IT had been about noon when John left Messrs. Barretts’ office. It was now between three and four in the afternoon. His long walk, his talk with Montressor, the agitation and excitement of the catastrophe had made the time go as upon wings. But it had not gone upon wings at the office, where there was a great deal of commotion and discomfort, the pupils saying among themselves that for Sandford to go away in such a way was next to impossible; that little Prince, the little sneak, had told some lie—just like him; that the bosses, or the governors, or whatever other name for the heads of the office happened to be current at the moment, had made a howling mistake, and that the whole affair was nothing but a proof of the general stupidity of those teachers and overseers whom it is the mission of youth to dethrone. This agitation of feeling was not confined to the pupil-room or the outer office. It entered in, with the most serious results, to the very sanctuary of the establishment, Mr. Barrett’s own room, where Mr. William had a controversy with his father, which nothing but the decorum necessary between the heads of such a government could have kept within bounds.
Mr. Barrett was a pessimist by nature, and one who always expected to be deceived and wronged. He had heard, he forgot what, that had led him to expect evil of John, and to that idea he had clung during the period of the young man’s training with the purest faith. He had to confess from time to time that John had done very well so far, but—— He never forgot to shake his head and add that but. Now he was, if it is permissible to say so of a good man, delighted that his prophecies were justified. He told his son that he had always expected it, ‘from something his mother told me,’—though in the course of years he had forgotten what Mrs. Sandford had told him, which was not much.
William Barrett, however, was of another mind. He had liked John—he had put full faith in him, he had appreciated his practical abilities, and the good work he did, and his power of managing men, and had been disposed to look indulgently upon any theories or plans he might have. This was all the length his mind had gone when John spoke to him first of that scheme for draining the Thames Valley. He had smiled at it very good-humouredly—he had said to himself that when boys do take up an idea it is generally a magnificent one, but that it is better even to plan something on a ridiculously gigantic scale than to think of nothing at all. He was prepared, indeed, to get some amusement out of John’s Thames Valley. Perhaps there might be something in it, some idea which a maturer brain could work out. There was no telling, but at all events it would be worth looking at for the fun of it, if nothing more: a youth of that age, with no experience to speak of, tackling a business which had baffled the wisest! But it was like a boy to do so. Fools rush in—or at least pupils rush in—where engineers sometimes fear to tread.
So he looked forward with amused expectation to the production of John’s scheme. But when Prince told him that story of Spender & Diggs, the scheme took a different aspect in Mr. William Barrett’s eyes. It gained an importance, a reality which nothing else could have given it. He did not smile at the idea of this absurd youthful plan as presented to the rival office. It became immediately a serious matter; a project of the greatest importance. All at once it became possible, very likely, that the other firm, who had nothing to do with John, might be about to reap all the benefit of him, and to enter upon the greatest engineering work that had been attempted for years, through this boy at whose plans ‘Barretts’ had smiled. William Barrett had no inclination to smile now. It was deadly earnest by this time: and he could not but feel sure in the natural certainty of events that this scheme which he had pooh-poohed would be seen in its true light by the others, and would make the fortune of Spender & Diggs.
This thought had made him severe to John, though not so severe as his father: and more open to conviction. His mind was at all times more open to conviction than that of his father: and when John had burst out of the office, in the first rage of his indignation, refusing to defend himself, Mr. William, as has been said, followed him to the door, calling him back, with a compunction which he could not get rid of. This compunction did nothing but go on increasing in the blank which followed that fiery scene. And the atmosphere in the pupil’s room affected Mr. William, too, though he was not aware of it. He had a consciousness that the lads were saying among themselves, in the slang of which all elder persons disapprove, that the bosses had made a thundering mistake. Had they made a mistake? He was, in his heart, of the same opinion as the pupil-room. He did not think that John Sandford had done this thing. Now that the flurry of discovery was over, he asked himself was it likely? had the young fellow ever done anything that looked the least like it? Had he not always been as steady as a rock, always honest and true, never neglecting his employers’ interests, carrying out their orders, as good a worker as could be? Was it likely he should turn round all at once? This thought worked in his mind silently, while those boys entertained each other with saying that the bosses had made a mistake: and it was greatly stimulated by the exasperating suggestion that Spender & Diggs might reap all the profit, and might go far ahead of Barretts in the struggle for fortune and fame. Would they go ahead of Barretts? He began to remember John’s start of surprise, his question as to who it was that had carried his papers to the other office, his look of enlightenment. If they had been stolen from him, and the papers which he had flung down on the table, were, as he had said, his original scheme, Spender & Diggs might not find it so easy to shoot ahead of Barretts. On the whole, thinking it over, it was more likely that Spender & Diggs had cheated than John. It would not be the first time. They might have put one of their men up to it, to find out what the young fellow was working at. Of course it soon got abroad among the lads what one was doing—and what more likely than that the rival firm, old hands at that sort of thing, people far more used to picking the brains of other people’s pupils than to developing talent among their own, what if they had secured possession of the copy of John’s scheme by one of the underhand ways with which they were familiar? On the whole, that was really more likely than that Sandford, a lad against whom nobody had a word to say, who had always behaved well, should have gone over, without rhyme or reason, to the enemy.
