by Ellen Wood
Bit by bit, step by step, gradually, imperceptibly, George found himself caught. He awoke to the fact that he could neither stir upwards nor downwards. He could not extricate himself; he could not go on without exposure; Verrall, or Verrall’s agents, those working in concert with him, though not ostensibly, stopped the supplies, and George was in a fix. Then began the frauds upon the Bank. Slightly at first. It was only a choice between that and exposure. Between that and ruin, it may be said, for George’s liabilities were so great, that, if brought to a climax, they must then have caused the Bank to stop, involving Thomas in ruin as well as himself. In his sanguine temperament, too, he was always hoping that some lucky turn would redeem the bad and bring all right again. It was Verrall who urged him on. It was Verrall who, with Machiavellian craft, made the wrong appear right; it was Verrall who had filled his pockets at the expense of George’s. That Verrall had been the arch-tempter, and George the arch-dupe, was clear as the sun at noonday to those who were behind the scenes. Unfortunately but very few were behind the scenes — they might be counted by units — and Verrall and Co. could still blazon it before the world.
The wonder was, where the money had gone to. It very often is the wonder in these cases. A wonder too often never solved. An awful amount of money had gone in some way; the mystery was, in what way. George Godolphin had kept up a large establishment; had been personally extravagant, privately as well as publicly; but that did not serve to account for half the money missing; not for a quarter of it; nay, scarcely for a tithe. Had it been to save himself from hanging, George himself could not have told how or where it had gone. When the awful sum total came to be added up, to stare him in the face, he looked at it in blank amazement. And he had no good to show for it; none; the money had melted, and he could not tell how.
Of course it had gone to the discounters. The tide of discounting once set in, it was something like the nails in the horseshoe, doubling, and doubling, and doubling. The money went, and there was nothing to show for it. Little marvel that George Godolphin stood aghast at the sum total, when the amount was raked up — or, as nearly the amount as could be guessed at. When George could no longer furnish legitimate funds on his own account, the Bank was laid under contribution to supply them, and George had to enter upon a system of ingenuity to conceal the outgoings. When those contributions had been levied to the very utmost extent compatible with the avoidance of sudden and immediate discovery, and George was at his wits’ end for money, which he must have, then Verrall whispered a way which George at first revolted from, but which resulted in taking the deeds of Lord Averil. Had the crash not come as it did, other deeds might have been taken. It is impossible to say. Such a course once entered on is always downhill. Like unto some other downward courses, the only safety lies in not yielding to the first temptation.
Strange to say, George Godolphin could not see the rogue’s part played by Verrall: or at best he saw it but very imperfectly. And yet, not strange; for there are many of these cases in the world. George had been on intimate terms of friendship with Verrall; had been lié, it may be said, with him and Lady Godolphin’s Folly. Mrs. Verrall was pretty. Charlotte had her attractions. Altogether, George believed yet in Verrall. Let the dagger’s point only be concealed with flowers, and men will rush blindly on to it.
Thomas Godolphin sat, some books before him, pondering the one weighty question — where could all the money have gone to? Until the present moment, this morning when he had the books before him, and his thoughts were more practically directed to business details, he had been pondering another weighty question — where had George’s integrity gone to? Whither had flown his pride in his fair name, the honour of the Godolphins? From the Saturday afternoon when the dreadful truth came to light, Thomas had had little else in his thoughts. It was his companion through the Sunday, through the night journey afterwards down to Prior’s Ash. He was more fit for bed than to take that journey: but he must face the exasperated men from whom George had flown.
He was facing them now. People had been coming in since nine o’clock with their reproaches, and Thomas Godolphin bore them patiently and answered them meekly: the tones of his voice low, subdued, as if they came from the sadness of a stricken heart. He felt their wrongs keenly. Could he have paid these injured men by cutting himself to pieces, and satisfied them with the “pound of flesh,” he would have done so, oh how willingly! He would have sacrificed his life and his happiness (his happiness!) and done it cheerfully, if by that means they could have been paid their due.
