dying: Mrs. Clement-Pell must come as soon as possible, to be in time to
see him: as to bringing the children she must do as she pleased about
that. In Mrs. Pell's agitation and dismay she read the telegram aloud to
the governess and the servant who brought it to her. Then was confusion!
Mrs. Pell seemed to have lost her head. Take the children?--Of course
she should take them;--and, oh, when was the earliest time they could
start?
The earliest time by rail was the following morning. And part of
the night was again passed in preparation--openly, this time. Mrs.
Clement-Pell said they should probably stay away some days, perhaps
a week or two, and must take things accordingly. The boxes were all
brought into her room, that she might superintend; the poor old uncle
was so very particular as to dress, she said, and she trusted he might
yet recover. On the Monday morning, she and her daughters departed in
the large carriage, at the same early hour that her husband had gone,
and for the same remote station. After all, not so much luggage went;
only a box a-piece. In stepping into her carriage, she told the
servants that it would be an excellent opportunity to clean the paint
of the sitting-rooms and of the first-floor while she was away: the
previous week she had remarked to them that it wanted doing.
The day went on; the household no doubt enjoying their freedom and
letting the paint alone. No suspicion was aroused amongst them until
late in the afternoon, when a curious rumour was brought over of some
confusion at the chief Bank--that it had stopped and its master had
flown. At first the governess and servants laughed at this: but
confirmation soon came thick and three-fold. Clement-Pell had burst-up.
And why the expression "bursting-up" should have been universally
applied to the calamity by all people, high and low, I know no more
than you; but it was so. Perhaps in men's minds there existed some
assimilation between a bubble, that shines brightly for its brief
existence before bursting, like the worthless froth it is, and the
brilliant but foundationless career of Mr. Clement-Pell.
The calamity at first was too great to be believed in. It drove people
mad only to fancy it might be true: and one or two, alas! subsequently
went mad in reality. For the bursting-up of Mr. Clement-Pell's huge
undertakings caused the bursting-up of many private ones, and of
households with them. Means of living went: homes were desolated.
It would be easier to tell you of those who had not trusted money in the
hands of Clement-Pell, than of those who had. Some had given him their
all. Led away by the fascinating prospect of large interest, they forgot
future safety in the dazzling but delusive light of immediate good. I
should like it to be distinctly understood that I, Johnny Ludlow, am
writing of a matter which took place years ago; and not of any recent
event, or events, that may have since occurred to shake public
equanimity in our own local world.
Disbelief in the misfortune was natural. Clement-Pell had stood
on a lofty pedestal, unapproachable by common individuals. We put
greater trust in him--in his unbounded wealth, his good faith, his
stability--than we could have put in any other man on the face of the
globe. We should almost as soon have expected the skies to fall as
Clement-Pell. The interests of so many were involved and the ruin would
be so universal, that the terrified natives could only take refuge in
disbelief: and Squire Todhetley was amongst them.
* * * * *
The news was brought to Dyke Manor on the Tuesday morning, as you have
heard, by the butcher boy, Sam Rimmer; and was confirmed by Mr. Brandon.
When the first momentary shock had been digested by the Squire, he
arrived at the conclusion that it must be false. But that Sam had
trotted off, he might have heard the length of the Pater's tongue. Sam
being gone, he turned his indignation on Mr. Brandon.
"One would have thought you had sense to know better, Brandon," said he,
raging about the breakfast-room with the skirts of his light morning
coat held out behind him. "Giving ear to a cock-and-bull story that
_can't_ be true! Take care Pell does not get to hear it. He'd sue you
for defamation."
"He'd be welcome," nodded old Brandon, in his thin voice, as he stood,
whip in hand, against the window.
"The grand fête of last Thursday," gasped Mrs. Todhetley--who had been
puzzling her brains over Sam Rimmer's master's book, the writing in
which could never be deciphered. "Surely the Clement-Pells would not
have given that fête had things been going wrong with them."
"And poured iced champagne, unlimited, down folk's throats; and strutted
about in point-lace and diamonds," added old Brandon. "Madam, I'd
believe it all the more for that."
As he spoke, the remembrance of the scene I had witnessed in the
grounds, and Clement-Pell's curious fear later when I told him of the
same man watching him, flashed over me, bringing a conviction that the
report was true.
