Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  Still, the daylight had one good effect, it completed the reassurance of Mr. Hollins. He could see his man now, and judging him to be good for the money, he gave way to greed and proposed to run the horses on to Dunstable. Clement thought that he might do worse and agreed, merely halting for five minutes at the George at Brickhill, to administer a quart of ale apiece to the nags, and to take one themselves. Then they pressed on to Dunstable, which they reached at half-past eight.

  Even so, Clement had still thirty miles to cover. But the postboy, a sportsman with his heart in the game, had ridden in, waving his whip and shouting for horses, and his good word spread like magic. Two minutes let the yard know that here was a golden customer, an out-and-outer, and almost before Clement could swallow a cup of scalding 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 the ten-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, that seemed to be almost as good as London.

  Luck could not have stood by him better, and, now the sun shone, they raced with taxed-carts, and flashed by sober clergymen jogging along on their hacks. The midnight shifts to which he had been put, the despairing struggle about Meriden and Dunchurch, were a dream. He was in 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 on purpose to delay him. Still he was near the end of his journey, and he began to consider all the alternatives to success, all the various ways in which he might yet fail. He might miss Bourdillon; he began to be sure that he would miss him. Either he would be at the India Office when Bourdillon was at the brokers’, or at brokers’ when he was at the India Office; and, failing the India Office or the brokers’, he had no clue to him. Or his quarry would have left town already, with the treasure in his possession. Or they might pass one another in the streets, 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 the hundred chances, the scores of accidents that might occur to prevent their meeting. And every minute that he spent on the road made things worse. He had had yonder windmill in sight this half-hour — and it seemed no nearer. He fidgeted to and fro, lowered a window and raised it again, scolded the postboy, flung himself back in the chaise.

  At the Green Man at Barnet he got sulkily into his last chaise, and they pounded down five miles of a gentle slope, then drove stoutly up the easy ascent to Highgate. By this time the notion that Bourdillon would pass him unseen had got such hold upon him — though it was the unlikeliest thing in the world that Arthur could have got through his business so early — that his eyes raked every chaise they met, and a crowded coach by which they sped, as it crawled up the southern side of the hill, filled him with the darkest apprehensions. Had he given a moment’s thought to the state of the market, to the pressure of business which it must cause, and to the crowd, greedy for transfers, in which Arthur must take his turn, he would have seen that this fear was groundless.

  However, the true state of things was by and by brought home to his mind. He had directed the postboy to take him direct to the brokers’ in the City, and he had hardly exchanged the pleasant country roads of Highbury and Islington, with their villas and cow-farms, for the noisy, dirty thoroughfares of north London, before he was struck by the evidences of excitement that met his eyes. Lads, shouting raucously, ran about the busier streets, selling broadsheets, which were fought for and bought up with greedy haste. A stream of walkers, with their faces set one way, hastened along almost as fast as his post-chaise. Busy groups stood at the street corners, debating and gesticulating. As he advanced still farther, and crossed the boundary and began to thread the narrow streets of the City — it wanted a half hour of noon — he found himself hampered and almost stopped by the crowd which thronged the roadway, and seemed in its preoccupation to be insensible to the obstacles that barred its way and into which it cannoned 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 of everything but the errand on which they were bent, sprang from offices, hurled themselves through the press, leaped on their fellows’ backs, tore on their way; while those whom they had maltreated did not even look round, but continued their talk, unaware of the outrage. Some pushed through the press, so deep in thought that they saw no one and might have walked a country lane, while others, meeting as by appointment, seized one another, shook one another, bawled in each other’s faces as if both had become suddenly deaf. And now and again the whole tormented mass, seething in the narrow lanes or narrower alleys, swayed this way or that under the impulse of some unknown mysterious 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 the news-sellers who constantly bawled, “Panic! Great panic in the City! Panic! List of banks closed!” He had heard as he changed at Barnet that fourteen houses in the City had shut their doors, but he had not appreciated the fact. Now he was to see with his own eyes shuttered windows and barred doors with great printed bills affixed to them, and huge crowds at gaze before them, groaning and hooting. Even the shops bore singular and striking witness to the crisis, for in Cheapside every other window exhibited a card stating that they would accept bank-notes to any extent and for goods to any amount — a courageous attempt to restore public confidence which deserved more success than it won; while there, and on all sides, he heard men execrating the Bank of England and loudly proclaiming — though this was not the fact — 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 very low his heart sank, as the chaise made a few yards, stopped, and advanced again. What chance had Ovington’s, what hope of survival had their little venture, when the very credit of the country tottered, and here in the heart of London age-long institutions with vast deposits and forty or fifty branches toppled down on all sides? When merchant princes with tens of thousands in sound but unsaleable securities could do nothing to save themselves, and men of world-wide fame, the giants of finance, went humbly, hat in hand, to ask for time?