“It’s nothing but a downright swindle. I’ll say it, sir, to your face, and I can’t help saying it. Here I bring the two thousand pounds in my hand, and I say to Mr. George Godolphin, ‘Will it be safe?’ ‘Yes,’ he answers me, ‘it will be safe.’ And now the Bank has shut up, and where’s my money?”
The speaker was Barnaby, the corn-dealer. What was Thomas Godolphin to answer?
“You told me, sir, on Saturday, that the Bank would open again to-day for business; that customers would be paid in full.”
“I told you but what I believed,” rose the quiet voice of Thomas Godolphin in answer. “Mr. Barnaby, believe me this blow has come upon no one more unexpectedly than it has upon me.”
“Well, sir, I don’t know what may be your mode of carrying on business, but I should be ashamed to conduct mine so as to let ruin come slap upon me, and not have seen it coming.”
Again, what was Thomas Godolphin to answer? Generous to the end, he would not say, “My brother has played us both alike false.” “If I find that any care or caution of mine could have averted this, Mr. Barnaby, I shall carry remorse to my grave,” was all he replied.
“What sort of a dividend will there be?” went on the dealer.
“I really cannot tell you yet, Mr. Barnaby. I have no idea. We must have time to go through the books.”
“Where is Mr. George Godolphin?” resumed the applicant; and it was a very natural question. “Mr. Hurde says he is away, but it is strange that he should be away at such a time as this. I should like to ask him a question or two.”
“He is in London,” replied Thomas Godolphin.
“But what’s he gone to London for now? And when is he coming back?”
More puzzling questions. Thomas had to bear the pain of many such that day. He did not say, “My brother is gone, we know not why; in point of fact he has run away.” He spoke aloud the faint hopes that rose within his own breast — that some train, ere the day was over, would bring him back to Prior’s Ash.
“Don’t you care, Mr. Godolphin,” came the next wailing plaint, “for the ruin that the loss of this money will bring upon me? I have a wife and children, sir.”
“I do care,” Thomas answered, his throat husky and a mist before his eyes. “For every pang that this calamity will inflict on others, it inflicts two on me.”
Mr. Hurde, who was busy with more books in his own department, in conjunction with some clerks, came in to ask a question, his pen behind his ear; and Mr. Barnaby, seeing no good to be derived by remaining, went out. Little respite had Thomas Godolphin. The next to come in was the Rector of All Souls’.
“What is to become of me?” was his saluting question, spoken in his clear, decisive tone. “How am I to refund this money to my wards, the Chisholms?”
Thomas Godolphin had no satisfactory reply to make. He missed the friendly hand held out hitherto in greeting. Mr. Hastings did not take a chair, but stood up near the table, firm, stern, and uncompromising.
“I hear George is off,” he continued.
“He has gone to London, Maria informs me,” replied Thomas Godolphin.
“Mr. Godolphin, can you sit there and tell me that you had no suspicion of the way things were turning? That this ruin has come on, and you ignorant of it?”
“I had no suspicion; none whatever. None can be more utterly surprised than I. There are moments when a feeling comes over me that it cannot be true.”
“Could you live i
n intimate association with your brother, and not see that he was turning out a rogue and a vagabond?” went on the Rector in his keenest and most cynical tone.
“I knew nothing, I suspected nothing,” was the quiet reply of Thomas.
“How dared he take that money from me the other night, when he knew that he was on the verge of ruin?” asked Mr. Hastings. “He took it from me; he never entered it in the books; he applied it, there’s no doubt, to his own infamous purposes. When a suspicion was whispered to me afterwards, that the Bank was wrong, I came here to him. I candidly spoke of what I had heard, and asked him to return me the money, as a friend, a relative. Did he return it? No: his answer was a false, plausible assurance that the money and the Bank were alike safe. What does he call it? Robbery? It is worse: it is deceit; fraud; vile swindling. In the old days, many a man has swung for less, Mr. Godolphin.”
