Haworth's/Chapter LII
CHAPTER LII.
"HAWORTH'S IS DONE WITH."
Almost at the same moment, Haworth was reading, in his room at the Works, the letter which had been left for himself.
"I have borne as much as I can bear," it ended. "My punishment for my folly is that I am a ruined man and a fugitive. My presence upon the scene, when the climax comes, would be of no benefit to either of us. Pardon me, if you can, for the wrong I have unintentionally done you. My ill-luck was sheerly the result of circumstances. Even yet, I cannot help thinking that there were great possibilities in my plans. But you will not believe this and I will say no more.
In haste,
When Rachel Ffrench finished reading her note she lighted a taper and held the paper to it until it was reduced to ashes, and afterward turned away merely a shade paler and colder than before. Haworth having finished the reading of Ffrench's letter, sat for a few seconds staring down at it as it lay before him on the table. Then he burst into a brutal laugh.
After that, he sat stupefied—his elbows on the table, his head on his hands. He did not move for half an hour. The Works saw very little of him during the day. He remained alone in his room, not showing himself, and one of the head clerks, coming in from the Bank on business, went back mystified, and remarked in confidence to a companion that "things had a queer look."
He did not leave the Works until late, and then went home. All through the evening his mother watched him in her old tender way. She tried to interest him with her history of the Briarley's bereavement and unexpected good fortune. She shed tears over her recital.
"So old, my dear," she said. "Old enough to have outlived her own,—an' her ways a little hard," wiping her eyes. "I'd like to be grieved for more, Jem—though perhaps it's only nat'ral as it should be so. She hadn't no son to miss her as you'll miss me. I shouldn't like to be the last, Jem."
He had been listening mechanically and he started and turned to her.
"The last?" he said. "Aye, it's a bit hard."
It was as if she had suggested a new thought to him of which he could not rid himself at once. He kept looking at her, his eyes wandering over her frail little figure and innocent old face, restlessly.
"But I haven't no fear," she went on, "though we never know what's to come. But you're a strong man, and there's not like to be many more years for me—though I'm so well an' happy."
"You might live a score," he answered in an abstracted way, his eyes still fixed on her.
"Not without you," she returned. "It's you that's life to me—an' strength—an' peace." The innocent tears were in her voice again, and her eyes were bright with them.
He lay down awhile but could not lie still. He got up and came and stood near her and talked and then moved here and there, picking up one thing and another, holding them idly for a few seconds and then setting them aside. At last she was going to bed and came to bid him good-night. He laid his hand on her shoulder caressingly.
"There's never been aught like trouble between us two," he said. "I've been a quiet enough chap, and different somehow—when I've been nigh you. What I've done, I've done for your sake and for the best."
In the morning the Works were closed, the doors of the Bank remained unopened, and the news spread like wildfire from house to house and from street to street and beyond the limits of the town—until before noon it was known through the whole country side that Ffrench had fled and Jem Haworth was a ruined man.
It reached the public ear in the first instance in the ordinary commonplace manner through the individuals who had suddenly descended upon the place to take possession. A great crowd gathered about the closed gates and murmured and stared and anathematized.
"Theer's been summat up for mony a month," said one sage. "I've seed it. He wur na hissen, wur na Haworth."
"Nay," said another, "that he wur na. Th' chap has na been o' a decent spree sin' Ffrench coom."
"Happen," added a third, "that wur what started him on th' road downhill. A chap is na good fur much as has na reg'lar habits."
"Aye, an' Haworth wur reg'lar enow when he set up. Good Lord! who'd ha' thowt o' that chap i' bankrup'cy!"
At the outset the feeling manifested was not unamiable to Haworth, but it was not very long before the closing of the Bank dawned upon the public in a new light. It meant loss and ruin. The first man who roused the tumult was a burly farmer who dashed into the town on a sweating horse, spurring it as he rode and wearing a red and furious face. He left his horse at an inn and came down to the Bank, booted and spurred and whip in hand.
