by Ellen Wood
And, now that the crash had come, he was without means. He had not so much as the fare in his pocket that would suffice to convey him away from the troubled scene, which the next week would evidently bring forth. The Bank funds were exhausted: so he had not them to turn to. But, get away he must: and, it seemed to him, the sooner the better.
He came forth through the door separating the Bank from the dwelling, and entered the dining-room. The tray was laid for luncheon, and for Meta’s dinner: but no one was in the room. He went upstairs to Maria’s sitting-room. She was there, quietly at work: and she looked up at him with a glad smile of welcome. Her attitude of repose, her employment, the expression of calm happiness pervading her countenance, told George that she was as yet in ignorance of what had occurred.
“What money have you in your purse, Maria?” asked he, speaking carelessly.
Maria laughed. “Why, none,” she answered quite merrily. “Or as good as none. I have been telling you ever so long, George, that I must have some money; and I must. A good deal, I mean; to pay my housekeeping bills.”
“Just see what you have,” returned George. “I want to borrow it.”
Maria put her hand into her pocket, and then found that her purse was in her desk. She gave the keys to George, and asked him to unlock it.
The purse was in a small compartment, lying on a ten-pound note. In the purse there proved to be a sovereign and seven shillings. George put the money and the purse back again, and took up the note.
“You sly girl!” cried he, pretending to be serious. “To tell me you had no money! What special cadeau is this put by for? A gold chain for Meta?”
“That is not mine, George. It is old Dame Bond’s. I told you about it, if you remember.”
“I’ll take this,” said George, transferring the note to his pocket.
“Oh no, George; don’t take that!” exclaimed Maria. “She may come for it at any hour. I promised to return it to her whenever she asked for it.”
“My dear, you shall have it again. She won’t come to-day.”
“Why can you not get a note from the Bank instead of taking that?”
George made no answer. He turned into his bedroom. Maria thought nothing of the omission: she supposed his mind to be preoccupied. In point of fact, she thought little of his taking the note. With coffers full (as she supposed) to turn to, borrowing a ten-pound note seemed an affair of no moment.
She sat on about ten minutes, hard at work. George remained in his bedroom, occupied (as it appeared to Maria) in opening and shutting various drawers. Somewhat curious as to what he could be doing, she at length rose from her seat and looked in. He was packing a large portmanteau.
“Are you going out, George?” she exclaimed in surprise.
“For a few days. Business is calling me to town. Look here, Maria. I shall take nothing with me, beyond my small black leather hand-case; but you can send this by one of the men to the station to-night. It must come after me.”
“What a very sudden determination, George!” she cried. “You did not say anything about it this morning.”
“I did not know then I should have to go. Don’t look sad, child. I shan’t be long away.”
“It seems to me that you are always going away now, George,” she observed, her tone as sad as her looks.
“Business must be attended to,” responded George, shaking out a coat that he was about to fold. “I don’t in the least covet going, I assure you, Maria.”
What more she would have said, was interrupted by a noise. Some one had entered the sitting-room with much commotion. Maria returned to it, and saw Meta and Margery.
Meta had been the whole morning long in the hayfield. Not the particular hayfield already mentioned; that one was cleared of hay now; but to some other hayfield, whose cocks were in full bloom — if such an expression may be used in regard to hay. There were few things Miss Meta liked so much as a roll in the hay; and, so long as cocks were to be found in the neighbourhood, Margery would be coaxed over to take her to them. Margery did not particularly dislike it herself. Margery’s rolling days were over; but, seated at the foot of one of the cocks, her knitting in hand, and the child in view, Margery found the time pass agreeably enough. As she had found it, this day: and the best proof of it was, that she stayed beyond her time. Miss Meta’s dinner was waiting.
Miss Meta was probably aware of the fact by sundry inward warnings. She had gone flying into her mamma’s sitting-room, tugging at the strings of her hat, which had got into a knot. Margery had flown in, almost as quickly; certainly in greater excitement.
“Is it true, ma’am?” she gasped out, the moment she saw Maria.
“Is what true?” inquired Maria.
“That the Bank has broke. When I saw the shutters up and the door barred, for all the world as if everybody in the house was dead, you might have knocked me down with a feather. There’s quite a crowd round: and one of ’em told me the Bank had broke.”
George came out of his bedroom. “Take this child to the nursery, and get her ready for her dinner,” said he in the quick, decisive, haughty manner that he now and then used, though rarely to Margery.
Margery withdrew with the child, and George looked at his wife. She was standing in perplexity; half aghast, half in disbelief; and she turned her questioning eyes on George.
But for those words of Margery’s, whose sound had penetrated to his bedroom, would he have said anything to Maria before his departure? It must remain a question. Now he had no resource left but to tell her.
“The fact is, Maria, we have had a run upon the Bank this morning; have been compelled to suspend payment. For the present,” added George, vouchsafing to Maria the hopeful view of the case which his brother, in his ignorance, had taken.
She did not answer. She felt too much dismayed. Perhaps, in her mind’s confusion, she could not yet distinctly understand. George placed her in a chair.
“How scared you look, child! There’s no cause for that. Such things happen every day.”
