Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  In very truth they were trying times. Men who had bought shares through Ovington’s, and might have sold them at a profit but had not, could not understand why the bank would not now advance money on the security of the shares, would not even pay calls on them, and had only advice, and that unpalatable, at their service. They came to the parlor and argued, pleaded, threatened, stormed. They would close their accounts, they would remove them to Dean’s, they would publish the treatment that they had received! Again, there were those who had bought railway shares, which were now at a considerable discount and looked like falling farther; the bank had issued them — they looked to the bank to take them off their hands. More trying still were the applications of those who, suddenly pressed for money, came, pallid and wiping their foreheads with bandanna handkerchiefs, to plead desperately for a small overdraft, for twenty, forty, seventy pounds — just enough to pay the weekly wage-bill, or to meet their household outgoings, or to settle with some pressing creditor. For all creditors were now pressing. No man gave time, no man trusted another, and for those in the bank the question was, How long would they trust Ovington’s? For every man who left the doors of the bank after a futile visit, every man who went away with his request declined, became a potential enemy, whose complaint or chance word might breed suspicion.

  “Still, every day is a day gained,” the banker said as he dropped his mask on the Friday afternoon and sank wearily into a chair. It was closing time, and the clerks could be heard moving in the outer room, putting away books, counting the cash, locking the drawers. Another day had passed without special pressure. “Time is everything.”

  Arthur shrugged his shoulders. “It would be, if it were money.”

  “Well, I think that we are doing capitally — capitally so far,” said Clement.

  “I am glad you are satisfied,” Arthur retorted. “We are four hundred down on the day! I can’t think, sir” — peevishly— “why you let Purslow have that seventy pounds.”

  “Well, he is a very old customer,” the banker replied patiently, “and he’s hard hit — he wanted it for wages, and I fear that he’s behindhand with them. And if we withhold all help, my boy, we shall certainly precipitate a run. On Monday those bills of Badger’s fall due, and I think will be met. We shall receive eleven hundred from them. On Tuesday another bill for three hundred and fifty matures, and I think is good. If we can go on till Wednesday we shall be a little stronger to meet the crisis than we are to-day. And we can only live from day to day” — wearily. “If Pole’s bank goes” — he glanced doubtfully at the door— “I fear that Williams’s will follow. And then — —”

  “There will be the devil to pay!”

  “Well, we must try to pay him!”

  “Bravo, sir!” Clement cried. “That’s the way to talk.”

  “Yes, it is no use to dwell on the dark side,” his father agreed. “All the same” — he was silent a while, reviewing the position and making calculations which he had made a hundred times before— “all the same, it would make all the difference if we had that twelve thousand pounds in reserve.”

  “By Jove, yes!” Arthur exclaimed. For a moment hope animated his face. “Can you think of no way of getting it, sir?”

  The banker shook his head. “I have tried every quarter,” he said, “and strained every resource. I cannot. I’m afraid we must fight our battle as we are.”

  Arthur gazed at the floor. The elder man looked at him and thought again of the Squire. But he would not renew his suggestion. Arthur knew better than he what was possible in that quarter, and if he saw no hope, there doubtless was no hope. At best the idea had been fantastic, in view of the prejudice which the Squire entertained against the bank.

  While they pondered, the door opened, and all three looked sharply round, the movement betraying the state of their nerves. But it was only Betty who entered — a little graver and a little older than the Betty of eight or nine months before, but with the same gleam of humor in her eyes. “What a conclave!” she cried. She looked round on them.

  “Yes,” Arthur answered drily. “It wants only Rodd to be complete.”

  “Just so.” She made a face. “How much you think of him lately!”

  “And unfortunately he’s taken his little all and left us.”

  The shot told. Her eyes gleamed, and she colored with anger. “What do you mean? Dad” — brusquely— “what does he mean?”

  “Only that we thought it better,” the banker explained, “to make Rodd safe by paying him the little he has with us.”

  “And he took it — of course?”

  The banker smiled. “Of course he took it,” he said. “He would have been foolish if he had not. It was only a deposit, and there was no reason why he should risk it with us — as things are.”

  “Oh, I see. Things are as bad as that, are they? Any other rats?” — with a withering look at Arthur.

  “I am afraid that there is no one else who can leave,” her father answered. “The gangway is down now, my dear, and we sink or swim together.”

  “Ah! Well, I fancy there’s one of the rats in the dining-room now. That is what I came to tell you. He wants to see you, dad.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Mr. Acherley.”

  Ovington shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it is after hours,” he said, “but — I’ll see him.”

  That broke up the meeting. The banker went out to interview his visitor, who had been standing for some minutes at one of the windows of the dining-room, looking out on the slender stream of traffic that passed up and down the pavement or slid round the opposite corner into the Market Place.

  Acherley was not of those who go round about when a direct and more brutal approach will serve. Broken fortunes had soured rather than tamed him, and though, when there had been something to be gained by it, he had known how to treat the banker with an easy familiarity, the contempt in which he held men of that class made it more natural to him to bully than to fawn. Before he had turned to the street for amusement he had surveyed the furniture of the room with a morose eye, had damned the upstart’s impudence for setting himself up with such things, and consoled himself with the reflection that he would soon see it under the hammer. “And a d — d good job, too!” he had muttered. “What the blazes does he want with a kidney wine-table and a plate-chest! It will serve Bourdillon right for lowering himself to such people!”

