Oh, but--" and with the ingenuity of a weak man he snatched at the first formal difficulty that occurred to him--"but I can't draw it out! It needs another signature besides mine."
"The Secretary's? Bourdillon's? Of course it does! But you must get his signature. D--n it, man, you must get it. If I were you I should go into town this minute. I wouldn't lose an hour!"
Sir Charles winced afresh at the idea of taking action so strong. He had not only a great distaste for any violent step, but he had also the feelings of a gentleman. To take on himself such a responsibility as was now suggested was bad; but to confront Ovington, who had gained considerable influence over him, and to tell the banker to his face that he distrusted his stability--good heavens, was it possible that such horrors could be asked of him? Flustered and dismayed, he went back to his original standpoint. "But--but there may be nothing in this," he objected weakly. "Possibly nothing at all. Mere gossip, my dear sir," with dignity. "In that case we might be putting ourselves in the wrong--very much in the wrong."
Acherley did not take the trouble to hide his contempt. "Nothing in it?" he replied, and he tossed off a second glass of the famous Woosenham cherry-brandy which the butler, unbidden, had placed beside him. "Nothing in it, man? You'll find there's the devil in it unless you act! Enough in it to ease us of ten thousand pounds! If the bank fails, and I'll go bail it will, not a penny of that money will you see again! And I tell you fair, the shareholders will look to you, Woosenham, to make it good. I'm not responsible. I've no authority to sign, and the others are just tools of that man Ovington, and afraid to call their souls their own! You're Chairman--you're Chairman, and, by G--d, they'll look to you if the money is left in the bank and lost!"
Sir Charles quailed. This was worse and worse! Worse and worse! He dropped the air of carelessness which he had affected to assume, and no more flustered man than he looked out on the world that day over a white lawn stock or wore a dark blue coat with gilt buttons, and drab kerseymeres with Hessians. But, again, true to his instincts, he grasped at a matter of form, hoping desperately that it might save him from the precipice towards which his friend was so vigorously pushing him. "But--my good man," he argued, "I can't draw out the money--the whole of the capital of the concern, so far as it is subscribed--on my own responsibility! Of course I can't!" wiping the perspiration from his brow. "Of course I can't!" peevishly. "I must have the authority of the Board first. We must call a meeting of the Board. That's the proper procedure."
Acherley rose to his feet, openly contemptuous. "Oh, hang your meeting!" he said. "And give a seven days' notice, eh? If you are going to stand on those P's and Q's I've said my say. The money's lost already! However, that's not my business, and I've warned you. I've warned you. You'll not forget that, Woosenham? You'll exonerate me, at any rate."
"But I can't--God bless my soul, Acherley," the poor man remonstrated, "I can't act like that in a moment!" And Sir Charles stared aghast at his too violent associate, who had brought into the calm of his life so rude a blast of the outer air. "I can't override all the formalities! I can't, indeed, even if it is as serious as you say it is--and I can hardly believe that--with such a man as Ovington at the helm!"
"You'll soon see how serious it is!" the other retorted. And satisfied that he had laid the train, he shrugged his shoulders, tossed off a third glass of the famous cherry-brandy, and took himself off without much ceremony.
He left a flustered, nervous, unhappy man behind him. "Good G--d!" the baronet muttered, as he rose and paced his library, all the peace and pleasantness of his life shattered. "What's to be done? And why--why in the world did I ever put my hand to this matter!" One by one and plainly all the difficulties of the position rose before him, the awkwardness and the risk. He must open the thing to Bourdillon--in itself a delicate matter--and obtain his signature. If he got that, he doubted if he had even then power to draw the whole amount in this way, and doubted, too, whether Ovington would surrender it, no meeting of the Board having been held? And if he obtained the money, what was he to do with it? Pay it into Dean's? But if things were as bad as Acherley said, was even Dean's safe? For, of a certainty, if he removed the money to Dean's and it were lost, he would be responsible for every penny--every penny of it! There was no doubt about that.
Yet if he left it at Ovington's and it were lost, what then? It was not his custom to drink of a morning, but his perturbation was so great that he took a glass of the cherry-brandy. He really needed it.
He could not tell what to do. In every direction he saw some doubt or some difficulty arise to harass him. He was no man of business. In all matters connected with the Company he had leant on Ovington, and deprived of his stay, he wavered, turning like a weathercock in the wind, making no progress.
