Young Mr. Barters Repentance | Page 7

father?' the young man answered, with a look and accent of pained surprise. 'Do you mean to say, sir, that you haven't heard the news?'
'The news?' cried Bommaney, feeling blindly as if some new misfortune threatened him. 'What news?'
'My father, sir,' said young Mr. Barter, with a certain blending of professional airs, something of a legal impress mingled with something of the manner of a medical man conveying mournful intelligence to the relatives of a patient, 'my father, sir, was struck down by an omnibus in the street this morning. He is terribly injured, and not expected to recover.'
'God bless my soul!' Bommaney cried out. His chin fell upon his breast, and his eyes stared at the floor, seeing nothing. He felt like a man upon a raft, who sees the bindings of the frail thing break apart. Shipwrecked already, and now the last hope gone! He hardly knew, if he could have asked himself the question clearly, why he so particularly desired to see Barter. He hardly knew what Barter could have done for him, except to listen to his troubles and take charge of the eight thousand pounds which tempted him, and yet the disappointment seemed as heavy and as hard to bear as anything he had hitherto endured. He sat staring forlornly before him, with tears in his eyes, and young Mr. Barter, in much astonishment at his susceptibility and tenderness, sat watching him. Something slid from Bommaney's hands with a rustle, and dropped upon the floor. Young Mr. Barter made a mere hint or beginning of a movement, as if he would have picked it up for him. Bommaney made no movement at all, but stared before him with his blue-gray eyes filling more and more with tears, until two or three brimmed over and trickled down his cheeks. He said, 'God bless my soul!' once more, mechanically, and restored what remained of his bundle of papers to his pocket. Young Mr. Barter looked with one swift and vivid glance from the fallen bundle to his guest's face, then back again. Bommaney rose from his seat, buttoned his overcoat with awkward and lingering fingers, and put on his hat. He was evidently unconscious of his own tears, and made no attempt to disguise them, or to wipe them away. He said, 'God bless my soul!' a third time, and then, shaking young Mr. Barter by the hand, murmured that he was sorry, very sorry, and so went stupidly away. Young Mr. Barter accompanied him to the door, casting a strange backward glance at the papers as he left the room, and was curiously voluble in his dismissal of his visitor. Anything he could do--Mr. Bommaney might rest perfectly assured--the clerks would be back to-morrow in any case--he would advise Mr. Bommaney of his father's condition by that night's post--he himself was naturally most profoundly anxious. In this wise he talked Bommaney from the chambers, and when once he had closed the door behind him, went back along the dark little corridor with an unnecessarily catlike tread. He could hardly have been other than certain that he was alone, yet when he reached the inner room he looked about him with a keen quick darting suspicion, and for half a minute ignored the fallen papers on the floor.
'Dear me!' he said, when at length he suffered his eyes to rest upon them. 'What can that be? How did that come here?'
He stooped, picked up the papers, laid them upon his desk, and smoothed them out, making a fold lengthways to counteract the creases into which they had already fallen. He saw a crisp clean Bank of England note for a hundred pounds, and, lifting it, found another. Then he lifted half the bundle, and, finding a note of the same value, gave an inward gasp, and expelled his breath slowly after it. Then he looked at the last note of all, and sat down with the whole bundle in his hands. His pale and fleshy features had taken an unusual colour, and his breathing was a good deal disturbed. A watcher might have guessed that he was profoundly agitated from the swift unintermittent rustle the paper made in his hands. He seemed to sit as steady as a rock, and yet the crisp paper rustled noisily.
Mr. Brown's bank-notes had been a fruitful source of emotion that day already, and, in Bommaney's mind at least, had raised very dreadful doubts and perplexities. There were doubts and perplexities in the mind of young Mr. Barter, but they were altogether of another order. Young Mr. Barter was perfectly aware that he was being tempted, and felt that, in its way, the temptation wets a kind of godsend. He even said as much in a low murmur to himself. His perplexities