# Some of Us Are Married/The Man Who Went Under

pp. 315-343. The story of an embezzler, apparently based on facts.

### THE MAN WHO WENT UNDER

AS TOLD TO
M.S.C.
I HAVE been called an embezzler—and to be an embezzler has, on the face of it, an ugly sound; sympathy is alienated at the start. Yet as a matter of fact, most men step, on occasion, over the barrier that separates them from dishonesty; they may scramble back at once, but at some time in their lives they do step over. … I haven't found myself, when all is said and done, very different from the men who will read this. Mine hasn't been one of the large pyrotechnical careers.
As a boy, in the sixties, I lived in a small town—it would be a suburb in these days near the city. I was an only child, and my mother was very proud of my looks—I was what is called a "pretty boy"—and of my polite manners. At home I was always quiet and obedient, and greeted visitors, as I often overheard them say, "like a little gentleman." But my character was, even at that early age, contradictory. My mother, who was delicate, disliked the noise of children around the place, and in the houses and yards of other boys, where I mostly spent my time out of school, I was both louder and rougher than at home, and I was also more ingenious in evading the law than my playmates. I was one with half a dozen others who set fire to an unused barn, and nearly burned down a whole row of houses, the wind rising unduly high; and I secretly indulged in the practice of throwing stones at windows, at horses, and the persons of such children as I could attack in this way from behind a tree. I once, to my fright, nearly killed a boy by stretching a wire across the sidewalk in the path of his bicycle, which he had refused to let me ride—they were high bicycles in those days—but I was seldom found out.
When I was haled up before my mother, as sometimes happened in spite of all the wariness in which I had become an adept, she, the gentlest of women, at once hotly took my side, and was furious at the accuser, giving her own version of the story afterward to my father, who always agreed with her.
He was both a pompous and indolent man, who disliked to take any more responsibility than he had to. If the complaint was made to him personally, he received it with dignified surprise and displeasure; I was called in and my invariable disclaimer offered in lofty and conclusive rebuttal of all evidence. Nothing was ever probed into, confession never demanded of me, even with half a dozen witnesses against me—though the gaps and rents in my defense must sometimes have made themselves apparent to all but the most wilfully blind of parents. Their own self-love was wounded in any criticism of their son.
I found it almost impossible, when passing a child who was much smaller than I, not to slyly pinch or kick it. I did not mean to be cruel, it was a teasing propensity, such as most boys have. But when the bigger boys laid hold of me that way sometimes, I would howl and shriek for mercy, sneaking out of their way afterward.
There was one, Jake Patton by name, only a year or two older than I—I was then fourteen—but very much larger and heavier. He used to lay in wait for me when I went to school, and jumping on me pull me down on the ground, rub my face unmercifully in the ice and snow, and then tweak my head back and stuff the snow in my mouth and nostrils, releasing me only after I was half blind and staggering with rage and fear. I did not dare to complain to my parents, knowing that I would get it ten times worse from my enemy afterward if they interfered. But one day my teacher, a pretty, spirited little thing, met me coming in at the door, my arm over my eyes, sobbing, and she got the whole truth from me.
"But why don't you try to stop him?" she asked, her eyes flashing. She had drawn me into an empty classroom. "I'd stop it! Why don't you fight him?"
"Ob, I wish I could!" I groaned, "but I can't; he's twice as strong as I am."
"I'd give him something to remember, even if I couldn't beat him. I'd fight!" she said. Her red lips trembled, but her dark eyes were dauntless. Somehow she looked to me perfectly beautiful. … Then she laughed, and said repentantly:
"Goodness, I oughtn't to talk this way to you!"
But the words she said kept repeating themselves over to me like a strain of music: "I'd fight!" Little and slight as that girl-teacher was, she wouldn't have crawled out of anything; she'd stand up and face odds. It was the glimpse of another world.
For two days Jake was not at his post; then I saw him, too late to turn back. My heart sank, my flesh crawled, I was more afraid than I had ever been. But as he called out:
"Come on, Ern, you sneak, and take what I'm going to give you!" I saw that he had even easier prey, a little chubby boy of six or seven, whom I liked, and whose ears I had pulled and whose fat legs I had kicked myself, more than once, smiling at his squeals. Jake was no ruffian, but when little Tommy rose from the snow in which he had been rolled, and ran off with distorted face, crying, while Jake laughed, something unforeseen, something strangely different and greater than I, rose in me—I have said that my nature is contradictory. I forgot that I was small and weak, and I hurled myself on him furiously, shouting, "Don't you ever touch Tommy again!" We grappled; he hit me, but I hit him; we went at it hot and heavy. I felt a strength that is a joy to remember, the strength of fighting in the open, and for a good cause. In the very midst of it, however, we heard a horrified "Stop—Stop! Boys, stop this wicked fighting at once!" Deacon Gulger pulled us apart, and gave us a severe lecture.