"I heard it at the chief Bank yesterday," began Mr. Brandon. "Having
some business to transact in the town, I went over by train in the
afternoon, and chanced to meet Wilcox in High Street. He is a red-faced
man in general----"
"Oh, I know Wilcox," impatiently interrupted the Squire. "Face as red as
the sun in a fog. What has that to do with it?"
"Well, it was as pale yesterday as the moon on a frosty night," went on
old Brandon. "I asked if he had an attack of bile--being subject to it
myself--and he said No, it was an attack of fright. And then he told me
there was a report in town that something was wrong with Pell's affairs,
and that he had run away. Wilcox will lose every penny of his savings."
"All talk; all talk," said the Pater in his obstinacy.
"And for a man to come to Wilcox's age, which must be five-and-fifty, it
is no light blow to lose a life's savings," calmly went on old Brandon.
"I went to the Bank, and found it besieged by an excited and angry crowd
fighting to get in, the door locked, and the porter vainly trying to put
up the shutters. That was enough to show me what the matter was, and I
left Wilcox to it."
The Squire stared in perplexity, rubbing up his scanty hair the wrong
way while his senses came to him.
"It is all true," said Mr. Brandon, nodding to him. "Church Dykely is in
an uproar this morning already."
"I'll go and see for myself," said the Squire, stripping off his nankeen
coat in haste so great that he tore one sleeve nearly out. "I'll go and
see; this is _not_ credible. Clement-Pell would never have swindled me
out of two hundred pounds only a day or two before he knew he was going
all to smash."
"The most likely time for him to do it," persisted Mr. Brandon. "People,
as a rule, only do these things when they are desperate."
But the Squire did not stay to listen. Settling himself into his other
coat, he went driving on across the fields as though he were walking for
a wager. Mr Brandon mounted his cob, and put up his umbrella against the
sun.
"Never embark any money with these beguiling people that promise you
undue interest, Johnny Ludlow," said Mr. Brandon, as I kept by his side,
and opened the gates for him. "Where would you have been now, young
man--or, worse, where should I have been--had I, the trustee of your
property, consented to risk it with Pell? He asked me to do it."
"Clement-Pell did, sir? When?"
"A year or two ago. I gave him an answer, Johnny; and I fancy he has not
altogether liked me since. 'I could not think of placing even a shilling
of Johnny Ludlow's where I did not know it to be safe,' I said to him.
'It will be safe with me,' says Pell, sharply. 'Possibly so, Mr Pell,' I
answered; 'but you see there's only your word as guarantee, and that is
not enough for an honest trustee.' That shut him up."
"Do you mean to say you have doubted Clement-Pell's stability, Brandon?"
demanded the Squire, who was near enough to hear this.
"I don't know about doubting," was the answer. "I have thought it as
likely to come to a smash as not. That the chances for it were rather
better than half."
This sent the Squire on again. _He_ had no umbrella; and his straw hat
glistened in the heat.
Church Dykely was in a commotion. Folk were rushing up to the little
branch Bank black in the face, as if their collars throttled them; for
the news was spreading like fire in dry turf. The Squire went bolting in
through every obstruction, and seized upon the manager.
"Do you mean to tell me that it's true, Robertson?" he fiercely
cried.--"That things have gone to smash?"
"I am afraid it is, sir," said Robertson, who looked more dead than
alive. "I am unable to understand it. It has fallen upon me with as much
surprise as it has on others."
"Now, don't you go and tell falsehoods, Robertson," roared the Squire,
as if he meant to shake the man. "Surprise upon you, indeed! Why, have
you not been here--at the head and tail of everything?"
"But I did not know how affairs were going. Indeed, sir, I tell you
truth."
"Tell a jackass not to bray!" foamed the Squire. "Have you been short of
funds here lately, or have you not? Come, answer me that."
"It is true. We have been short. But Mr. Clement-Pell excused it to me
by saying that a temporary lock-up ran the Banks short, especially the
small branch Banks. I declare, before Heaven, that I implicitly believed
him," added Robertson, "and never suspected there could be any graver
cause."
"Then you are either a fool or a knave."
"Not a knave, Squire Todhetley. A fool I suppose I have been."
"I want my two hundred pounds," returned the Squire. "And, Robertson, I
mean to have it."
But Robertson had known nothing of the loan; was surprised to hear of it
now. As to repayment, that was out of his power. He had not two hundred
pence left in the place, let alone pounds.
"It is a case of swindle," said the Squire. "It's not one of ordinary
debt."
