Sevenoaks Part 47

Mrs. Dillingham had a difficult role to play. She could not break with Mr. Belcher without exposing her motives and bringing herself under unpleasant suspicion and surveillance. She felt that the safety of her protege and his father would be best consulted by keeping peace with their enemy; yet every approach of the great scoundrel disgusted and humiliated her. That side of her nature which had attracted and encouraged him was sleeping, and, under the new motives which were at work within her, she hoped that it would never wake. She looked down the devious track of her past, counted over its unworthy and most unwomanly satisfactions, and wondered. She looked back to a great wrong which she had once inflicted on an innocent man, with a self-condemnation so deep that all the womanhood within her rose into the purpose of reparation.

The boy whom she had called to her side, and fastened by an impa.s.sioned tenderness more powerful even than her wonderful art, had become to her a fountain of pure motives. She had a right to love this child. She owed a duty to him beyond any woman living. Grasping her right, and acknowledging her duty--a right and duty accorded to her by his nominal protector--she would not have forfeited them for the world. They soon became all that gave significance to her existence, and to them she determined that her life should be devoted. To stand well with this boy, to be loved, admired and respected by him, to be to him all that a mother could be, to be guided by his pure and tender conscience toward her own reformation, to waken into something like life and nourish into something like strength the starved motherhood within her--these became her dominant motives.

Mr. Belcher saw the change in her, but was too gross in his nature, too blind in his pa.s.sion, and too vain in his imagined power, to comprehend it. She was a woman, and had her whims, he thought. Whims were evanescent, and this particular whim would pa.s.s away. He was vexed by seeing the boy so constantly with her. He met them walking together in the street, or straying in the park, hand in hand, or caught the lad looking at him from her window. He could not doubt that all this intimacy was approved by Mr. Balfour. Was she playing a deep game? Could she play it for anybody but himself--the man who had taken her heart by storm? Her actions, however, even when interpreted by his self-conceit, gave him uneasiness. She had grown to be very kind and considerate toward Mrs. Belcher. Had this friendship moved her to crush the pa.s.sion for her husband? Ah! if she could only know how true he was to her in his untruthfulness!--how faithful he was to her in his perjury!--how he had saved himself for the ever-vanishing opportunity!

Many a time the old self-pity came back to the successful scoundrel.

Many a time he wondered why the fate which had been so kind to him in other things would not open the door to his wishes in this. With this unrewarded pa.s.sion gnawing at his heart, and with the necessity of treating the wife of his youth with constantly increasing consideration, in order to cover it from her sight, the General was anything but a satisfied and happy man. The more he thought upon it, the more morbid he grew, until it seemed to him that his wife must look through his hypocritical eyes into his guilty heart. He grew more and more guarded in his speech. If he mentioned Mrs. Dillingham's name, he always did it incidentally, and then only for the purpose of showing that he had no reason to avoid the mention of it.

There was another thought that preyed upon him. He was consciously a forger. He had not used the doc.u.ment he had forged, but he had determined to do so. Law had not laid its finger upon him, but its finger was over him. He had not yet crossed the line that made him legally a criminal, but the line was drawn before him, and only another step would be necessary to place him beyond it. A brood of fears was gathering around him. They stood back, glaring upon him from the distance; but they only waited another act in his career of dishonor to crowd in and surround him with menace. Sometimes he shrank from his purpose, but the shame of being impoverished and beaten spurred him renewedly to determination. He became conscious that what there was of bravery in him was sinking into bravado. His self-conceit, and what little he possessed of self-respect, were suffering. He dimly apprehended the fact that he was a rascal, and it made him uncomfortable. It ceased to be enough for him to a.s.sure himself that he was no more a rascal than those around him. He reached out on every side for means to maintain his self-respect. What good thing could he do to counterbalance his bad deeds? How could he sh.o.r.e himself up by public praise, by respectable a.s.sociations, by the obligations of the public for deeds of beneficence? It is the most natural thing in the world for the dishonest steward, who cheats his lord, to undertake to win consideration against contingencies with his lord's money.

On the same evening in which the gathering at the Sevenoaks tavern occurred, preceding Jim's wedding, Mr. Belcher sat in his library, looking over the doc.u.ment which nominally conveyed to him the right and t.i.tle of Paul Benedict to his inventions. He had done this many times since he had forged three of the signatures, and secured a fraudulent addition to the number from the hand of Phipps. He had brought himself to believe, to a certain extent, in their genuineness, and was wholly sure that they were employed on behalf of justice. The inventions had cost Benedict little or no money, and he, Mr. Belcher, had developed them at his own risk. Without his money and his enterprise they would have amounted to nothing. If Benedict had not lost his reason, the doc.u.ment would have been legally signed. The cause of Benedict's lapse from sanity did not occur to him. He only knew that if the inventor had not become insane, he should have secured his signature at some wretched price, and out of this conviction he reared his self-justification.