But Jake never bullied me again after this. He said: "Why, old chap, I never supposed you had it in you!" and we became friends.
For a little while after that I felt in me a new self-respect, the knowledge of the joy of facing the worst——
I have sometimes thought since, oddly enough, that if I could have fought that fight out some higher spirit in me might have been set free. …
One other incident stands out in this part of my history. At a crowded church fair I picked up a ten-dollar bill in the lobby and stuffed it in my pocket, filled with exhilaration and excitement at my luck. Shortly afterward I heard that the pretty young school-teacher, of whom I have spoken, had lost a ten-dollar bill.
I never could clearly explain to myself why I didn't return the money at once—something in my excitement seemed to hold me back from action. I listened to her laments; I watched the search of the floor by others; I even joined in it eagerly, in a vague idea that it might not be her bill which I had found. A strange inertia began to steal over me; there appeared to be a panel slid across my mind which hid the reasoning side of it from use; the money in my pocket seemed to be really mine, and to have no connection with the girl's loss.
But that night I awoke suddenly in the dark as if a cold hand had been laid on me—that panel in my mind had been drawn back and a troop of horrible, accusing thoughts poured forth and terrified me. I had deliberately stolen that bill—pretty Miss Nannie's tearful eyes wrenched my soul. I trembled and wept, myself, with horror at my deed, and vowed that I would give her back the money the first thing in the morning. Yet I did not. When morning came, the terrifying impressions of the night had vanished entirely. The money was mine—I had found it; I saw that it would be impossible to make restitution now without having unpleasant questions asked. I was unusually good in school that day, and won Miss Nannie's grateful praise.
I speak of this incident, because, though it occurred more than forty years ago, I have, strangely enough, never been able to forget it; at the oddest times it has recurred to me as vividly as when it happened, with that same poignant remorse. I do not believe my case at all singular. All childhood commits petty sins to which the tender mind gives pricking remorse; the best men, even, have small debts long ago incurred, small trusts miscarried, small dishonest occasions, so to speak, that always, through all the years, cannot change their shape, but, in spite of reason, remain ever the same. … Fifteen years after, I sent a cheque for a hundred dollars, when I could not really afford it, to Miss Nannie—whom I had heard of as poor and an invalid—in remembrance of her kindness to me when a lad—but it was returned—Miss Nannie had died the week before. The news unaccountably disturbed me for awhile.
I had always been brought up to a particularly strict observance of the Sabbath Day, even when it was the general rule, and the present laxities were not thought of. I became, at seventeen, a member of the church. My experience of religion was sincere and deep, and in all the following chances and changes of my life that religion was my consolation and my mainstay. I have been called a hypocrite, and nothing could be farther from the truth to my own consciousness. I often erred—who has not? But I could always lay my sins at the feet of my Saviour, and rise forgiven. In my more prosperous years it was one of my most grateful pleasures to give liberally to the church and to missions; from a lad, I was constant in my attendance at service, leading often in prayer, and setting, as our pastor said, a needed example to other young men. It was one of the crosses of my later life that my own son remained deaf to the Heavenly Call.
I began my business life early, in a large bank in the city. A runner at first, I was gradually promoted. I neither drank, smoked, nor played cards. I paid close and intelligent attention to my work. I had a cheerful manner, an agreeable face (I am told), and blue eyes that met the gaze steadily and squarely; it is a habit that has always been mine.
I made many friends, and was one of the most popular men in the bank. My few private pecuniary irregularities were entirely my own affair, and the natural outcome of circumstances. As the treasurer of the Sunday School, for instance, I considered that I had a right temporarily to use the funds entrusted to me in those instances in which ready cash was an object. Once, indeed, a shortage was accidentally discovered, but I secretly raised the money and offered it as a gift to make the account good. As it happened, another young fellow was suspected, and my generosity much praised. I begged that he should not be accused, defending him, and urging my own greater care for the future. He found this out in some way, and never liked me afterward. The sneering attitude he took wounded me, and our friendship ceased, although as a Christian I cherished no hard feelings toward him.