  Stranded, or moving at a snail’s pace, he caught scraps of the talk about him. Smith’s in Mansion House Street had closed its doors. Everett and Walker’s had followed Pole’s into bankruptcy. Wentworth’s at York had failed for two hundred thousand pounds. Telford’s at Plymouth had been sacked by an angry mob. The strongest bank in Norwich was going or gone. The Bank of England had paid out eight millions in gold within the week — and had no more. They were paying in one-pound notes now, a set found God knows where — in the cellars, it was said. The tellers were so benumbed with terror that they could not separate them or count them.

  For the moment he forgot Arthur and Arthur’s business, and thought only of his father and of their own plight. “We are gone!” he reflected, his face almost as pale as the faces in the street. “We are ruined! There is no hope. When this reaches Aldersbury we must close!” He could no longer bear the inaction. He could not sit still. He paid off the chaise — with difficulty, owing to the press — and pushed forward on foot. But his mind still ran on Aldersbury, was still busy with the fate of their own bank. He felt an immense pity for his father, and recognized that until this moment, when panic in its most dreadful form stared him in the face, he had not realized the catastrophe, or the sadness, or the finality of it. They must close. They must begin the world again, begin it at the bottom, in competition with a multitude of beggared men, three-fourths of whom had never speculated, never touched a share, never left the safe pat
h of industrious commerce, but were now to pay with all they possessed in the world, their daughters’ portions and their sons’ fortunes, for the recklessness or the extravagance of others.

  For a space there was vouchsafed to him the wider vision, and he saw the thing that was passing in its true light. He saw the wave of ruin spread from these crowded streets ever farther and farther, from city to town and town to country; and where it passed it wrecked homes, it made widows, it swept away the dowries of children, it separated lovers, it overwhelmed the happiness of thousands and tens of thousands. He saw the honest trader, whose father’s good name was his glory, broken in heart and fortune through the failure of others, his health shattered, his house sold over his head, his pensioners and dependants flung into the workhouse. He saw deluded parsons doomed to spend the close of their lives in a hopeless wrestle with debt, their sons taken from school, their daughters sent out into a cold and unfeeling world. He saw squires, the little gods of their domain, men once wealthy, doomed to drink themselves into forgetfulness of the barred 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 upon thousands would lose their hoarded savings, and, too old to begin again, would sink, they and their children and their children’s children, into the under-world, there to be lost amid the dregs of the population.

  And he and his? Why should they escape? How could they escape? It would be much if they could feel, while they shared the common lot, that they had deserved to escape, that they were not of those whose wild speculations had brought this disaster on their kind.

  He had by this time fought his way as far as the end of Cheapside, and here, where the roar was loudest and the contending currents mingled their striving masses, where the voices of the news-boys were shrillest, and the timid stood daunted, while even strong men paused, measuring the human whirlpool into which they must plunge, Clement’s eye was caught by a side-scene which was passing in the street hard by the Mansion House. Raised above the crowd on the steps of a large building, 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 his meaning could be deduced only from his gestures of appeal. The lower windows of the house were shuttered, and the upper exhibited many broken panes; but behind these and the cornice of the roof gleamed here and there a pale frightened face, peering down at the proceedings below. From the crowd collected before the haggard man rose a continuous roar of protest, a forest of menacing hands, shrill cries and curses, and now and again a missile, which, falling absurdly short — for in that press no man could swing his arm — still bore witness to the malice that urged it. Nearer to Clement on the skirts of the throng, where they could see little and were perpetually elbowed by impatient passersby, loitered a few who at a first glance seemed to be uninterested — so apathetic were their attitudes, so absent was their gaze. But a second glance disclosed the truth. They were men whom the tidings of ruin, sudden and unforeseen, had stunned. Spiritless and despairing, seeing only the home they had forfeited and the dear ones they had beggared, they stood in the street, blind and deaf to what was passing about them, and only by the mute agony of their eyes betrayed the truth.

  The sight wrung Clement’s heart with pity, and he seized a news-lad by the arm. “What is that place?” he shouted in his ear. In that babel no man could make himself heard without shouting.

  The man looked at him suspiciously. “Yar! Yer kidding!” he said. “Yer know as well as me!”

  Clement shook him in his impatience. “No, I don’t,” he shouted. “I’m a stranger! 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 as well ha’ never opened!”

  He went off hurriedly, and Clement went too, plunging into the maelstrom that divided him from Cornhill. But as he buffeted his way through the throng, the faces of the ruined men went with him, coming between him and the street, and with a sinking heart he fancied that he read, written on them, the fate of Ovington’s.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  It was to Clement’s credit that, had his object been to save his father’s bank, instead of to do that which might deprive it of its last hope, he could not have struggled onward through the press more stoutly than he did. But though the offices for which he was bound, situate in one of the courts north of Cornhill, were no more than a third of a mile from the point at which he had dismissed his chaise, the city clocks had long struck twelve before, wresting himself from the human flood, which panic and greed were driving through the streets, he turned into this quiet backwater.

