"Then it is all right. Mr. Johnson is an eccentric friend of mine.
Rather--in fact, rather given to take at times more than is good for
him. I suppose he has been going in for champagne. I--I thought it might
be some bad character."
It might be "all right," as Mr. Pell said: I fancied, by the relieved
tone, that it _was_ so: but I felt quite sure that he had cause to fear,
if not Mr. Johnson, some one else. At that moment there arose a slight
rustle of leaves outside, and he stood, holding his breath to listen,
his finger raised. The smell of the shrubs was borne freely on the night
air.
"It is only the wind: there must be a little breeze getting up," said
Mr. Clement-Pell. "Thank you; and good night. Oh, by the way, don't talk
of this, Mr. Ludlow. If Johnson _has_ been exceeding, he would not like
to hear of it again."
"No fear, sir. Once more, good night."
Before I had well leaped the steps of the balcony, the window, a very
heavy one, was closed with a bang, and the shutters being put to.
Glancing back, I saw the white face of Clement-Pell through the closing
shutters, and then heard the bolts shot. What could he be afraid of?
Perhaps Johnson turned mad when he drank. Some men do.
"Have you been making that bag, Johnny?" they called out when I caught
them up.
"No."
"I'm sure it was on the chair," said Helen.
"Oh, I found it at once. I stayed talking with Mr. Pell. I say, has the
night grown damp?--or is it my fancy?"
"What does it matter?" returned Bill Whitney. "I wish I was in a bath,
for my part, if it was only cold water."
The Squire stood at the end of the garden when we reached home, with old
Jacobson, whose gig was waiting. After reproaching us with our sins,
first for sending the carriage back empty, then for being so late, the
Squire came round and asked all about the party. Old Jacobson drew in
his lips as he listened.
"It's fine to be the Clement-Pells!" cried he. "Why, a Duke-Royal could
not give a grander party than that. Real lace for gowns, had they! No
wonder Madame Pell turns her nose up at farmers!"
"Did Clement-Pell send me any particular message?" asked the Pater.
"He sent his kind regards," I said. "And he was sorry you and Mrs.
Todhetley did not go."
"It was a charming party," cried Helen Whitney. "Papa and mamma put it
to us, when the invitation came--would we go, or would we not go. They
don't much care for the Clement-Pells. I am glad we did go: I would not
have missed it for the world. But there's something about the
Clement-Pells that tells you they are not gentlepeople."
"Oh, that's the show and the finery," said Bill.
"No, I think it lies more in their tones and their manner of speaking,"
said Helen.
* * * * *
"Johnny, are you _quite_ sure Clement-Pell sent me no message, except
kind regards, and that?"
"Quite sure, sir."
"Well, it's very odd."
"What is very odd, sir?"
"Never you mind, Johnny."
This was after breakfast on the Saturday morning. The Squire was opening
a letter that the post had brought, and looked up to ask me. Not that
the letter had anything to do with Clement-Pell, for it only enclosed a
bill for some ironmongery bought at Evesham.
On the Friday the Whitneys had gone home, and Tod with them. So I was
alone: with nothing to do but to wish him back again.
"I am going to Alcester, Johnny," said the Pater, in the course of the
morning. "You can come with me if you like."
"Then will you please bring me back some money?" cried Mrs. Todhetley.
"You will pass the Bank, I suppose."
"It's where I am going," returned the Pater: and I thought his voice had
rather a grumbling tone in it.
We took the pony-carriage, and he let me drive. It was as hot as ever;
and the Squire wondered when the autumn cool would be coming in. Old
Brandon happened to be at his gate as we went by, and the Pater told me
to pull up.
"Going in to Alcester?" cried Mr. Brandon.
"Just as far as the Bank," said the Pater. "So I hear you went to the
Clement-Pells' after all, Brandon."
"I looked in to see what it was like," said old Brandon, giving me a
moment's hard stare: as much as to recall to my mind what had really
taken him there.
"It was a dashing affair, I hear."
"Rather too much so for me," cried Mr. Brandon drily. "Where's your son,
sir?"
"Oh, he's gone home with the Whitneys' young folk. How hot it is
to-day!"
"Ay. Too hot to stand in it long. Drive on, Johnny."