By dint of long-continued reasonings like this, William Barrett worked himself up by the time he left the office to seek another interview with John. He said to himself that he would put his pride in his pocket, and go after the young fellow, who no doubt was miserable, though he had so much pluck he would not show it. His heart smote him that he had not taken all these things into consideration before, and he had visions of young Sandford’s misery and despair, which affected even the middle-aged imagination of a man quite unused to anything heroical. He felt that his father had been unkind to John, which gave him at once an impulse and a motive for seeking the young man out—for, though he respected his father, the junior partner was generally more or less in opposition to him. All these things together made him determine to go after John, and have it out with him. He got his address almost stealthily, as not wishing anyone in the office to know until he saw what would come of it, and set out from the office a little earlier than usual that no time might be lost. He found the door open when he came to the house, and being himself somewhat excited, and beyond the rule of common laws, went in without ringing the bell; and, hearing voices in the first sitting-room he came to, knocked at the door. He was thus brought into the very midst of the agitated group which we have attempted to set before the reader at the climax of their excitement. The voices ceased, after a moment, but no attention was paid to Mr. Barrett’s knock. Something of the excitement that was in the air communicated itself to him.
‘Sandford,’ said William Barrett, putting his head in at the door.
They were all silent, staring at each other full of confused trouble, suspicion, and uncertainty. Even John felt vaguely, when the original question rose up before him in the sudden apparition of Mr. William Barrett’s grave face, that another matter had since arisen which swallowed up the first. The intruder who came in without invitation, feeling somehow that here was a crisis above conventional rules found that the interest centred like the high light in a picture in the countenance of the man who sat at the table, leaning on it, his whole person quivering with a tremulous movement like palsy, his face turned, pale, with a half-anxious, half-fatuous beseeching smile upon it to the other man standing opposite to him, who on his side looked from John to the new-comer and back again with a look of amazement and confusion. John himself stood half-stupefied between them, giving no more than a glance of recognition to his employer, occupied with more urgent affairs; and yet Mr. Barrett had good reason to know that his own mission to this youth who was so strangely daring his fate, was in one sense life and death.
‘Whom do you mean by John May? John May’s not a common name, neither is Sandford. Montressor, you’re stirring up all my life, and you know it. Most things I can bear well enough. I’ve gone through a great deal. I’m hardened to most things—but not—not—to my little boy’s name. You’ve got a child of your own, and you ought to know. I’ve not seen that little chap for fourteen years. I don’t know where he is now, if he’s living or if he’s dead, and yet once he was the apple of my eye. Montressor, what do you mean with your play-acting and your stage tricks, bandying about what was the name of my little boy?’
John Sandford stood listening to these words which came out, with pauses between, in a voice which was full of real feeling, a voice so different from the easy sophistry, the humorous self-contempt, the confused philosophy which were its usual utterance—with sensations indescribable, and something like a moral overturn of his whole being: vague recollections, suggestions from the past, horrible fears, doubts, certainties, confusion, rose up in him, enveloping him like a mist. He cared no more for William Barrett than if he had been an office-boy; he forgot all the question about the Thames Valley. These things, though he had felt them half-an-hour ago to be the most momentous in the world, departed from him as if they had never been. He stood, scarcely able to see for the haze of feverish excitement that had got into his eyes, staring blindly, with all his faculties concentrated in that of hearing, listening for what would come next.
