Part 26 (2/2)
But it is dangerous to be a convert, real or false, to Bubble: the game is to be rash at once, and turn prudent at the full tide. When Richard Hardie was up to his chin in these time bargains, came an incident not easy to foresee: the conductors of the _Times,_ either from patriotism or long-sighted policy, punctured the bladder, though they were making thousands weekly by the railway advertis.e.m.e.nts. The time was so well chosen, and the pin applied, that it was a death-blow: shares declined from that morning, and the inevitable panic was advanced a week or two. The more credulous speculators held on in hopes of a revival; but Hardie, who knew that the collapse had been merely hastened, saw the gravity of the situation, and sold largely at a heavy loss. But he could not sell all the bad paper he had acc.u.mulated for a temporary purpose: the panic came too swiftly and too strong; soon there were no buyers at any price. The biter was bit: the fox who had said, ”This is a trap; I'll lightly come and lightly go,” was caught by the light fantastic toe.
In this emergency he showed high qualities: vast financial ability, great fort.i.tude, and that sense of commercial honour which Mrs. Dodd justly called his semi-chivalrous sentiment. He mustered all his private resources to meet his engagements and maintain his high position. Then commenced a long and steady struggle, conducted with a Spartan dignity and self-command, and a countenance as close as wax. Little did any in Barkington guess the doubts and fears, the hopes and despondencies, which agitated and tore the heart and brain that schemed, and throbbed, and glowed, and sickened by turns beneath that steady modulated exterior. And so for months and months he secretly battled with insolvency; sometimes it threatened in the distance, sometimes at hand, but never caught him unawares: he provided for each coming danger, he encountered each immediate attack. But not unscathed in morals. Just as matters looked brighter, came a concentration of liabilities he could not meet without emptying his tills, and so incurring the most frightful danger of all. He had provided for its coming too; but a decline, greater than he had reckoned on, in the value of his good securities, made that provision inadequate. Then it was he committed a _faux-pas._ He was one of his own children's trustees, and the other two signed after him like machines. He said to himself: ”My honour is my children's; my position is worth thousands _to them._ I have sacrificed a fortune to preserve it; it would be madness to recoil now.” He borrowed three thousand pounds of the trust money, and, soon after, two thousand more: it kept him above water; but the peril, and the escape on such terms, left him gasping inwardly.
At last, when even his granite nature was almost worn down with labour, anxiety, and struggling all alone without a word of comfort--for the price of one grain of sympathy would have been ”Destruction”--he shuffled off his iron burden and breathed again.
One day he spent in a sort of pleasing lethargy, like a strong swimmer who, long and sore buffeted by the waves, has reached the sh.o.r.e at last.
The next day his cas.h.i.+er, a sharp-visaged, bald-headed old man called Young Skinner, invited his attention rather significantly to the high amount of certain balances compared with the cash at his (Skinner's) disposal.
”Indeed!” said Hardie quietly; ”that must be regulated.” He added graciously, as if conferring a great favour, ”I'll look into the books myself, Skinner.”
He did more: he sat up all night over the books; and his heart died with him. Bankruptcy seemed coming towards him, slow perhaps, but sure. And meantime to live with the sword hanging over him by a hair!
Soon matters approached a crisis; several large drafts were drawn, which would have cleaned the bank out, but that the yearly rents of a wealthy n.o.bleman had for some days past been flowing in. This n.o.bleman had gone to explore Syria and a.s.syria. He was a great traveller, who contrived to live up to his income at home, but had never been able to spend a quarter of it abroad, for want of enemies and masters--better known as friends and servants--to help him. So Hardie was safe for some months, unless there should be an extraordinary run on him, and that was not likely this year; the panic had subsided, and, _nota bene,_ his credit had never stood higher. The reason was, he had been double-faced; had always spoken against railways: and his wise words were public, whereas his fatal acts had been done in the dark.
But now came a change, a bitter revulsion, over this tossed mind: hope and patience failed at last, and his virtue, being a thing of habit and traditions rather than of the soul, wore out; nay more, this man, who had sacrificed so n.o.bly to commercial integrity, was filled with hate of his idol and contempt of himself. ”Idiot!” said he, ”to throw away a fortune fighting for honour--a greater bubble than that which has ruined me--instead of breaking like a man, with a hidden purse, and starting fair again, as sensible traders do.”
