JOHN’S amanuensis, whom he had so rashly trusted, had carried away his copy of John’s scheme with, in reality, little or no idea of cheating, and none at all of injuring John. His faculties were confused by long courses of meditative sophistry, such as had been his amusement in the years when he had no other, and by the criminal atmosphere in which he had lived, in which the deception or spoiling of your neighbour was the most natural matter, the best sign of talent and originality, at once the excitement and the amusement of the perverted mind. The man who called himself March had a more than usual share of that confusion which so often accompanies breaches of the moral law. He had gone through far more than usual of those mental exercises by which all but the most stupid and degraded attempt to prove themselves right, or at least not so far wrong, in those offences which to the rest of the world are beyond excuse. And his mental ingenuity was such that he could make a wonderful plea to himself in favour of any course which fancy or temptation suggested. In the present case the effort had not been at all a difficult one. He had really meant no harm to John. He intended, in fact, to recommend John warmly, to put a good thing in his way. In all probability the young man would not prove a good advocate for himself. He might be shy of pushing his own interests: most inventors were shy and retiring, easily discouraged: and what he meant to secure would not in reality be more than a percentage on the trouble he would take in recommending John. A percentage—that was what in reality it would be—and well earned: for had he not been at the trouble of copying, and indeed adding something of his own to the young man’s dry plans and calculations, besides the service he would do him in carrying his goods as it were to market and securing a sale for them, and a profitable job for their inventor. Nothing could be more self-evident than this. At the end he came to be quite sure that he was doing his young benefactor a real service, and that nothing in his conduct wanted excusing at all.
He was a little shaken, however, by his reception at the office of Messrs. Spender and Diggs, and by their instant recognition of John’s name, and their curious questions on the subject. Had the plan been rejected by Barretts, they asked—and he did not even know what ‘Barretts’ meant. He was still more dismayed when he found (though he ought to have known very well it must be so) that no answer would be given him on the subject till the papers were examined, and that it would be necessary that Sandford should come himself to elucidate and explain them. There was quite a little excitement in the office, evidently, about Sandford’s work and its presentation there. The partner who seemed to him to be Diggs (he could not tell why, from his appearance), came and looked over the shoulder of the partner who must be Spender, and one or two others were called into the council and questions asked as to whether young Sandford had left Barretts, whether there had been a quarrel, what had happened. The ignorance he showed about all this, brought suspicious looks upon him, looks which disturbed all his calculations: for it had never occurred to him that any suspicion could attach to him in respect of a document written in his own hand, and which by that very fact surely belonged to him, more or less. He was glad at last to get away, feeling a certain distrust involved in the questions that were addressed to him, and beginning to wonder what they could do to him if it were discovered to be without John’s permission that the papers were brought here. Pooh! he said to himself, but only when he had got away—nothing could be done to him; it was no wrong to John or anyone. He had a right, a moral right, to the work of his own hands: and it was in kindness he had done it; kindness qualified by a percentage which is what the very best of friends demand.
But if he was disturbed and troubled by this contretemps, Joe, who was really throughout the matter his inspiring influence, was much more so. He was angry and disappointed beyond description. He had expected, being so much more ignorant than his principal, money immediate, a sum down, for the papers which young Sandford had said were his fortune. He was furious with the feebleness of his ‘mate,’ who had left those papers without getting anything for them.
‘I’d not a’ bin such a blooming fool,’ said Joe, whose adjectives are generally left out in this record. ‘I’d a’ up and spoken. Money down or ye gets nothin’ from me. Lor, if I had a ’ansom coat to my back like you, and could speak like as them swells would listen to me, d’ye think I’d a’ come back empty-handed like that?’
March was still more confused by this vituperation. It was in vain, he knew, to convince Joe that such a rapid transaction was impossible in the nature of things, for neither Joe nor his kind know anything of the nature of things. They know that when they have anything to sell, money is to be got for it, and that is all. Joe made his patron and dependent (for the poor man was both) very uncomfortable on this subject: and other things too made him uncomfortable; the necessity for communicating with John, and informing him that he must see Spender & Diggs, and explain his scheme to them; and the necessity for going back to Spender & Diggs, which Joe had pressed upon him, incapable of hearing reason. What was he to do? The poor man hung about the street in which John lived, half hoping for an encounter which might clear up the matter one way or other. When he saw John his heart gave a jump of pleasure and relief in the first instance, and then the instinct of the offender came upon him and he turned and fled. But what was his flight worth before the pursuit of the active and impassioned youth who could have outstripped his swiftest pace in a stride or two? And then the fugitive said to himself that he was not really guilty, that he had done nothing to be afraid of. Kindness, qualified by a percentage. The rueful smile which was in his eyes when he turned to John was half conciliatory and half made up of self-approbation and amusement at the success of that phrase. Naturally, John was aware of neither of these sentiments. He pushed his prisoner before him into his sitting-room, taking no heed of the exclamations of Montressor. It was a trouble to him at all times to hear that name of May from the actor’s lips, but it was his own fault, and he could blame nobody. He thrust the culprit into his sitting-room, and pushed him into a chair without saying a word. He was breathless, not with the exertion so much as with the tumult in his mind, the eagerness, and passion. He had not expected to find thus the means of exonerating himself so soon, nor could he help a certain blaze of wrath against the man who had done him so ill a turn.
