While I and my clerks were still discussing the failure of the firm, two mercantile men, who were friends of mine, ran into the office, and overwhelmed us with the news that one of the partners had been arrested for forgery.Never shall I forget the terrible Monday morning when those tidings reached me, and when I knew that the partner was Mr.Fauntleroy.
I was true to him--I can honestly say I was true to my belief in my generous friend--when that fearful news reached me.My fellow-merchants had got all the particulars of the arrest.They told me that two of Mr.Fauntleroy's fellow-trustees had come up to London to make arrangements about selling out some stock.On inquiring for Mr.Fauntleroy at the banking-house, they had been informed that he was not there; and, after leaving a message for him, they had gone into the City to make an appointment with their stockbroker for a future day, when their fellow-trustee might be able to attend.The stock-broker volunteered to make certain business inquiries on the spot, with a view to saving as much time as possible, and left them at his office to await his return.He came back, looking very much amazed, with the information that the stock had been sold out down to the last five hundred pounds.The affair was instantly investigated; the document authorizing the selling out was produced; and the two trustees saw on it, side by side with Mr.Fauntleroy's signature, the forged signatures of their own names.This happened on the Friday, and the trustees, without losing a moment, sent the officers of justice in pursuit of Mr.Fauntleroy.He was arrested, brought up before the magistrate, and remanded on the Saturday.On the Monday I heard from my friends the particulars which I have just narrated.
But the events of that one morning were not destined to end even yet.I had discovered the failure of the bank and the arrest of Mr.Fauntleroy.I was next to be enlightened, in the strangest and the saddest manner, on the difficult question of his innocence or his guilt.
Before my friends had left my office--before I had exhausted the arguments which my gratitude rather than my reason suggested to me in favor of the unhappy prisoner--a note, marked immediate, was placed in my hands, which silenced me the instant I looked at it.It was written from the prison by Mr.Fauntleroy, and it contained two lines only, entreating me to apply for the necessary order, and to go and see him immediately.
I shall not attempt to describe the flutter of expectation, the strange mixture of dread and hope that agitated me when Irecognized his handwriting, and discovered what it was that he desired me to do.I obtained the order and went to the prison.
The authorities, knowing the dreadful situation in which he stood, were afraid of his attempting to destroy himself, and had set two men to watch him.One came out as they opened his cell door.The other, who was bound not to leave him, very delicately and considerately affected to be looking out of window the moment I was shown in.
He was sitting on the side of his bed, with his head drooping and his hands hanging listlessly over his knees when I first caught sight of him.At the sound of my approach he started to his feet, and, without speaking a word, flung both his arms round my neck My heart swelled up.
"Tell me it's not true, sir! For God's sake, tell me it's not true!" was all I could say to him.
He never answered--oh me! he never answered, and he turned away his face.
There was one dreadful moment of silence.He still held his arms round my neck, and on a sudden he put his lips close to my ear.
"Did you get your money out?" he whispered."Were you in time on Saturday afternoon?"I broke free from him in the astonishment of hearing those words.
"What!" I cried out loud, forgetting the third person at the window."That man who brought the message--""Hush!" he said, putting his hand on my lips."There was no better man to be found, after the officers had taken me--I know no more about him than you do--I paid him well as a chance messenger, and risked his cheating me of his errand.""_You_ sent him, then!"
"I sent him."
My story is over, gentlemen.There is no need for me to tell you that Mr.Fauntleroy was found guilty, and that he died by the hangman's hand.It was in my power to soothe his last moments in this world by taking on myself the arrangement of some of his private affairs, which, while they remained unsettled, weighed heavily on his mind.They had no connection with the crimes he had committed, so I could do him the last little service he was ever to accept at my hands with a clear conscience.
I say nothing in defense of his character--nothing in palliation of the offense for which he suffered.But I cannot forget that in the time of his most fearful extremity, when the strong arm of the law had already seized him, he thought of the young man whose humble fortunes he had helped to build; whose heartfelt gratitude he had fairly won; whose simple faith he was resolved never to betray.I leave it to greater intellects than mine to reconcile the anomaly of his reckless falsehood toward others and his steadfast truth toward me.It is as certain as that we sit here that one of Fauntleroy's last efforts in this world was the effort he made to preserve me from being a loser by the trust that I had placed in him.There is the secret of my strange tenderness for the memory of a felon; that is why the word villain does somehow still grate on my heart when I hear it associated with the name--the disgraced name, I grant you--of the forger Fauntleroy.Pass the bottles, young gentlemen, and pardon a man of the old school for having so long interrupted your conversation with a story of the old time.
THE TENTH DAY.
THE storm has burst on us in its full fury.Last night the stout old tower rocked on its foundations.