"It's right!" said Mr. Belcher. "The State prison may be in it, but it's right!"

And then, confirming his foul determination by an oath, he added:

"I'll stand by it."

Then he rang his bell, and called for Phipps.

"Phipps," said he, as his faithful and plastic servitor appeared, "come in, and close the door."

When Phipps, with a question in his face, walked up to where Mr. Belcher was sitting at his desk, with the forged doc.u.ment before him, the latter said:

"Phipps, did you ever see this paper before?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now, think hard--don't be in a hurry--and tell me when you saw it before. Take it in your hand, and look it all over, and be sure."

"I can't tell, exactly," responded Phipps, scratching his had; "but I should think it might have been six years ago, or more. It was a long time before we came from Sevenoaks."

"Very well; is that your signature?"

"It is, sir."

"Did you see Benedict write his name? Did you see Johnson and Ramsey write their names?"

"I did, sir."

"Do you remember all the circ.u.mstances--what I said to you, and what you said to me--why you were in the room?"

"Yes, sir."

"Phipps, do you know that if it is ever found out that you have signed that paper within a few weeks, you are as good as a dead man?"

"I don't know what you mean, sir," replied Phipps, in evident alarm.

"Do you know that that signature is enough to send you to the State prison?"

"No, sir."

"Well, Phipps, it is just that, provided it isn't stuck to. You will have to swear to it, and stand by it. I know the thing is coming. I can feel it in my bones. Why it hasn't come before, the Lord only knows."

Phipps had great faith in the might of money, and entire faith in Mr.

Belcher's power to save him from any calamity. His master, during all his residence with and devotion to him, had shown himself able to secure every end he had sought, and he believed in him, or believed in his power, wholly.

"Couldn't you save me, sir, if I were to get into trouble?" he inquired, anxiously.

"That depends upon whether you stand by me, Phipps. It's just here, my boy. If you swear, through thick and thin, that you saw these men sign this paper, six years ago or more, that you signed it at the same time, and stand by your own signature, you will sail through all right, and do me a devilish good turn. If you balk, or get twisted up in your own reins, or thrown off your seat, down goes your house. If you stand by me, I shall stand by you. The thing is all right, and just as it ought to be, but it's a little irregular. It gives me what belongs to me, but the law happens to be against it."

Phipps hesitated, and glanced suspiciously, and even menacingly, at the paper. Mr. Belcher knew that he would like to tear it in pieces, and so, without unseemly haste, he picked it up, placed it in its drawer, locked it in, and put the key in his pocket.

"I don't want to get into trouble," said Phipps.

"Phipps," said Mr. Belcher, in a conciliatory tone, "I don't intend that you shall get into trouble."

Then, rising, and patting his servant on the shoulder, he added:

"But it all depends on your standing by me, and standing by yourself.

You know that you will lose nothing by standing by the General, Phipps; you know me."

Phipps was not afraid of crime; he was only afraid of its possible consequences; and Mr. Belcher's a.s.surance of safety, provided he should remember his story and adhere to it, was all that he needed to confirm him in the determination to do what Mr. Belcher wished him to do.

After Phipps retired, Mr. Belcher took out his doc.u.ment again, and looked it over for the hundredth time. He recompared the signatures which he had forged with their originals. Consciously a villain, he regarded himself still as a man who was struggling for his rights. But something of his old, self-reliant courage was gone. He recognized the fact that there was one thing in the world more powerful than himself.

The law was against him. Single-handed, he could meet men; but the great power which embodied the justice and strength of the State awed him, and compelled him into a realization of his weakness.

The next morning Mr. Belcher received his brokers and operators in bed in accordance with his custom. He was not good-natured. His operations in Wall street had not been prosperous for several weeks. In some way, impossible to be foreseen by himself or his agents, everything had worked against him He knew that if he did not rally from this pa.s.sage of ill-luck, he would, in addition to his loss of money, lose something of his prestige. He had a stormy time with his advisers and tools, swore a great deal, and sent them off in anything but a pleasant frame of mind.

Talbot was waiting in the drawing-room when the brokers retired, and followed his card upstairs, where he found his princ.i.p.al with an ugly frown upon his face.

"Toll," he whimpered, "I'm glad to see you. You're the best of 'em all, and in the long run, you bring me the most money."

"Thank you," responded the factor, showing his white teeth in a gratified smile.

"Toll, I'm not exactly ill, but I'm not quite myself. How long it will last I don't know, but just this minute the General is devilish unhappy, and would sell himself cheap. Things are not going right. I don't sleep well."

"You've got too much money," suggested Mr. Talbot.

"Well, what shall I do with it?"

"Give it to me."

"No, I thank you; I can do better. Besides, you are getting more than your share of it now."

"Well, I don't ask it of you," said Talbot, "but if you wish to get rid of it, I could manage a little more of it without trouble."