THE CRASH
The first to see the blue letters was a milkman driving his wagon into
town. At first he thought it some advertisement such as was often posted
in conspicuous places, and wondered a little to see it where it was.
Then, as he drew near enough to read it, he nearly fell over among his
cans, while his hair seemed rising on his head. He was one of those who
had taken his money from the National and deposited it in Grey’s Bank,
where there were now nearly one hundred and fifty dollars. Not a large
sum, but representing a great deal to him—a new range his wife had set
her heart upon, and his winter’s coal; a new overcoat for Johnny, and
one for himself, and so on. The whole list came up before him as his
lips formed the words, “This bank closed,” but gave no sound. Men have
lost their thousands and never felt it more keenly than the milkman, who
did not notice that his horse had started on, thinking he had been long
enough in one place. The first stop was near by, and as the maid came
out with her bowl the milkman said to her with long-drawn breaths:
“Grey’s Bank has busted! Got anything in it?”
In a moment the bowl, milk and all, were on the walk, and the girl was
staring open-mouthed across the street at the placard on the door.
“Failed! Burst! and my money gone! It can’t be,” and she began to cry,
while the milkman drove on, carrying the news with him, until every
house on his beat knew it, and half-dressed men, and women, too, were in
the street, hurrying towards the bank, as they had done on the morning
of the great run.
The cashier, who boarded near by and had just risen, was pounced upon to
tell what he knew. He knew nothing, except that funds were rather low,
as they had been several times when the bank had righted again.
“Good heavens! I ain’t to blame,” he said to the excited crowd, which
looked as if about to lay violent hands on him. “I can’t help it. I
didn’t know it,” and he started for the street, putting on his coat as
he ran.
By this time there was quite a crowd of people around the bank, reading
the notice and giving vent to their feelings as they read.
“Let us in,” some said to the cashier; but he knew better than that, and
shook his head.
“I haven’t the key. Wait for the boss,” he said.
“Where is he? Where’s Grey? Call him up. We want to know what he has to
say for himself,” was heard on every side, while two or three rushed to
a store near by, where there was a telephone, each trying to reach it
first.
“Leave it to me,” the cashier said, and the Central was rung up and
“Grey at his house” called for, while “Halloo!” soon came in response,
in Louie’s voice.
“I want your father,” the cashier screamed in his excitement, and Louie
replied:
“He is not here. We don’t know where he is. What is the matter?”
“The bank is closed—failed! Where can he be?” was shouted, but Louie
didn’t answer.
She had dropped insensible upon the floor, where the housemaid found her
a few minutes later. Her mother had missed her father, and was making
inquiries for him when the message came through the ‘phone, bringing
alarm and dismay and an insight into some things which had seemed
strange of late.
It did not take long to restore Louie to consciousness, and in a few
minutes she was on her wheel, speeding away to the bank, where she felt
her father was.
On her way she passed the White House, and glanced towards it with a
thought of Herbert, and what he would say and do, and with a thought,
too, of Fred Lansing on the ocean that summer day, with no suspicion of
what was transpiring in Merivale. This she did not know, as she had not
heard what the judge said to Herbert when he gave him Fred’s letter the
day before.
The village was thoroughly roused by this time, and the country, too. No
one could tell who carried it, but the news had reached Godfrey Sheldon,
as he was washing himself in a tin basin by the well, and thinking what
a hot day it was going to be for him to drive to an adjoining town to
pay for some oxen and a Jersey cow, the money for which he must get from
Grey’s Bank. To say that he swore is putting it mildly, and between his
swearing and excitement he emptied the tin basin into the well and
finished his ablutions in the pail of water drawn for the house. He
called himself a fool for leaving so much in the bank as he ran his
horse into town, hoping against hope, and finding that the worst had
happened when he saw the notice on the door and the crowd in the street.
“Heavens and earth!” he exclaimed, clutching first one and then another.
“How much do you s’pose he’ll pay on the dollar? or be we tee-totally
swamped?”
Nobody answered him. Nobody knew. Each was intent upon himself, and
Nancy Sharp was the most intent of all. She had heard the news in
White’s Row, where as usual on Monday morning she was busy over her
washtub. For a moment she seemed paralyzed, and stood with her mouth
wide open and a wet towel dangling high in the air and dripping up her
arms and down to the floor. Then she started for the scene of action,
outrunning every one who joined her. If she was excited at the great
run, she was now a howling hyena, threatening to tear out Grey’s heart
if she could get at him.
“All my savings in hard, round silver dollars gone, and wasn’t it only
Saturday I put in the last, and he took it—the wretch, knowin’ he was
busted!” she said, and this was the plaint of three or four more who had
hurried to place their money with the man they trusted, and for whom now
there were not names bad enough.