"Wheer's Ffrench?" he shouted to the smaller crowd attracted there, and whose views as to the ultimate settlement of things were extremely vague. "Wheer's Ffrench an' wheer's Haworth?"
Half a dozen voices volunteered information regarding Ffrench, but no one knew anything of Haworth. He might be in a dozen places, but no one had yet seen him or heard of his whereabouts. The man began to push his way toward the building, swearing hotly. He mounted the steps and struck violently on the door with his whip.
"I'll mak' him hear if he's shut hissen i' here," he cried. "Th' shifty villain's got ivvery shillin' o' brass I've been savin' for my little wench for th' last ten year. I'll ha' it back, if it's to be gotten."
"Tha'lt ne'er see it again," shouted a voice in the crowd. "Tha'dst better ha' stuck to th' owd stockin', lad."
Then the uproar began. One luckless depositor after another was added to the crowd. They might easily be known among the rest by their pale faces. Some of them were stunned into silence, but the greater portion of them were loud and passionate in their outcry. A few women hung on the outskirts, wiping their eyes every now and then with their aprons, and sometimes bursting into audible fits of weeping.
"I've been goin' out charrin' for four year," said one, "to buy silks an' satins fur th' gentry. Yo' nivver seed her i' owt else."
And all knew whom she meant, and joined in shouts of rage.
Sometimes it was Ffrench against whom their anger was most violent—Ffrench, who had been born among them a gentleman, and who should have been gentleman enough not to plunder and deceive them. And again it was Haworth—Haworth, who had lived as hard as any of them and knew what their poverty was, and should have done fairly by them, if ever man should.
In the course of the afternoon Murdoch, gathering no news of Haworth elsewhere, went to his house. A panic-stricken servant let him in and led him into the great room where he had spent his first evening, long ago. Despite its splendor, it looked empty and lifeless, but when he entered, there rose from a carved and satin upholstered chair in one corner a little old figure in a black dress—Jem Haworth's mother, who came to him with a white but calm face.
"Sir," were her greeting words, "where is he?"
"I came to see him," he answered, "I thought——"
"No," she interrupted, "he is not here. He has not been here since morning."
She began to tremble, but she shed no tears.
"There's been a good many to ask for him," she went on. "Gentlemen, an' them as was rough, an' didn't mind me bein' a woman an' old. They were harder than you'd think, an'—troubled as I've been, I was glad he was not here to see 'em. But I'd be more comfortable if I could rightly understand."
"I can only tell you what I know," he said. "It isn't much. I have only gathered it from people on the streets." He led her back to her chair, and did not loosen his light grasp on her hand while he told her the story as he had heard it. His own mood was so subdued that it was easier than he had thought to use words which would lighten the first weight of the blow.
She asked no questions after his explanation was over.
"He's a poor man," she said at last,—"a poor man, but—we was poor before."
Suddenly her tears burst forth.
"They've said hard things to me to-day," she cried. "I don't believe 'em, Jem, my dear—now less than ever."
He comforted her as best he could. He could easily understand what they had told her, how much of the truth and how much of angry falsehood.
"When he comes back," she said, "I shall be here to meet him. Wherever he is, an' however much he's broke down with trouble, he knows that. He'll come here to-night, an' I shall be here."
Before he went away he asked if he might send Christian or his mother to her. But though she thanked him, she refused.
"I know how good they'd be," she said, "an' what a comfort in the lonesomeness, but when he comes he'll want to be alone, an' a unfamiliar face might trouble him."
But he did not come back. The day went on, and the excitement increased and waned by turns. The crowd grew and surged about the Bank and shouted itself hoarse, and would have broken a few windows if it had not been restrained by the police force, who appeared upon the field; and there were yells for Haworth and for Ffrench, but by this time Mr. Ffrench had reached Rotterdam and Haworth was—no one knew where, since he had not been seen at all. And when at length dusk fell upon the town, the crowd had dwindled away and gone home by ones and twos, and in Jem Haworth's house sat his mother, watching and waiting, and straining her ears to catch every passing sound.
