A Knight of the Nineteenth Century Part 9

The loud ring at the door remained unanswered a few moments, for the servants had all retired. But the applicant without did not wait long before repeating the summons still more emphatically.

Then they heard the library door open, and Mr. Arnot's heavy step in the hall, as he went himself to learn the nature of the untimely call. His wife's nervous timidity vanished at once, and she stepped forward to join her husband, while Laura stood looking out from the parlor entrance with a pale and frightened face. "Can it be bad news from home?" she thought.

"Who is there?" demanded Mr. Arnot, sternly.

"Me and Misther Haldane," answered a voice without in broadest brogue.

"Mr. Haldane!" exclaimed Mr. Arnot excitedly; "what can this mean? Who is _me?_" he next asked loudly.

"Me is Pat M'Cabe, sure; the same as tidies up the office and does yer irrinds. Mr. Haldane's had a bad turn, and I've brought him home."

As Mr. Arnot swung open the door, a man, who seemingly had been leaning against it, fell p.r.o.ne within the hall. Laura gave a slight scream, and Mrs. Arnot was much alarmed, thinking that Haldane was suffering from some sudden and alarming attack. Thoughts of at once telegraphing to his mother were entering her mind, when the object of her solicitude tried to rise, and mumbled in the thick utterance of intoxication:

"This isn't home. Take me to mother's."

Mrs. Arnot's eyes turned questioningly to her husband, and she saw that his face was dark with anger and disgust.

"He is drunk," he said, turning to Pat, who stood in the door, cap in hand.

"Faix, sur, it looks moighty loike it. But it's not for a dacent sober man loike meself to spake sartainly o' sich matters."

"Few words and to the point, sir," said Mr. Arnot harshly; "your breath tells where you have been. But where did you find this--and how came you to find him?"

Either Mr. Arnot was at a loss for a term which would express his estimation of the young man, who had slowly and unsteadily risen, and was supporting himself by holding fast the hatrack, or he was restrained in his utterance by the presence of his wife.

"Well, sur," said Pat, with as ingenuous and candid an air as if he were telling the truth, "the wife o' a neighbor o' mine was taken on a suddint, and I went for the docther, and as I was a comin' home, who shud I see sittin' on a doorsthep but Misther Haldane, and I thought it me duty to bring him home to yees."

"You have done right. Was it on the doorstep of a drinking-place you found him?"

"I'm athinkin' it was, sur; it had that sort o' look."

Mr. Arnot turned to his wife and said coldly, "You now see how it works.

But this is not a fit object for you and Laura to look upon; so please retire. I will see that he gets safely to his room. I suppose he must go there, though the station-house is the more proper place for him."

"He certainly must go to his own room," said Mrs. Arnot, firmly but quietly.

"Well, then, steady him along up the stairs, Pat. I will show you where to put the--" and Mr. Arnot again seemed to hesitate for a term, but the blank was more expressive of his contempt than any epithet could be, since his tone and manner suggested the worst.

Returning to the parlor, Mrs. Arnot found Laura's face expressive of the deepest alarm and distress.

"O auntie, what does all this mean? Am I in any way to blame? He said he would go to ruin if I didn't--but how could I?"

"No, my dear, you are not in the slightest degree to blame. Mr. Haldane seems both bad and foolish. I feel to-night that he is not worthy to speak to you; much less is he fit to be intrusted with that which you will eventually give, I hope, only to one who is pre-eminently n.o.ble and good. Come with me to your room, my child. I am very sorry I permitted you to stay up to-night."

But Laura was sleepless and deeply troubled; she had never seen a laborer--much less one of her own acquaintances--in Haldane's condition before; and to her young, innocent mind the event had almost the character of a tragedy. Although conscious of entire blamelessness, she supposed that she was more directly the cause of Haldane's behavior than was true, and that he was carrying out his threat to destroy himself by reckless dissipation. She did not know that he had been beguiled into his miserable condition through bad habits of long standing, and that he had fallen into the clutches of those who always infest public haunts, and live by preying upon the fast, foolish, and unwary. Haldane, from his character and a.s.sociations, was liable to such an experience whenever circ.u.mstances combined to make it possible. Young men with no more principle than he possessed are never safe from disaster, and they who trust them trust rather to the chances of their not meeting the peculiar temptations and tests to which they would prove unequal. Laura could not then know how little she had to do with the tremendous downfall of her premature lover. The same conditions given, he would probably have met with the same experience upon any occasion. After his first gla.s.s of punch the small degree of discretion that he had learned thus far in life began to desert him; and every man as he becomes intoxicated is first a fool, and then the victim of every one who chooses to take advantage of his voluntary helplessness and degradation.

But innocent Laura saw a romantic and tragic element in the painful event, and she fell asleep with some vague womanly thoughts about saving a fellow-creature by the sacrifice of herself. However, the morning light, the truth concerning Haldane, and her own good sense, would banish such morbid fancies. Indeed the worst possible way in which a young woman can set about reforming a bad man is to marry him. The usual result is greatly increased guilt on the part of the husband, and lifelong, hopeless wretchedness for the wife.