When I was twenty-eight I had been receiving teller of the bank for a year; and my wedding day was set to one of the sweetest girls in the world.
II
For some months before my marriage I had cautiously availed myself of the opportunity which my position in the bank gave for private financiering.
Money passed into my hands daily from which I soon saw that one might easily borrow to further his own fortunes; with, of course, the strict promise to himself of replacing what was taken. There were ways of changing an entry—about which there is no need to go into detail—which have been practised successfully many times before and since, and which, if executed with unvarying care, reduced the chance of detection to a minimum. Besides, I was a popular and trusted employee, my honesty beyond question. I inaugurated a system of my own, placing the sums at my disposal from time to time with a broker who bought stocks for me, and who was supposed not to know that I was in a bank.
Like many young men, I had a great deal of imagination. The first time I took a couple of hundred dollars from the pile before me it seemed to be entirely the result of a natural sequence. I thought:—I will take this chance.—No, I will not.—Yes, I will. Why shouldn't I? There seemed no reasoning power to deter me. I felt the same exhilaration and excitement which had possessed me when I kept Miss Nannie's ten-dollar bill, added to a cool keenness of intention. The next day my broker bought for me; and with the proverbial luck of the beginner, my stock rose. Afterward, I kept on cautiously venturing, with the same success. I considered then, as I do now, that my methods were not very different from those employed by most business men. I had occasional nights, indeed, when the panel in my mind slid back, as it had long ago, to let those other, accusing thoughts pour forth; but morning brought saner counsel. I was supposed to have inherited a small sum from my parents—though the contrary was the case—so that it occasioned no surprise when in view of my approaching marriage I bought, on easy payments, a good house on the outskirts of the city.
But two weeks before Marian and I were married luck began to go heavily against me; the market took a slump which threw many into a panic besides myself; what I went through was something awful. Bank examinations were not so strict thirty odd years ago as they are now, and I had always, warned by some sixth sense, managed to cover my tracks before the examiners, unheralded, appeared. But now I lived in daily fear that the shortage would be found out, and I arrested.
Everyone laid my haggard appearance to the score of health. I had, indeed, a frightful cold, and the president himself, Mr. Woodley, urged me to greater care.
Three days before my wedding I was obliged to take a plunge which it makes my hair stand on end now to think of. It seemed as if every face I saw looked on me in suspicion. I took my troubles to my Maker; I prayed as I had never done before that this effort might be successful, vowing that I would never, never take such a chance again. I believed that He would hear me and help me—it was the prayer of faith! And although the venture did mercifully succeed, every day of the ten days of our wedding journey, in the midst of my happiness, there were horrible moments when I felt that something would be found out in my absence, and I broke into a cold sweat with the certainty that the iron hand of the law would be laid on me as soon as we returned.
I may be blamed for marrying Marian under these conditions, with the chance of dragging her in to share immediate disgrace; but, as ever in such cases, only one half of my mind, that half that was occupied with what I strongly desired, seemed to be in working order, and I refused to face any consequences which I did not have to. I dreaded nothing more than to have that sliding panel withdrawn.
When I did come back and found no suspicions raised against me, I felt justified in having taken the risk, and my thanksgiving to an ever-watchful Providence was deep and sincere. I fully intended to give up my private schemes for the future.
But circumstances were too strong for me. There were payments to be made on the house; my darling son Ernest was born; Marian had a long and expensive illness; two little girls succeeded the boy; I found it more and more expensive to support a family. When I gained, I couldn't help chancing further, and when I lost I was forced to venture largely against my will. My salary at that time was a beggarly twenty-five hundred a year.
But, as time went on, the game I was forced to play began to tell on me. Most business men, particularly those who seem to the outsider to be on an assured and prosperous basis, live, themselves, in an uncertain state from day to day, always engaged in half surmounting an endless chain of difficulties which stretch ahead to imperil the way at every step. For all I worked so hard, the money I gained never seemed to be enough to do any real good. When I was "flush," I had to remember to spend the money cautiously; it would never do for a bank clerk to be prominently extravagant; but as a rule, I was always getting out of one hole into another.