For two days, though terribly uneasy in his mind, he halted between two opinions. He did nothing. Then tidings began to come to his ears, low murmurs of the storm which was raging afar off; and he wrote to Bourdillon asking him to come out and see him--he thought that he could broach the matter more easily on his own ground. But two days elapsed, during which he received no answer, and in the meantime the warnings that reached him grew louder and more disquieting. His valet let drop a discreet word while shaving him. A neighbor hoped that he had nothing in Ovington's--things were in a bad way, he heard. His butler asked leave to go to town to cash a note. Gradually he was wrought up to such a pitch of uneasiness that he could not sleep for thinking of the ten thousand pounds, and the things that would be said of him, and the figure that he would cut if, after Acherley's warning, the money were lost. When Wednesday morning came, he made up his mind to take advice, and he could think of no one on whose wisdom he could depend more surely than on the old Squire's at Garth; though, to be sure, to apply to him was, considering his attitude towards the Railroad, to eat humble pie.
Still, he made up his mind to that course, and at eleven he took my lady's landau and postillions, and started on his sixteen-mile drive to Garth. He avoided the town, though it lay only a little out of his way, but he saw enough of the unusual concourse on the road to add to his alarm. Once, nervous and fidgety, he was on the point of giving the order to turn the horses' heads for Aldersbury--he would go direct to the bank and see Ovington! But before he spoke he changed his mind again, and half-past twelve saw him wheeling off the main road and cantering, with some pomp and much cracking of whips, up the rough ascent that led to Garth.
He was so far in luck that he found the Squire not only at home, but standing before the door, a gaunt, stooping figure, leaning on his stick, with Calamy at his elbow. "Who is it?" the old man asked, as he caught the sound of galloping hoofs and the roll of the wheels. He turned his sightless eyes in the direction of the approaching carriage.
"I think it's Sir Charles, sir," Calamy answered. "It's his jackets."
"Ay! Well, I won't go in, unless need be. Go you to the stables and bid 'em wait."
Sir Charles alighted, and bidding the postillions draw off, greeted his host. "I want your advice, Squire," he said, putting his arm through the old man's, and, after a few ceremonial words he drew him a few paces from the door. It was a clear, mild day, and the sun was shining pleasantly. "I'm in a position of difficulty, Griffin," he said. "You'll tell me, I know, that I've only myself to thank for it, and perhaps that is so. But that does not mend matters. The position, you see, is this." And with many apologies and some shamefacedness he explained the situation.
The Squire listened with gloomy looks, and, beyond grunting from time to time in a manner far from cheering, he did not interrupt his visitor. "Of course, I ought not to have touched the matter," the baronet confessed, when he had finished his story. "I know what you think about that, Griffin."
"Of course you ought not!" The Squire struck his stick on the gravel.
"I warned you, man, and you wouldn't take the warning. You wouldn't listen to me. Why, damme, Woosenham, if _we_ do these things, if we once begin to go on 'Change' and sell and buy, where'll you draw the line? Where'll you draw the line? How are you going to shut out the tinkers and tailors and Brummagem and Manchester men when you make yourselves no better than them! How? By Jove, you may as well give 'em all votes at once, and in ten years' time we shall have bagmen on the Bench and Jews in the House! Aldshire--we've kept up the fence pretty well in Aldshire, and kept our hands pretty clean, too, and it's been my pride and my father's to belong to this County. We're pure blood here. We've kept ourselves to ourselves, begad! But once begin this kind of thing----"
"I know, Griffin, I know," Woosenham admitted meekly. "You were right and I was wrong, Squire. But the thing is done, and what am I to do now? If I stand by and this money is lost----"
"Ay, ay! You'll have dropped us all into a pretty scalding pot, then!"
"Just so, just so." The baronet had pleaded guilty, but he was growing restive under the other's scolding, and he plucked up spirit.
"Granted. But, after all, your nephew's in the concern, Griffin. He's in it, too, you know, and----"
He stopped, shocked by the effect of his words. For the old man had withdrawn his arm and had stepped back, trembling in all his limbs.
"Not with my good will!" he cried, and he struck his stick with violence on the ground. "Never! never!" he repeated, passionately.
"But you are right," bitterly, "you are right, Woosenham. The taint is in the air, the taint of the City and the 'Change, and we cannot escape it even here--even here in this house! In the concern? Ay, he is! And I tell you I wish to heaven that he had been in his grave first!"
The other, a kindly man, was seriously concerned. "Oh. come, Squire,"
he said; and he took the old man affectionately by the arm again.
"It's no such matter as all that. You make too much of it. He's young, and the younger generation look at these things differently. After all, there's more to be said for him than for me."
The Squire groaned.
"And, anyway, my old friend," Woosenham continued gently, "advise me.
Time presses." He looked at his watch. "What shall I do? What had I better do? I know I am safe in your hands."
The Squire sighed, but the other's confidence was soothing, and with the sigh he put off his own trouble. He reflected, his face turned to the ground at his feet. "Do you think him honest?" he asked, after a pause.
"Who? Ovington?"
