Masterman and Son Part 32

"I think so too."

"It was great." The phrase was a portrait--vital, indubitable, convincing. During all these miserable days and nights Arthur had laboured to fashion some portrait of his father. He had seen him bent, shame-stricken, prematurely aged; had imagined him leaning on his young strength for succour, acknowledging his errors, voluble in explanation, perhaps fierce in accusation of those who had failed him or betrayed him; had, in fact, seen him in every att.i.tude but the real one; and now, as though a curtain lifted, he saw his father painted at a touch, with an instinctive penetration, an absolute veracity. He was a fighter, and would fight to the last. His pride fed upon defeat.

Calamity had given him nerves of steel. He would drink the cup that he had brewed, and drink it with a smile. "No sugar"--that phrase said everything. Pity, sympathy, help, consolation--he was above them, beyond them, indifferent to them; a man who bared his breast to the flight of arrows, thrust his hand in the flame without a shudder, challenged the thunderbolt, upheld while the flame consumed him by a scorn more potent than his anguish. Yes, it was great--a Promethean greatness, which defies the heart-eating vulture. He might have known so much, if he had thought about it. In a sense, he had always known it, for he had always, even as a boy, felt the element of greatness in his father. But now, for the first time, he really measured it, and his heart quailed before it, foreseeing elements in this imminent meeting with his father which he had not so much as guessed.

They had driven fast. The carriage pa.s.sed rapidly by the old Church of St. Sepulchre, and under the walls of Newgate, stopping at last at the mean, insignificant doors of the Old Bailey.

The pavements were thronged. From the court a great crowd was pouring out. And already, from the neighbouring newspaper offices, men and boys were racing breathlessly, shouting "Verdict!" Above the clamour of the street the shrill cry rose, "_Verdict! Verdict!_"

Bundy leapt from the carriage, and plunged into the throng. He came back a moment later, waving an evening paper.

"What is it?"

"Scales five years; Masterman acquitted!"

"Thank G.o.d!"

And then the tension broke. Arthur found himself sobbing, with the arm of Vickars round his neck.

"Take me to my father at once," he said. "I wish to go home with him."

"Very well," said Bundy. "Wait here till I find him."

The crowd rapidly thinned, till, in a few moments, where a roaring torrent of life had run, but an insignificant ripple flowed and eddied.

The tragic bubble, so long watched by thousands of eager eyes, had burst; it was a thing of the past, to be speedily forgotten. The carriage moved unimpeded now to the doors of the court. A few stragglers still hung around, in the hope of seeing once more the protagonists in the finished drama.

A long black van with a grated door at the back drew up against the curb. Two policemen came out of the court-house, looked warily up and down the street, and disappeared again. The man who drove the van nodded to them, and went on reading his evening paper.

The policemen reappeared, with a man walking between them. The man's head was bowed, his coat-collar turned up, his hat drawn down over his eyes.

Arthur had a brief glimpse of a face yellow as wax, a pair of shifty, bloodshot eyes, and he shuddered. It was Scales. The door of the van closed, and, through the barred window, that yellow, awful face looked out, in a last glimpse at liberty. A long, terrible look, gathering up and flashing to the memory things that would be seen no more, unforgetable things that would become the torture of sleep and dreams, little things, such as sunlight flashing on a pool of water, sparrows in the gutter, a broken flower lying in the road, a girl's languorous face turned toward her lover, a beggar gazing into the window of a cook-shop--and then the lids fell upon the bloodshot eyes, and the van rolled away.

"And that might have been my father," thought Arthur. And with the thought came a pang of pity for the man in the black van. Not a good man, not even a lovable man; without grace, without charm, inherently mean-natured--yet, were he a thousandfold worse than he was, to be pitied as a creature going to the torture. And, after all, who should judge even a Scales with justice, who declare how far he was a victim of the evil system which had inflamed his avarice--the victim, too, perhaps of some potency of evil in his own blood, some ghostly hand stretched out of the illimitable past, from whose predestined clutch he could not escape? Ah, G.o.d! who should judge?

And now at last he saw him--his father. Archibold Masterman stood in the doorway of the court-house. He came down the steps with a firm tread, looking up and down the street with a calm, defiant glance, his lips compressed in scornful challenge. Yet scorn could not conceal the ravage wrought in him by his misfortunes. The face had lost its colour, it was drawn and haggard, and the hair was nearly white. He was talking with Bundy, and he smiled as he talked. He drew near the waiting carriage, opened the door, and stepped in.

"Father!"

"Ah, Arthur!"--no other word.

There was a hard grip of the hand, a sudden heat that flushed the haggard face, and then iron-cold composure.

"Won't you come to my house, Masterman? If only for to-night," pleaded Bundy.

"No; I want to go home.... To such a home as I've got," he added bitterly.

"Well, G.o.d bless you, my friend!" said Bundy softly.

"I'm not asking anything of G.o.d that I know of, and you needn't ask anything for me. I reckon I can look after myself. Tell the driver, Eagle House, Highbourne Gardens."

And the carriage moved off.

They reached the house, and entered it in silence. Masterman went at once to his room--the room in which his wife had died--and remained there. What memories, what remorses met him there, who can say?

Arthur, pa.s.sing that closed door at midnight, could hear his father walking up and down like a caged lion. He stood listening to that slow, continuous footfall; but he dared not knock upon the door. He went downstairs again, knowing sleep impossible, and sat in the deserted dining-room, still pursued by that inevitable footfall. A dreadful thought possessed his mind--his father might be contemplating suicide. When, for an instant, the footfall ceased the sweat of fear stood upon his forehead and his flesh crept. When it commenced again he drew a long breath of relief. So the brief summer night pa.s.sed, sleepless for both father and son, and at last, through the unshuttered window, the first ray of dawn stole in.

