“Ah! my God—has it come to this?” exclaimed the banker. “Ruin—disgrace—and beggary, all in one day! But better that than submit to such terms as those which you dictate.”
With these words he rang the bell violently.
Old Martin immediately made his appearance.
“Mr. Martin,” said Tomlinson, affecting a calmness which he was far from feeling, “bring two thousand pounds for Mr. Greenwood.”
“It can’t be done,” growled Michael, taking a huge pinch of snuff.
“Can’t be done?” ejaculated the banker.
“No,” answered the old man, doggedly: “just paid away four hundred and sixty-five more. There isn’t two thousand in the safe.”
Tomlinson walked once up the room; then, turning to Greenwood, he said, “I will accept your proposal. Mr. Martin,” he added, addressing the cashier, “you can retire: I will settle this matter with Mr. Greenwood.”
The old man withdrew.
“When, where, and how is this business to be arranged?” demanded Tomlinson, after a short pause.
“The count is to call at my house at twelve. I have left a note to request him to come on hither.”
“You had, then, already arranged this matter in your mind?” said the banker, ironically.
“Certainly,” answered Greenwood, with his usual coolness. “I knew you would relieve me of this obligation; because I shall be enabled in return to afford you that assistance of which you stand so much in need.”
“I must throw myself upon your generosity,” said Tomlinson. “It is now twelve: the count will soon be here.”
Half an hour passed away; and the Italian nobleman made his appearance.
“You see that I have kept my word, count,” exclaimed Mr. Greenwood, with an ironical smile of triumph. “Mr. Tomlinson holds in his hands certain funds of mine, which, according to the terms of agreement between us, he is to retain in his possession and use for a period of six months and six days from the present day, at an interest of four per cent. If you, Count Alteroni, be willing to accept a transfer of fifteen thousand pounds of such funds in Mr. Tomlinson’s hands from my name to your own, the bargain can be completed this moment.”
“I cannot hesitate, Mr. Greenwood,” said the count, “to accept a guarantee of such known stability as the name of Mr. Tomlinson.”
“Then all that remains to be done,” exclaimed the financier, “is for you to return me my acknowledgment for the amount specified, and for Mr. Tomlinson to give you his in its place. Mr. Tomlinson has already received my written authority for the transfer.”
The business was settled as Mr. Greenwood proposed. The count returned the financier his receipt, and accepted one from the banker.
“Now, that this is concluded, count,” said Mr. Greenwood, placing the receipt in his pocket-book, “I hope that our friendship will continue uninterrupted.”
“Pardon me, sir,” returned the count, his features assuming a stern expression: “although I am bound to admit that you have not wronged me in respect to money, you have dared to talk to me of my daughter, who is innocence and purity itself.”
“Count Alteroni,” began Mr. Greenwood, “I am not aware——”
“Silence, sir!” cried the Italian noble, imperatively: “I have but one word more to say. Circumstances have revealed to me your profligate character; and never can I be too thankful that my daughter should have escaped an alliance with a man who bribes his agents to administer opiate drugs to an unprotected female for the vilest of purposes. Mr. Tomlinson,” added the count, “pardon me for having used such language in your apartment, and in your presence.”
Count Alteroni bowed politely to the banker, and, darting a withering glance of mingled contempt and indignation upon the abashed and astounded Greenwood, took his departure.
“He talks of things which are quite new to me,” said Greenwood, recovering an outward appearance of composure, though inwardly he was chagrined beyond description.
Tomlinson made no reply: he was too much occupied with his own affairs to be able to afford attention to those of others.
Greenwood shortly took his leave—delighted at having effectually settled his pecuniary obligation with the count, in such a manner that it could never again be the means of molestation in respect to himself,—but vexed at the discovery which the Italian nobleman had evidently made in respect to his conduct towards Eliza Sydney.
Immediately after Mr. Greenwood had left the bank-parlour, old Michael entered. This time he carried his snuff-box open in his left hand; and at every two paces he took a copious pinch with the fore-finger and thumb of his right. This was a fearful omen; and Tomlinson trembled.
“Well, Michael—well?”
“Not a deposit this morning. Draughts come in like wild-fire,” said the old cashier. “There is but a hundred pounds left in the safe!”
“A hundred pounds!” ejaculated the banker, clasping his hands together: “and is it come to this at length, Michael?”
“Yes,” said the cashier, gruffly.
“Then let us post a notice at once,” cried Tomlinson: “the establishment must be closed without another moment’s delay.”
“Will you write out the notice of stoppage of payment, or shall I?” inquired Michael.
“Do it yourself, my good old friend—do it for me!” said the banker, whose countenance was ashy pale, and whose limbs trembled under him, as if he expected the officers of justice to drag him to a place of execution.
The old cashier seated himself at the table, and wrote out the announcement that the bank was unfortunately compelled to suspend its payments. He then read it to the ruined man who was now pacing the apartment with agitated steps.
“Will that do?”
“Yes,” answered the banker; “but, in mercy, let me leave the house ere that notice be made public.”