Thomas Godolphin could not gainsay it.
“Nine thousand and forty-five pounds!” continued the Rector. “How am I to make it good? How am I to find money only for the education of Chisholm’s children? He confided them and their money to me; and how have I repaid the trust?”
Every word he spoke was as a dagger entering the heart of Thomas Godolphin. He could only sit still, and bear. Had the malady that was carrying him to the grave never before shown itself, the days of anguish he had now entered upon would have been sufficient to induce it.
“If I find that Maria knew of this, that she was in league with her husband to deceive me, I shall feel inclined to discard her from my affections from henceforth,” resumed the indignant Rector. “It was an unlucky day when I gave my consent to her marrying George Godolphin. I never in my heart liked his addressing her. It must have been instinct warned me against it.”
“I am convinced that Maria has known nothing,” said Thomas Godolphin, “She — —”
Mr. Godolphin stopped. Angry sounds had arisen outside, and presently the door was violently opened, and quite a crowd of clamorous people entered, ready to abuse Thomas Godolphin, George not being there to receive it. There was no question but that that day’s work took weeks from his short remaining span of life. Could a man’s heart break summarily, Thomas Godolphin’s would have broken then. Many men would have retaliated: he felt their griefs, their wrongs, as keenly as they did. They told him of their ruin, of the desolation, the misery it would bring to them, to their wives and families; some spoke in a respectful tone of quiet plaint, some were loud, unreasonable, insulting. They demanded what dividend there would be: some asked in a covert tone to have their bit of money returned in full; some gave vent to most unorthodox language touching George Godolphin; they openly expressed their opinion that Thomas was conniving at his absence; they hinted that he was as culpable as the other.
None of them appeared to glance at the great fact — that Thomas Godolphin was the greatest sufferer of all. If they had lost part of their means, he had lost all his. Did they remember that this terrible misfortune, which they were blaming him for, would leave him a beggar upon the face of the earth? He, a gentleman born to wealth, to Ashlydyat, to a position of standing in the county, to honour, to respect? It had all been rent away by the blow, to leave him homeless and penniless, sick with an incurable malady. Had they only reflected, they might have found that Thomas Godolphin deserved their condolence rather than their abuse.
But they were in no mood to reflect, or to spare him in their angry feelings; they gave vent to all the soreness within them — and perhaps it was excusable.
The Rector of All Souls’ had had his say, and strode forth. Making his way to the dining-room, he knocked sharply with his stick on the door, and then entered. Maria rose and came forward: something very like terror on her face. The knock had frightened her: it had conjured up visions of the visitors suggested by Mrs. Charlotte Pain.
“Where is George Godolphin?”
“He is in London, papa,” she answered, her heart sinking at the stern tone, the abrupt greeting.
“When do you expect him home?”
“I do not know. He did not tell me when he went; except that he should be home soon. Will you not sit down, papa?”
“No. When I brought that money here the other night, the nine thousand and forty-five pounds,” he continued, touching her arm to command her full attention, “could you not have opened your lips to tell me that it would be safer in my own house than in this?”
Maria was seized with inward trembling. She could not bear to be spoken to in that stern tone by her father. “Papa, I could not tell you. I did not know it.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you knew nothing — nothing — of the state of your husband’s affairs? of the ruin that was impending?”
“I knew nothing,” she answered. “Until the Bank closed on Saturday, I was in total ignorance that anything was wrong. I never had the remotest suspicion of it.”
“Then, I think, Maria, you ought to have had it. Rumour says that you owe a great deal of money in the town for your personal necessities, housekeeping and the like.”
“There is a good deal owing, I fear,” she answered. “George has not given me money to pay regularly of late, as he used to do.”
“And did that not serve to open your eyes?”
