CHAPTER XXXIV
Still, the daylight had one good effect, it completed the reassuranceof Mr. Hollins. He could see his man now, and judging him to be goodfor the money, he gave way to greed and proposed to run the horses onto Dunstable. Clement thought that he might do worse and agreed,merely halting for five minutes at the George at Brickhill, toadminister a quart of ale apiece to the nags, and to take onethemselves. Then they pressed on to Dunstable, which they reached athalf-past eight.
Even so, Clement had still thirty miles to cover. But the postboy, asportsman with his heart in the game, had ridden in, waving his whipand shouting for horses, and his good word spread like magic. Twominutes let the yard know that here was a golden customer, anout-and-outer, and almost before Clement could swallow a cup ofscalding coffee and pocket a hot roll he had wrung the farmer's hand,fee'd old Sam to his heart's content, and was away again, on theten-mile downhill stage to St. Albans. They cantered most of the way,the postboy's whip in the air and the chaise running after the horses,and did the distance triumphantly in forty-three minutes. Then on,with the reputation of a good paymaster, to Barnet--Barnet, thatseemed to be almost as good as London.
Luck could not have stood by him better, and, now the sun shone, theyraced with taxed-carts, and flashed by sober clergymen jogging alongon their hacks. The midnight shifts to which he had been put, thedespairing struggle about Meriden and Dunchurch, were a dream. He wasin the fairway now, though the pace was not so good, and the hills,with windmills atop, seemed to be set on the road at intervals onpurpose to delay him. Still he was near the end of his journey, and hebegan to consider all the alternatives to success, all the variousways in which he might yet fail. He might miss Bourdillon; he began tobe sure that he would miss him. Either he would be at the India Officewhen Bourdillon was at the brokers', or at brokers' when he was at theIndia Office; and, failing the India Office or the brokers', he had noclue to him. Or his quarry would have left town already, with thetreasure in his possession. Or they might pass one another in thestreets, or even on the road. He would be too late and he would fail,after all his exertions! He began to feel sure of it.
Yes, he had certainly been a fool not to think at starting of thehundred chances, the scores of accidents that might occur to preventtheir meeting. And every minute that he spent on the road made thingsworse. He had had yonder windmill in sight this half-hour--and itseemed no nearer. He fidgeted to and fro, lowered a window and raisedit again, scolded the postboy, flung himself back in the chaise.
At the Green Man at Barnet he got sulkily into his last chaise, andthey pounded down five miles of a gentle slope, then drove stoutly upthe easy ascent to Highgate. By this time the notion that Bourdillonwould pass him unseen had got such hold upon him--though it was theunlikeliest thing in the world that Arthur could have got through hisbusiness so early--that his eyes raked every chaise they met, and acrowded coach by which they sped, as it crawled up the southern sideof the hill, filled him with the darkest apprehensions. Had he given amoment's thought to the state of the market, to the pressure ofbusiness which it must cause, and to the crowd, greedy for transfers,in which Arthur must take his turn, he would have seen that this fearwas groundless.
However, the true state of things was by and by brought home to hismind. He had directed the postboy to take him direct to the brokers'in the City, and he had hardly exchanged the pleasant country roads ofHighbury and Islington, with their villas and cow-farms, for thenoisy, dirty thoroughfares of north London, before he was struck bythe evidences of excitement that met his eyes. Lads, shoutingraucously, ran about the busier streets, selling broadsheets, whichwere fought for and bought up with greedy haste. A stream of walkers,with their faces set one way, hastened along almost as fast as hispost-chaise. Busy groups stood at the street corners, debating andgesticulating. As he advanced still farther, and crossed the boundaryand began to thread the narrow streets of the City--it wanted a halfhour of noon--he found himself hampered and almost stopped by thecrowd which thronged the roadway, and seemed in its preoccupation tobe insensible to the obstacles that barred its way and into which itcannoned at every stride. And still, with each yard that he advanced,the press increased. The signs of ferment became more evident.Distracted men, hatless and red-hot with haste, regardless ofeverything but the errand on which they were bent, sprang fromoffices, hurled themselves through the press, leaped on their fellows'backs, tore on their way; while those whom they had maltreated did noteven look round, but continued their talk, unaware of the outrage.Some pushed through the press, so deep in thought that they saw no oneand might have walked a country lane, while others, meeting as byappointment, seized one another, shook one another, bawled in eachother's faces as if both had become suddenly deaf. And now and againthe whole tormented mass, seething in the narrow lanes or narroweralleys, swayed this way or that under the impulse of some unknownmysterious impulse, some warning, some call to action.
Clement had never seen anything like it, and he viewed it with awe,his ears deafened by the babel or pierced by the shrill cries of thenews-sellers who constantly bawled, "Panic! Great panic in the City!Panic! List of banks closed!" He had heard as he changed at Barnetthat fourteen houses in the City had shut their doors, but he had notappreciated the fact. Now he was to see with his own eyes shutteredwindows and barred doors with great printed bills affixed to them, andhuge crowds at gaze before them, groaning and hooting. Even the shopsbore singular and striking witness to the crisis, for in Cheapsideevery other window exhibited a card stating that they would acceptbank-notes to any extent and for goods to any amount--a courageousattempt to restore public confidence which deserved more success thanit won; while there, and on all sides, he heard men execrating theBank of England and loudly proclaiming--though this was not thefact--that it had published a notice that it could no longer pay cash.