CHAPTER IX

PAT AND THE PRESS

Pat having steadied and half carried Haldane to his room, Mr. Arnot demanded of his clerk what had become of the money intrusted to his care; but his only answer was a stupid, uncomprehending stare.

"Hold his hands," said Mr. Arnot impatiently.

M'Cabe having obeyed, the man of business, whose solicitude in the affair had no concern with the young man's immeasurable loss, but related only to his own money, immediately felt in Haldane's pockets for the envelopes which had contained the thousand dollars in currency. The envelopes were safe enough--one evidently opened with the utmost care, and the other torn recklessly--but the money was gone.

When Haldane saw the envelopes, there was a momentary expression of trouble and perplexity upon his face, and he tried to speak; but his thick utterance was unintelligible. This gleam of intelligence pa.s.sed quickly, however, and the stupor of intoxication rea.s.serted itself. His heavy eyelids drooped, and Pat with difficulty could keep him on his feet.

"Toss him there on the lounge; take off his muddy boots. Nothing further can be done while he is in this beastly condition," said Mr. Arnot, in a voice that was as harsh as the expression of his face.

The empty envelopes and Mr. Arnot's dark looks suggested a great deal to Pat, and he saw that one of his "sprees" was an innocent matter compared with this affair.

"Now, go down to my study and wait there for me."

Pat obeyed in a very steady and decorous manner, for the matter was a.s.suming such gravity as to sober him completely.

Mr. Arnot satisfied himself that there was no chance of escape from the windows, and then, after another look of disgust and anger at Haldane, who was now sleeping heavily, he took the key from the door, and locked it on the outside.

Descending to his study, the irate gentleman next wrote a note, and gave it to his porter, saying:

"Take that to the police-headquarters, and ask that it be sent to the superintendent at once. No mistake, now, as you value your place; and mind, not a word of all this to any one."

"Faix, sir, I'll be as dumb as an oyster, and do yer biddin' in a jiffy," said Pat, backing out of the room, and glad to escape from one whose threatening aspect seemed to forebode evil to any one within his reach.

"He looks black enough to murther the poor young spalpeen," muttered the Irishman, as he hastened to do his errand, remembering now with trepidation that, though he had escaped from his master, the big, red-faced, stout-armed wife of his bosom was still to be propitiated after his late prowlings.

When he entered the main street, a light that glimmered from the top of a tall building suggested how he might obtain that kind of oil which, cast upon the domestic billows that so often raged in his fourth-floor back room, was most effective in producing a little temporary smoothness.

Since the weather was always fouler within his domestic haven than without, and on this occasion threatened to be at its worst, Pat at one time half decided not to run into port at all; but the glimmer of the light already mentioned suggested another course.

Although the night was far spent, Pat still longed for a "wink o' slape"

before going to his work, and, in order to enjoy it, knew that he must obtain the means of allaying the storm, which was not merely brewing, but which, from the lateness of the hour, had long been brewed. In his own opinion, the greenness of his native isle had long ago faded from his mental and moral complexion, and he did not propose that any stray dollars, which by any shrewdness or artifice could be diverted into his pocket, should get by him.

Since his wife had developed into a huge, female divinity, at whose shrine it seemed probable that he would eventually become a human sacrifice, and whose wrath, in the meantime, it was his daily task to appease, Pat had gradually formed the habit of making a sort of companion of himself. In accordance with his custom, therefore, he stopped under the high window from whence gleamed the light, for the sake of a little personal counsel.

"Now, Pat," he muttered, "if yees had gone home at nine o'clock, yees wudn't be afeared to go home now; and if yees go home now widout a dollar more or less, the ould 'ooman will make yer wish yees had set on the curbstone the rest o' the night. They sez some men has no bowels o'

marcies; and after what I've seen the night, and afore the night, too, I kin belave that Boss Arnot's in'ards were cast at the same foundry where he gets his mash-shines. He told me that I must spake nary a word about what I've seen and heard, and if I should thry to turn an honest penny by givin' a knowin' wink or two where they wud pay for the same, that 'ud be the ind of Pat M'Cabe at the big office. And yet they sez that them as buys news is loike them that takes stolen goods--moighty willin'

to kape dark about where they got it, so that they kin get more next time. That's the iditor of the 'Currier' in yon high room, and p'raps he'll pay me as much for a wink and a hint the night as I'll get for me day's work termorrow. Bust me if I don't thry him, if he'll fust promise me to say it any one axes him that he niver saw Pat M'Cabe in his loife," and the suddenly improvised reporter climbed the long stairways to where the night editor sat at his desk.

Pat gave a hearty rap for manners, but as the night was waning he walked in without waiting for an answer, and addressed the startled newspaper man with a business-like directness, which might often be advantageously imitated:

"Is this the shop where yer pays a dacent price for news?"