Tomlinson was about to rush distractedly out of the room, when the cashier was summoned into the public department of the establishment.
Five minutes elapsed ere his return—five minutes which appeared five hours to James Tomlinson.
At length the old man came back; and this time he did not carry his snuff-box in his hand.
Without uttering a word, he took the “notice of stoppage” off the table, crushed it in his hand, and threw it into the fire.
“Saved once more,” he murmured, as he watched the paper burning to tinder; and when it was completely consumed, he took a long and hearty pinch of snuff.
“Saved!” echoed Tomlinson: “do you mean that we are saved again?”
“Seven thousand four hundred and sixty-seven pounds just paid in to Dobson and Dobbins’s account,” answered the cashier, coolly and leisurely, as if he himself experienced not the slightest emotion.
In another hour there were fifteen thousand pounds in the safe; and when the bank closed that evening at the usual time, this sum had swollen up to twenty thousand and some hundreds.
This day was a specimen of the life of James Tomlinson, the banker.
Readers, when you pass by the grand commercial and financial establishments of this great metropolis, pause and reflect ere you envy their proprietors! In the parlours and offices of those reputed emporiums of wealth are men whose minds are a prey to the most agonising feelings—the most poignant emotions.
There is no situation so full of responsibility as that of a banker—no trust so sacred as that which is confided to him. When he fails, it is not the ruin of one man which is accomplished: it is the ruin of hundreds—perhaps thousands. The effects of that one failure are ramified through a wide section of society: widows and orphans are reduced to beggary—and those who have been well and tenderly nurtured are driven to the workhouse.
And yet the law punis
hes not the great banker who fails, and who involves thousands in his ruin. The petty trader who breaks for fifty pounds is thrown into prison, and is placed at the tender mercy of the Insolvents’ Court, which perhaps remands him to a debtor’s gaol for a year, for having contracted debts without a reasonable chance of paying them. But the great banker, who commenced business with a hundred thousand pounds, and who has dissipated five hundred thousand belonging to others, applies to the Bankruptcy Court, never sees the inside of a prison at all, and in due time receives a certificate, which clears him of all his liabilities, and enables him to begin the world anew. The petty trader passes a weary time in gaol, and is then merely emancipated from his confinement—but not from his debts. His future exertions are clogged by an impending weight of liability. One system or the other is wrong:—decide, O ye legislators who vaunt “the wisdom of your ancestors,” which should be retained, and which abolished,—or whether both should be modified!
* * * * * * *
In the course of the evening the Earl of Warrington called upon Mrs. Arlington, with whom he passed a few minutes alone in the drawing-room.
When his lordship had taken his departure, Diana returned to Eliza whom she had left in another apartment, and, placing a quantity of letters, folded, but unsealed, in her hands, said, “These are the means of introduction to some of the first families in Montoni. They are written, I am informed, by an Italian nobleman of great influence, and whose name will act like a talisman in your behalf. They are sent unsealed according to usage; but the earl has earnestly and positively desired that their contents be not examined in this country. He gave this injunction very seriously,” added Diana, with a smile, “doubtless because he supposed that he has to deal with two daughters of Eve whose curiosity is invincible. He, however, charged me to deliver this message to you as delicately as possible.”
“These letters,” answered Eliza, glancing over their superscriptions, “are addressed to strangers and not to me; and although I know that they refer to me, I should not think of penetrating into their contents, either in England or elsewhere. But did you express to the earl all the gratitude that I feel for his numerous and signal deeds of kindness?”
“The earl is well aware of your grateful feelings,” replied Mrs. Arlington. “Can you suppose that I would forget to paint all you experience for what he has already done, and what he will still do for you? He will see you for a moment ere your departure to-morrow, to bid you farewell.”
“I appreciate that act of condescension on his part,” observed Eliza, affected even to tears, “more than all else he has ever yet done for me!”
* * * * * * *
On the following day Eliza Sydney, accompanied by the faithful Louisa, and attended by an elderly valet who had been for years in the service of the Earl of Warrington, took her departure from London, on her way to the Grand Duchy of Castelcicala.
CHAPTER LV.
MISERRIMA!!!
WE now come to a sad episode in our history—and yet one in which there is perhaps less romance and more truth than in any scene yet depicted.
We have already warned our reader that he will have to accompany us amidst appalling scenes of vice and wretchedness:—we are now about to introduce him to one of destitution and suffering—of powerful struggle and unavailing toil—whose details are so very sad, that we have been able to find no better heading for our chapter than miserrima, or “very miserable things.”
The reader will remember that we have brought our narrative, in preceding chapters, up to the end of 1838:—we must now go back for a period of two years, in order to commence the harrowing details of our present episode.