"Ay," gloomily. "Ovington? The banker there."
"Well, I do think he is. Yes, I do think so. I've no reason to think otherwise."
"He's a director, ain't he?"
"Of the Railroad? Yes."
"Responsible as you are?"
"Yes, I suppose he is!"
"A kind of trustee, then, ain't he--for the shareholders."
Sir Charles had not seen it in that light before. He looked at his adviser with growing respect. "Well, I take it he is--now you mention it, Griffin," he said.
"Then"--this, it was plain, was the verdict, and the other listened with all his ears--"if he is honest, he'll not have mixed the money with his own. He'll not have put it to an ordinary account, but to a Trust account--so that it will remain the property of the Company, and not be liable to calls on him. That's what he should have done, anyway. Whether he has done it or not is another matter. He's pressed, hard pressed, I hear, and I don't know that we can expect the last spit of honesty from such as him. It's not what I've been brought up to expect. But," with a return of his former bitterness, "we may be changing places with 'em even in that! God knows! And I do know something that gives me to believe that he may behave as he should."
"You do?" Sir Charles exclaimed, his spirits rising. "You do think so?"
"Well, I do," reluctantly. "I'll speak as I know. But if I were you I should go to him now and tell him, as one man to another, that that's what you expect; and if he hangs back, tell him plain that if that money's not put aside he'll have to answer to the law for it. Whether that will frighten him or not," the Squire concluded, "I'm not lawyer enough to say. But you'll learn his mind."
"I'll go in at once," Sir Charles replied, thankfully.
"I'm going in myself. If you'll take me in--you've four horses--it will save time, and my people shall fetch me out in an hour or so."
Sir Charles assented with gratitude, thankful for his support; and Calamy was summoned. Two minutes later they got away from the door in a splutter of flying gravel and dead beech leaves. They clattered down the stony avenue, over the bridge, and into the high road.
Probably of all those--and they were many--who travelled that day with their faces set towards the bank, they were the last to start. If Tuesday had been the town's day, this was certainly the country's day.
For one thing, there was a market; for another, the news of something amiss, of something that threatened the little hoard of each--the slowly-garnered deposit or the hardly-won note--had journeyed by this time far and wide. It had reached alike the remote flannel-mill lapped in the folds of the border-hills, and the secluded hamlet buried amid orchards, and traceable on the landscape only by the grey tower of its church. On foot and on horse-back, riding and tying, in gigs and ass-carts, in market vans and carriers' carts, the countryside came in--all who had anything to lose, and many who had nothing at stake, but were moved by a vague alarm. Even before daybreak the roads had begun to echo the sound of their marching. They came by the East Bridge, laboring up the steep, winding Cop; by the West Bridge and under the gabled fronts of Maerdol, along the river bank, before the house of the old sea-dog whose name was a household word, and whose portrait hung behind the mayor's chair, and so up the Foregate--from every quarter they came. Before ten the streets were teeming with country-folk, whose fears were not allayed by the news that all through the previous day the townsfolk had been drawing their money.
Sullen tradesmen, victims of the general depression, eyed the march from their shop doors, and some, fearing trouble, put up half their shutters. More took a malicious amusement in telling the rustics that they were too late, and that the bank would not open.
The alarm was heightened by a chance word which had fallen from Frederick Welsh. The lawyer's last thought had been to do harm, for his interest in common with all substantial men lay the other way. But that morning, before he had dressed, or so much as shaved, his office and even his dining-room had been invaded. Scared clients had overwhelmed him with questions--some that he could answer and more that he could not. He could tell them the law as to their securities, whether they were lodged for safety, or pawned for loans, or mortgaged on general account. But he could not tell them whether Ovington was solvent, or whether the bank would open, or whether Dean's was affected; and it was for answers to these questions that they clamored. In the end, badgered out of all patience, he had delivered a curt lecture on banking.
"Look here, gentlemen," he had said, imposing silence from his hearth-rug and pressing his points with wagging forefinger, "do you know what happens when you pay a thousand pounds into a bank? No, you don't? Well, I'll tell you. They put a hundred pounds into the till, and they lend out four thousand pounds on the strength of the other nine hundred. If they lend more than that, or lend that without security, they go beyond legitimate banking. Now you know as much as I do. A banker's money is out on bills payable in two months or four, it's out on the security of shares and farms and shop-stock, it's lent on securities that cannot be realized in five minutes. But it's all there, mark me, somewhere, in something, gentlemen; and I tell you candidly that it's my opinion that if you would all go home and wait for your money till you need it, you'd all get it in full, twenty shillings in the pound."
He meant no harm, but unfortunately the men who heard the lecture paid no heed to the latter part, but went out, impressed with the former, and spread it broad-cast. On which some cried, "That's banking, is it!