  When the banker came to him he made no apology for the lateness of his visit, but “Hallo!” he said bluntly, “I want a little talk with you. But short’s the word. Fact is, I find I’ve more of those railway shares than it suits me to keep, Ovington, and I want you to take a hundred off my hands. I hear they’re fetching two-ten.”

  “One-ten,” the banker said. “They are barely that.”

  “Two-ten,” Acherley repeated, as if the other had not spoken. “That’s my price. I suppose the bank will accommodate me by taking them?”

  Ovington looked steadily at him. “Do you mean the shares you pledged with us? If so, I am afraid that in any event we shall have to put them on the market soon. The margin has nearly run off.”

  “Oh, hang those!” — lightly. “You may as well account for them at the same price — two and a half. I’ll consider that settled. But I’ve a hundred more that I don’t want to keep, and it’s those I am talking about. You’ll take them, I suppose — for cash, of course? I’m a little pressed at present, and want the money.”

  “I am afraid that I must say, no,” Ovington said. “We are not buying any more, even at thirty shillings. As to those we hold, if you wish us to sell them at once — and I am inclined to think that we ought to — —”

  “Steady, steady! Not so fast!” Acherley let the mask fall, and, drawing himself to his full height — and tall and lean, in his long riding coat shaped to the figure, he looked imposing and insolent enough — he tapped his teeth with the handle of his riding whip. “Not so fast, man! Think it over!” — with an ugly smile. “I’ve b
een of use to you. It is your turn to be of use to me. I want to be rid of these shares.”

  “Naturally. But we don’t wish to take them, Mr. Acherley.”

  Acherley glowered at him. “You mean,” he said, “that the bank can’t afford to take them? If that’s your meaning — —”

  “It does not suit us to take them.”

  “But by G — d you’ve got to take them! D’you hear, sir? You’ve got to take them, or take the consequences! I went into this to oblige you.”

  “Not at all,” Ovington said. “You came into it with your eyes open, and with a view to the improvement of your property, if the enterprise proved a success. No man came into it with eyes more open! To be frank with you — —”

  But Acherley cut him short. “Oh, d — n all that!” he cried. “I did not come here to palaver. The long and short of it is you’ve got to take the shares, or, by Gad, I go out of this room and I say what I think! And you’ll take the consequences. There’s talk enough in the town already as you know. It only needs another punch, one more good punch, and you’re out of the ring and in the sponging house. And your beautiful bank you know where. You know that as well as I do, my good man. And if you want a friend instead of an enemy you’ll oblige me, and no words about it. That’s flat!”

  The room was growing dark. Ovington stood facing such light as there was. He looked very pale. “Yes, that’s quite flat,” he said.

  “Very good. Then what do you say to it?”

  “What I said before — No! No, Mr. Acherley!”

  “What? Do you mean it? Why, if you are such a fool as not to know your own interests — —”

  “I do know them — very well,” Ovington said, resolutely taking him up. “I know what you want and I know what you offer. It is, as you say, quite flat, and I’ll be equally — flat! Your support is not worth the price. And I warn you, Mr. Acherley, and I beg you to take notice, that if you say a word against the solvency of the bank after this — after this threat — you will be held accountable to the law. And more than that, I can assure you of another thing. If, as you believe, there is going to be trouble, it is you and such as you who will be the first to suffer. Your creditors — —”

  “The devil take them! And you!” the gentleman cried, stung to fury. “Why, you swollen little frog!” losing all control over himself, “you don’t think my support worth buying, don’t you? You don’t think it’s worth a dirty hundred or two of your scrapings! Then I tell you I’ll put my foot on you — by G — d, I will! Yes! I’ll tread you down into the mud you sprang from! If you were a gentleman I’d shoot you on the Flash at eight o’clock to-morrow, and eat my breakfast afterwards! You to talk to me! You, you little spawn from the gutter! I’ve a good mind to thrash you within an inch of your life, but there’ll be those ready enough to do that for me by and by — ay, and plenty, by G — d!”

  He towered over the banker, and he looked threatening enough, but Ovington did not flinch. He went to the door and threw it open. “There’s the door, Mr. Acherley!” he said.

  For a moment the gentleman hesitated. But the banker’s firm front prevailed, and with a gesture, half menacing, half contemptuous, Acherley stalked out. “The worse for you!” he said. “You’ll be sorry for this! By George, you will be sorry for this next week!”

  “Good evening,” said the banker — he was trembling with passion. “I warn you to be careful what you say, or the law will deal with you.” And he stood his ground until the other, shrugging his shoulders and flinging behind him a last curse, had passed through the door. Then he closed the door and went back to the fireplace. He sat down.

