CHAPTER XXXI.
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In the afternoon of the day on which this conversation
occurred, Mr. Lennox, with Mary and Miss Elton on either
arm, and Frank with Mrs. Elton, were coming in from a
walk, when, as they entered the house, their attention was
arrested by the sound of voices in the office.
“It is true.”
“It is not true.”
“Do you mean to say I am telling a falsehood?” said the
gentle voice of Emmerson.
“I mean to say you first gave it me to copy, and that you
then desired me not to copy it till you should correct it.”
The door of the office now opened and discovered the
whole party, with Mr. Lennox at the head, but unobserved,
apparently, by either of the disputants.
“I do not say you tell a wilful untruth, my young friend,”
said Emmerson, gently, although the expression which
came over his dark and now pallid countenance betrayed
considerable emotion, “but I deny your statement. You
are habitually negligent. You have forgotten, and propose
this as an excuse. I wish your faults ended there.”
“It is false!” said Seth; “I am not negligent. I appeal
to every clerk in the office. I do my best; I neglect nothing,
and I am incapable of an untruth. I remember most
distinctly your countermanding your order to copy the bill,
that you might correct it; and, moreover, I believe, sir, you
know what I say to be the truth.”
“What is all this?” said Mr. Lennox, coming forward.
“Oh, nothing. One of the daily occurrences of the office
when you are absent,” said Emmerson, with mild indifference.
“What is it you charge so boldly upon Mr. Emmerson?”
inquired Mr. Lennox, gravely.
Seth was silent.
“Will you be good enough to favour me with an answer?”
reiterated Mr. Lennox, yet more mildly.
Seth turned very red, then very pale—commenced to
speak, but had, for the moment, either not the presence of
mind or the bodily strength to do so.
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“Will you explain, Mr. Emmerson, if you please?”
“I really should be sorry to do so,” said Emmerson,
smiling. “I believe the boy speaks in a passion, and will
deny to-morrow what he has dared to insinuate to-day.”
“But what does he insinuate?”
“I gave him a bill in chancery to copy—it should have
been done a week ago, and if not filed to-day, will be too
late. I should have reminded him of it, but he is so susceptible
and irritable when I speak to him of anything, that
I abstained from doing so, supposing he had copied it, perhaps,
when I was not in the room. To-day I ask him for
it; he replies I requested him not to copy it—a thing on the
face of it—at least—a mistake.”
“And you added, Master Seth,” remarked Mr. Lennox,
“that Mr. Emmerson had not only countermanded this order
to you in this way, but knew he had done so—that is, was
not only making a mistake, but preferring against you deliberately
a false accusation.”
Seth turned still paler, but did not reply.
“I should never have mentioned this,” said Emmerson,
“for I do not wish to injure the boy; but this is what I
mean when I say I cannot get along easily with him.”
“Seth,” said Mr. Lennox.
“Sir,” said Seth, suddenly lifting his pale face, but meeting
the stern glance of his benefactor with one, if not as
stern, at least not less firm.
“Ask Mr. Emmerson's pardon, and confess you have uttered
an unworthy falsehood, this moment.”
Fire darted into the cheeks of Seth and flashed from his
eyes as he turned them upon Emmerson with a haughty
indignation, totally unlike anything ever seen in him before.
He answered in a low voice,
“Never!”
“You persist in your charge, then?”
“It is true,” said Seth.
“You mean to say that Mr. Emmerson asked you to defer
copying the bill till he had corrected it, and now, while
denying it, is conscious of having done so?”
“I do, sir!”
“Seth! do you know what you say? Do you mean to
charge Mr. Emmerson with dishonour—with duplicity?”
“Before man and God!” replied Seth, firmly.
“Look!” said Emmerson, showing the bill to Mr.
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Lennox. “It is drawn by yourself: is it likely I should propose
to correct it?”
“How do you explain this fact, sir?” demanded Mr.
Lennox, still suppressing beneath the calmest exterior an
obviously rising storm of indignation.
“I cannot explain it—I can't explain anything connected
with Mr. Emmerson, but I have asserted the truth. I repeat
it, and Mr. Emmerson knows it.”
“Oh, if you believe me capable of laying a snare for
you!” said Emmerson, with a smile.
“I would not have voluntarily advanced such a charge,”
said Seth, his face extremely pale, but his voice steady and
his eye unshrinking; “but since the point is raised, I scorn
to conceal my opinion. I do believe Mr. Emmerson capable
of any act of selfish meanness or malignant slander, of
any art to provoke, and any lie to ruin me.”