Marian knew nothing of money, and little of my affairs; she never questioned me about them, taking what I gave her and asking for more if it was needed. Sometimes I had odd moments—I have spoken of my contradictory nature—of wishing that she would question me and insist on knowing just where we stood, and help me stem this whelming tide. She had no surprise when I authorized some large expenditure after a month of scarceness—"business" was a man's province. There was no sweeter woman than Marian, her trust in me was implicit; everything that I did was right to her, and she was particularly proud of my honesty and religious uprightness.
With my friends—and I had many apparently—I was always conscious, down below everything, of something that separated me from them. In my most jovial moments there was a never-sleeping sense of caution. The one exception to this was my enemy of old days, my friend ever since our encounter—Jake Patton. I had seen him but seldom since our boyhood—he had become a partner in a large firm while I was still an humble bank-clerk. But when we ran across each other there was something in the heartiness of his greeting different from that which I received from any one else, and another spirit in me rose to meet it. His invariable:
"Well, old fellow, been engaged in any fights lately? What soulless corporation are you battering your fool head against now?" Made me feel for a little while as if I were really brave, as if I could fight against the conditions and desires that were dragging me down. I had, sometimes, in his presence, that unexpected, almost overpowering impulse to confession which has come over me at the oddest seasons; the words:
"You do not know what I am, but I am going to tell you. I have been taking money from the bank," seemed as if they would force themselves from my closed lips. After the danger was over, I would become literally unnerved, and find myself with trembling lips and shaking limbs and a devout thankfulness that I hadn't yielded to the weakness. The thought haunted me that I might tell someone before I knew it, and find myself lodged in prison and in stripes. Perhaps if I had seen more of Jake, or. …
There was, among the people I knew, a certain poor young priest with whom I had been associated some years before in trying to get a charity patient into a hospital. I often met him in going through certain streets; we exchanged a word of greeting as we passed. I cannot describe him adequately or his effect on me. His bearing, the firm, sweet lines of his mouth, his glance—in which there was a heavenly simplicity and kindness—affected me strangely. I was not the only one whom he thus attracted—little children ran up to him at his smile; people who went by turned back to gaze again with a surprised, softened look. When I found myself nearing him a tremor seemed to run through me—I wished, yet feared to hear that gentle greeting, to feel those eyes fixed on me; I longed for the moment, unmeasurably, to be something different from what I was—I felt a sudden unexplainable horror of myself.
There came a day when I could not stand meeting him any longer—I turned aside. I said to myself: Some day I will go to him and talk to him——And then I heard that he was dead. If he had lived—if I had gone to him. …
I went on in that way for nineteen years. I could never take a vacation, the price of safety was in constant vigilance. In lieu of promotion, my salary had been raised to three thousand dollars.
Our children were all that Marian and I could wish; Ernest, my handsome boy, was the pride of my heart. But for the last few years luck, in spite of all my efforts, had gone against me. At the end of this time, strange as it may seem, I not only owed the bank more than a hundred thousand dollars, but I owed everyone else, too. Marian had accounts every- where; I speculated more and more heavily, only to lose and lose. What I went through in this time nobody will ever know. Only my religious convictions sustained me.
III
While many banks had changed materially in the conduct of their affairs, ours remained approximately the same. I couldn't help wondering sometimes both why I was not found out, and at a sort of laxness that seemed to be coming into the management. Mr. Woodley, the president, was growing old; his hand shook as he signed his name. His son-in-law, young Lessner, had been appointed cashier in the place that I should have had—— Once I had a horrible scare; I fancied that Lessner had been set to spy on me. I fancied that he had found out something wrong in my books, one afternoon, when I returned for my keys and found him still there. His eye avoided mine when we next met.
In all these years, my religious life had been my mainstay and my inspiration. I still kept the Lord's Day with the utmost strictness, and obliged my family to do so in spite of the tendencies of the age. When I discovered Ernest once riding on a bicycle on a Sabbath afternoon I punished him severely for the only time in his life. I had perhaps an almost superstitious reverence for the command to keep the Sabbath holy; I felt that I could expect no help during the week if I neglected it, and that the wrath of the Lord descended on those who did.
My joy was in my church work; there, indeed, sinner that I was—and who is not? I could feel my humble service of some worth. I was superintendent of the Sunday School, and my Bible Class for young men achieved prominence. Young men, indeed, were my especial care. I made friends with them, prayed with them earnestly, and talked to them unceasingly on the temptations to which all lads are open. The duty of strict honesty was one of my most urgent themes. I can conscientiously say that my heart was in this work; it gave me a grateful glow, it drugged that accusing part of me to rest. It is strange that though I made warm friends among the many boys I helped, I could never seem to reach my own boy in this way—he remained aloof.
