Part 96 (1/2)

Isaac answered lightly and evasively. He was aware that such suspicions were afloat with the clerks. Chiefly led to by that application from the stranger, and his rude and significant charges, made so publicly. Isaac had not been present at that application. It was somewhat curious, perhaps--for a freemasonry runs amidst the clerks of an establishment, and they talk freely one with another--that he never heard of it until after the stoppage of the firm. If he had heard of it, he would certainly have told his father. But whatever suspicions he and his fellow-clerks might be entertaining against George G.o.dolphin, he was not going to speak of them to Grace Akeman.

Grace turned to her mother. ”Papa has a thousand pounds or two there, has he not?”

”Ah, child! if that were all!” returned Mrs. Hastings, with a groan.

”Why? What more has he there?” asked Grace, startled by the words and the tone. Rose, startled also, turned round to await the answer.

Mrs. Hastings seemed to hesitate. But only for a moment. ”I do not know why I should not tell you,” she said, looking at her daughters. ”Isaac and Reginald both know it. He had just lodged there the trust-money belonging to the Chisholms: nine thousand and forty-five pounds.”

A silence fell upon the room. Grace and her sister were too dismayed to speak immediately. Reginald, who had now seated himself astride on a chair, his face and arms over the back of it, set up a soft lugubrious whistle, the tune of some old sea-song, feeling possibly the silence to be uncomfortable. To disclose a little secret, Mr. Reginald was not in the highest of spirits, having been subjected to some hard scolding that day on the part of his father, and some tears on the part of his mother, touching the non-existence of any personal effects. He had arrived at home, for the fourth time since his first departure for sea, baggageless, his luggage consisting exclusively of what he stood up in.

Of everything else belonging to him, he was able to give no account whatever. It is rather a common complaint amongst young sailors. And then he was always changing his s.h.i.+ps.

”Is papa responsible for it?” The half-frightened question came from Rose.

”Certainly he is,” replied Mrs. Hastings. ”If the Bank should _not_ go on, why--we are ruined. As well as those poor children, the Chisholms.”

”Oh, mamma! why did he not draw it out this morning?” cried Grace in a tone of pain. ”Tom told me that many people were paid in full.”

”Had he known the state the Bank was in, that there was anything the matter with it, no doubt he would have drawn it out,” returned Mrs.

Hastings.

”Did Maria know it was paid in?”

”Yes.”

Grace's eyes flashed fire. Somehow, she was never inclined to be too considerate to Maria. She never had been from their earliest years. ”A dutiful daughter! Not to give her father warning!”

”Maria may not have been able to do it,” observed Mrs. Hastings.

”Perhaps she did not know that anything was wrong.”

”Nonsense, mamma!” was Grace's answer. ”We have heard--when a thing like this happens, you know people begin to talk freely, to compare notes, as it were--we have heard that George G.o.dolphin and Maria are owing money all over the town. Maria has not paid her housekeeping bills for ever so long. _Of course_ she must have known what was coming!”

Mrs. Hastings did not dispute the point with Grace. The main fact troubled her too greatly for minor considerations to be very prominent with her yet. She had never found Maria other than a considerate and dutiful daughter: and she must be convinced that she had not been so in this instance, before she could believe it.

”She was afraid of compromising George G.o.dolphin,” continued Grace in a bitter tone. ”He has ever been first and foremost with her.”

”She might have given a warning without compromising him,” returned Mrs.

Hastings; but, in making the remark, she did not intend to cast any reflection on Maria. ”When your papa went to pay the money in, it was after banking hours. Maria was alone, and he told her what he had brought. Had she been aware of anything wrong, she might have given a hint to him, then and there. It need never have been known to George G.o.dolphin--even that your papa had any intention of paying money in.”

”And this was recently?”

”Only a week or two ago.”

Grace pushed her shawl more off her shoulders, and beat her knee up and down as she sat on the low stool. Suddenly she turned to Isaac.

”Had _you_ no suspicion that anything was wrong?”

”Yes, a slight one,” he incautiously answered. ”A doubt, though, more than a suspicion.”