Even Louie, the favorite of the town, was greeted with a low hiss from
some quarter as she rode into their midst and, dismounting, said:
“Hasn’t father appeared? He must be in the bank. Open the door,
somebody.”
She looked helplessly round, while many voices cried:
“Yes, open the door, and bring him out and make him tell us what he has
done with our money, or we’ll hang him up on a tree,” one brutal fellow,
who had only twenty dollars in the bank, said.
“Easy enough to tell. Spent it in fine carriages, and horses, and
diamonds, and pianos, and party gowns,” some one replied.
“And hundred-dollar bicycles!” was added, with a glance at Louie, who
was leaning on her wheel, sick at heart as she heard what was said, and
thought how soon the loss of money would transform seeming friends into
cruel foes.
She had beckoned the cashier to her, and asked for a key. On being told
that her father had both, she said:
“I am sure he is here. He is not at home. We must get to him somehow.”
She did not think of suicide, or that he was asleep. He was there, and
afraid to come out, and she kept calling to him, “Father, let me in! It
is Louie!” while there fell a kind of hush upon the people waiting for
the answer, and pressing into the rear yard near the door.
“Oh, keep back, please,” she said, as she heard her father trying to
unlock the door.
“Not much back. I’m going to have my silver dollars—seventy-five of ’em!
He can’t have spent ’em all since Saturday night,” Nancy Sharp screamed,
crowding up to the door, which was opened slowly, disclosing a face
before which the crowd recoiled, it was so corpse-like and haggard, with
a wild look in the bloodshot eyes, and a tremor about the lips which
tried to smile as Mr. Grey said:
“Good-morning, friends. Excuse me for not coming to you before. I must
have overslept. Please let my daughter in a moment, and I’ll come out
and explain, or Lawyer Blake will do it for me. Isn’t he here?”
He had listened for the muttering of the storm, and when it came and
increased in violence and he knew that a crowd was gathering in the
street and would soon be clamoring for him, all his courage left him,
and as the angry voices grew louder and there were kicks and thumps on
the door, with cries for Grey to show himself, he cowered in a corner in
abject fear of what awaited him beyond the heavy doors of his bank. Was
there no friend outside? No one to stand between him and bodily harm? he
was asking himself, when Louie’s voice came to him like a pæan of
safety. No one would touch him with her at his side, and summoning all
his courage he unlocked the door, greeted the people with his old-time
courtesy, and asked for Lawyer Blake, who had just arrived, and with the
cashier and Louie entered the room, the door of which was closed.
“Good-morning, Blake,” Mr. Grey said, as if it were an ordinary meeting.
“I suppose you have brought that paper. Get at it, please, while I have
my wits. That noise outside drives me half crazy.”
The paper was hastily produced, signed by Mr. Grey, and acknowledged
before the cashier as notary and delivered to Mr. Blake.
“There, that’s over,” Mr. Grey said, “and now please step into the front
room. I must speak to Louie.”
They left him alone with his daughter, who stood gazing at him in
horror, he was so changed. Alone with her he broke down entirely, and
covering his face with his hands, sobbed like a child, while she
regarded him fixedly and almost sternly.
“Oh, Louie,” he began feebly and in a whisper, “I dreaded you more than
any one else—more than your mother. She is my wife and must stand by me
and will not feel it as keenly as you, who have thought me so perfect.
Oh, Louie, when I kissed you last night, I thought it might be for the
last time. Let me sit down and I’ll tell you about it.”
He tottered to the couch, and she came and stood beside him, listening
while he told her of his speculations, first with his own money and then
with the depositors’; and how, when funds were needed for the house, he
had drawn from the bank, when he had none there which lawfully belonged
to him.
“And that isn’t the worst,” he said, as if resolved to make a clean
breast of it; “it was not always stocks. It was regular gambling at the
last. You asked me once if I were a gambler. I told you no. I wasn’t
then. I have been since. I had a friend in New York who for a percentage
did it for me with money I sent him—sometimes my own but oftener other
people’s. Sometimes he won; sometimes he lost, and latterly it was more
loss than gain. Everything was loss. I expected a big sum yesterday
which would have put me on my feet, and had sworn to be an honest man if
it came. I did, Louie, and I prayed in church all the time that it might
come, and I’d begin new. The news came, and it was ruin. Your money is
safe. I couldn’t let you lose that, and I took one hundred and fifty
dollars from the funds and put away for you.”
There were little spots of red in the eyes which flashed angrily as
Louie exclaimed, “I shall not touch it! I shall share with the rest! I
can afford to lose far better than many of them!”