Here was panic indeed! Here was an appalling state of things! And verylow his heart sank, as the chaise made a few yards, stopped, andadvanced again. What chance had Ovington's, what hope of survival hadtheir little venture, when the very credit of the country tottered,and here in the heart of London age-long institutions with vastdeposits and forty or fifty branches toppled down on all sides? Whenmerchant princes with tens of thousands in sound but unsaleablesecurities could do nothing to save themselves, and men of world-widefame, the giants of finance, went humbly, hat in hand, to ask fortime?
Stranded, or moving at a snail's pace, he caught scraps of the talkabout him. Smith's in Mansion House Street had closed its doors.Everett and Walker's had followed Pole's into bankruptcy. Wentworth'sat York had failed for two hundred thousand pounds. Telford's atPlymouth had been sacked by an angry mob. The strongest bank inNorwich was going or gone. The Bank of England had paid out eightmillions in gold within the week--and had no more. They were paying inone-pound notes now, a set found God knows where--in the cellars, itwas said. The tellers were so benumbed with terror that they could notseparate them or count them.
For the moment he forgot Arthur and Arthur's business, and thoughtonly of his father and of their own plight. "We are gone!" hereflected, his face almost as pale as the faces in the street. "We areruined! There is no hope. When this reaches Aldersbury we must close!"He could no longer bear the inaction. He could not sit still. He paidoff the chaise--with difficulty, owing to the press--and pushedforward on foot. But his mind still ran on Aldersbury, was still busywith the fate of their own bank. He felt an immense pity for hisfather, and recognized that until this moment, when panic in its mostdreadful form stared him in the face, he had not realized thecatastrophe, or the sadness, or the finality of it. They must close.They must begin the world again, begin it at the bottom, incompetition with a multitude of beggared men, three-fourths of whomhad never speculated, never touched a share, never left the safe pathof industrious commerce, but were now to pay with all they possessedin the world, their daughters' portions and their sons' fortunes, forthe recklessness or the extravagance of other
s.
For a space there was vouchsafed to him the wider vision, and he sawthe thing that was passing in its true light. He saw the wave of ruinspread from these crowded streets ever farther and farther, from cityto town and town to country; and where it passed it wrecked homes, itmade widows, it swept away the dowries of children, it separatedlovers, it overwhelmed the happiness of thousands and tens ofthousands. He saw the honest trader, whose father's good name was hisglory, broken in heart and fortune through the failure of others, hishealth shattered, his house sold over his head, his pensioners anddependants flung into the workhouse. He saw deluded parsons doomed tospend the close of their lives in a hopeless wrestle with debt, theirsons taken from school, their daughters sent out into a cold andunfeeling world. He saw squires, the little gods of their domain, menonce wealthy, doomed to drink themselves into forgetfulness of thebarred entail and the lost estate; the great house would be closed,the agent would squeeze the tenants, and they in turn the laborers,until the very village shop would feel the pinch. Thousands uponthousands would lose their hoarded savings, and, too old to beginagain, would sink, they and their children and their children'schildren, into the under-world, there to be lost amid the dregs of thepopulation.
And he and his? Why should they escape? How could they escape? Itwould be much if they could feel, while they shared the common lot,that they had deserved to escape, that they were not of those whosewild speculations had brought this disaster on their kind.
He had by this time fought his way as far as the end of Cheapside, andhere, where the roar was loudest and the contending currents mingledtheir striving masses, where the voices of the news-boys wereshrillest, and the timid stood daunted, while even strong men paused,measuring the human whirlpool into which they must plunge, Clement'seye was caught by a side-scene which was passing in the street hard bythe Mansion House. Raised above the crowd on the steps of a largebuilding, a haggard man was making an announcement--but in dumb show,for no word could be heard even by those who stood beside him, and hismeaning could be deduced only from his gestures of appeal. The lowerwindows of the house were shuttered, and the upper exhibited manybroken panes; but behind these and the cornice of the roof gleamedhere and there a pale frightened face, peering down at the proceedingsbelow. From the crowd collected before the haggard man rose acontinuous roar of protest, a forest of menacing hands, shrill criesand curses, and now and again a missile, which, falling absurdlyshort--for in that press no man could swing his arm--still borewitness to the malice that urged it. Nearer to Clement on the skirtsof the throng, where they could see little and were perpetuallyelbowed by impatient passersby, loitered a few who at a first glanceseemed to be uninterested--so apathetic were their attitudes, soabsent was their gaze. But a second glance disclosed the truth. Theywere men whom the tidings of ruin, sudden and unforeseen, had stunned.Spiritless and despairing, seeing only the home they had forfeited andthe dear ones they had beggared, they stood in the street, blind anddeaf to what was passing about them, and only by the mute agony oftheir eyes betrayed the truth.
The sight wrung Clement's heart with pity, and he seized a news-lad bythe arm. "What is that place?" he shouted in his ear. In that babel noman could make himself heard without shouting.
The man looked at him suspiciously. "Yar! Yer kidding!" he said. "Yerknow as well as me!"
Clement shook him in his impatience. "No, I don't," he shouted. "I'm astranger! What is it, man? A bank?"
"Where d'yer come from?" the lad retorted, as he twisted himself free."It's Everitt's, that's what it is! They closed an hour ago! Might aswell ha' never opened!"
He went off hurriedly, and Clement went too, plunging into themaelstrom that divided him from Cornhill. But as he buffeted his waythrough the throng, the faces of the ruined men went with him, comingbetween him and the street, and with a sinking heart he fancied thathe read, written on them, the fate of Ovington's.
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