  He stood for a moment to take breath and adjust his dress, and even in that brief space he discovered that the calm was but comparative. Many of the windows which looked on the court were raised, as if the pent-up emotions of their occupants craved air and an outlet even on that December day; and from these and from the open doors below issued a dropping fire of sounds, the din of raised voices, of doors recklessly slammed, of feet thundering on bare stairs, of harsh orders. Clerks rushing into the court, hatless and demented, plunged into clerks rushing out equally demented, yet flew on their course without look or word, as if unconscious of the impact. From a lighted window — many were lit up, for the court was small and the day foggy — a hat, even as Clement paused, flew out and bounded on the pavement. But no one heeded it or followed it, and it was a passing clerk who came hurrying out a little less recklessly than his fellows, whom Clement, after a moment’s hesitation, seized by the arm. “Mr. Bourdillon here?” he asked imperatively — for he saw that in no other way could he gain attention.

  “Mr. Bourdillon!” the man snapped. “Oh, I don’t know! Here, Cocky Sands! Attend to this gentleman! Le’ me go! Le’ me go. D’ you hear?”

  He tore himself free, and was gone while he spoke, leaving Clement to climb the stairs. On the landing he encountered another clerk, whom he supposed to be “Cocky Sands,” and he attacked him. “Mr. Bourdillon? Is he here?” he asked.

  But Mr. Sands eluded him, shouted over his shoulder for “Tom!” and clattered down the stairs. “Can’t wait!” he flung behind him. “Find some one!”

  However, Clement lost nothing by this, for the next moment one of the partners appeared at a door. Clement knew him, and “Is Mr. Bourdillon here?” he cried for the third time, and he seized the broker by the button-hole. He, at any rate, should not escape him.

  “Mr. Bourdillon?” The broker stared, unable on the instant to recall his thoughts, and from the way in which he wiped his bald and steaming head with a yellow bandanna, it was plain that he had just got something of moment off his mind. “Pheugh! What times!” he ejaculated, fanning himself and breathing hard. “What a morning! You’ve heard, I suppose? Everitt’s are gone. Gone within the hour, d — n them! Oh, Bourdillon? It was Bourdillon you asked for? To be sure, it’s Mr. Ovington, isn’t it? I thought so; I never forget a face, but he didn’t tell me that you were here. By Jove!” He raised his hands — he was a portly gentleman, wearing a satin under-vest and pins and chains innumerable, all at this moment a little awry. “By Jove, what a find you have there! Slap, bang, and tip to the mark, and no mistake! Hard and sharp as nails! I take off my hat to him! There’s not a firm,” mopping his heated face anew, “within half a mile of us that wouldn’t be glad to have him! I’ll take my Davy there are not ten men in country practice could have pushed the deal through, and squeezed eleven thousand in cash out of Snell & Higgins on such a day as this! He’s a marvel, Mr. Ovington! You can tell your father I said so, and I don’t care who says the contrary.”

  “But is he here?” Clement cried, dancing with impatience. “Is he here, man?”

  “Gone to the India House this—” he looked at his watch— “this half-hour, to complete. He had to drop seven per cent. for cash on the nail — that, of cours
e! But he got six thousand odd in Bank paper, and five thou. in gold, and I’m damned if any one else would have got that to-day, though the stuff he had was as good as the ready in ordinary times. My partner’s gone with him to Leadenhall Street to complete — glad to oblige you, for God knows how many clients we shall have left after this — and they’ve a hackney coach waiting in Bishopsgate and an officer to see them to it. You may catch him at the India House, or he may be gone. He’s not one to let the grass grow under his feet. In that case — —”

  “Send a clerk with me to show me the Office!” Clement cried. “It’s urgent, man, urgent! And I don’t know my way inside the House. I must catch him.”

  “Well, with so much money — here, Nicky!” The broker stepped aside to make room for a client who came up the stairs three at a time. “Nicky, go with this gentleman! Show him the way to the India House. Transfer Office — Letter G! Sharp’s the word. Don’t lose time. — Coming! Coming!” to some one in the office. “My compliments to your father. He’s one of the lucky ones, for I suppose this will see you through. It’s Boulogne or this—” he made as if he held a pistol to his head— “for more than I care to think of!”

  But Clement had not waited to hear the last words. He was half-way down the stairs with his hand on the boy’s collar. They plunged into Cornhill, but the lad, a London-bred urchin, did not condescend to the street for more than twenty yards or so. Then he dived into a court on the same side of the way, crossed it, threaded a private passage through some offices, and came out in Bishopsgate Street. Stemming the crowd as best they could they crossed this, and by another alley and more offices the lad convoyed his charge into Leadenhall Street. A last rush saw them landed, panting and with their coats wellnigh torn from their backs, on the pavement on the south side of the street, in front of the pillared entrance, and beneath the colossal Britannia that, far above their heads and flanked by figures of Europe and Asia, presided over the fortunes of the greatest trading company that the world has ever seen. Through the doors of that building — now, alas, no more — had passed all the creators of an oriental empire, statesmen, soldiers, merchant princes, Clive, Lawrence, Warren Hastings, Cornwallis. Yet to-day, the mention of it calls up as often the humble figure of a black-coated white-cravated clerk with spindle legs and a big head, who worked within its walls and whom Clement, had he called a few months earlier, might have met coming from his desk.