THE FALL OF PRINCE CHARMING.

Miss Carlaw stood for a long time in the same attitude after her brother had left her; the whole hideous thing had come upon her so unexpectedly and with such force that she was like one stunned. She began presently to pace about the room, moaning once or twice to herself as she walked, and then again stopping suddenly with a new light on her face and a smile about her lips. But those latter moments were rare and fleeting; they came to her only when she felt for an instant that the story she had heard was a hideous invention, and that her faith in Comethup might still remain unshaken.

After a long, long time her heart leaped suddenly at the sound of wheels and the opening of a door; then died down again at the thought of the interview before her. She heard his footstep in the hall, and then knew by the opening of the room door that he was coming to her as he always did. She stood stiff and rigid to receive him.

The sound of the voice she loved so well almost shook her resolution to be stern with him, almost broke her into an appeal. She knew that in another moment his arm would be about her shoulders in the old boyish fashion, and she cried out in an agony, “Stop! Stay where you are. Don’t come near me!”

He stopped dead; so suddenly quiet was he that she almost fancied he had stopped breathing. Then the tension was over; he gave a quick little gasp and said hurriedly, “What’s the matter?”

“Years ago, Comethup, when I first saw you in the house wherein your father lay dead, I drove a bargain with you—a bargain which, child though you were, you were fully capable of understanding. Do you remember it now?”

“Yes, of course.” His heart was beating thickly, and he had a dim and miserable feeling that he knew what was coming.

“I fear you may have forgotten it. I asked for your love and your confidence; swore that I would be your friend if you dealt with me openly and squarely through all things and at all times. Have I kept my word?”

“God knows you have!” he replied in a low voice.

“Have you kept yours?—Ah! you are silent on that point. I ask you to-night if you have anything to tell me—anything to say to me?”

He raised his head and looked at her; even made a step toward her with his arms stretched out. Then the arms fell to his sides again and he simply answered, “Nothing.”

Miss Charlotte Carlaw’s face hardened suddenly. “Then the talking must be done by me,” she said. “I reminded you just now of our compact when you were a child; perhaps it will be well to remind you of the penalty for breaking that compact. I swore to you then, and I meant it, that if you ever deceived me, ever proved yourself to be anything but the boy I believed you to be, I’d cast you out and you might starve. I meant it then, and, by the Lord, I’ll keep my word! It has come to my knowledge to-night that you have done what, in my eyes, is a shameful and disgraceful thing; that, trading on the fact that you believed yourself to be my heir, you have borrowed a large sum of money; have used the bounty and generosity of a foolish old woman who believed in you, and so have actually drawn money which you can not possess until after my death. Will you deny that? Is it true?”

“Yes, it’s true,” said Comethup.

She gave a long sigh, turned away from him, leaned her arm against the side of the fireplace, and laid her old face against the arm and began to cry helplessly. It was the most pitiful sight imaginable, and yet he could do nothing to comfort her, dared not even go near her. In a dim, forlorn fashion he seemed to see passing before him all that had happened in that very room—the riotous feasts, when he had been a child—the sound of merry laughter; he even seemed to see himself as he had once stood on the table, singing a foolish song, with the captain watching him silently; he could hear his own childish treble, could feel again the old woman’s hand grasping his ankle. And now the room was empty and the generous-hearted old creature, the giver of the feast, who had craved only for his love in return for all her bounty, was crying hopelessly over her shattered idol.

Presently she ceased her weeping and turned upon him with a certain sad fierceness of manner. “Have I ever denied you anything, boy? Was I so much in your way or had you given me so little of your love that you must long for the time when you could step into possession? O God! for the dream I have lost! Why, you’re worse than any murderer—for the things you have killed in me to-night! I honestly believe that that is the unpardonable sin—to kill some trusting fellow-creature’s belief in you.”

“Don’t, don’t!” he cried; “you’ll break my heart!”

“And what of mine; did you think nothing of that? I swear to you that if you had come to me and had told me that you were in want or in difficulties I’d have helped you if I’d had to mortgage everything I possessed. Your income has been a large one; it passes my comprehension to know what you’ve done with the money; I’m quite afraid to think. However, that’s all done with; I’ll never believe in any human creature again. I believed in you with all my heart and soul; I saw in you, or thought I did, something better and truer than in any one else. Now I find my mistake. Thinking over it now, I see what a fool I’ve been. I remember those days on the Continent when we were travelling about, and when your money went more rapidly than I could put it in your hands. I didn’t mind then; I thought you didn’t know the value of it, but would learn in time. Now your chance to learn is gone. You and I part to-night!”

He stood there dumb, knowing that he could say nothing to her, knowing that he dare not plead for himself. Indeed, he did not think of himself at that time; he found himself dimly wondering what was to become of ’Linda when this last sum of money was exhausted. He had never foreseen such a crisis as this. The fashion in which he had supplied Brian and his father with funds, beginning as it had done in his boyhood, had grown to be such a natural thing that he had ceased to be surprised at it, or, indeed, to think about it very much at all. He put himself clearly and quietly outside the question; his heart only ached desperately for this old woman who was destined to be left alone again after all these years, despite all her goodness to him. He stood still for a few moments watching her, and then turned quietly and went toward the door.

She called after him: “Have you nothing to say to me?”

He came back slowly. “Oh, my dear,” he said in a broken voice, “what shall I say to you? To thank you for all that you’ve done, all that I seem so shamefully to have misused, would sound like a mockery. After all, all that you say is good and fair and just; I have lied to you and deceived you and broken my bargain; I can’t say anything more than that. Deep as my gratitude is, I wish—O God, how much I wish!—that you had left me as you found me when I was a little child. I suppose I wasn’t fit or strong enough to take the position you meant for me.”

“I suppose not. And you won’t tell me what you’ve done with all this money?”

“No, I can’t tell you that,” he replied. Before him again he seemed to see the face of ’Linda—’Linda, whose fool’s paradise he had created, and who lived in it contentedly, knowing nothing of what it was founded upon. In his own steadfast, single-hearted way he knew that that secret must be kept, and kept to the end for her sake.

“Well, if you won’t, you won’t,” said the old woman, with a sudden return of her hardness of manner. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. But, since you refuse all explanations, so I refuse to have anything to do with you further, or with any trouble you have created. You have borrowed this money under the belief that you were my heir, but you’ve reckoned without me. Here, to-night, under the very roof where I first gave you all your honours, I strip them from you. Those who lent you the money may get it back as they can; I’ll encourage no such business as that. I’ll warrant they’ll pull long faces when they find they’ve been misled. Yes, I strip everything from you. The boy I loved, the Prince Charming I worshipped, is dead—never has been at all. Another—a creature I don’t know and don’t understand, a stranger to me—has taken his place. Prince Charming has gone—God help me!—forever.”

He turned then and went quietly out of the room. When at the door he looked back for a moment she was seated in her chair with her hands resting on the top of her stick, and her face bowed on the hands; she was rocking herself to and fro in the fashion he remembered so well.

He stole up to his room, struck a light, and looked round that happy place of his boyhood for a long time; then presently closed the door, went down the stairs, put on his hat, and left the house, taking nothing with him, but going out as quietly and as steadfastly to begin the world again as though he had been merely starting for a quiet half-hour’s walk. He had not the faintest idea of what to do or where to go; there was no one to whom he could turn, for even the captain would not understand, and must never be told. Prince Charming, as the old woman had said, was dead; it would surely be wiser that he should be forgotten also.