good luck – with a start of seven hundred and twenty, but hardly with ten pounds. A silver reef – or more likely a gambling table, or a second crime, or a series of crimes. It will be observed that his opinion of the young man was now very bad indeed: otherwise, he would have reflected that as none of those notes had been presented, none of them had been used. Even if an English ten-pound note is converted into American dollars, the note comes home before ten years. 'Extraordinary good luck.' He read the words again, and shook his head. 'Now, I want you to take charge of this money, to say nothing at all about it, to keep the matter a profound secret, to invest it or put it in some place of safety, where confidential clerks with a taste for forgery cannot get at it, and to give it, on her twenty-first birthday, to my sister Elsie. Do not tell her or anybody from whom the money comes. Do not tell anybody that you have heard from me. When I came away, she was the only one of all my friends and people who declared that she believed in me. I now strip myself of my whole possessions in order to show this mark of my love and gratitude towards her. In sending you this money I go back to the ten pounds with which I started.'
Mr. Dering laid the letter down. The words, somehow, seemed to ring true. Could the boy – after all – ? He shook his head, and went on. 'You will give Elsie this money on her twenty-first birthday, to be settled on her for herself.'
'Athelstan Arundel.'
The letter was dated, but no address was given. The post-mark was Idaho, which, as we all know, belongs to a Western State.
He looked into the envelope. There fell out a paper, which was a draft on a well-known London Firm, payable to his order for twelve thousand and fifty pounds.
'This is very unbusiness-like,' said Mr. Dering. 'He puts all this money into my hands, and vanishes. These are the ways he learns in America, I suppose. Puts the money blindly in my hands without giving me the means of communicating with him. Then he vanishes. How could he prove that it was a Trust? Well, if I could only think – but I cannot – the circumstantial evidence is too strong – that the boy was innocent – I should be very sorry for him. As for Elsie – she must be eighteen now – about eighteen – she will get this windfall in three years or so. It will be a wonderful lift for her. Perhaps it may make all the difference in her future! If I could only think that the boy was innocent – a clever lad, too – which makes his guilt more probable. But I can't – no – I can't. Either Checkley or that boy – and Checkley couldn't do it. He couldn't if he were to try. What did the boy do it for? And what did he do with the notes?'
CHAPTER I
UP THE RIVER
'Can you not be content, George?' asked the girl sitting in the stern. 'I think that I want nothing more than this. If we could only go on always, and always, and always, just like this.' She had taken off her right-hand glove, and she was dipping her fingers into the cool waters of the river as the boat slowly drifted down stream. 'Always like this,' she repeated softly. 'With you close to me – so that I could touch you if I wanted to – so that I could feel safe, you know – the sun behind us, warm and splendid, such a sweet and fragrant air about us, trees and gardens and fields and lanes on either side – and both of us always young, George, and – and nice to look at, and all the world before us.'
She, for one, was not only young and nice to look upon, but fair – very fair to look upon. Even young persons of her own sex, critics and specialists in the Art and Science of Beauty – rivals as well – had to confess that Elsie was rather pretty. I believe that few such critics ever go farther. She was, to begin with, of sufficient stature, in a time when dumpy women are not considered, and when height is a first necessity of comeliness: she paid, next, such obedience to the laws of figure as becomes the age of twenty, and is, with stature, rigorously demanded at this end of the century. Her chief points, perhaps, lay in her eyes, which were of a darker shade of blue than is common. They were soft, yet not languid; they were full of light; they were large, and yet they could be quick. Her face was subject to sudden changes that made it like a spring-time sky of shower, rainbow, sunshine, and surprise. Her hair was of a very common brown, neither dark nor light. She was attired, this evening, in a simple gray frock of nun's cloth with a bunch of white roses on her left shoulder.
When one says that her companion was a young man, nearly all is said, because the young men of the present day are surprisingly alike. Thousands of young men can be found like George Austin: they are all excellent fellows, of much higher principles, on some subjects, than their fathers before them; not remarkably intellectual, to judge by their school record: yet with intelligence and application enough to get through their examinations moderately: for the most part they do pass them with moderate success: they are not ambitious of obtaining any of the great prizes – which, indeed, they know to be out of their reach – but they always set before themselves and keep always well in sight the ideal suburban villa and the wife: they always work steadily, if not feverishly, with the view of securing these two blessings; they always hope to secure an income that will enable them to maintain that wife – with a possible following of babies – in silk attire (for Sundays); in ease as to household allowance; and in such freedom of general expenditure as may enable her to stand up among her neighbours in church without a blush.
The world is quite full of such men: they form the rank and file, the legionaries: their opinion on the subject of labour is purely Scriptural – namely, that it is a curse: they do not particularly love any kind of work: they would prefer, if they had the choice, to do nothing at all: when they get their summer holiday they do nothing all day long, with zeal: they give no more thought to their work than is sufficient for the bread-winning: whether they are professional men or trading men their view of professional work is solely that it brings in the money. If such a young man becomes a clerk, he never tries to learn any more after he has left school: he accepts the position: a clerk and a servant he is, a clerk and a servant he will remain. If he is engaged in trade he gives just so much attention to his business as will keep his connection together: that and no more: others may soar: others may become Universal Providers: for his