  The matter was no surprise to him. He knew his man, and neither the demand nor the threat was unexpected. But he knew, too, that Acherley was shrewd, and that the demand and the threat were ominous signs. More forcibly than anything that had yet occurred, they brought before him the desperate nature of the crisis, and the likelihood that, before a week went by, the worst would happen. He would be compelled to put up the shutters. The bank would stop. And with the bank would go all that he had won by a life of continuous labor: the position that he had built up, the status that he had gained, the reputation that he had achieved, the fortune which he had won and which had so much exceeded his early hopes. The things with which he had surrounded himself, they too, tokens of his success, the outward and handsome signs of his rise in life, many of them landmarks, milestones on the path of triumph — they too would go. He looked sadly on them. He saw them, he too, under the hammer: saw the mocking, heedless crowd handling them, dividing them, jeering at his short-lived splendor, gibing at his folly in surrounding himself with them.

  Ay, and one here and there would have cause to say more bitter things. For some — not many, he hoped, but some — would be losers with him. Some homes would be broken up, some old men beggared: and all would be laid at his door. His name would be a byword. There would be little said of the sufferers’ imprudence or folly or rashness: he would be the scapegoat for all, he and the bank he had founded. Ovington’s Bank! They would tell the story of it through years to come — would smile at its rise, deride its fall, make of it a town tale, the tale of a man’s arrogance, and of the speedy Nemesis which had punished it!

  He was a proud man, and the thought of these things, the visions that they called up, tortured him. At times, he had borne himself a little too highly, had presumed on his success, had said a word too much. Well, all that would be repaid now with interest, ay, with compound interest.

  The room was growing dark, as dark as his thoughts. The fire glowed, a mere handful of red embers, in the grate. Now and again men went by the windows, talking — talking, it might be, of him: anxious, suspicious, greedy, ready at a word to ruin themselves and him, to cut their own throats in their selfish panic. They had only to use common sense, to control themselves, and no man would lose a penny. But they would have no common sense. They would rush in and destroy all, their own and his. For no bank called upon to pay in a day all that it owed could do so, any more than an insurance office could at any moment pay all its lives. But they would not blame themselves. They would blame him — and his!

  He groaned as he thought of his children. Clement, indeed, might and must fend for himself. And he would — he had proved it of late days by his courage and cheerfulness, and the father’s heart warmed to him. But Betty? Gay, fearless, laughing Betty, the light of his home, the joy of his life! Who, born when fortune had already begun to smile on him, had never known poverty or care or mean shifts! For whom he had been ambitious, whom he had thought to see well married — married into the county, it might be! Poor Betty! There would be an end of that now. Past his prime and discredited, he could not hope to make more than a pittance, happy if he could earn some two or three pounds a week in some such situation as Rodd’s. And she must sink with him and accept such a home as he could support, in place of this spacious old town-house, with its oaken wainscots and its wide, shallow stairs, and its cheerful garden at the back.

  His love suffered equally with his pride.

  He was thinking so deeply that he did not hear the door open, or a light foot cross the room. He did not suspect that he was observed until a pair of warm young arms slid round his neck, and Betty’s curls brushed his check. “In the dumps, father?” she said. “And in the dark — and alone? Poor father! Is it as bad as that? But you have not given up hope? We are not ruined yet?”

  “God forbid!” he said, hardly able, on finding her so close to him, to control his voice. “But we may be, Betty.”

  “And what then?” She clasped him more closely to her. “Might not worse things happen to us? Might you not die and I be left alone? Or might I not die, and you lose me? Or Clement? You are pleased with Clement, father, aren’t you? He may not be as clever as — as some people. But you know he’s there when you want him. Suppose you lost us?”

  “True, child. But you don’t know what poverty is — after wealth, Betty — how narrowing, how irks
ome, how it galls at every point! You don’t know what it is to live on two or three pounds a week, in two or three rooms!”

  “They will bring us the closer together,” said Betty.

  “And to be looked down upon by those who have been your equals, and shunned by those who have been your friends!”

  “Nice friends! We shall do better without them!”

  “And things will be said of me, things it will be hard to listen to!”

  “They won’t say them to me,” said Betty. “Or look out for my nails, ma’am! Besides, they won’t be true, and who cares, father! Lizzie Clough said yesterday I’d a cast in one eye, but does it worry me? Not a scrap. And we’ll shut the door on our two or three rooms and let them — go hang! As long as we are together we can face anything, father — we can live on two pounds or two shillings or two pence. And consider! You might never have known what Clement was, how lively, how brave, how” — with a funny little laugh— “like me,” hugging him to her, “if this had not happened — that’s not going to happen after all.”

  He sighed. He dealt with figures, she with fancy. “I hope not,” he said. “At any rate I’ve two good children, and if it does come to the worst — —”

  “We’ll lock ourselves in and our false friends out!” she said; and for a moment after that she was silent. Then, “Tell me, father, why did Mr. Rodd take that money — when you need all that you can get together, and he knows it? For he’s taking the plate to Birmingham to pledge, isn’t he? So he must know it.”

  “He is, if — —”

  “If it comes to the worst? I know. Then why did he take his money, when he knew how things stood?”

  “Why did he take his own when we offered it?” the banker replied. “Why shouldn’t he, child? It was his own, and business is business. He would have been very foolish if he had not taken it. He’s not a man who can afford to lose it.”