by Ellen Wood
“Oh, that’s the show and the finery,” said Bill.
“No, I think it lies more in their tones and their manner of speaking,” said Helen.
“Johnny, are you quite sure Clement-Pell sent me no message, except kind regards, and that?”
“Quite sure, sir.”
“Well, it’s very odd.”
“What is very odd, sir?”
“Never you mind, Johnny.”
This was after breakfast on the Saturday morning. The Squire was opening a letter that the post had brought, and looked up to ask me. Not that the letter had anything to do with Clement-Pell, for it only enclosed a bill for some ironmongery bought at Evesham.
On the Friday the Whitneys had gone home, and Tod with them. So I was alone: with nothing to do but to wish him back again.
“I am going to Alcester, Johnny,” said the Pater, in the course of the morning. “You can come with me if you like.”
“Then will you please bring me back some money?” cried Mrs. Todhetley. “You will pass the Bank, I suppose.”
“It’s where I am going,” returned the Pater: and I thought his voice had rather a grumbling tone in it.
We took the pony-carriage, and he let me drive. It was as hot as ever; and the Squire wondered when the autumn cool would be coming in. Old Brandon happened to be at his gate as we went by, and the Pater told me to pull up.
“Going in to Alcester?” cried Mr. Brandon.
“Just as far as the Bank,” said the Pater. “So I hear you went to the Clement-Pells’ after all, Brandon.”
“I looked in to see what it was like,” said old Brandon, giving me a moment’s hard stare: as much as to recall to my mind what had really taken him there.
“It was a dashing affair, I hear.”
“Rather too much so for me,” cried Mr. Brandon drily. “Where’s your son, sir?”
“Oh, he’s gone home with the Whitneys’ young folk. How hot it is to-day!”
“Ay. Too hot to stand in it long. Drive on, Johnny.”
The Squire went in to the Bank alone, leaving me with the carriage. He banked with the Old Bank at Worcester; but it was a convenience to have some little money nearer in case of need, and he had recently opened a small account at Alcester. Upon which Clement-Pell had said he might as well have opened it with him, at his Church Dykely branch. But the Squire explained that he had as good as promised the Alcester people, years ago, that if he did open an account nearer than Worcester it should be with them. He came out, looking rather glum, stuffing some notes into his pocket-book.
“Turn the pony round, Johnny,” said he. “We’ll go back. It’s too hot to stay out to-day.”
“Yes, sir. Is anything the matter?”
“Anything the matter! No. Why do you ask?”
“I thought you looked put out, sir.”
“There’s nothing the matter. Only I think men of business should not be troubled with short memories. Take care of that waggon. What’s the fellow galloping his horses at that rate for? Now, Johnny, I say, take care. Or else, give me the reins.”
I nearly laughed. At home they never seemed to think I could do anything. If they did let me drive, it was always Now take care of this, Johnny; or, Take care of that. And yet I was a more careful driver than Tod: though I might not have had so much strength as he to pull up a four-in-hand team had it run away.
“Go round through Church Dykely, Johnny, and stop at Pell’s Bank,” said the Squire, as I was turning off on the direct road home.
I turned the pony’s head accordingly. It took us about a mile out of our way. The pavement was so narrow and the Bank room so small, that I heard all that passed when the Squire went in.
“Is Mr. Clement-Pell here?”
“Oh dear no, sir,” replied the manager. “He is always at the chief Bank on Saturday. Did you want him?”
“Not particularly. Tell him I think he must have forgotten to send to me.”
“I’ll tell him, sir. He may look in here to-night on his return. If you wish to see him yourself, he will be here all day on Monday.”
The Squire came out and got in again. Cutting round the sharp corner by Perkins the butcher’s, I nearly ran into Mrs. and the Miss Clement-Pells, who were crossing the dusty road in a line like geese, the one behind the other; their muslins sweeping the highway like brooms, and their complexions sheltered under point lace parasols.
“There you go again, Johnny! Pull up, sir.”