She had kept up her courage bravely through the first part of the day, but the strangers who came one after the other, and sometimes even two or three together, to demand her son with loud words and denunciations and even threats, were a sore trial to her. Some of them flung their evil stories at her without remorse, taking it for granted that they were nothing new to her ears, and even those who had some compunction muttered among themselves and hinted angrily at what the others spoke outright. Her strength began to give way, and she quailed and trembled before them, but she never let their words pass without a desperate effort to defend her boy. Then they stared or laughed at her, or went away in sullen silence, and she was left to struggle with her grief and terror alone until some new call was made upon her, and she must bear all again. When the twilight came she was still alone, and sat in the darkened room battling against a dread which had crept slowly upon her. Of all those who had come none had known where he was. They did not know in the town, and he had not come back.
"He might go," she whispered, "but he'd not go without me. He's been true and fond of his mother, let them say what they will. He'd never leave me here alone."
Her thoughts went back over the long years from his birth to the day of his highest success. She remembered how he had fought with fate, and made his way and refused to be conquered. She thought of the wealth he had won, the power, the popularity, and of his boast that he had never been beaten, and she began to sob in the shadow of her corner.
"He's lost it all," she cried. "An' he won it with his own hands an' worked for it an' bore up agen a world! An' it's gone!"
It was when she came to this point that her terror seized on her as it had never done before. She got up, shaking in every limb.
"I'll go to him myself," she said. "Who should go to him but his mother? Who should find him an' be a help to him if I can't? Jem—Jem, my dear, it's me that's comin' to you—me!"
He had been sitting in a small back office in the Bank all through the day when they had been calling and searching for him. He had got in early and locked the door and waited, knowing well enough all that was to come. It was no feeling of fear that made him keep hidden; he had done with fear—if, indeed, he had ever felt it in his life. He knew what he was going to do and he laid his plans coolly. He was to stay here and do the work that lay before him and leave things as straight as he could, and then at night when all was quiet he would make his way out in the dark and go to the Works. It was only a fancy, this, of going to the Works, but he clung to it persistently.
He had never been clearer-headed in his life—only, sometimes as he was making a calculation or writing a letter he would dash down his work and fall to cursing.
"There's not another chap in England that had done it," he would say. "And it's gone!—it's gone!—it's gone!"
Then again he would break into a short laugh, remembering the M. P. and his speech and poor Ffrench's stumbling, overwhelmed reply to it. When he heard the crowd shouting and hooting at the front, he went into a room facing the street and watched them through a chink in the shutter. He heard the red-faced farmer's anathemas, and swore a little himself, knowing his story was true.
"Tha shalt have all Haworth can give, chaps," he muttered, "an' welcome. He'll tak' nowt with him."
He laughed again but suddenly stopped, and walked back into the little office silently, and waited there.
At nightfall he went out of a back door and slipped through unfrequented by-ways, feeling his heart beat with heavy thuds as he went. Nothing stood in his way and he got in, as he believed he should. The instant his foot crossed the threshold a change came upon him. He forgot all else but what lay before him. He was less calm, and in some little hurry.
He reached his room and lighted the gas dimly only so that he could see to move about. Then he went to his desk and opened it and took out one of a pair of pistols, speaking aloud as he did so.
"Here," he said, "is the end of Jem Haworth."
He knew where to aim, the heavy thuds marked the spot for him.
"I'll count three," he said, "and then——"
He began slowly, steadily, but in a voice that fell with a hollow sound upon the dead stillness.
"One," he said. "Two!" and his hand dropped at his side with his weapon in it, for at the door stood his mother. In an instant she had fallen upon her knees and dragged herself toward him and was clinging to his hand.
"No—Jem!" she panted. "No, not that, my dear—God forbid!"
He staggered back though she still clung to him.
"How," he faltered,—"how did you come here?"
"The Lord led me," she sobbed. "He put it into my heart and showed me the way, an' you had forgot the door, Jem—thank God!"