I needed comfort sorely, for luck seemed to have deserted me for good. I lived on the edge of a precipice; my nights were frightful. But although I prayed now with agonized fervour and faith, my prayers remained unanswered.
I speculated frantically, under, as I hoped, the Divine direction. I still lost. Each day I said to myself, "How long can this thing last?" I became terribly thin and worn; I started when any one spoke to me. I would have given anything to stop my pecuniary operations, but I couldn't stop now.
One morning I awoke early from a bad dream to find my wife regarding me strangely.
"You say such queer things in your sleep, lately, Ernie," she said.
"What do I say?" I asked, fixing my eyes on her. Suddenly I felt that I would get this fearful load off my mind; I would tell her all.
"Oh, dreams are nothing. I'm so foolish; forget all about it, dear," she said hurriedly.
"No, I want to tell you something."
She changed colour. "Isabel is calling me," she said nervously, and left the room. When she came back, after some minutes, she made no allusion to the subject; but she did not look herself for several days. Once, after reading in the newspaper of some defalcation, she put her arms around my neck, with her face hidden, and said:
"Ernie, if you ever did anything wrong, it would kill me. It is my greatest joy that you are beyond reproach."
IV
I well remember the day when the crash came. By that time, what with being pinched for money, hounded by dunning letters and in constant danger of detection, the fear that possessed me was so terrible that it was only by those moments of respite in which nature mercifully dulls the mind, airholes at which the submerged comes up to breathe, that I was able to preserve my reason. I had lost so much of the bank's money that only an almost impossible coup could land me in safety. Yet I still clung to the cherished, desperate hope of it. I prayed in agony.
On this fateful morning, the day after the bank examiners had been there, I had gone down town for the first time in weeks with that strange, exaltedly sanguine state of mind that is sometimes more apt than foreboding to come before a great catastrophe. The bank examiner had left. I felt at ease, comforted, sure that my prayer was answered, that this day extraordinary good fortune was to be mine. I would be able to restore before night the funds that I had borrowed, and begin to lead a new life; I shed tears of thankfulness at the blessed assurance given me from on High. I entered the bank with a light heart.
As the day went on, however, I found a chill slowly creeping over me. There was a directors' meeting, unusual in itself on a Saturday after the noon closing, and an unusually long session. As I stood over my books, pen in hand, working after hours, as often happened, with a couple of other clerks, suddenly the knowledge came to me, irrevocable, certain, that I was found out. I do not know how the knowledge forced itself on me, but I knew it to be a fact, the result of a sub-consciousness which could not be defied; all else was delusion. I watched the door of the directors' room. Once it opened suddenly, someone came out, and passing down the aisle, looked at me. In that look I saw. …
I kept working on, dizzily, seeing nothing in the page before me, waiting for the summons to come. When it did not, I put on my hat and coat and went out.
It was in December, a few days before Christmas. Though only four o'clock, it was already growing dark; the streets were black with mud, yet slippery with a growing iciness. Lights were hazily dimmed in an encroaching fog. I wandered at first aimlessly in a confusion of mind that was in itself a horror—after a while I found myself before the Central Station. Yes, that was it—I must go off at once, while I was yet free. Free? I felt in my pocket; I had just two dollars in the world; my feet were already bound. And my wife and children—how about them?
It was half -past ten when I finally reached home. Marian started back when she saw me.
"Why, Ernie," she said. She put up her hand as if to ward off a blow—— We stood and looked at each other. When she spoke it was with pale lips to ask: "Are you ill?"
"No, I'm all right."
"Mr. Patton is in the library; he has been waiting impatiently for you for more than an hour."
"Very well," I said shortly, striding in there at once, with a quick sense of respite. We were both interested in a Christmas entertainment for newsboys—— After all, everything seemed as before; my imagination might have played me false.
He was pacing the room as I entered, but hitched his chair close up to mine after our greeting. I realized suddenly that there was something strange in his manner. Jake was a big man with a large head, grizzled hair and direct eyes. I saw my own figure reflected in the glass opposite, painfully thin, with bent shoulders and nearly white locks, though I was barely fifty.