In one of the low dark rooms of a gloomy house in a court leading out of Golden Lane, St. Luke’s, a young girl of seventeen sate at work. It was about nine o’clock in the evening; and a single candle lighted the miserable chamber, which was almost completely denuded of furniture. The cold wind of December whistled through the ill-closed casement and the broken panes, over which thin paper had been pasted to repel the biting chill. A small deal table, two common chairs, and a mattress were all the articles of furniture which this wretched room contained. A door at the end opposite the window opened into another and smaller chamber: and this latter one was furnished with nothing, save an old mattress. There were no blankets—no coverlids in either room. The occupants had no other covering at night than their own clothes;—and those clothes—God knows they were thin, worn, and scanty enough!
Not a spark of fire burned in the grate;—and yet that front room in which the young girl was seated was as cold as the nave of a vast cathedral in the depth of winter.
The reader has perhaps experienced that icy chill which seems to strike to the very marrow of the bones, when entering a huge stone edifice:—the cold which prevailed in that room, and in which the young creature was at work with her needle, was more intense—more penetrating—more bitter—more frost-like than even that icy chill!
Miserable and cheerless was that chamber: the dull light of the candle only served to render its nakedness the more apparent, without relieving it of any of its gloom. And as the cold draught from the wretched casement caused the flame of that candle to flicker and oscillate, the poor girl was compelled to seat herself between the window and the table, to protect her light from the wind. Thus, the chilling December blast blew upon the back of the young sempstress, whose clothing was so thin and scant:—so very scant!
The sempstress was, as we have before said, about seventeen years of age. She was very beautiful; and her features, although pale with want, and wan with care and long vigils, were pleasing and agreeable. The cast of her countenance was purely Grecian—the shape of her head eminently classical—and her form was of a perfect and symmetrical mould. Although clothed in the most scanty and wretched manner, she was singularly neat and clean in her appearance; and her air and demeanour were far above her humble occupation and her impoverished condition.
She had, indeed, seen better days! Reared in the lap of luxury by fond, but too indulgent parents, her education had been of a high order; and thus her qualifications were rather calculated to embellish her in prosperity than to prove of use to her in adversity. She had lost her mother at the age of twelve; and her father—kind and fond, and proud of his only child—had sought to make her shine in that sphere which she had then appeared destined to adorn. But misfortunes came upon them like a thunderbolt: and when poverty—grim poverty—stared them in the face—this poor girl had no resource, save her needle! Now and then her father earned a trifle in the City, by making out accounts or copying deeds;—but sorrow and ill-health had almost entirely incapacitated him from labour or occupation of any kind;—and his young and affectionate daughter was compelled to toil from sun-rise until a late hour in the night to earn even a pittance.
One after another, all their little comforts, in the shape of furniture and clothing, disappeared; and after vainly endeavouring to maintain a humble lodging in a cheap but respectable neighbourhood, poverty compelled them to take refuge in that dark, narrow, filthy court leading out of Golden Lane.
Such was the sad fate of Mr. Monroe and his daughter Ellen.
At the time when we introduce the latter to our readers, her father was absent in the City. He had a little occupation in a counting-house, which was to last three days, which kept him hard at work from nine in the morning till eleven at night, and for which he was to receive a pittance so small we dare not mention its amount! This is how it was:—an official assignee belonging to the Bankruptcy Court had some heavy accounts to make up by a certain day: he was consequently compelled to employ an accountant to aid him; the accountant employed a petty scrivener to make out the balance-sheet; and the petty scrivener employed Monroe to ease him of a portion of the toil. It is therefore plain that Monroe was not to receive much for his three days’ labour.
And so Ellen was compelled to toil and work, and work and toil—to rise early and go to bed late—so late that she had scarcely fallen asleep, worn out with fatigue, when it appeared time to get up again;—and thus the roses forsook her cheeks—and her health suffered—and her head ached—and her eyes grew dim—and her limbs were stiff with the chill!
And so she worked and toiled, and toiled and worked.
We said it was about nine o’clock in the evening.
Ellen’s fingers were almost paralysed with cold and labour; and yet the work which she had in her hands must be done that night; else no supper then—and no breakfast on the morrow; for on the shelf in that cheerless chamber there was not a morsel of bread!
And for sixteen hours had that poor girl fasted already; for she had eaten a crust at five in the morning, when she had risen from her hard cold couch in the back chamber. She had left the larger portion of the bread that then remained, for her father; and she had assured him that she had a few halfpence to purchase more for herself—but she had therein deceived him! Ah! how noble and generous was that deception;—and how often—how very often did that poor girl practise it!
Ellen had risen at five that morning to embroider a silk shawl with eighty flowers. She had calculated upon finishing it by eight in the evening; but, although she had worked, and worked, and worked hour after hour, without ceasing, save for a moment at long intervals to rest her aching head and stretch her cramped fingers, eight had struck—and nine had struck also—and still the blossoms were not all embroidered.
It was a quarter to ten when the last stitch was put into the last flower.
But then the poor creature could not rest:—not to her was it allowed to repose after that severe day of toil! She was hungry—she was faint—her stomach was sick for want of food; and at eleven her father would come home, hungry, faint, and sick at stomach also!
The Mysteries of London Volume 1 Page 56