The house appeared both deserted and dismantled. The pictures and much of the furniture had disappeared. Instead of the array of smiling servants, a single sour old woman occupied the kitchen. From her, Arthur learned that the pictures and the more valuable furniture had been sold at some auction rooms in the city; and that Helen had left the house upon the day of her mother's funeral, and had not returned.

Did she know where she had gone? To some friend--so she said. But no one knew.

The father and son met at breakfast next morning. It was a miserable meal, ill-cooked and coa.r.s.ely served--very different from the generous luxury of other days. The cloth was stained and torn, the china broken, the food wretched. Masterman appeared to notice none of these things. He drank the straw-coloured tea and ate the burned toast with complete indifference. He seemed indifferent even to the presence of his son.

When the meal was over, he said, with a mocking abruptness, "So you've come home to pity me, I suppose? Well, you and me have got to have an explanation. As well now as later."

"I came home to help you, father--if I could."

"Ah! did you?" he sneered. "Well, let me tell you I want no man's pity and no man's help. You think I'm done for, don't you? So does everybody. But I'm not. The world has cheated me, but I'm going to get even with the world. I'm going to get my revenge. I've years of work in me--years of work--and I've a dozen schemes for success."

And then he began to talk in a loud, scornful, hectoring voice.

Failure? Only fools talked of failure, and they failed themselves because they were fools. He was going to start again. He would start that very day. No sensible man would think the worse of him for what had happened. There were scores of men in the city who had come much nearer a prison than he had; and what were they now? They were rich, honoured, respected. They had succeeded, and no one reminded them of past misfortunes. The very men who had tried to ruin them were now licking their boots. Well, he'd have the world licking his boots, too, before he died. Only he'd kick their lying faces in when the time came, that's what he'd do. He'd teach them. He'd let them know what kind of man Archibold Masterman was.

There was much more of the same kind, a loud outrageous monologue, to which Arthur listened with a sinking heart. It was obviously useless to interrupt or interfere. It was the fierce outcry of a man in torment, the immedicable torment of an injured pride. And, as Arthur looked upon that coldly furious face, he began to suspect, what was indeed the truth, that his father's mind hung upon the verge of madness.

And this impression was confirmed when, without warning, the gust of rage ceased, and was replaced by a pathetic weak humility.

"I somehow don't feel well this morning. I didn't sleep last night.

Perhaps I'd better wait a day or two and get my strength built up. O Arthur! I've had lots to try me. I've had a hard life, with very little in it but toil and trouble. And I'm a man that's had sorrows.

Your mother's dead. They buried her while I was in gaol. They wouldn't give me bail at first. Did I tell you that? When they let me out on bail, she'd gone. They'd buried her in Highbourne Cemetery.

They showed me her grave. And Helen wasn't pleased with me. I did everything I could to please the girl. And yet, when my trouble came, she flew at me like a cat. And she's gone away too--I don't know where. I reckon she thinks me a poor kind of father. Well--well--I'm a man that's had sorrows. And I suppose you'll be going away too? Eh?"

"Father, father, you know I won't go away. I love you, and you used to love me. Don't you love me still?"

"Well, I don't know, Arthur. I don't know that I love any one. It doesn't seem much good loving people, does it? They always go away.

Well--well----"

And then he relapsed into a gloomy silence, from which nothing could arouse him. So he sat for hours, gazing out of window, until he fell asleep in his chair.

This scene was but a sample of many similar scenes. Sometimes he would rouse himself, dress, and go down into the city, full of all kinds of schemes to rehabilitate his fortunes. From these excursions he would return late at night, weary, but full of impossible hopes. He would try the Stock Exchange. That was where fortunes were made. Hard work didn't pay; it was the gambler who got both the luck and the money. He had had a tip from some one who knew; such and such a stock was bound to rise. And then, with pen and paper, he would work out his illusory profits, his hands trembling, his face glowing, and reach the most surprising and incredible conclusions.

"If I only had the money!" he would cry. "I would buy upon a margin.

Bruce and Whitson would be proud to do business for me, for old times'

sake. Masterman isn't forgotten in the city, I can tell you. Not by a long chalk. All I want is a chance, just a little money to begin with."

"I have a hundred pounds, father," Arthur replied to one of these appeals. "You can have that."

"A hundred pounds! Yes, that would be enough." And then, with a sudden flare of the old pride, he exclaimed, "No, no. That wouldn't do at all. I'm not sunk so low as to be a pensioner upon my children.

I'll get what I want out of the world yet, and I'll get it by myself.

I'm not very well yet, but wait till I get my nerve back, and I'll show you. Don't you be afraid about me. I'm playing a waiting game, and I'm going to win--you mind that!"

So a month pa.s.sed, marked by tragic incalculable alternations of temper in his father. No one came near the house. Bundy had called twice, but Masterman had refused to see him. The church people appeared to have forgotten his existence. When the Sundays came, Masterman drew down the blinds, and sat alone in his office. If Arthur left the house it was but for the briefest absence. He would go round to Lonsdale Road, exchange a few words with Vickars, taste a raptured moment with Elizabeth, and return in haste and often in fear. For he could not calculate his father's moods, he did not know what he might be tempted to do, and he dared not leave him solitary.