I pulled up: and the heads came from under the parasols, and grouped round to speak to us. They had quite recovered Thursday’s fatigue, Mrs. Clement-Pell graciously said, in answer to the Squire’s inquiries; and she hoped all her young friends had done the same, Mr. Todhetley’s young friends in particular.
“They felt no fatigue,” cried the Pater, “Why, ma’am, they’d keep anything of that sort up for a week and a day, and not feel it. How’s Mr. Clement-Pell?”
“He is as well as he allows himself to be,” she answered. “I tell him he is wearing himself out with work. His business is of vast magnitude, Mr. Todhetley. Good day.”
“So it is,” acquiesced the Pater as we drove on, partly to himself, partly to me. “Of vast magnitude. For my part, I’d rather do less, although it involved less returns. One can forgive a man, like him, forgetting trifles. And, Johnny, I shouldn’t wonder but his enormous riches render him careless of small obligations.”
Part of which was unintelligible to me.
Sunday passed. We nodded to the Miss Clement-Pells at church (their bonnets making the pew look like a flower-garden); but did not see Mr. Clement-Pell or his wife. Monday passed; bringing a note from Tod, to say Lady Whitney and Bill would not let him leave yet. Tuesday morning came in. I happened to be seated under the hedge in the kitchen-garden, mending a fishing-rod, when a horse dashed up to the back gate. Looking through, I saw it was the butcher boy, Sam Rimmer. Molly, who was in one of her stinging tempers that morning, came out.
“We don’t want nothing,” said she tartly. “So you might have spared yourself the pains of coming.”
“Don’t want nothing!” returned the boy. “Why’s that?”
“Why’s that!” she retorted. “It’s like your imperence to ask. Do families want joints every day; specially such weather as this? I a-going to cook fowls for dinner, and we’ve the cold round o’ beef for the kitchen. Now you know why, Sam Rimmer.”
Sam Rimmer sat looking at her as if in a quandary, gently rubbing his hair, which shone again in the sun.
“Well, it’s a pity but you wanted some,” said he, slowly. “We’ve gone and been and pervided a shop full o’ meat to-day, and it’ll be a dead loss on the master. The Clement-Pells don’t want none, you see: and they took a’most as much as all the rest o’ the gentlefolks put together. There’s summat up there.”
“Summat up where?” snapped Molly.
“At the Clement-Pells’. The talk is, that they’ve busted-up, and be all gone off in consekence.”
“Why, what d’ye mean?” cried Molly. “Gone off where? Busted-up from what?”
But, before Perkins’s boy could answer, the Pater, walking about the path in his straw hat and light thin summer coat, came on the scene. He had caught the words.
“What’s that you are saying about the Clement-Pells, Sam Rimmer?”
Sam Rimmer touched his hair, and explained. Upon going to Parrifer Hall for orders, he had found it all sixes-and-sevens; some of the servants gone, the rest going. They told him their master had bursted-up, and was gone away since Sunday morning; and the family since Monday morning. And his master, Perkins, would have all the meat left on his hands that he had killed on purpose for the Clement-Pells.
You should have seen the Squire’s amazed face. At first he did not know how to take the words, and stared at Sam Rimmer without speaking.
“All the Banks has went and busted-up too,” said Sam. “They be a-saying, sir, as how there won’t be nothing for nobody.”
The S
quire understood now. He turned tail and rushed into the house. And rushed against Mr. Brandon, who was coming in.
“Well, have you heard the news?” asked Mr. Brandon in his thinnest voice.
“I can’t believe it; I don’t believe it,” raved the Squire. “Clement-Pell would never be such a swindler. He owes me two hundred pounds.”
Mr. Brandon opened his little eyes. “Owes it you!”
“That day, last week, when he came driving in, in his smart cockle-shell carriage — when you were here, you know, Brandon. He got a cheque for two hundred pounds from me. A parcel of money that ought to have come over from the chief Bank had not arrived, he said, and the Church Dykely branch might be run close; would I let him have a cheque for two or three hundred pounds on the Bank at Alcester. I told him I did not believe I had anything like two hundred pounds lying at Alcester: but I drew a cheque out for that amount, and wrote a note telling the people there to cash it, and I would make it right.”