To this Mr. Grey made no reply, but continued: “I’ve made Blake my
assignee. I saw him yesterday, and I made Nancy Sharp a preferred
creditor. It’s a big joke,” and he laughed as he thought of the joke.
Then he went on: “Stand by me, Louie. No matter how bad I am, I am your
father, and love you so much. Don’t let them send me to prison. They can
do it if they want to. And don’t look so at me,” he added, as Louie’s
face grew paler and her eyes darker with a look she had never given him
before, and from which he shrank. “I thought to end my life last night,
and again this morning, but a thought of you restrained me. I have the
means—see!” and held up the revolver, while Louie drew back from him a
moment.
Then, with a quick movement she took it from him, and said:
“Father, would you kill yourself? Shame on you! Better State’s prison
than that. I would rather think of you a felon than a suicide. How many
balls are there in it?”
“Three,” he answered, and in rapid succession three reports rang through
the room, the balls entering the floor, at which they were aimed.
Outside there was comparative quiet, for Mr. Blake had left the bank by
the front door, and was explaining as well as he could, and advising the
people to go home. Everything would be settled in time, and matters
might not be as bad as they seemed. Mr. Grey would do everything he
could for them, and they could do no good hanging round the bank.
“But we want to see Grey, and give him a piece of our mind,” several
said.
These were mostly the small depositors who, like the milkman, had lost
their all. One woman had laid by thirty dollars for some teeth to be
made that week and she wrung her hands in despair over her loss.
Nancy Sharp was worst of all, and tore round like a wild beast, shaking
her fists and threatening all sorts of harm if once “she got that Grey
in her clutches.” At last she grew so violent and noisy that Mr. Blake
whispered to her,
“Be quiet, Nancy! you are the preferred creditor!”
Just what a preferred creditor meant, Nancy did not know, until Mr.
Blake explained what it was, and that she would be paid in full. She
understood that, and from a tigress, ready to tear Mr. Grey in pieces,
she became at once a lamb so far as he was concerned, and ready to do
battle with all who were censuring him.
It was at this point that the pistol shots were heard, sending
consternation through the crowd, which could not be kept back any
longer. The cashier, who had been standing guard at the door outside,
opened it, and a few of those nearest to him rushed in, expecting at
least to find Mr. Grey dead and possibly his daughter. What they found
was Louie with the smoking revolver in her hand, and her father lying
upon the couch, white and still as a corpse.
“Go back,” she said, advancing towards them. “No one is hurt. I have
made that impossible. See!” and she pointed to the three bullet holes in
the floor.
“Yes, go back, you spalpeens, and mind your business,” Nancy Sharp
cried, plunging into the crowd, which she shoved right and left until
the room was cleared of all but Mr. Blake and the cashier, who had
re-entered it.
“You must get your father home. I have telephoned to have the carriage
sent. It will soon be here,” the latter said.
Louie scarcely heard him. Her ears were strained to catch a voice she
did not hear, and her eyes were looking through the open door for a face
she did not see. Where was Herbert in this her hour of trouble, and
would he not come to her?
This was a question she had asked herself many times during the terrible
ordeal through which she had passed. He must have heard the news.
Everybody had, it seemed, and why did he not come to her. Of course all
was over between them now that this disgrace had come upon her. Her
father _was_ a gambler, and remembering what Herbert had once said to
her on that subject, she could not expect him to be loyal to her.
“But he might come and speak to me for the sake of what has been,” she
thought, and her lip quivered and she had hard work to keep back her
tears.
“’Tother bank is open. Maybe the judge will help out as Mr. Grey helped
him,” she heard someone saying.
But she knew better than to expect that. Judge White would not help her
father, and could not now if he would. It was too late for that. The
crash had come. Failure was declared. The mob was there howling for
their money, and she was left alone to battle with the wild storm
without a sympathetic face or word to cheer her. If the White Bank was
open Herbert was probably there, or would be soon, and then he _will_
come, she said to herself over and over again as the minutes passed and
still he did not come. Where was he?
Breakfast at the White House was always late, and the family were at the
table when the news reached them, brought by the servant, who, after
passing the coffee, said:
“The Grey Bank has burst and the street is full of people.”
“What!” both the Judge and Herbert exclaimed together, the former
putting his coffee down so quickly that some of it was spilled on the
cloth.
The girl repeated her news with additions and told how she knew it.
There could be no mistake, and although he would not like to acknowledge
it, the Judge was only conscious of a stir of exultation, such as mean
natures feel when misfortune has befallen a rival. He certainly did not
seem greatly disturbed as he said:
“Bust at last, has he? I told you so. I knew he couldn’t go on cutting
such a swell and kicking up such a dust as he did yesterday. I haven’t
got it out of my eyes and throat yet.”