‘There!’ he said, waving Montressor aside with his hand. ‘Tell me first why you did it. What induced you to steal my papers and try to ruin me? Was not I kind to you?—was I not——’
‘Steal your papers!’ said the offender, with a look of surprised innocence. ‘I stole none of your papers. The copy which I had myself made at your request was surely by all laws of reason mine in the first place, and not yours.’
John gazed at him with a gasp of astonishment at this extraordinary doctrine, but for the first moment found nothing to say.
‘I allow,’ said the culprit, with a certain magnanimity, ‘that had I been engaged by you at, let us say, so much a day to make this copy, with a full understanding that it was to be your property, your question might be justified; but, as a matter of fact, no stipulations of the kind were made. You suggested to me that I should come here and copy your papers—with the benevolent intention of keeping me out of mischief—I suppose out of the company which you did not think good for me, of my faithful Joe.’
He had changed his position in the chair to a more easy one, and leaned forward a little, speaking, demonstrating slightly, easily, with his hand. John, in his sudden fury, and in the darkness of his distress, felt the current of his thoughts arrested, and his mind standing still with wonder. He gasped, but the words would not come.
‘But there was no engagement,’ resumed the speaker, with a smile; ‘nothing was said about so much a day. My labour was not put to any price, nor was there any time mentioned when it should be finished, or anything said about its ultimate destination. You will see that I am quite exact when you think over the circumstances. Isn’t it so? Well, then, by all laws of logic, the copy was mine, and I had a right to do what I liked with it; put it in the fire if I liked——’
‘But not to offer my scheme, my work, my ideas to—to—another firm,’ cried John, in his confusion: ‘to an opposition—to a——’
He saw he had made a mistake, but in his excitement could not tell what it was.
‘Oh,’ said March, ‘I see! Now I understand; it is a question of rivalry: they’re competitors—they’re on the other side? Certainly that wasn’t at all what I intended: and now I understand.’
It was John’s impulse to seize him by the collar, to shake the sophistry out of this bland usurper of his rights. But he did not do so. He restrained himself with a strong effort, and recovered the thread of reason which had been snatched for a moment out of his hand.
‘We might go into that,’ he said, ‘if you had the least right to take from me what was my work, and not yours. But you are too clever not to see that this is quite a secondary question. Whatever you may say, you copied those papers for me, by my orders, for payment. Bah! what is the use of arguing about such a matter? You know it as well as I do. You know my papers are stolen, that you have tried to make a profit of them, that you have taken them from me, to whom they belonged——’
John’s aspect in spite of himself was threatening: his countenance flushed, he changed his position, he clenched his hand. He was a powerful young man and the other was feeble and limp if not very old. Montressor, with his stage instinct, found it time for him to interfere.
‘May,’ he said, ‘old friend, I have always stood up for you, though I know you’ve done a dark deed. I’ve spoken for you even to this brave boy. He’s your own name, and may-be for aught I know he’s your own flesh and blood. Oh, me old friend! there used to be a deal of good in you, though weak. How could you find it in your heart to do a wrong to a young beginner? That wasn’t like what ye used to be, me old May——’
John had listened with a stupefied air to this speech. May! what did Montressor mean? He caught him by the arm.
‘The man’s name is March,’ he said.
This brought, what all other accusations had not done, a faint colour to the culprit’s face.
‘One month’s as good as another,’ he said, with a feeble laugh, ‘and begins with the same letter. So it’s you, Montressor. I didn’t notice who it was: the outer part of you is in better trim than when I saw you the other day.’
The actor replied, with a wave of his hand,
‘What has to be thought upon at present,’ he said, ‘is you and not me.’
This was not the policy of the man who was on his trial.
‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘it’s the fortune of war. The other day I was able to help you as an old friend, and now it’s you that patronise me.’
‘May,’ said John. He could not get beyond that point. What they said between themselves was nothing to him. He paid no attention to what they said. May! There swept into his mind a quick passing recollection of the feverish anxiety he had once felt to identify somehow and find out his relationship with some one of the name, and the Mayor of Liverpool, whom he had almost disturbed in his state to ask, Do you know anyone——? But he never met anywhere an individual who bore that name till now.
‘Ye see before ye,’ said Montressor, embarrassed, ‘me young friend, the unfortunate man that I was trying to recommend to you the last time we met. He says true, he was better off at that moment than I was; but that makes no difference. Yes, me noble boy. This is the May I told ye of. I have thought there was a likeness in some things between ye; but me wife would not hear me say it, for, John May, ye have the heart of a king: and me poor friend there, though he’s named the same——’
The man, who had not been listening any more than John had listened to the private conversation between his two companions, here woke up from his own thoughts with a slight start.
‘Who,’ he said, ‘are you calling John May? My name is Robert, not John at all—if it is me you mean. My father’s name was John, an honest worthy man. I always made up my mind to call the boy after him. What do you know about John May? that’s not my name, not my name at all. I’m rather in a weak state of health and I can’t bear very much. You wouldn’t speak of such things if you knew that they threw me into a tremble all over, which is very bad for me. Who do you mean by John May?’
The three men looked at each other in a tremulous quiver of excitement, like the flashing of intense heat in the air. They gazed at each other saying nothing. Montressor, though he had hitherto been calm, was growing agitated too, he could not tell why. There was a suppressed excitement in the very air round them which none of the three could fully understand. At this moment there was a knock at the door, which they all heard, as if they heard it not, without an attempt to make any reply. The world outside was for the moment blank to them; they had something more important than anything outside to settle among themselves.