“And Pell drove straight off to Alcester then and there, and cashed the cheque?” said Mr. Brandon in his cynical way.
“He did. He had told me I should receive the money on the following day. It did not come, or on the Friday either; and on Saturday I went to Alcester, thinking he might have paid it in there.”
“Which of course he had not,” returned old Brandon. “Well, you must have been foolish, to be so taken-in.”
“Taken-in!” roared the Squire, in a passion. “Why, if he had asked me for two thousand pounds he might have had it — a man with the riches of Clement-Pell.”
“Well, he wouldn’t have got any from me. One who launched out as he did, and let his family launch out, I should never put much trust in. Any way, the riches are nowhere; and it is said Pell is nowhere too.”
It was all true. As Sam Rimmer put it, Clement-Pell and his Banks had bursted-up.
XXIV.
GETTING AWAY.
You have heard of the avalanches that fall without warning and crush luckless dwellers in the Swiss mountains; and of mälströms that suddenly swallow up vessels sailing jauntily along on a calm sea; and of railway trains, filled with happy passengers, that one minute are running smoothly and safely along, and the next are nowhere: but nothing of this sort ever created the consternation that attended the bursting-up of the Clement-Pells.
It was Saturday night. — For we have to trace back a day or two. — Seated in the same room where I had seen him when I went back for Helen Whitney’s bag, was Clement-Pell. That the man had come to his last gasp, he knew better than any one else in the world could have told him. How he had braved it out, and fought against the stream, and still kept off the explosion since the night but one before — Thursday — when Mr. Johnson had intruded himself into the grounds and then stealthily watched him from the trees, and he knew all was over, it might have puzzled him to tell. How he had fought against all for months, ay, and years, turned him sick only to recall. It had been a fierce, continuous, secret battle; and it had nearly worn him out, and turned his face and his hair grey before their time.
On the day following this fête-night, Friday, Clement-Pell took the train and was at his chief Bank early. He held his interview with Mr. Johnson; he saw other people; and his manner was free and open as usual. On this next day, Saturday, he had been denied to nearly all callers at the Bank: he was too busy to be interrupted, he told his clerks: and his son James boldly made appointments with them in his name for the Monday. After dark on Saturday evening, by the last train, he reached home, Parrifer Hall. And there he was, in that room of his; the door and shutters bolted and barred upon him, alternately pacing it in what looked like tribulation, and bending over account-books by the light of two wax candles.
Leaning his forehead on his hand, he sat there, and thought it out. He strove to look the situation fully in the face; what it was, and what it would be. Ruin, and worse than ruin. Clement-Pell had possessed good principles once: so to say, he possessed them still. But he had allowed circumstances to get the better of him and of them. He had come from his distant home (supposed to have been London) as the manager of an insignificant and humble little Bank: that was years ago. It was only a venture: but a certain slice of luck, that need not be recorded here, favoured him, and he got on beyond his best expectations. He might have made an excellent living, nay, a good fortune, and kept his family as gentlepeople, had he been prudent. But the luck, coming suddenly, turned his head, you see. Since then, I, Johnny Ludlow, who am no longer the inexperienced boy of that past time, have known it turn the heads of others. He launched out into ventures, his family launched into expense. The ventures paid; the undue expense did not pay. When matters came to be summed up by a raging public, it was said that it was this expense which had swamped the Pells. That alone, I suppose, it could not have been: but it must have gone some way towards it.
It lay on his mind heavily that Saturday night. Looking back, he got wondering how much more, in round figures, his family had cost him than they ought to have cost. There had been his wife’s different expenses. Her houses, and her staff of servants, her carriages and horses, her dresses and jewels, and all the rest that it would take too long to tell of; and the costly bringing-up of his daughters; and the frightful outlay of his two younger sons. Fabian and Gusty Pell ought to have had ten thousand a year apiece, to have justified it. James had his expenses too, but in a quieter way. Clement-Pell ran his nervous fingers through his damp hair, as he thought of this, and in his bitter mind told himself that his family had ruined him. Unlimited spending — show — the shooting up above their station! He gave a curse to it now. He had not checked it when he might have done so; and it (or they) got the upper hand, and then he could not. Nothing is so difficult as to put down such expenses as these when they have become a habit.