The Squire went in to the Bank alone, leaving me with the carriage. He
banked with the Old Bank at Worcester; but it was a convenience to have
some little money nearer in case of need, and he had recently opened a
small account at Alcester. Upon which Clement-Pell had said he might as
well have opened it with him, at his Church Dykely branch. But the
Squire explained that he had as good as promised the Alcester people,
years ago, that if he did open an account nearer than Worcester it
should be with them. He came out, looking rather glum, stuffing some
notes into his pocket-book.
"Turn the pony round, Johnny," said he. "We'll go back. It's too hot to
stay out to-day."
"Yes, sir. Is anything the matter?"
"Anything the matter! No. Why do you ask?"
"I thought you looked put out, sir."
"There's nothing the matter. Only I think men of business should not
be troubled with short memories. Take care of that waggon. What's the
fellow galloping his horses at that rate for? Now, Johnny, I say, take
care. Or else, give me the reins."
I nearly laughed. At home they never seemed to think I could do
anything. If they did let me drive, it was always Now take care of this,
Johnny; or, Take care of that. And yet I was a more careful driver than
Tod: though I might not have had so much strength as he to pull up a
four-in-hand team had it run away.
"Go round through Church Dykely, Johnny, and stop at Pell's Bank," said
the Squire, as I was turning off on the direct road home.
I turned the pony's head accordingly. It took us about a mile out of our
way. The pavement was so narrow and the Bank room so small, that I heard
all that passed when the Squire went in.
"Is Mr. Clement-Pell here?"
"Oh dear no, sir," replied the manager. "He is always at the chief Bank
on Saturday. Did you want him?"
"Not particularly. Tell him I think he must have forgotten to send to
me."
"I'll tell him, sir. He may look in here to-night on his return. If you
wish to see him yourself, he will be here all day on Monday."
The Squire came out and got in again. Cutting round the sharp corner
by Perkins the butcher's, I nearly ran into Mrs. and the Miss
Clement-Pells, who were crossing the dusty road in a line like geese,
the one behind the other; their muslins sweeping the highway like
brooms, and their complexions sheltered under point lace parasols.
"There you go again, Johnny! Pull up, sir."
I pulled up: and the heads came from under the parasols, and grouped
round to speak to us. They had quite recovered Thursday's fatigue, Mrs.
Clement-Pell graciously said, in answer to the Squire's inquiries; and
she hoped all her young friends had done the same, Mr. Todhetley's young
friends in particular.
"_They_ felt no fatigue," cried the Pater, "Why, ma'am, they'd keep
anything of that sort up for a week and a day, and not feel it. How's
Mr. Clement-Pell?"
"He is as well as he allows himself to be," she answered. "I tell him he
is wearing himself out with work. His business is of vast magnitude, Mr.
Todhetley. Good day."
"So it is," acquiesced the Pater as we drove on, partly to himself,
partly to me. "Of vast magnitude. For my part, I'd rather do less,
although it involved less returns. One can forgive a man, like him,
forgetting trifles. And, Johnny, I shouldn't wonder but his enormous
riches render him careless of small obligations."
Part of which was unintelligible to me.
Sunday passed. We nodded to the Miss Clement-Pells at church (their
bonnets making the pew look like a flower-garden); but did not see Mr.
Clement-Pell or his wife. Monday passed; bringing a note from Tod, to
say Lady Whitney and Bill would not let him leave yet. Tuesday morning
came in. I happened to be seated under the hedge in the kitchen-garden,
mending a fishing-rod, when a horse dashed up to the back gate. Looking
through, I saw it was the butcher boy, Sam Rimmer. Molly, who was in one
of her stinging tempers that morning, came out.
"We don't want nothing," said she tartly. "So you might have spared
yourself the pains of coming."
"Don't want nothing!" returned the boy. "Why's that?"
"Why's that!" she retorted. "It's like your imperence to ask. Do
families want joints every day; specially such weather as this? I
a-going to cook fowls for dinner, and we've the cold round o' beef for
the kitchen. Now you know why, Sam Rimmer."
Sam Rimmer sat looking at her as if in a quandary, gently rubbing his
hair, which shone again in the sun.
"Well, it's a pity but you wanted some," said he, slowly. "We've gone
and been and pervided a shop full o' meat to-day, and it'll be a dead
loss on the master. The Clement-Pells don't want none, you see: and they
took a'most as much as all the rest o' the gentlefolks put together.
There's summat up there."