“No,” she faintly said. “I never gave a thought to anything being wrong.”
She spoke meekly, softly, just as Thomas Godolphin had spoken. The Rector looked at her pale, sad face, and perhaps a sensation of pity for his daughter came over him, however bitterly he may have felt towards her husband.
“Well, it is a terrible thing for us all,” he said in a more kindly voice, as he turned to move away.
“Will you not wait, and sit down, papa?”
“I have not the time now. Good day, Maria.”
As he went out, there stood, gathered close against the wall, waiting to go in, Mrs. Bond. Her face was rather red this morning, and a perfume — certainly not of plain waters — might be detected in her vicinity. That snuffy black gown of hers went down in a reverence as he passed. The Rector of All Souls’ strode on. Care was too great at his heart to allow of his paying attention to extraneous things, even though they appeared in the shape of attractive Mrs. Bond.
Maria Godolphin, her face buried on the sofa cushions, was giving way to the full tide of unhappy thought induced by her father’s words, when she became aware that she was not alone. A sound, half a groan, half a sob, coming from the door, aroused her. There stood a lady, in a crushed bonnet and unwholesome stuff gown that had once been black, with a red face, and a perfume of strong waters around her.
Maria rose from the sofa, her heart sinking. How should she meet this woman? how find an excuse for the money which she had not to give? “Good morning, Mrs. Bond.”
Mrs. Bond took a few steps forward, and held on by the table. Not that she was past the power of keeping herself upright; her face must be redder than it was, by some degrees, ere she lost that; but she had a knack of holding on to things.
“I have come for my ten-pound note, if you please, ma’am.”
Few can imagine what this moment was to Maria Godolphin; for few are endowed with the sensitiveness of temperament, the refined consideration for the feelings of others, the acute sense of justice, which characterized her. Maria would willingly have given a hundred pounds to have had ten then. How she made the revelation, she scarcely knew — that she had not the money that morning to give.
Mrs. Bond’s face turned rather defiant. “You told me to come down for it, ma’am.”
“I thought I could have given it to you. I am very sorry. I must trouble you to come when Mr. George Godolphin shall have returned home.”
“Is he going to return?” asked Mrs. Bond in a quick, hard tone. “Folks is saying that he isn’t.”
Maria’s heart beat painfully at the words. Was he going to return? She could only say aloud that she hoped he would very soon be home.
“But I want my money,” resumed Mrs. Bond, standing
her ground. “I must have it, ma’am, if you please.”
“I have not got it,” said Maria. “The very instant I have it, it shall be returned to you.”
“I’d make bold to ask, ma’am, what right you had to spend it? Warn’t there enough money in the Bank of other folks’s as you might have took, without taking mine — which you had promised to keep faithful for me?” reiterated Mrs. Bond, warming with her subject. “I warn’t a deposit in the Bank, as them folks was, and I’d no right to have my money took. I want to pay my rent to-day, and to get in a bit o’ food. The house is bare of everything. There’s the parrot screeching out for seed.”
It is of no use to pursue the interview. Mrs. Bond grew bolder and more abusive. But for having partaken rather freely of that cordial which was giving out its scent upon the atmosphere, she had never so spoken to her clergyman’s daughter. Maria received it meekly, her heart aching: she felt very much as did Thomas Godolphin — that she had earned the reproaches. But endurance has its limits: she began to feel really ill; and she saw, besides, that Mrs. Bond appeared to have no intention of departing. Escaping out of the room in the midst of a fiery speech, she encountered Pierce, who was crossing the hall.
“Go into the dining-room, Pierce,” she whispered, “and try to get rid of Mrs. Bond. She is not quite herself this morning, and — and — she talks too much. But be kind and civil to her, Pierce: let there be no disturbance.”
Her pale face, as she spoke, was lifted to the butler almost pleadingly. He thought how wan and ill his mistress looked. “I’ll manage it, ma’am,” he said, turning to the dining-room.