And so the years had soon come that he found need for supplies. Unlimited as his millions were supposed to be by a confiding public, Clement-Pell in secret wanted money more than most people. His operations were gigantic, but then they required gigantic resources to keep them going. Money was necessary — or the smash must have come two or three years earlier. But sufficient money was not then conveniently attainable by Clement-Pell: and so — he created some. He believed when all his returns from these gigantic operations should flow in, that he could redeem the act; could replace the money, and no one ever be the wiser. But (it is the old story; one that has been enacted before and since), he found somehow that he could not replace it. Like Tod and that gambling affair when we were in London, in trying to redeem himself, he only got further into the mire. Tod, in playing on to cover his losses, doubled them; Clement-Pell’s fresh ventures in the stream of speculation only sent him into deeper water. Of late, Clement-Pell had been walking as on a red-hot ploughshare. It burnt and scorched him everlastingly, and he could not get out of it. But the end had come. The thunder-cloud so long hovering in the air was on the very point of bursting, and he was not able to meet it. He must get away: he could not face it.
Get away for good, as he hoped, never to be tracked by friends or foes. What his future life was to be he did not attempt to consider: he only knew that he would give all he ever had been worth to be able to live on, no matter how quietly, with his fellow-men around him. The little moderate home that he and his wife had once looked to as the haven of their desires, would have been a harbour of safety and pride to him now.
Say what you will, men do not like to be shown up as black sheep in the eyes of their fellows; especially if they have hitherto stood out as conspicuously white leaders of the flock. The contrast is so great, the fall so startling. The public gives them all sorts of hard names; as it did in the case of Clement-Pell. A desperately hardened man he must be, said the world, with a brazen conscience; unprincipled as — well, yes, as Satan. But we may be very sure of one thing — that upon none does the disgrace tell so keenly, the ruin so heavily, the sense of shame so cruelly, as on these men themselves. Put it, if you will, that they make a purs
e and carry it off to set up a new home in some foreign land — they carry their sense of humiliation with them also; and their sun of happiness in this life has set. Men have tried this before now, and died of it.
That was the best that lay prospectively before Clement-Pell: what the worst might be, he did not dare dwell upon. Certain ugly possibilities danced before his mental vision, like so many whirling ballet girls. “If I can only get away!” he muttered; “if I can only get away!”
He tried to confine his whole attention to the ledgers before him, and he put on his spectacles again. Mental trouble and mental work will dim the sight as well as whiten the hair and line the face, and Clement-Pell could not see as he had seen a year before. He altered figures; he introduced entries; he tore out whole leaves, and made a bonfire of them in the grate — carefully removing from the grate first of all its paper ornament. One book he burnt wholesale, even to the covers; and the covers made a frightful smell and daunted him.
Money was wanted here, there, everywhere. Snatching a piece of paper he idly dotted down the large sums occurring to him at the moment; and quite laughed as he glanced at the total. These were only business liabilities. At his elbow lay a pile of bills: domestic and family debts. House rent, taxes, horses, carriages, servants’ wages, bills for food, bills for attire: all running back a long while; for no one had pressed Clement-Pell. The outlay for the fête might well have been profuse, since none of it was ever paid for. Beside the bills lay letters from Fabian and Gusty — wanting money as usual. To all these he scarcely gave a thought; they were as nothing. Even though he were made bankrupt upon them, they were still as nothing: for they would not brand his brow with the word felon. And he knew that there were other claims, of which no record appeared here, that might not be so easily wiped out.
Just for a moment, he lost himself in a happy reverie of what might have been had he himself been wise and prudent. It was Gusty’s pressing letter that induced the reflection. He saw himself a prosperous man of moderate expenses and moderate desires, living at his ease in his own proper station, instead of apeing the great world above him. His daughters reared to be good and thoughtful women, his sons to be steady and diligent whatever their calling, whether business or profession. And what were they? “Curse the money and the pride that deluded me and my wife to blindness!” broke with a groan from the lips of Clement-Pell.