Helen Vardons Confession | Page 2

tip-toe, without hearing more than the vague murmur of conversation
from within. "The Spectators" stood on a shelf close to the door; a
goodly row clothed in rusty calf to which the worn gilt tooling imparted
a certain sumptuousness that had always seemed very pleasant to my
eye. My hand was on the third volume when I heard my father say:
"So that's how the matter stands."
I plucked the volume from the shelf, and, tucking it under my arm,
stole out of the book-room, intending to dart up the stairs before there
should be time for anything more to be said; but I had hardly crossed
the threshold, and was, in fact, exactly opposite the study door, when a
voice said very distinctly, though not at all loudly:
"Do you realise, Vardon, that this renders you liable to seven years'
penal servitude?"
At those terrible words I stopped as though I had been, in a moment,
turned into stone: stopped with my lips parted, my very breathing
arrested, clutching at the book under my arm, with no sign of life or
movement save the tumultuous thumping of my heart. There was what
seemed an interminable pause, and then my father replied: "Hardly, I
think, Otway. Technically, perhaps, it amounts to a misdemeanour--"
"Technically!" repeated Mr. Otway.

"Yes, technically. The absence of any intent to defraud modifies the
position considerably. Still, for the purpose of argument, we may admit
that it amounts to a misdemeanour."
"And," said Mr. Otway, "the maximum punishment of that
misdemeanour is seven years' penal servitude. As to your plea of
absence of fraudulent intent, you, as a lawyer of experience, must know
well that judges are not apt to be very sympathetic with trustees who
misappropriate property placed in their custody."
"Misappropriate!" my father exclaimed.
"Yes, Mr. Otway, "I say misappropriate. What other word could you
apply? Here is a sum of money which has been placed in your custody.
I come here with the intention to receive that money from you on
behalf of the trustees, and you tell me that you haven't got it. You are
not only unable to produce it, but you are unable to give any date on
which you could produce it. And meanwhile it seems that you have
applied it to your own uses."
"I haven't spent it," my father objected. "The money is locked up for
the present, but it isn't lost."
"What is the use of saying that?" demanded Mr. Otway. "You haven't
got the money, and you can't give any satisfactory account of it. The
plain English of it is that you have used this trust money for your own
private purposes, and that when the trustors ask to have it restored to
them, you are unable to produce it."
To this my father made no immediate reply; and in the silence that
ensued I could hear my heart throbbing and the blood humming in the
veins of my neck. At length my father asked: "Well, Otway, what are
you going to do?"
"Do!" repeated Mr. Otway. "What can I do? As a trustee, it is my duty
to get this money from you. I have to protect the interests of those
whom I represent. And if you have misapplied these funds--well, you
must see for yourself that I have no choice."

"You mean that you'll prosecute?"
"What else can I do? I can't introduce personal considerations into the
business of a trust; and even if I should decline to move in the matter,
the trustors themselves would undoubtedly take action."
Here there followed a silence which seemed to me of endless duration;
then Mr. Otway said, in a somewhat different tone: "There is just one
way for you out of this mess, Vardon,"
"Indeed!" said my father.
"Yes. I am going to make you a proposal, and I may as well put it quite
bluntly. It is this. I am prepared to take over your liabilities, for the
time being, on condition that I marry your daughter. If you agree, then
on the day on which the marriage takes place, I pay into your bank the
sum of five thousand pounds, you giving me an undertaking to repay
the loan if and when you can."
"Have you any reason to suppose that my daughter wishes to marry
you?" my father asked.
"Not the slightest," replied Mr. Otway; "but I think it probable that, if
the case were put to her--"
It is not going to be," my father interrupted. "I would rather go to gaol
than connive at the sacrifice of my daughter's happiness."
"You might have thought of her happiness a little sooner, Vardon," Mr.
Otway remarked. "We are not quite of an age, but she might easily find
it more agreeable to be the