A strange stir came in John’s heart. All this while had he been thinking only of himself? All this while, why had he not written to Flora? In penitential tenderness, he took her hand, and, to his awe and trouble, it remained in his, compliant. A voice told him this was Flora, after all – told him so quietly, yet with a thrill of singing.
“And you never married?” said he.
“No, John; I never married,” she replied.
The hall clock striking two recalled them to the sense of time.
“And now,” said she, “you have been fed and warmed, and I have heard your story, and now it’s high time to call your brother.”
“O!” cried John, chapfallen; “do you think that absolutely necessary?”
“I can’t keep you here; I am a stranger,” said she. “Do you want to run away again? I thought you had enough of that.”
He bowed his head under the reproof. She despised him, he reflected, as he sat once more alone; a monstrous thing for a woman to despise a man; and, strangest of all, she seemed to like him. Would his brother despise him, too? And would his brother like him?
And presently the brother appeared, under Flora’s escort; and, standing afar off beside the doorway, eyed the hero of this tale.
“So this is you?” he said at length.
“Yes, Alick, it’s me – it’s John,” replied the elder brother feebly.
“And how did you get in here?” inquired the younger.
“O, I had my pass-key,” says John.
“The deuce you had!” said Alexander. “Ah, you lived in a better world! There are no pass-keys going now.”
“Well, father was always averse to them,” sighed John. And the conversation then broke down, and the brothers looked askance at one another in silence.
“Well, and what the devil are we to do?” said Alexander. “I suppose if the authorities got wind of you, you would be taken up?”
“It depends on whether they’ve found the body or not,” returned John. “And then there’s that cabman, to be sure!”
“O, bother the body!” said Alexander. “I mean about the other thing. That’s serious.”
“Is that what my father spoke about?” asked John. “I don’t even know what it is.”
“About your robbing your bank in California, of course,” replied Alexander.
It was plain, from Flora’s face, that this was the first she had heard of it; it was plainer still, from John’s, that he was innocent.
“I!” he exclaimed. “I rob my bank! My God! Flora, this is too much; even you must allow that.”
“Meaning you didn’t?” asked Alexander.
“I never robbed a soul in all my days,” cried John: “except my father, if you call that robbery; and I brought him back the money in this room, and he wouldn’t even take it!”
“Look here, John,” said his brother; “let us have no misunderstanding upon this. MacEwen saw my father; he told him a bank you had worked for in San Francisco was wiring over the habitable globe to have you collared – that it was supposed you had nailed thousands; and it was dead certain you had nailed three hundred. So MacEwen said, and I wish you would be careful how you answer. I may tell you also, that your father paid the three hundred on the spot.”
“Three hundred?” repeated John. “Three hundred pounds, you mean? That’s fifteen hundred dollars. Why, then, it’s Kirkman!” he broke out. “Thank Heaven! I can explain all that. I gave them to Kirkman to pay for me the night before I left – fifteen hundred dollars, and a letter to the manager. What do they suppose I would steal fifteen hundred dollars for? I’m rich; I struck it rich in stocks. It’s the silliest stuff I ever heard of. All that’s needful is to cable to the manager: Kirkman has the fifteen hundred – find Kirkman. He was a fellow-clerk of mine, and a hard case; but to do him justice I didn’t think he was as hard as this.”
“And what do you say to that, Alick?” asked Flora.
“I say the cablegram shall go to-night!” cried Alexander, with energy. “Answer prepaid, too. If this can be cleared away – and upon my word I do believe it can – we shall all be able to hold up our heads again. Here, you John, you stick down the address of your bank manager. You, Flora, you can pack John into my bed, for which I have no further use to-night. As for me, I am off to the post-office, and thence to the High Street about the dead body. The police ought to know, you see, and they ought to know through John; and I can tell them some rigmarole about my brother being a man of a highly nervous organisation, and the rest of it. And then; I’ll tell you what, John – did you notice the name upon the cab?”
John gave the name of the driver, which, as I have not been able to commend the vehicle, I here suppress.
“Well,” resumed Alexander, “I’ll call round at their place before I come back, and pay your shot for you. In that way, before breakfast-time, you’ll be as good as new.”
John murmured inarticulate thanks. To see his brother thus energetic in his service moved him beyond expression; if he could not utter what he felt, he showed it legibly in his face; and Alexander read it there, and liked it the better in that dumb delivery.
“But there’s one thing,” said the latter, “cablegrams are dear; and I daresay you remember enough of the governor to guess the state of my finances.”
“The trouble is,” said John, “that all my stamps are in that beastly house.”
“All your what?” asked Alexander.
“Stamps – money,” explained John. “It’s an American expression; I’m afraid I contracted one or two.”
“I have some,” said Flora. “I have a pound-note upstairs.”
“My dear Flora,” returned Alexander, “a pound-note won’t see us very far; and besides, this is my father’s business, and I shall be very much surprised if it isn’t my father who pays for it.”
“I would not apply to him yet; I do not think that can be wise,” objected Flora.
“You have a very imperfect idea of my resources, and none at all of my effrontery,” replied Alexander. “Please observe.”
He put John from his way, chose a stout knife among the supper things, and with surprising quickness broke into his father’s drawer.
“There’s nothing easier when you come to try,” he observed, pocketing the money.
“I wish you had not done that,” said Flora. “You will never hear the last of it.”
“O, I don’t know,” returned the young man; “the governor is human, after all. And now, John, let me see your famous pass-key. Get into bed, and don’t move for any one till I come back. They won’t mind you not answering when they knock; I generally don’t myself.”
CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH MR. NICHOLSON CONCEDES THE PRINCIPLE OF AN ALLOWANCE
In spite of the horrors of the day and the tea-drinking of the night, John slept the sleep of infancy. He was wakened by the maid, as it might have been ten years ago, tapping at the door. The winter sunrise was painting the east; and as the window was to the back of the house, it shone into the room with many strange colours of refracted light. Without, the houses were all cleanly roofed with snow; the garden walls were coped with it a foot in height; the greens lay glittering. Yet strange as snow had grown to John during his years upon the Bay of San Francisco, it was what he saw within that most affected him. For it was to his own room that Alexander had been promoted; there was the old paper with the device of flowers, in which a cunning fancy might yet