A Knight of the Nineteenth Century Part 13

"Misther Arnot, won't ye plaze slape on it afore ye gives me me discharge. If ye'll only think a bit about them newspaper men, ye'll know it could not be helped a' tall. If they suspicion that a man has anything in him that they're wantin' to know, they the same as put a corkscrew intil him, and pull till somethin' comes, and thin they make up the rest. Faix, sur, I niver could o' got by 'em aloive wid me letther onless a little o' the news had gone intil their rav'nous maws."

"Then I'll find a man who can get by them, and who is able to obey my orders to the letter. The cashier will pay you up to date; then leave the premises."

"Och, Misther Arnot, me woife'll be the death o' me, and thin ye'll have me bluid on yer sowl. Give me one more--"

"Begone!" said his employer harshly; "too much time has been wasted already."

Pat found that his case was so desperate that he became reckless, and, instead of slinking off, he, too showed the same insubordination and disregard for Mr. Arnot's power and dignity that had been so irritating in Haldane. Clapping his hat on one side of his head, and with such an insolent cant forward that it quite obscured his left eye, Pat rested his hands on his hips, and with one foot thrust out sidewise, he fixed his right eye on his employer with the expression of sardonic contemplation, and then delivered himself as follows:

"The takin' up a few minits o' yer toime is a moighty tirrible waste, but the sindin' of a human bain to the divil is no waste a' tall a'

tall: that's the way ye rason, is it? I allers heerd that yer in'ards were made o' cast-iron, and I can belave--"

"Leave this office," thundered Mr. Arnot.

"Begorry, ye can't put a man in jail for spakin' his moind, nor for spakin' the truth. If ye had given me a chance I'd been civil and obadient the rist o' me days. But whin ye act to'ard a man as if he was a lump o' dirt that ye can kick out o' the way, and go on, ye'll foind that the lump o' dirt will lave some marks on yer nice clothes. I tell ye till yer flinty ould face that ye'r a hard-hearted riprobate that 'ud grind a poor divil to paces as soon as any mash-shine in all yer big factories. Ye'll see the day whin ye'll be under somebody's heel yerself, bad luck to yez!"

Pat's irate volubility flowed in such a torrent that even Mr. Arnot could not check it until he saw fit to drop the sluice-gates himself, which, with a contemptuous sniff, and an expression of concentrated wormwood and gall, he now did. Lifting his battered hat a little more toward the perpendicular, he went to the cashier's desk, obtained his money, and then jogged slowly and aimlessly down the street, leaving a wake of strange oaths behind him.

Thus Mr. Arnot's system again ground out the expected result; but the plague of humanity was that it would not endure the grinding process with the same stolid, inert helplessness of other raw material. Though he had had his way in each instance, he grew more and more dissatisfied and out of sorts. This vituperation of himself would not tend to impress his employes with awe, and strike a wholesome fear in their hearts. The culprits, instead of slinking away overwhelmed with guilt and the weight of his displeasure, had acted and spoken as if he were a grim old tyrant; and he had a vague, uncomfortable feeling that his clerks in their hearts sided with them and against him. It even occurred to him that he was creating a relation between himself and those in his service similar to that existing between master and slaves; and that, instead of forming a community with identical interests, he was on one side and they on the other. But, with the infatuation of a selfish nature and imperious will, he muttered:

"Curse them! I'll make them move in my grooves, or toss them out of the way!" Then, summoning his confidential clerk, he said:

"You know all about the affair. You will oblige me by going to the office of the justice, and stating the case, with the prisoner's admissions. I do not care to appear further in the matter, except by proxy, unless it is necessary."

CHAPTER XII

A MEMORABLE MEETING

Mrs. Arnot had looked upon Haldane's degradation with feelings akin to disgust and anger, but as long, sleepless hours pa.s.sed, her thoughts grew more gentle and compa.s.sionate. She was by nature an advocate rather than a judge. Not the spirit of the disciples, that would call down fire from heaven, but the spirit of the Master, who sought to lay his healing, rescuing hand on every lost creature, always controlled her eventually. Human desert did not count as much with her as human need, and her own sorrows had made her heart tender toward the sufferings of others, even though well merited.

The prospect that the handsome youth, the son of her old friend, would cast himself down to perish in the slough of dissipation, was a tragedy that wrung her heart with grief; and when at last she fell asleep it was with tears upon her face.

Forebodings had followed Laura also, even into her dreams, and at last, in a frightful vision, she saw her uncle placing a giant on guard over the house. Her uncle had scarcely disappeared before Haldane tried to escape, but the giant raised his mighty club, as large and heavy as the mast of a ship, and was about to strike when she awoke with a violent start.

In strange unison with her dream she still heard her uncle's voice in the garden below. She sprang to the window, half expecting to see the giant also, nor was she greatly rea.s.sured on observing an unknown man posted in the summer-house and left there. Mr. Arnot's mysterious action, and the fact that he was out at that early hour, added to the disquiet of mind which the events of the preceding night had created.

Her simple home-life had hitherto flowed like a placid stream in sunny meadows, but now it seemed as if the stream were entering a forest where dark and ominous shadows were thrown across its surface. She was too womanly to be indifferent to the fate of any human being. At the same time she was still so much of a child, and so ignorant of the world, that Haldane's action, even as she understood it, loomed up before her imagination as something awful and portentous of unknown evils. She was oppressed with a feeling that a crushing blow impended over him. Now, almost as vividly as in her dream, she still saw the giant's club raised high to strike. If it were only in a fairy tale, her sensitive spirit would tremble at such a stroke, but inasmuch as it was falling on one who had avowed pa.s.sionate love for her, she felt almost as if she must share in its weight. The idea of reciprocating any feeling that resembled his pa.s.sion had at first been absurd, and now, in view of what he had shown himself capable, seemed impossible; and yet his strongly expressed regard for her created a sort of bond between them in spite of herself. She had realized the night before that he would be immediately dismissed and sent home in disgrace; but her dream, and the glimpse she had caught of her uncle and the observant stranger, who, as she saw, still maintained his position, suggested worse consequences, whose very vagueness made them all the more dreadful.