The boy stood erect, with a deep emotion, which appeared
to have given tallness to his stature as well as grace
and dignity to his gestures; his brow and cheeks grew absolutely
swarthy with indignation, and his eyes flashed with
the fire of a noble soul fully aroused. There was a moment
a dead silence. Mr. Lennox, thunderstruck, appeared for
an instant to hesitate what course to pursue, while Emmerson
was so speechless with surprise and rage, that impartial
observers would have certainly supposed him the culprit
of the two. His cheek was yellow with emotion, his
dark eyes were sunken and bent beneath Seth's keen glance,
and the paper shook with an audible noise in his trembling
hand. He looked, in short, more like a fiend than a man.
But everybody found, in these marks of agitation, only
the shame and natural anger which any irreproachable person
might feel on being publicly charged with a dishonourable
act, and, after a single glance of sympathy at him, Mr.
Lennox stepped up to Seth and took him by the shoulder.
“Listen to me, sir,” said he, with a serious tranquillity,
which boded no good. “You are a little, homeless, friendless
boy, with a temper too rebellious and brutal to hope
for employment elsewhere, or I would this instant turn you
out of my house. If you were my son, I would horsewhip
you within an inch of your life; as it is, believing you to
be insane with rage, and not responsible for what you say,
if you go down upon your knees and ask that gentleman's
pardon for the atrocious insult you have offered him, and
if he grant it—”
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“Oh! I pardon him unasked,” said Emmerson. “Pray
let us drop the subject. I am far from wishing to destroy
the prospects of the poor little fellow.”
“I may, for the present,” continued Mr. Lennox, “abstain
from turning you out of the house, at least until I can
get you some other mode of support. But obey me at once,
or I shall teach you on the spot how a character so deceitful
and worthless must be dealt with.”
“If I am so worthless,” said Seth, respectfully, but firmly.
“Silence, sir!” said Mr. Lennox, too much accustomed
to implicit obedience from his own grown-up sons to hear
without amazement these bold words. “One breath more,
and you shall learn I can punish as well as reprove.”
“Punish!” echoed Seth.
“My dear father!” murmured Mary.
“I have not been used to suffer such a threat in my boyhood,”
said Seth, “and I don't know why—”
“Pray go on,” said Lennox.
“You are the only man living to whom I would not go
on; but punishment, if you mean chastisement, I did not
permit when a child, and I would not permit now, even if
I merited it!”
“Leave the room! leave the house! never cross my
threshold again!” cried Lennox.
“My dear husband,” said Mrs. Lennox.
“I obey you, sir,” said Seth, and, passing through the
group of ladies at the door quite firm, but his face very
white, he walked with a proud step down the street.
As he turned the corner, however, he remembered he had
no place to go to—no home—not a cent of money—no resources
but what he held from Mr. Lennox, who even paid
his board in a house in which he had now no right to remain.
He remembered, too, the kind friends he might now
never see again, Mrs. Lennox, and Miss Elton, and Mrs.
Elton, and, most of all, Mary, and what they must now
think of him, and how clearly all Emmerson's hints and
calumnies would now appear well founded, and what a cruel
advantage his hated foe would take to slander him, now
that he had really committed such a shocking outrage.
“No matter,” he murmured, “I will saw wood, dig,
sweep the streets, or starve, but I won't have anything
more to do with Emmerson. If there were anything of
the man in him, I'd make him eat his words. But one
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might as well threaten and insult a woman! He `pardons
me unasked!' He pardons me! Ah, the scoundrel!”
Thus yielding to the ungovernable passions of inexperienced
youth, and despising, as youth so often does, the dictates
of prudence and propriety, the boy had not only insulted
the person whom he imagined his enemy, but also Mr.
Lennox and his whole family. As this last recollection
forced itself upon him, the tears, which the thought of his
destitute state could not make him indulge in, began to
overcome his power of resistance, and turning down a side
street where no one happened to be walking, he wept and
sobbed as if his heart would break.
But, luckily, the hearts of fine, honest, bold fellows like
him don't break quite so easily.
Fay, Theodore S. (Theodore Sedgwick), 1807-1898 [1843], A romance of New York volume 1 (Harper & Brothers, New York) [word count] [eaf099v1].