"Summat up where?" snapped Molly.
"At the Clement-Pells'. The talk is, that they've busted-up, and be all
gone off in consekence."
"Why, what d'ye mean?" cried Molly. "Gone off where? Busted-up from
what?"
But, before Perkins's boy could answer, the Pater, walking about the
path in his straw hat and light thin summer coat, came on the scene. He
had caught the words.
"What's that you are saying about the Clement-Pells, Sam Rimmer?"
Sam Rimmer touched his hair, and explained. Upon going to Parrifer Hall
for orders, he had found it all sixes-and-sevens; some of the servants
gone, the rest going. They told him their master had bursted-up, and was
gone away since Sunday morning; and the family since Monday morning. And
his master, Perkins, would have all the meat left on his hands that he
had killed on purpose for the Clement-Pells.
You should have seen the Squire's amazed face. At first he did not know
how to take the words, and stared at Sam Rimmer without speaking.
"All the Banks has went and busted-up too," said Sam. "They be a-saying,
sir, as how there won't be nothing for nobody."
The Squire understood now. He turned tail and rushed into the house. And
rushed against Mr. Brandon, who was coming in.
"Well, have you heard the news?" asked Mr. Brandon in his thinnest
voice.
"I can't believe it; I don't believe it," raved the Squire.
"Clement-Pell would never be such a swindler. He owes me two hundred
pounds."
Mr. Brandon opened his little eyes. "Owes it _you_!"
"That day, last week, when he came driving in, in his smart cockle-shell
carriage--when you were here, you know, Brandon. He got a cheque for two
hundred pounds from me. A parcel of money that ought to have come over
from the chief Bank had not arrived, he said, and the Church Dykely
branch might be run close; would I let him have a cheque for two or
three hundred pounds on the Bank at Alcester. I told him I did not
believe I had anything like two hundred pounds lying at Alcester: but I
drew a cheque out for that amount, and wrote a note telling the people
there to cash it, and I would make it right."
"And Pell drove straight off to Alcester then and there, and cashed the
cheque?" said Mr. Brandon in his cynical way.
"He did. He had told me I should receive the money on the following day.
It did not come, or on the Friday either; and on Saturday I went to
Alcester, thinking he might have paid it in there."
"Which of course he had not," returned old Brandon. "Well, you must have
been foolish, to be so taken-in."
"Taken-in!" roared the Squire, in a passion. "Why, if he had asked me
for two thousand pounds he might have had it--a man with the riches of
Clement-Pell."
"Well, he wouldn't have got any from me. One who launched out as he did,
and let his family launch out, I should never put much trust in. Any
way, the riches are nowhere; and it is said Pell is nowhere too."
It was all true. As Sam Rimmer put it, Clement-Pell and his Banks had
bursted-up.
XXIV.
GETTING AWAY.
You have heard of the avalanches that fall without warning and crush
luckless dwellers in the Swiss mountains; and of mälströms that suddenly
swallow up vessels sailing jauntily along on a calm sea; and of railway
trains, filled with happy passengers, that one minute are running
smoothly and safely along, and the next are nowhere: but nothing of this
sort ever created the consternation that attended the bursting-up of the
Clement-Pells.
It was Saturday night.--For we have to trace back a day or two.--Seated
in the same room where I had seen him when I went back for Helen
Whitney's bag, was Clement-Pell. That the man had come to his last gasp,
he knew better than any one else in the world could have told him. How
he had braved it out, and fought against the stream, and still kept off
the explosion since the night but one before--Thursday--when Mr. Johnson
had intruded himself into the grounds and then stealthily watched him
from the trees, and he knew all was over, it might have puzzled him to
tell. How he had fought against all for months, ay, and years, turned
him sick only to recall. It had been a fierce, continuous, secret
battle; and it had nearly worn him out, and turned his face and his hair
grey before their time.
On the day following this fête-night, Friday, Clement-Pell took the
train and was at his chief Bank early. He held his interview with Mr.
Johnson; he saw other people; and his manner was free and open as usual.
On this next day, Saturday, he had been denied to nearly all callers at
the Bank: he was too busy to be interrupted, he told his clerks: and his
son James boldly made appointments with them in his name for the Monday.
After dark on Saturday evening, by the last train, he reached home,
Parrifer Hall. And there he was, in that room of his; the door and
shutters bolted and barred upon him, alternately pacing it in what
looked like tribulation, and bending over account-books by the light of
two wax candles.