No honest man in the country that year repented of his vices so sincerely as Richard Hardie loathed his virtue. And he did not confine his penitence to sentiment: he began to spend his days at the bank poring over the books, and to lay out his arithmetical genius in a subtle process, that should enable him by degrees to withdraw a few thousands from human eyes for his future use, despite the feeble safeguards of the existing law. In other words, Richard Hardie, like thousands before him, was fabricating and maturing a false balance-sheet.
One man in his time plays many animals. Hardie at this period turned mole. He burrowed darkling into _oes alienum._ There is often one of these sleek miners in a bank: it is a section of human zoology the journals have lately enlarged on, and drawn the painstaking creature grubbing and mining away to brief opulence--and briefer penal servitude than one could wish. I rely on my reader having read these really able sketches of my contemporaries, and spare him minute details, that possess scarcely a new feature, except one: in that bank was not only a mole, but a mole-catcher; and, contrary to custom, the mole was the master, the mole-catcher the servant. The latter had no hostile views; far from it: he was rather attached to his master. But his attention was roused by the youngest clerk, a boy of sixteen, being so often sent for into the bank parlour, to copy into the books some arithmetical result, without its process. Attention soon became suspicion; and suspicion found many little things to feed on, till it grew to certainty. But the outer world was none the wiser: the mole-catcher was no chatterbox; he was a solitary man--no wife nor mistress about him; and he revered the mole, and liked him better than anything in the world--_except money._
Thus the great banker stood, a colossus of wealth and stability to the eye, though ready to crumble at a touch; and indeed self-doomed, for bankruptcy was now his game.
This was a miserable man, far more miserable than his son, whose happiness he had thwarted: his face was furrowed and his hair thinned by a secret struggle; and of all the things that gnawed him, like the fox, beneath his Spartan robe, none was more bitter than to have borrowed five thousand pounds of his children and sunk it.
His wife's father, a keen man of business, who saw there was little affection on his side, had settled his daughter's money on her for life, and in case of her death, on the children upon coming of age.
The marriage of Alfred or Jane would be sure to expose him; settlements would be proposed; lawyers engaged to peer into the trust, &c. No; they _must_ remain single for the present, or else marry wealth.
So, when his son announced an attachment to a young lady living in a suburban villa, it was a terrible blow, though he took it with outward calm, as usual. But if, instead of prating about beauty, virtue, and breeding, Alfred had told him hard cash in five figures could be settled by the bride's family on the young couple, he would have welcomed the wedding with great external indifference, but a secret gush of joy; for then he could throw himself on Alfred's generosity, and be released from that one corroding debt; perhaps allowed to go on drawing the interest of the remainder.
Thus, in reality, all the interests with which this story deals converged towards one point: the fourteen thousand pounds. Richard Hardie's opposition was a mere misunderstanding; and if he had been told of the Cash, and to what purpose Mrs. Dodd destined it, and then put on board the _Agra_ in the Straits of Gaspar, he would have calmly taken off his coat, and help to defend the bearer of It against all a.s.sailants as stoutly, and, to all appearance, imperturbably, as he had fought that other bitter battle at home. For there was something heroic in this erring man, though his rect.i.tude depended on circ.u.mstances.
CHAPTER IX
THE way the pirate dropped the mask, showed his black teeth, and bore up in chase, was terrible: so dilates and bounds the sudden tiger on his unwary prey. There were stout hearts among the officers of the peaceable _Agra_; but danger in a new form shakes the brave, and this was their first pirate: their dismay broke out in e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns not loud but deep.
”Hush,” said Dodd doggedly; ”the lady!”
Mrs. Beresford had just come on deck to enjoy the balmy morning.
”Sharpe,” said Dodd, in a tone that conveyed no suspicion to the new-comer, ”set the royals and flying jib.--Port!”
”Port it is,” cried the man at the helm.
”Steer due south!” And, with these words in his mouth, Dodd dived to the gun-deck.
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