“Dear me!”
“And now,” continued Bucholz, “that ten thousand must be repaid.”
“Of course it must be. Only—”
“Only you haven’t got it, I suppose. Not even ad majorem Dei gratiam. Well, sir, you have got to get it.”
As he spoke, he rose from his seat and fronted his host. His face had changed. Up to this it had conveyed the varying shades of indifference, apathy, and disgust, but now it was resolute, it expressed a determination menacing and inflexible as a bayonet, and of which Gonfallon seemed to feel the point and the chill.
“You have got to get it,” he repeated, “and before Saturday at that.”
And as Gonfallon made no answer, Bucholz bent over him until his face almost touched his listener’s ear. “I put Usselex’ name on the check,” he whispered, and drew himself up.
“You—you say you put Usselex’ name on the check?”
And as Bucholz nodded encouragingly, invitingly even, to the dawn of understanding which he discerned breaking in Gonfallon’s eyes, the latter cowered in his chair. “Why, that is forgery!” he gasped.
“Be still,” hissed Bucholz; “be still.” Then, seeing that the shot had told, he nodded again, and added, with a negligent, musing air, “Yes, that, I believe, is what it is called.” He laughed a little—or was it a laugh?—a sound that had in it the ghoulish mock of the graphophone, a tone that runs cracked and thin, like a man’s laughter, as Swinburne puts it, heard in hell, far down.
Gonfallon still cowered in his chair. Bucholz assumed a graver mien, and, affecting to ignore his son-in-law’s attitude, monologued at the wall. “There was a time,” he said—“but bah! what is the use? Why, I couldn’t turn a block that someone didn’t rush to me with hands outstretched: ‘Oh, my dear Mr. Bucholz, how are you?’ Today the same people—and to every man jack of them I have been of use—the very same ones, people whom I lifted not out of the dust alone, but out of the mud, will not loan me a dollar. After all, they are only human, I suppose. What is that line in the catechism? However, that is not to the point. I am sorry about it all, but it was not for myself I worked, it was for Ruth and for Claire. It was for them I made myself rich, respected, famous even. It was for them I got into that trap of Jerolomon’s. It was for them I did this thing. Ruth you can always look after, but Claire—well, I used to think she would be the richest girl in the land. The hope of a parvenu, you will say. I grant it; but it was for her I cared, for her and for Ruth, not for myself.”
“I can do nothing,” said Gonfallon. In his eyes was the look of one who has sounded an abyss. “No, nothing. The very utmost I could raise would not cover a quarter of the—the—”
“Forgery is the word, but theft will do.”
“Of the amount,” he continued, in a dogged effort to pass the interruption unheeded. “And there is no one to whom I could go,” he added, reflectively, “save perhaps to Nicholas Manhattan. And if I went to him I would have to explain; which of course is impossible.”
“Not impossible in the least,” said Bucholz, very gravely; “not impossible in the least. I don’t see at all why you should say so. Nothing could be more proper. Mr. Manhattan is your parishioner; he is even a warden, isn’t he? I haven’t the pleasure of knowing him personally, and yet I am quite sure that he wouldn’t let a trifle like ten thousand weigh with him if he knew your good repute and that of Gethsemane was concerned.”
“My good repute! My good repute has nothing to do in the matter.”
“You are mistaken, dear boy; it has. When I am promenading a striped suit through the corridors of Sing Sing, it were facetious indeed did my son-in-law continue to officiate in the Church of the Holy Bilk—I mean Gethsemane. Your parishioners in whom you have instilled so well all the beautiful precepts of Christian charity will show you the difference between theory and practice. Not an atom of charity will you get from them. Why, dear boy, you might just as well begin to pack up at once. If this thing gets out, never will they let you preach again. Really they won’t. I think you can take my word for that—Why, Claire, where did you spring from?”
Unobserved by either, the girl had entered the room. To her father’s query she made no direct answer; she hastened towards him and gave him a fleeting caress.
Then, turning to Gonfallon, “Ruth wants you,” she explained.
“Can she have heard?” he wondered. He scanned her face; it was untroubled, and as she spoke, her voice assured.
“She has not heard,” he decided, and, waving at Bucholz, “I will be back presently,” he said.
“Saturday is the first of the month,” that gentleman announced. “The bank-account will be balanced then.”
But Gonfallon had already left the room. As he ascended the stair, he felt as though it were giving way beneath him. On each side were threatening hands. Yet above no haven was discernible, while below was an abyss.
“Of us two,” he muttered, “the nobler still is he;” and then, mentally, he bolted at the eccentricity of his own thought. “I am daft,” he told himself.
The stair, however, did not give way beneath him, the threatening hands did not detain his steps; he reached his wife in safety and sank in a chair at her side.
“Were you busy, Chris?” she asked. “I could