“George — George!” she reiterated, struggling as it were for utterance: “do you mean that the Bank has failed? I don’t think I understand.”
“For the present. Some cause or other, that we can none of us get to the bottom of, caused a run upon us to-day.”
“A run? You mean that people all came together, wanting to withdraw their money?”
“Yes. We paid as long as our funds held out. And then we closed.”
She burst into a distressing flood of tears. The shock, from unclouded prosperity — she had not known that that prosperity was fictitious — to ruin, to disgrace, was more than she could bear calmly. George felt vexed. It seemed as if the tears reproached him.
“For goodness’ sake, Maria, don’t go on like that,” he testily cried. “It will blow over; it will be all right.”
But he put his arm round her in spite of his hasty words. Maria leaned her face upon his bosom and sobbed out her tears upon it. He did not like the tears at all; he spoke quite crossly; and Maria did her best to hush them.
“What will be done?” she asked, choking down the rebellious sobs that rose in spite of her.
“Don’t trouble yourself about that. I have been obliged to tell you, because it is a thing that cannot be concealed; but it will not affect your peace and comfort, I hope. There’s no cause for tears.”
“Will the Bank go on again?”
“Thomas has gone up to London, expecting to bring funds down. In that case it will open on Monday morning.”
How could he tell it her? Knowing as he did know, and he alone, that through his deep-laid machinations, there were no longer funds available for the Bank or for Thomas Godolphin.
“Need you go to London,” she asked in a wailing tone, “if Thomas has gone? I shall be left alone.”
“I must go. There’s no help for it.”
“And which day shall you be back again? By Monday?”
“Not perhaps by Monday. Keep up your spi
rits, Maria. It will be all right.”
Meta came bursting in. She was going down to dinner. Was mamma coming to luncheon?
No, mamma did not want any. Margery would attend to her. George picked up the child and carried her into his room. In his drawers he had found some trifling toy; brought home for Meta weeks ago, and forgotten to be given to her. It had lain there since. It was one of those renowned articles, rarer now than they once were, called Bobbing Joan. George had given sixpence for it. A lady, with a black head and neck, a round body, and no visible legs. He put it on the top of the drawers, touched it, and set it bobbing at Meta.
She was all delight; she stretched out her hands for it eagerly. But George, neglecting the toy, sat down on a chair, clasped the child in his arms, and showered upon her more passionately heartfelt embraces than perhaps he had ever given to living mortal, child or woman. He did not keep her: the last long lingering kiss was pressed upon her rosy lips, and he put her down, handed her the toy, and bade her run and show it to mamma.
Away she went; to mamma first, and then in search of Margery.
Maria went into the bedroom to her husband. He was locking his portmanteau.
“That is all, I believe,” he said, transferring the keys to his pocket, and taking up the small hand-case. “Remember that it is sent off by to-night’s train, Maria. I have addressed it.”
“You are not going now, George?” she said, her heart seeming to fail her strangely.
“Yes, I am.”
“But — there is no train. The express must have passed this half-hour.”
“I shall ride over to Crancomb and take the train there,” he answered. “I have some business in the place,” added he, by way of stopping any questions as to the why and wherefore. “Listen, Maria. You need not mention that I have gone until you see Thomas on Monday morning. Tell him.”
“Shall you not see him yourself in London?” she returned. “Are you not going to meet him?”
“I may miss him: it is just possible,” was the reply of George, spoken with all the candour in life, just as though his mission to London was the express one of meeting his brother. “If Thomas should return home without having seen me, I mean.”
“What am I to tell him?” she asked.
“Only that I am gone. There’s no necessity to say anything else. I shall — if I miss seeing him in town — write to him here.”
“And when shall you be back again?”
“Soon. Good-bye, my darling.”
He held his wife folded in his arms, as he had recently held Meta. The tears were raining down her cheeks.
“Don’t grieve, Maria. It will blow over, I say. God bless you. Take care of Meta.”
Maria’s heart felt as if it were breaking. But in the midst of her own distress, she remembered the claims of others. “That ten-pound note, George? If you are not back in a day or two, how shall I have it? The woman may come for it.”
“Oh, I shall be back. Or you can ask Thomas.”
In his careless indifference he thought he should be back before long. He was not going to run away: only to absent himself from the brunt of the explosion. That his delinquencies would be patent to Thomas and to others by Monday morning, he knew: it would be just as well to let some of their astonishment and anger evaporate without his presence; be far more agreeable to himself, personally. In his careless indifference, too, he had spoken the words, “You can ask Thomas.” A moment’s consideration would have told him that Thomas would have no ten-pound notes to spare for Maria. George Godolphin was one who never lost heart. He was indulging, now, the most extravagantly sanguine hopes of raising money in London, by some means or other. Perhaps Verrall could help him?
He strained his wife to his heart, kissed her again, and was gone. Maria sat down in the midst of her blinding tears.
Walking round to the stables, he waited there while his horse was got ready, mounted him, the small black case in front, and rode away alone. The groom thought his master was only going out for a ride, as he did on other days: but the man did wonder that Mr. George should go that day. Crancomb was a small place about five miles off: it had a railway station, and the ordinary trains stopped there. What motive induced him to go there to take the train, he best knew. Probably, he did not care to excite the observation and comment, which his going off from Prior’s Ash on that day would be sure to excite. Seriously to fear being stopped, he did not.