"You—saw—what I was going to do?"
"What you was goin' to do, but what you'll never do, Jem, an' me to live an' suffer when it's done—me as you've been so good an' such a comfort to."
In the dim light she knelt sobbing at his feet.
"Let me sit down," he said. "And sit down nigh me. I've summat to tell you."
But though he sank into the chair she would not get up, but kept her place in spite of him and went on.
"To-day there have been black tales told you?" he said.
"Yes," she cried, "but——"
"They're true," he said, "th' worst on 'em."
"No—no!"
He stopped her by going on monotonously as if she had not spoken.
"Think of the worst you've ever known—you've not known much—and then say to yourself, 'He's worse a hundred times'; think of the blackest you have ever known to be done, and then say to yourself, 'What he's done's blacker yet.' If any chap has told you I've stood at naught until there was next to naught I'd left undone, he spoke true. If there was any one told you I set th' decent ones by the ears and laughed 'em in the face, he spoke true. If any o' 'em said I was a dread and a byword, they spoke true, too. The night you came there were men and women in th' house that couldn't look you in th' face, and that felt shame for th' first time in their lives—mayhap—because you didn't know what they were, an' took 'em to be as innocent as yourself. There's not a sin I haven't tasted, nor a wrong I've not done. I've had murder in my mind, an' planned it. I've been mad for a woman not worth even what Jem Haworth had to give her—and I've won all I'd swore I'd win—an' lost it! Now tell me if there's aught else to do but what I've set my mind on?"
She clung to his heavy hand as she had not clung to it before, and laid her withered cheek upon it and kissed it. Bruised and crushed as she was with the blows he had dealt, she would not let it go free yet. Her words came from her lips a broken cry, with piteous sobs between them. But she had her answer ready.
"That as I've thanked God for all my life," she said, "He'll surely give me in the end. He couldn't hold it back—I've so believed an' been grateful to Him. If there hadn't been in you what would make a good man, my dear, I couldn't have been so deceived an' so happy. No—not deceived—that aint the word, Jem—the good was there. You've lived two lives, may be,—but one was good, thank God! You've been a good son to me. You've never hurt me, an' it was your love as hid from me the wrong you did. You did love me, Jem—I won't give that up—never. There's nothing you've done as can stand agen that, with her as is your mother. You loved me an' was my own son—my boy as was a comfort an' a pride to me from the first."
He watched her with a stunned look.
"You didn't believe them? he said hoarsely, "and you don't believe me?"
She put her hand to her heart and almost smiled.
"It hasn't come home to me yet," she said. "I don't think it ever will."
He looked helplessly toward the pistol on the table. He knew it was all over and he should not use it.
"What must I do?" he said, in the same hoarse voice.
"Get up," she said, "an' come with me. I'm a old woman but my heart's strong, an' we've been poor before. We'll go away together an' leave it all behind—all the sorrow of it an' the sin an' the shame. The life I thought you lived, my dear, is to be lived yet. Theer's places where they wont know us an' where we can begin again. Get up and come with me."
He scarcely grasped what she meant.
"With you!" he repeated. "You want me to go now?"
"Yes," she answered, "for Christ's sake, my dear, now."
He began to see the meaning and possibility of her simple, woman's plan, and got up, ready to follow her. And then he found that the want of food and the long day had worn upon him so that he was weak. She put her arm beneath his and tried to support him.
"Lean on me, my dear," she said. "I'm stronger than you think."
They went out, leaving the empty room and the pistol on the table and the dim light burning. And then they had locked the gate and were outside with the few stars shining above and the great black Works looming up before them.
He stopped a moment to look back and up and remembered the key. Suddenly he raised it in his hand and flung it across the top of the locked gate; they heard it fall inside upon the pavement with a clang.
"They'll wonder how it came there," he said. "They'll take down the name to-morrow. 'Haworth's' is done with!"
He turned to her and said, "Come." His voice was a little stronger. They went down the lane together, and were lost in the darkness.