On the next day at two o’clock punctually, Mark Robarts was at the “Dragon of Wantly” walking up and down the very room in which the party had breakfasted after Harold Smith’s lecture, and waiting for the arrival of Mr Sowerby. He had been very well able to divine what was the business on which his friend wished to see him, and he had been rather glad than otherwise to receive the summons. Judging of his friend’s character by what he had hitherto had seen, he thought that Mr Sowerby would have kept out of the way, unless he had it in his power to make some provision for these terrible bills. So he walked up and down the dingy room, impatient for the expected arrival, and thought himself wickedly ill-used in that Mr Sowerby was not there when the clock struck a quarter to three. But when the clock struck three, Mr Sowerby was there, and Mark Robarts’s hopes were nearly at an end.
‘Do you mean that they will demand nine hundred pounds?’ said Robarts, standing up and glaring angrily at the member of Parliament.
‘I fear they will,’ said Sowerby. ‘I think it is best to tell you the worst, in order that we may see what can be done.’
‘I can do nothing, and will do nothing,’ said Robarts. ‘They may do what they choose — what the law allows them.’ And then he thought of Fanny and his nursery, and Lucy refusing in her pride Lord Lufton’s offer, and he turned away his face that the hard man of the world before him might not see the tear gathering in his eye.
‘But, Mark, my dear fellow —’ said Sowerby, trying to have recourse to the power of his cajoling voice. Robarts, however, would not listen.
‘Mr Sowerby,’ said he, with an attempt at calmness which betrayed itself at every syllable, ‘it seems to me that you have robbed me. That I have been a fool, and worse than a fool, I know well; but — but — but I thought that your position in the world would guarantee me from such treatment as this.’ Mr Sowerby was by no means without feeling, and the words which he now heard cut him very deeply — the more so because it was impossible that he should answer them with an attempt at indignation. He had robbed his friend, and, with all his wit, knew no words at the present moment sufficiently witty to make it seem that he had not done so. ‘Robarts,’ said he, ‘you may say what you like to me now; I shall not resent it.’
‘Who would care for your resentment?’ said the clergyman, turning on him with ferocity. ‘The resentment of a gentleman is terrible to a gentleman; and the resentment of one just man is terrible to another. Your resentment!’— and then he walked twice the length of the room, leaving Sowerby dumb in his seat. ‘I wonder whether you ever thought of my wife and children when you were plotting this ruin for me!’ And then again he walked the room.
‘I suppose you will be calm enough presently to speak of this with some attempt to make a settlement?’
‘No; I will make no such attempt. These friends of yours, you tell me, have a claim on me for nine hundred pounds, of which they demand immediate payment. You shall be asked in a court of law how much of that money I have handled. You know that I have never touched — have never wanted to touch — one shilling. I will make no attempt at any settlement. My person is here, and there is my house. Let them do their worst.’
‘But, Mark —’
‘Call me by my name, sir, and drop that affectation of regard. What an ass I have been to be so cozened by a sharper!’ Sowerby had by no means expected this. He had always known that Robarts possessed what he, Sowerby, would have called the spirit of a gentleman. He had regarded him as a bold, open, generous fellow, able to take his own part when called on to do so, and by no means disinclined to speak his own mind; but he had not expected from him such a torrent of indignation, or thought that he was capable of such a depth of anger. ‘If you use such language, Robarts, I can only leave you.’
‘You are welcome. Go. You tell me that you are the messenger of these men who intend to work nine hundred pounds out of me. You have done your part in the plot, and have now brought their message. It seems to me that you had better go back to them. As for me, I want my time to prepare my wife for the destiny before her.’
‘Robarts, you will be sorry some day for the cruelty of your words.’
‘I wonder whether you will ever be sorry for the cruelty of your doings, or whether these things are really a joke to you.’
‘I am at this moment a ruined man,’ said Sowerby. ‘Everything is going from me,— my place in the world, the estate of my family, my father’s house, my seat in Parliament, the power of living among my countrymen, or, indeed, of living anywhere;— but all this does not oppress me now so much as the misery which I have brought upon you.’
And then Sowerby also turned away his face, and wiped from his eyes tears which were not artificial. Robarts was still walking up and down the room, but it was not possible for him to continue his reproaches after this. This is always the case. Let a man endure to heap contumely on his own head, and he will silence the contumely of others — for the moment. Sowerby, without meditating on the matter, had had some inkling of this, and immediately saw that there was at last an opening for conversation. ‘You are unjust to me,’ said he, ‘in supposing that I have now no wish to save you. It is solely in the hope of doing so that I have come here.’
‘And what is your hope? That I should accept another brace of bills, I suppose.’
‘Not a brace; but one renewed bill for —’
‘Look here, Mr Sowerby. On no earthly consideration that can be put before me will I again sign my name to any bill in the guise of an acceptance. I have been very weak, and am ashamed of my weakness; but so much strength as that, I hope, is left to me. I have been very wicked, and am ashamed of my wickedness; but so much right principle as that, I hope, remains. I will put my name to no other bill; not for you, not even for myself.’
‘But, Robarts, under your present circumstances that will be madness.’
‘Then I will be mad.’
‘Have you seen Forrest? If you will speak to him, I think you will find that everything can be accommodated.’
‘I already owe Mr Forrest a hundred and fifty pounds, which I obtained from him when you pressed me for the price of that horse, and I will not increase the debt. What a fool I was again there! Perhaps you do not remember that, when I agreed to buy the horse, the price was to be my contribution to the liquidation of those bills.’
‘I do remember it; but I will tell you how that was.’
‘It does not signify. It has been all of a piece.’
‘But listen to me. I think you would feel for me if you knew all that I have gone through. I pledge you my solemn word that I had no intention of asking you for the money when you took the horse;— indeed I had not. But you remember that affair of Lufton’s, when he came to you at your hotel in London and was so angry about an outstanding bill.’
‘I know that he was very unreasonable as far as I was concerned.’
‘He was so; but that makes no difference. He was resolved, in his rage, to expose the whole affair; and I saw that, if he did so, it would be most injurious to you, seeing that you had just accepted your stall at Barchester.’ Here the poor prebendary winced terribly. ‘I moved heaven and earth to get up that bill. Those vultures stuck to their prey when they found the value which I attached to it, and I was forced to raise above a hundred pounds at the moment to obtain possession of it, although every shilling absolutely due on it had not long since been paid. Never in my life did I wish to get money as I did to raise that hundred and twenty pounds: and as I hope for mercy in my last moments, I did that for your sake. Lufton could not have injured me in that matter.’
‘But you told him that you got it for twenty-five pounds.’
‘Yes, I told him so. I was obliged to tell him that, or I should have apparently condemned myself by showing how anxious I was to get it. And you know that I could not have explained all this before him and you. You would have thrown up the stall in disgust.’ Would that he had! That was Mark’s wish now,— his futile wish. In what a slough of despond had he come to wallow in consequence of his folly on that night at Gatherum Castle! He had done a silly thing, and was he now to rue it by almost total ruin? He was sickened also with all those li............