He rode along at a leisurely pace, reaching Crancomb just before the up-train was expected. Evidently the day’s great disaster had not yet travelled to Crancomb. George was received with all the tokens of respect, ever accorded to the Godolphins. He charged the landlord of the inn to send his horse back to Prior’s Ash on Monday morning, changed Mrs. Bond’s ten-pound note, and chatted familiarly to the employés at the station, after taking his ticket.
Up came the train. Two or three solitary passengers, bound for the place, descended, two or three entered. The whistle sounded; the engine shrieked and puffed: and George Godolphin, nodding familiarly around with his gay smile, was carried on his road to London.
Maria had sat on, her blinding tears falling. What an alteration it was! What a contrast to the happiness of the morning! That a few minutes should have power to bring forth so awful a change! The work she had done so eagerly before, lay on the table. Where had its enjoyment gone? She turned from it now with a feeling not far removed from sickness. Nothing could be thought of but the great trouble which had fallen; there was no further satisfaction to be derived from outward things. The work lay there, untouched; destined, though she knew it not, never to have another stitch set in it by its mistress; and she sat on and on, her hands clasped inertly before her, her brain throbbing with its uncertainty and its care.
CHAPTER XX. MRS. BOND’S VISIT.
In the old study at All Souls’ Rectory — if you have not forgotten that modest room — in the midst of almost as much untidiness as used to characterize it when the little Hastingses were in their untidy ages, sat some of them in the summer’s evening. Rose’s drawings and fancy-work lay about; Mrs. Hastings’s more substantial sewing lay about; and a good deal of litter besides out of Reginald’s pocket; not to speak of books belonging to the boys, fishing-tackle, and sundries.
Nothing was being touched, nothing used; it all lay neglected, as Maria Godolphin’s work had done, earlier in the afternoon. Mrs. Hastings sat in a listless attitude, her elbow on the old cloth cover of the table, her face turned to her children. Rose sat at the window; Isaac and Reginald were standing by the mantel-piece; and Grace, her bonnet thrown off on to the floor, her shawl unpinned and partially falling from her shoulders, half sat, half knelt at her mother’s side, her face upturned to her, asking for particulars of the calamity. Grace had come running in only a few minutes ago, eager, anxious, and impulsive.
“Only think the state I have been in!” she cried. “But one servant in the house, and unable to leave baby to get down here! I — —”
“What brings you with only one servant?” interrupted Rose.
“Ann’s mother is ill, and I have let her go home until Monday morning. I wish you would not interrupt me with frivolous questions, Rose!” added Grace in her old, quick, sharp manner. “Any other day but Saturday, I would have left baby to Martha, and she might have put off her work, but on Saturdays there’s always so much to do. I had half a mind to come and bring the baby myself. What should I care, if Prior’s Ash did see me carrying him? But, mamma, you don’t tell me — how has this dreadful thing been brought about?”
“I tell you, Grace!” returned Mrs. Hastings. “I should be glad to know, myself.”
“There’s a report going about — Tom picked it up somewhere and brought it home to me — that Mr. George Godolphin had been playing pranks with the Bank’s money,” continued Grace.
“Grace, my dear, were I you I would not repeat such a report,” gravely observed Mrs. Hastings.
Grace shrugged her shoulders. George Godolp
hin had never been a favourite of hers, and never would be. “It may turn out to be true,” said she.
“Then, my dear, it will be time enough for us to talk of it when it does. You are fortunate, Grace; you had no money there.”
“I’m sure we had,” answered Grace, more bluntly than politely. “We had thirty pounds there. And thirty pounds would be as much of a loss to us as thirty hundred to some.”
“Tom Akeman must be getting on — to keep a banking account!” cried free Reginald.
Grace for a wonder, did not detect the irony: though she knew that Reginald had never liked Mr. Akeman: he had always told Grace she lowered herself by marrying an unknown architect.
“Seven hundred pounds were lodged in the Bank to his account when that chapel-of-ease was begun,” she said, in answer to Reginald’s remark. “He has drawn it all out, for wages and other things, except thirty pounds. And of course, that, if it is lost, will be our loss. Had the Bank stood until next week, there would have been another large sum paid in. Will it go on again, Isaac?”
“You may as well ask questions of a stranger, as ask them of me, Grace,” was her brother Isaac’s answer. “I cannot tell you anything certain.”
“You won’t, you mean,” retorted Grace. “I suppose you clerks may not tell tales out of school. What sum has the Bank gone for, Isaac? That, surely, may be told.”
“Not for any sum,” was Isaac’s answer. “The Bank has not ‘gone’ yet, in that sense. There was a run upon the Bank this morning, and the calls were so great that we had not enough money in the place to satisfy them, and were obliged to cease paying. It is said that the Bank will open again on Monday, when assistance shall have come; that business will be resumed, as usual. Mr. Godolphin himself said so: and he is not one to say a thing unless it has foundation. I know nothing more than that, Grace, whatever you may choose to infer.”