‘Sir,’ said Montressor, ‘ye do me wrong. The drama is the drama, and I love it; but stage business is not, as ye say, for common life. Me own name I don’t deny, if all were laid bare, is perhaps not Montressor. But the poor player is likewise a man. Had I any stage effect in me mind when I told ye there was one of your own name I would recommend ye to? here he stands, and a young fellow any man might be proud of. The first time I set eyes on him he saved me chyild’s life—judge if I was likely to forget his name. This, me poor friend, is John May.’
‘That’s nonsense as I can testify,’ said William Barrett, breaking in bluntly. ‘I don’t know who your friends are, Sandford, and perhaps I ought to beg your pardon for interfering; but you’re very young though you’re not perhaps aware of it. Come, gentlemen, if you’ve got any hold upon this young man I shall be glad to answer your questions about him, and let him attend to his business. He is in fact my pupil, and it’s not to my interest his mind should be disturbed from his work. Whatever stories you may have heard I must know more about him than you do. His name is Sandford. He was placed by his mother in our hands.’
‘Sir,’ said Montressor, with dignity, ‘these are me friends, both the young man and the old. I do not turn to strangers to ask for information concerning me friends. Ye may be well meaning, but ye are ignorant—and I find ye intrusive,’ said the actor, turning away with a wave of his hand.
‘Sandford!’ cried William Barrett. Capitals could not do justice to the injured majesty of this cry. Intrusive! In the rooms of a pupil taken without a premium (that even he remembered in the shock of the indignity), such a word to be applied to him!
But John said nothing. He was stupefied, or mad, or drunk, which was it? He scarcely gave his employer a look. The colour had disappeared from his face, his eyes seemed to have a film over them, his lips trembled. He said at last, almost inaudibly, looking straight before him at vacancy,
‘My real name is John May—that was my name when I was a child—the other—is my grandfather’s name.’
Then the man who had injured John, who had taken his plans from him and robbed him, and made him appear a traitor, rose up tottering, supporting himself by the table.
‘If it’s your grandfather’s name,’ he said, ‘and you were Johnnie May when you were a child—— God help us all, it’s fourteen years ago. Are you my little chap, my little man, that I used to take out of your bed in your nightgown, with your bonny bright eyes shining? Oh, God in heaven, I’m not fit to be any good lad’s father. Are you my little boy? Are you Johnnie May?’
The room and all that was in it swam in dark circles of confusing mist in John’s eyes. He grasped a chair to support himself, to defend himself; the floor seemed to give way under his feet.
‘I’ll—I’ll come back presently,’ he said.
Mr. Barrett thought more and more, with a grieved heart, that the young fellow must have been drinking, as with a sudden rush he gained the door, and clung to that again for a moment, like a man who has no control of his limbs or movements. There he paused, and, looking at them, said,
‘Wait: wait here: till I come back——’
Mr. Barrett followed him quickly, afraid of what might follow. He found John ghastly and helpless, sitting on the step of the outer door. The young man gave a little nod of his head.
‘Wait,’ he gasped, ‘I’ll be better—in a moment—I want a little air.’
‘Sandford, what is the matter? Something has happened to you; what are you going to do?’
John did not answer for a minute. He sat with his mouth open taking long breaths, as if the air had been a cordial which he was gulping down in mouthfuls. The street was very quiet, there was nobody in sight, and the air of early summer was fresh and a little chill in afternoon greyness. Presently the young man rose and smiled faintly at his companion.
‘I’m better,’ he said. ‘I’m fit now for what I’ve got to do.’
‘Tell me, Sandford, what is it you are going to do? Nothing desperate, I hope. I came to tell you I was ready to hear any explanation—’
John waved his hand with an air of almost derision.
‘Do you suppose I’m thinking of that? It’s gone far beyond that.’
‘What can be beyond that?’ cried the employer, with exasperation. Then he seized the young man by the arm. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I am afraid I must have a cab,’ said John, with his confused look, ‘for quickness; besides that I couldn’t walk. All my strength’s gone out of me.’
‘But what are you doing? What has happened? Where are you going now?’ John looked at his chief, the friend of so many years, with a piteous smile.
‘I am going to find out—if there’s any hope for me—what’s to become of me,’ he said.