Leaning his forehead on his hand, he sat there, and thought it out. He
strove to look the situation fully in the face; what it was, and what
it would be. Ruin, and worse than ruin. Clement-Pell had possessed good
principles once: so to say, he possessed them still. But he had allowed
circumstances to get the better of him and of them. He had come from
his distant home (supposed to have been London) as the manager of an
insignificant and humble little Bank: that was years ago. It was only a
venture: but a certain slice of luck, that need not be recorded here,
favoured him, and he got on beyond his best expectations. He might have
made an excellent living, nay, a good fortune, and kept his family as
gentlepeople, had he been prudent. But the luck, coming suddenly, turned
his head, you see. Since then, I, Johnny Ludlow, who am no longer the
inexperienced boy of that past time, have known it turn the heads of
others. He launched out into ventures, his family launched into expense.
The ventures paid; the undue expense did not pay. When matters came to
be summed up by a raging public, it was said that it was this expense
which had swamped the Pells. That alone, I suppose, it could not have
been: but it must have gone some way towards it.
It lay on his mind heavily that Saturday night. Looking back, he got
wondering how much more, in round figures, his family had cost him than
they ought to have cost. There had been his wife's different expenses.
Her houses, and her staff of servants, her carriages and horses, her
dresses and jewels, and all the rest that it would take too long to tell
of; and the costly bringing-up of his daughters; and the frightful
outlay of his two younger sons. Fabian and Gusty Pell ought to have had
ten thousand a year apiece, to have justified it. James had his expenses
too, but in a quieter way. Clement-Pell ran his nervous fingers through
his damp hair, as he thought of this, and in his bitter mind told
himself that his family had ruined him. Unlimited spending--show--the
shooting up above their station! He gave a curse to it now. He had not
checked it when he might have done so; and it (or they) got the upper
hand, and then he could not. Nothing is so difficult as to put down such
expenses as these when they have become a habit.
And so the years had soon come that he found need for supplies.
Unlimited as his millions were supposed to be by a confiding public,
Clement-Pell in secret wanted money more than most people. His
operations were gigantic, but then they required gigantic resources to
keep them going. Money was necessary--or the smash must have come two or
three years earlier. But sufficient money was not then conveniently
attainable by Clement-Pell: and so--he created some. He believed when
all his returns from these gigantic operations should flow in, that he
could redeem the act; could replace the money, and no one ever be the
wiser. But (it is the old story; one that has been enacted before and
since), he found somehow that he could not replace it. Like Tod and that
gambling affair when we were in London, in trying to redeem himself, he
only got further into the mire. Tod, in playing on to cover his losses,
doubled them; Clement-Pell's fresh ventures in the stream of speculation
only sent him into deeper water. Of late, Clement-Pell had been walking
as on a red-hot ploughshare. It burnt and scorched him everlastingly,
and he could not get out of it. But the end had come. The thunder-cloud
so long hovering in the air was on the very point of bursting, and he
was not able to meet it. He must get away: he could not face it.
Get away for good, as he hoped, never to be tracked by friends or foes.
What his future life was to be he did not attempt to consider: he only
knew that he would give all he ever had been worth to be able to live
on, no matter how quietly, with his fellow-men around him. The little
moderate home that he and his wife had once looked to as the haven of
their desires, would have been a harbour of safety and pride to him now.
Say what you will, men do not like to be shown up as black sheep in the
eyes of their fellows; especially if they have hitherto stood out as
conspicuously white leaders of the flock. The contrast is so great, the
fall so startling. The public gives them all sorts of hard names; as it
did in the case of Clement-Pell. A desperately hardened man he must be,
said the world, with a brazen conscience; unprincipled as--well, yes, as
Satan. But we may be very sure of one thing--that upon none does the
disgrace tell so keenly, the ruin so heavily, the sense of shame so
cruelly, as on these men themselves. Put it, if you will, that they make
a purse and carry it off to set up a new home in some foreign land--they
carry their sense of humiliation with them also; and their sun of
happiness in this life has set. Men have tried this before now, and died
of it.
That was the _best_ that lay prospectively before Clement-Pell: what the
worst might be, he did not dare dwell upon. Certain ugly possibilities
danced before his mental vision, like so many whirling ballet girls. "If
I can only get away!" he muttered; "if I can only get away!"