He said: "Ern, I may as well go straight to the point. It was discovered to-day that you've been robbing the bank for years."
It had come at last. "My God!" I said, and crumpled up in my chair as if the spoken words had hit me like a stone.
He averted his eyes for a moment before going on.
"Suspicion was aroused a couple of weeks ago. The cash was examined to-day—part of it as you know was deposited in a couple of other banks—and it was found that it did not tally with the entries to an enormous amount. The securities won't cover it, the directors themselves will have to make the loss good. You will be arrested on Monday. Johnson told me this—he was very much cut up. You were the least suspected man in the place."
My lips, my hands, something in my very soul seemed twisted out of shape. I burst forth gaspingly:
"I couldn't help it, Jake! I got in wrong from the first—I've tried and tried to pay back what I took. I've suffered the tortures of hell! If I'd only had a little luck——"
He stopped me. "Excuses aren't any good now. But I've not come to score you, Hollins—God knows we're none of us too honest! I've always liked you. Somehow it goes hard with me to think that we've been boys together and I'll be free while you're clapped into prison. Have you got any money?"
"Money!" I said, "Money!" I laughed, with a laugh that turned into a shriek. I felt suddenly beside myself. I took the loose change from my pocket and threw it on the table.
"Yes, I've got this!—if I had any money, do you suppose I'd be here now, cornered like a rat in a trap? Do you think I want to rot in jail? Do you think——"
"Hush, hush!" said Jake hurriedly. He went on and closed the door, and then came and bent over me.
"Ern, for the sake of old times, I'm going to help you get off to Canada." He drew out of his pocket a wad of bills and thrust them into my grasp. "Here's five hundred. Pack your bag, take a cab, and catch a midnight train. It's your only chance."
"Jake, I'll never forget this," I babbled. "I'll never—I'll never forget it——" I began to sob, the relief was so great. I rose and then stopped short, struck by a sudden terrible thought, and then sank back clutching the chair. I fell to trembling violently, as I knew that what had seemed this heaven-sent escape was inexorably cut off from me.
"Oh, Jake!" I moaned, "I can't go. O Lord have mercy, help me to withstand temptation! Jake, Jake, I can't go!"
"For heaven's sake, pull yourself together," he adjured me, alarmed. "What's the matter?"
I threw up my arms.
"Don't you see? I can't go to-night; I'll have to wait until Monday, even if it's too late! To-morrow is Sunday!"
He stared at me.
"Well, what of it?"
"Jake, I've never travelled on Sunday in my life—I daren't go against my conscience now. The Lord would never bless me if I did."
"Why, you blaspheming old hypocrite!" said Jake incredulously, with a contempt before which I shrank. He controlled himself . "Here, I've offered to get you off, and I'll abide by it."
"I tell you, I can't go," I persisted wildly.
"All right, I'll leave the money. Your rotten conscience may let up on you by morning. Good-night!"
He left me feebly protesting. Providence spared me the necessity of further decision. An attack of vertigo, such as I have been subject to ever since, laid me low the next day.
On Monday morning early I slipped out of the house. I was looking down the street while I descended the steps; as I reached the pavement someone from behind tapped me on the shoulder. I shall never forget that moment; my heart stood still suddenly. A horrible cold tingling thrill ran through me unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I seemed to become all at once a criminal—I!—— Two men had been waiting there to arrest me. I was put in a cab and hurried off
It seems strange and almost unbelievable that what followed made so little impression upon me. I grew increasingly dazed and confused—the scenes and incidents of the day passed before me like a dream, which I had imagined many times before more realistically. Only the feeling of that tap on my shoulder has remained—such a slight thing, over in an instant—to haunt me with its dread suggestion. In all the years since there have been times when I have felt it as vividly as in that first moment; I start even now, in sudden, uncontrollable terror, if any one touches my arm unexpectedly. It is the little things often that have the most tenacious power of torment——
I was finally committed to the prison where I was to await trial. I sent word to my wife later, and the papers were full of my delinquency and arrest the next day, with my picture to head a column.
You may think it strange, but for the first time in many years I felt comparative relief. I had nothing to hide any more. I sat there in that prison cell, lethargic, but at peace. My wife was ill for the two weeks I was in jail and could not come to me, though I had several loving notes from her. I sent her the money Jake had left with me.