As it was still a long time before the breakfast hour, she again sought her couch, and after a while fell into a troubled sleep, from which she was awakened by her aunt. Hastily dressing, she joined Mrs. Arnot at a late breakfast, and soon discovered that she was worried and anxious as well as herself.

"Has Mr. Haldane gone out?" she asked.

"Yes; and what perplexes me is that two strangers followed him to the street so rapidly that they almost seemed in pursuit."

Then Laura related what she had seen, and her aunt's face grew pale and somewhat rigid as she recognized the fact that her husband was carrying out some plan, unknown to her, which might involve a cruel blow to her friend, Mrs. Haldane, and an overwhelming disgrace to Egbert Haldane. At the same time the thought flashed upon her that the young man's offence might be graver than she had supposed. But she only remarked quietly:

"I will go down to the office and see your uncle after breakfast."

"Oh, auntie, please let me go with you," said Laura nervously.

"I may wish to see my husband alone," replied Mrs. Arnot doubtfully, foreseeing a possible interview which she would prefer her niece should not witness.

"I will wait for you in the outer office, auntie, if you will only let me go. I am so unstrung that I cannot bear to be left in the house alone."

"Very well, then; we'll go together, and a walk in the open air will do us both good."

As Mrs. Arnot was finishing her breakfast she listlessly took up the morning "Courier," and with a sudden start read the heavy head-lines and paragraph which Pat's unlucky venture as a reporter had occasioned.

"Come, Laura, let us go at once," said she, rising hastily; and as soon as they could prepare themselves for the street they started toward the central part of the city, each too busy with her own thoughts to speak often, and yet each having a grateful consciousness of unspoken sympathy and companionship.

As they pa.s.sed down the main street they saw a noisy crowd coming up the sidewalk toward them, and they crossed over to avoid it. But the approaching throng grew so large and boisterous that they deemed it prudent to enter the open door of a shop until it pa.s.sed. Their somewhat elevated position gave them a commanding view, and a policeman's uniform at once indicated that it was an arrest that had drawn together the loose human atoms that are always drifting about the streets. The prisoner was followed by a retinue that might have bowed the head of an old and hardened offender with shame--rude, idle, half-grown boys, with their morbid interest in every thing tending to excitement and crime, seedy loungers drawn away from saloon doors where they are as surely to be found as certain coa.r.s.e weeds in foul, neglected corners--a ragged, unkempt, repulsive jumble of humanity, that filled the street with gibes, slang, and profanity. Laura was about to retreat into the shop in utter disgust, when her aunt exclaimed in a tone of sharp distress:

"Merciful Heaven! there is Egbert Haldane!"

With something like a shock of terror she recognized her quondam lover, the youth who had stood at her side and turned her music. But as she saw him now there appeared an immeasurable gulf between them; while her pity for him was profound, it seemed as helpless and hopeless in his behalf as if he were a guilty spirit that was being dragged away to final doom.

Her aunt's startled exclamation caught the young man's attention, for it was a voice that he would detect among a thousand, and he turned his livid face, with its agonized, hunted look, directly toward them.

As their eyes met--as he saw the one of all the world that he then most dreaded to meet, Laura Romeyn, regarding him with a pale, frightened face, as if he were a monster, a wild beast, nay, worse, a common thief on his way to jail--he stopped abruptly, and for a second seemed to meditate some desperate act. But when he saw the rabble closing on him, and heard the officers growl in surly tones, "Move on," a sense of helplessness as well as of shame overwhelmed him. He shivered visibly, dashed his hat down over his eyes, and strode on, feeling at last that the obscurity of a prison cell would prove a welcome refuge.

But Mrs. Arnot had recognized the intolerable suffering and humiliation stamped on the young man's features; she had seen the fearful, shrinking gaze at herself and Laura, the lurid gleam of desperation, and read correctly the despairing gesture by which he sought to hide from them, the rabble, and all the world, a countenance from which he already felt that shame had blotted all trace of manhood.

Her face again wore a gray, rigid aspect, as if she had received a wound that touched her heart; and, scarcely waiting for the miscellaneous horde to pa.s.s, she took Laura's arm, and said briefly and almost sternly:

"Come."

Mr. Arnot's equanimity was again destined to be disturbed. Until he had commenced to carry out his scheme of striking fear into the hearts of his employes, he had derived much grim satisfaction from its contemplation. But never had a severe and unrelenting policy failed more signally, and a partial consciousness of the fact annoyed him like a constant stinging of nettles which he could not brush aside. When, therefore, his wife entered, he greeted her with his heaviest frown, and a certain twitching of his hands as he fumbled among his papers, which showed that the man who at times seemed composed of equal parts of iron and lead had at last reached a condition of nervous irritability which might result in an explosion of wrath; and yet he made a desperate effort at self-control, for he saw that his wife was in one of those moods which he had learned to regard with a wholesome respect.

"You have sent Haldane to prison," she said calmly. Though her tone was so quiet, there was in it a certain depth and tremble which her husband well understood, but he only answered briefly:

"Yes; he must go there if he finds no bail."

"May I ask why?"

"He robbed me of a thousand dollars."

"Were there no extenuating circ.u.mstances?" Mrs. Arnot asked, after a slight start.

"No, but many aggravating ones."

"Did he not come here of his own accord?"

"He could not have done otherwise. I had detectives watching him."