He tried to confine his whole attention to the ledgers before him, and
he put on his spectacles again. Mental trouble and mental work will dim
the sight as well as whiten the hair and line the face, and Clement-Pell
could not see as he had seen a year before. He altered figures; he
introduced entries; he tore out whole leaves, and made a bonfire of them
in the grate--carefully removing from the grate first of all its paper
ornament. One book he burnt wholesale, even to the covers; and the
covers made a frightful smell and daunted him.
Money was wanted here, there, everywhere. Snatching a piece of paper he
idly dotted down the large sums occurring to him at the moment; and
quite laughed as he glanced at the total. These were only business
liabilities. At his elbow lay a pile of bills: domestic and family
debts. House rent, taxes, horses, carriages, servants' wages, bills for
food, bills for attire: all running back a long while; for no one had
pressed Clement-Pell. The outlay for the fête might well have been
profuse, since none of it was ever paid for. Beside the bills lay
letters from Fabian and Gusty--wanting money as usual. To all these he
scarcely gave a thought; they were as nothing. Even though he were made
bankrupt upon them, they were still as nothing: for they would not brand
his brow with the word felon. And he knew that there were other claims,
of which no record appeared here, that might not be so easily wiped out.
Just for a moment, he lost himself in a happy reverie of what might
have been had he himself been wise and prudent. It was Gusty's pressing
letter that induced the reflection. He saw himself a prosperous man
of moderate expenses and moderate desires, living at his ease in his
own proper station, instead of apeing the great world above him. His
daughters reared to be good and thoughtful women, his sons to be steady
and diligent whatever their calling, whether business or profession. And
what were they? "Curse the money and the pride that deluded me and my
wife to blindness!" broke with a groan from the lips of Clement-Pell.
A sharp knocking at the door made him start. He looked about to see if
there were anything to throw over his tell-tale table, and had a great
mind to take off his coat and fling it there. Catching up the ornamental
paper of the grate to replace it if he could, the knocking came again,
and with it his wife's voice, asking what that smell of burning was. He
let her in, and bolted the door again.
How far Mrs. Clement-Pell had been acquainted with his position, never
came out to the world. That she must have known something of it was
thought to be certain; and perhaps the additional launching out
lately--the sojourn at Kensington, the fête, and all the rest of it--had
only been entered upon to disarm suspicion. Shut up together in that
room, they no doubt planned together the getting-away. That Mrs.
Clement-Pell fought against their leaving home and grandeur, to become
fugitives, flying in secret like so many scapegoats, would be only
natural: we should all so fight; but he must have shown her that there
was no help for it. When she quitted the room again, she looked like one
over whom twenty years had passed--as Miss Phebus told us later. And the
whole of that night, Mrs. Clement-Pell never went to bed; but was in her
room gathering things together barefooted, lest she should be heard.
Jewels--dresses--valuables! It must have been an awful night; deciding
which of her possessions she should take, and which leave for ever.
At six in the morning, Sunday, Mr. Clement-Pell's bell rang, and the
groom was summoned. He was bade get the small open carriage ready to
drive his master to the railway station to catch an early train. Being
Sunday, early trains were not common. Mr. Clement-Pell had received
news the previous night, as was intimated, of an uncle's illness. At
that early hour, and Sunday besides, Clement-Pell must have thought he
was safe from meeting people: but, as it happened (things do happen
unexpectedly in this world), in bowling out from his own gates, he
nearly bowled over Duffham. The Doctor, coming home from a distant
patient, to whom he had been called in the night, was jogging along on
his useful old horse.
"Well!" said he to the banker. "You _are_ off early."
"Drive on, don't stop," whispered Clement-Pell to the groom. "I had news
last night of the dangerous illness of my poor old uncle, and am going
to see him," he called out to Duffham as they passed. "We shall have it
piping hot again to-day, Doctor!"
The groom told of this encounter afterwards--as did Duffham too,
for that matter. And neither of them had any more suspicion that
Clement-Pell was playing a part than a baby could have had. In the
course of the morning the groom drove in again, having safely conveyed
his master to a distant station. The family went to church as usual,
chaperoned by Miss Phebus. Mrs. Clement-Pell stayed at home, saying she
had a headache: and no doubt quietly completed her preparations.