I wondered painfully what effect my future imprisonment would have on my two elder girls, just growing up, and on my boy. But above all things I yearned to make a full confession to Marian; to cleanse my soul of all I had been harbouring in it for so many years, to tell her all I had suffered, to feel her one with me in my better resolves; to make her understand … I had been alone for so many years!
After all, she was spared the worst—I was never brought to trial; greater interests than mine were at stake, with influence to hush up the matter. It was not only my imagination that had shown Lessner, the president's son-in-law, with the same expression as my own—he had followed in my tracks. If the president himself had been honest, matters in the state they were could never have run on so long—the whole edifice was corrupt, as was the edifice of my boyhood's home, though it was only whispered by those who knew. I was let out on bail, furnished secretly to the ostensible bondsmen. I was forbidden to leave the jurisdiction of the city; I might be brought to trial at any moment.
When I went home eagerly to Marian, she was convalescent. She sat up in bed and put her arm around me, murmuring brokenly as I laid my wet cheek against hers:
"Poor boy! What you must have suffered under all these dreadful suspicions! It has nearly killed me. But you knew all the time that your wife would never believe you were a thief—— I would not believe it even if you confessed it yourself. We will never speak of it again."
I cannot describe to you what prop seemed to have given way under me. I had never had much sense of humour, but I laughed more than once. My youngest girl, Flossy, came and stood by me, frightened. "Why do you laugh like that, Daddy?" she asked.
I answered, "Oh, you always laugh when your tower of blocks tumbles down."
It was a few days afterward that I overheard the Doctor talking to the nurse in another room.
"It's a pity his wife hasn't the courage to face his trouble with him."
"He is guilty?"
"Undoubtedly—on his own statement, I hear. She can't help knowing it. But she'll never own it, and the poor devil will never get the help he needs, and might profit by now; I can see it in his face. Well! Give those powders. …"
It was true. That rectitude I had looked upon as a bulwark in time of need in my wife was only another form of self-love——.
I must bring this confession to a close. For ten years the sentence of the court has hung over me. If I had been an embezzler of consequence, many ways of making money might still have been open to me; as a discredited bank clerk of fifty, there were none, though I tried everywhere. We moved out of our house and went to a cheap flat in a poor part of the city. My wife took in sewing. One daughter went to live with a relative in the country; the other ran away at seventeen and married. Ernest, my boy, got a position with a broker, an old friend of mine. We managed to exist. I cooked while my wife ran the machine, swept, took her work home, and carried brown paper parcels from the corner grocery. I tried to save her all I could, but I longed for a man's work.
I was beginning to get up courage again when that fatal blow fell which made an old man of me. I have found that there is no escaping the Law under which we all live; it takes its awful toll of us in one way or another. My bright boy, Ernest, was discovered robbing the stamp box, of a small amount indeed, but the fact remained. Ernest was a thief! My God—how that word rang through me! A thief! My erstwhile friend, the broker, sent for me and told me, kindly but explicitly.
The first word my boy said to me when I was alone with him was:
"Don't tell Mother."
And I answered:
"No, she must never know."
He wept with my arms around him. We knew without speaking that there could be no help from her. Yet she must have suspected something, then and since!
Ernest got another place and was discharged after a few months, for the same reason. He drifted off and it is long since we have heard from him.
Once the newsdealer at the corner hired me to make up his books for him. I was tremulously eager at the prospect of doing a man's work once more. I dressed myself carefully, and walked to the store with a firm step. But my head would not stay clear. I made mistake after mistake, the old vertigo attacked me. I went home tottering.
The consolations of religion even have forsaken me lately. I, who used to feel so sure of my place by the Throne of Grace, and in the Great and Exulting Company of the Redeemed, have no joy in the assurance now; it seems somehow beside the mark. I seldom go to church, and when I do, it is to slip into a back seat and out again before the perfunctory words of cordiality greet me.
I am always thinking of Ernest, my boy so far away. In my thoughts I am fighting for him as I fought for the little boy Jake was hurting so long ago.
As I walk to and from the corner grocery with my paper parcels of butter and sugar—living is terribly high these days!—I find myself repeating over and ever to myself: "Lord, help my boy! I don't want anything for myself any more; only have mercy on my boy. Keep him straight—my life is over, but keep him straight. Don't visit my sins on him!"
I get strangely confused at times. The other day I thought I saw my friend of long ago, the young priest, coming down the street toward me. There was something in his kind eyes—— But when I looked again he was gone.