"I can't help it," returned Robertson. "If it were to save Mr.
Clement-Pell from hanging, I could not give a stiver of it. There's my
own salary, sir, since Midsummer; that, I suppose, I shall lose: and I
can't afford it, and I don't know what will become of me and my poor
little children."
At this, the Squire's voice and anger dropped, and he shook hands with
Robertson. But, as a rule, every one began by brow-beating the manager.
The noise was deafening.
How had Pell got off? By which route: road or rail? By day or night? It
was a regular hubbub of questions. Mr. Brandon sat on his cob all the
while, patiently blinking his eyes at the people.
Palmerby of Rock Cottage came up; his old hands trembling, his face as
white as the new paint on Duffham's windows. "It can't be true!" he was
crying. "It can't be true!"
"Had you money in his hands, Palmerby?"
"Every shilling I possess in the world."
Mr. Brandon opened his lips to blow him up for foolishness: but
something in the poor old face stopped him. Palmerby elbowed his way
into the Bank. Duffham came out of his house, a gallipot of ointment in
his hand.
"Well, this is a pretty go!"
The Squire took him by the buttonhole. "Where's the villainous swindler
off to, Duffham?"
"I should like to know," answered the surgeon. "I'd be pretty soon on
his trail and ask him to refund my money."
"But surely he has none of yours?"
"Pretty nigh half the savings of my years."
"Mercy be good to us!" cried the Pater. "He got two hundred pounds out
of me last week. What's to become of us all?"
"It's not so much a question of what is to become of us--of you and me,
Squire," said Duffham, philosophically, "as of those who had invested
with him their all. We can bear the loss: you can afford it without much
hurt; I must work a few years longer, Heaven permitting me, than I had
thought to work. That's the worst of us. But what will those others do?
What will be the worst for them?"
Mr. Brandon nodded approvingly from his saddle.
"Coming home last night from Duck Lane--by the way, there's another
infant at John Mitchel's, because he had not enough before--the
blacksmith accosted me, saying Clement-Pell was reported to be in a mess
and to have run off. The thing sounded so preposterous that I thought at
first Dobbs must have been drinking; and told him that I happened to
know Clement-Pell was only off to a relative's death-bed. For on Sunday
morning, you see----"
A crush and rush stopped Duffham's narrative, and nearly knocked us all
down. Ball the milkman had come bumping amongst us in a frantic state,
his milk-cans swinging from his shoulders against my legs.
"I say, Ball, take care of my trousers. Milk stains, you know."
"Master Ludlow, sir, I be a'most mad, I think. Folks is saying as Mr.
Clement-Pell and his banks have busted-up."
"Well? You have not lost anything, I suppose?"
"Not lost!" panted poor Ball. "I've lost all I've got. 'Twere a hundred
pound, Mr. Johnny, scraped together hard enou', as goodness knows. Mr.
Clement-Pell were a-talking to me one day, and he says, says he, Ah,
says he, it's difficult to get much interest now; money's plentiful. I
give eight per cent., says he; most persons gets but three. Would ye
take mine, sir, says I; my hundred pound? If you like, he says. And I
took it to him, gentlemen, thinking what luck I was in, and how safe it
were. My hundred pound!"--letting the cans down with a clatter. "My
hundred pound that I'd toiled so hard for! Gentlefolk, wherever be all
the money a-gone?"
Well, it was a painful scene. One we were glad to get out of. The
Squire, outrageously angry at the way he had been done out of his money,
insisted on going to Parrifer Hall. Mr. Brandon rode his cob; Duffham
stepped into his surgery to get his hat.
One might have fancied a sale was going on. The doors were open: boxes
belonging to some of the servants were lying by the side-entrance, ready
to be carted away; people (creditors and curiosity-mongers) stood about.
Sam Rimmer's master, the butcher, came out of the house as we went in,
swearing. Perkins had not been paid for a twelvemonth, and said it would
be his ruin. Miss Phebus was in the hall, and seemed to have been having
it out with him. She was a light-haired, bony lady of thirty-five, or
so, and had made a rare good gipsy that day in the tent. Her eyes were
peculiar: green in some lights, yellow in others: a frightfully hard
look they had in them this morning.
"Oh, Mr. Todhetley, I am so glad to see you!" she said. "It is a cruel
turn that the Clement-Pells have served me, leaving me here without
warning, to bear the brunt of all this! Have you come in the interests
of the family?"
"I've come after my own interests, ma'am," returned the Pater. "To find
out, if I can, where Clement-Pell has gone to: and to see if I can get
back any of the money I have been done out of."
"Why, it seems every one must be a creditor!" she exclaimed in surprise,
on hearing this.
"I know I am one," was his answer.
"To serve _me_ such a trick,--to behave to me with this duplicity: it is
infamous," went on Miss Phebus, after she had related to us the chief
events of the Sunday, as connected with the story of the dying uncle and
the telegram. "If I get the chance, I will have the law against them,
Mr. Todhetley."
"It is what a few more of us mean to do, ma'am," he answered.
"They owe me forty pounds. Yes, Mr. Duffham, it is forty pounds: and I
cannot afford to lose it. Mrs. Pell has put me off from time to time:
and I supposed it to be all right; I suspected nothing. They have not
treated me well lately, either. Leaving me here to take care of the
house while they were enjoying themselves up in Kensington! I had a
great mind to give warning then. The German governess got offended while
they were in town, and left. Some friend of Fabian Pell's was rude to
her."
A little man looked into the room just then; noting down the furniture
with his eye. "None of these here articles must be moved, you
understand, mum," he said to Miss Phebus.
"Don't talk to me," she answered wrathfully. "I am going out of the
house as soon as I can put my things together." And the man went away.
"If I had only suspected!" she resumed to us, her angry tone full of
pain; "and I think I might have done so, had I exercised my wits. My
room is next to Mrs. Pell's; but it's not much larger than a closet, and
has no fireplace in it: she only gave it me because it was not good
enough for any one else. Saturday night was very hot--as you must
remember--and I could not sleep. The window was open, but the room felt
like an oven. After tossing about for I don't know how long, I got up
and opened the door, thinking it might admit a breath of air. At that
moment I heard sounds below--the quiet shutting of a door, and advancing
footsteps. Wondering who could be up so late, I peeped out and saw Mrs.
Pell. She came up softly, a candle in her hand, and her face quite
curious and altered--aged and pale and haggard. She must be afraid of
the ghosts, I thought to myself, as she turned off into her chamber--for
we had been telling ghost-stories that night up to bed-time. After that,
I did not get to sleep; not, as it seemed, for hours; and all the time I
heard drawers being opened and shut in her bed and dressing-room. She
must even then have been preparing for flight."
"And the dying uncle was invented for the occasion, I presume," remarked
Mr. Duffham.
"All I know is, I never heard of an uncle before," she tartly answered.
"I asked Mrs. Clement-Pell on Sunday night where the uncle lived, and
how long a journey they had to go: she answered shortly that he was at
his country house, and bade me not tease her. Mr. Duffham, can my own
boxes be stopped?"
"I should think no one would attempt to do it," he answered. "But I'd
get them out as soon as I could, were I you, Miss Phebus."
"What a wreck it will be!" she exclaimed.
"You have used the right word, ma'am," put in Mr. Brandon, who had left
his horse outside. "And not only here. Wrecks they will be; and many of
them."
We stood looking at one another ruefully. The Pater had come to hunt up
his two hundred pounds; but there did not seem much chance of his doing
it. "Look here," said he suddenly to the governess, "where was that
telegram sent from?"
"We have not been able to discover. It was only seen by Mrs. Pell. After
she had read it aloud, she crushed it up in her hand, as if in frightful
distress, and called out about the poor dear old uncle. She took care it
should not be seen: we may be very sure of that."
"But who sent the telegram?"
"I don't know," said Miss Phebus viciously. "Her husband, no doubt.
Neither was the luggage that they took with them labelled: we have
remembered the fact since."
"I think we might track them by that luggage," observed the Pater. "Five
big boxes."
"If you do track them by it I'll eat the luggage wholesale," cried wise
old Brandon. "Clement-Pell's not a fool, or his wife either. They'll go
off just in the opposite direction that they appeared to go--and their
boxes in another. As to Pell, he was probably unknown at the distant
station the groom drove him to."
There was no end to be served in staying longer at the house, and we
quitted it, leaving poor Miss Phebus to her temper. I had never much
liked her; but I could not help feeling for her that unlucky morning.
"What's to be done now?" gloomily cried the Squire, while old Brandon
was mounting. "It's like being in a wood that you can't get out of. If
Clement-Pell had played an honest part with me: if he had come and said,
'Mr. Todhetley, I am in sore need of a little help,' and told me a bit
about things: I don't say that I would have refused him the money. But
to dupe me out of it in the specious way he did was nothing short of
swindling; and I will bring him to book for it if I can."
That day was only the beginning of sorrow. There have been such cases
since: perhaps worse; where a sort of wholesale ruin has fallen upon a
neighbourhood: but none, to me, have equalled that. It was the first
calamity of the kind in my experience; and in all things, whether of joy
or sorrow, our earliest impressions are the most vivid. It is the first
step that costs, the French tell us: and that is true of all things.
* * * * *
The ruin turned out to be wider even than was feared; the distress
greater. Some had only lost part of their superfluous cash. It was
mortifying; but it did not further affect their prosperity, or take from
them the means of livelihood; no luxuries need be given up, or any
servants dispensed with. Others had invested so much that it would throw
them back years, perhaps cripple them for life. Pitiable enough, that,
but not the worst. It was as nothing to those who had lost their all.
People made it their business to find out more about Mr. and Mrs.
Clement-Pell than had been known before. Both were of quite obscure
origin, it turned out, and he had _not_ been a lawyer in London, but
only a lawyer's clerk. So much the more credit to him for getting on to
be something better. If he had only had the sense to let well alone! But
she?--well, all I mean to say here, is this: the farmers she had turned
up her nose at were far, far better born and bred, even the smallest of
them, than she was. Let that go: other women have been just as foolishly
upstart as Mrs. Clement-Pell. One fact came out that I think _riled_ the
public worse than any other: that his Christian name was Clement and his
surname Pell. He had united the two when growing into a great man, and
put a "J." before the Clement, which had no right there. Mr. Brandon had
known it all along--at least he chanced to know that in early life his
name was simply Clement Pell. The Squire, when he heard of this, went
into a storm of reproach at old Brandon, because he had not told it.
"Nay, why should I have sought to do the man an injury?" remonstrated
Mr. Brandon. "It was no business of mine, that I should interfere. We
must live and let live, Squire, if we care to go through the world
peaceably."
The days went on, swelling the list of creditors who came forward to
declare themselves. The wonder was, that so many had been taken in. But
you see, people had not made it their business to proclaim that their
money lay with Clement-Pell. Gentlefolk who lived on their fortunes;
professional men of all classes, including the clergy; commercial men of
high and low degree; small tradespeople; widows with slender incomes,
and spinsters with less. If Clement-Pell had taken the money of these
people, not intentionally to swindle them, as the Squire put it in
regard to his own, but only knowing there was a chance that it would not
be safe, he must have been a hard and cruel man. I think the cries of
the defrauded of that unhappy time must have gone direct to heaven.
He was not spared. Could hard words injure an absentee, Clement-Pell
must have come in for all sorts of harm. His ears burned, I should
fancy--if there's any truth in the saying that ears burn when distant
friends give pepper. The queerest fact was, that no money seemed to be
left. Of the millions that Clement-Pell had been worth, or had had to
play with, nothing remained. It was inconceivable. What had become of
the stores? The hoards of gold; the chests, popularly supposed to be
filled with it; the bank-notes; the floating capital--where was it all?
No one could tell. People gazed at each other with dismayed faces as
they asked it. Bit by bit, the awful embarrassment in which he had been
plunged for years came to light. The fictitious capital he had created
had consumed itself: and the good money of the public had gone with it.
Of course he had made himself secure and carried off loads, said the
maddened creditors. But they might have been mistaken there.
For a week or two confusion reigned. Accountants set to work in a fog;
official assignees strove to come to the bottom of the muddy waters.
There existed some of what people called securities; but they were so
hemmed in by claims that the only result would be that there would not
be anything for any one. Clement-Pell had done well to escape, or the
unhappy victims had certainly tarred and feathered him. All that time
he was being searched for, and not a clue could be obtained to him.
Stranger perhaps to say, there was no clue to his wife and daughters
either. The five boxes had disappeared. It was ascertained that certain
boxes, answering to the description, had been sent to London on the
Monday from a populous station by a quick train, and were claimed at the
London terminus by a gentleman who did _not_ bear any resemblance to
Clement-Pell. I'm sure the excitement of the affair was something before
unknown to the Squire, as he raged up hill and down dale in the August
weather, and it must have been as good as a course of Turkish baths to
him.