The dust of the Grey carriage was the last grievance, and the Judge
dwelt upon it, while Herbert looked at him in surprise.
“Father,” he said, at last, “never mind the dust. Think of the trouble
Mr. Grey is in; can’t you help him?”
“Can’t I help him?” the Judge repeated. “Help him—how? Pay his debts?
No, sir! He has made his bed and must lie on it!”
“But he helped us,” Herbert continued.
“I know he did,” his father replied, “but played right into his own
pocket. We were honest, and not to blame for the run, while I’ll be
hanged if I think he is honest. I wonder how Sheldon feels now. Serves
him right, and the rest of ’em. I don’t believe he’ll pay ten cents on a
dollar. He can’t, spending as he has—dressing up his wife and that girl.
I am sorry for her; but s’posin’ your tomfooling with her had amounted
to something, where’d you be now.”
“Just where I’m going,” Herbert said, leaving the room and going for his
wheel, on which he rode rapidly to Mr. Grey’s house, expecting to find
Louie there.
The maid told him she was at the bank, and that Mrs. Grey was in
hysterics, with two physicians attending her.
Herbert started at once for the bank, where he heard a wonderful story.
Louie had stayed there all night with her father, who had tried to kill
himself, and would have done so if Louie had not snatched the revolver
from him and fired it off, wounding him, it was said. She was with him
now, and the lawyer and cashier were with her and no one else was
allowed to go in.
Herbert did not believe the first of the story, but was glad of the
last, for if no one was allowed in the bank, he would not be expected to
go in. He was sorry for Louie, but too cowardly to identify himself very
prominently with her in the face of this trouble and before the curious
world. Fear of his father restrained him, and although he expressed
himself strongly as sorry for Mr. Grey, and even asserted his belief
that he would pay every indebtedness in time, he made no effort to enter
the bank, but hovered near the door, hoping to get a sight of Louie, and
hearing her voice once as she said:
“I wish the carriage would come. Will they molest father, do you think,
when they see him?”
Then all his manhood rose to the surface. Molest Louie’s father! He
guessed not, when he was there, and he waited for the carriage and
talked to the crowd, which, in some respects, was different from that on
the day of the run. Then there had at first been fierce anger, which had
resolved itself into excitement and haste when it was known that the
money was forthcoming. Here the anger was more intense because more
quiet. The case was probably a hopeless one—they would never get their
money—and some of the men had a dangerous look as they spoke together in
low tones and watched the entrance to the rear yard to the bank.
When the Grey carriage came up, there was a murmur like the low
muttering of distant thunder, and Herbert drew near to the gate, around
which some of the most angry men were standing.
But whatever the people felt was kept down by the sight of the man, who
had aged ten years since they saw him. All his elasticity and erectness
of figure was gone, and he stooped as he walked, with Louie and the
cashier on either side of him.
The crowd was very quiet as it watched him with something like pity in
their hearts. Then suddenly a stone crashed against the side of the
carriage and bounded off upon the walk. Then a second followed, hitting
one of the horses and making him rear upon his hind feet. The stones
came from the same group of boys who, during the run, had shouted
themselves hoarse for Grey, the honest banker, and given three groans
for Old Money Bags. Now Grey was down, and Money Bags was up, and the
boys were carrying out the brutal instincts of their class.
“It’s a shame!” Herbert said, starting for the boys; but Nancy Sharp was
there before him, her brawny arms scattering the boys right and left,
and her big hand seizing one by the hair and holding him fast while she
shook him vigorously.
The preferred creditor business was bearing fruit and the volubility of
her tongue was something wonderful. She was sure of her money—Mr. Blake
had said so—and Mr. Grey was a “misfortunate man whom she would not see
insulted.”
Something in her attitude shamed Herbert, who went at once to Louie’s
side and said to her:
“I cannot tell you how sorry I am. Let me help your father.”
“Oh, Herbert,” Louie cried, “I am so glad you have come. I wanted you so
badly—wanted somebody to help me bear it. No one has said a kind word
but Nancy Sharp.”
“I came as soon as I heard of it. I went to your house first,” Herbert
said, offering again to help her father.
But she did not relinquish her hold. She only put her hand on Herbert’s
arm to steady herself, she felt so faint.
Not until he was in the carriage did Mr. Grey seem conscious of the
crowd. Then he lifted his hat and bowed, while a smile broke over his
pallid features and his lips moved as if he would speak. Louie saw it
and whispered, “Don’t father. Don’t say anything now. It can do no
good.”
Then she turned to Herbert, who helped her in and held her hand a moment
with a warm pressure which she felt during all the rapid drive home—past
stores and shops, and houses, from which curious faces were looking, as
if Mr. Grey were some new species of the genus homo which they had never
seen before.
Louie had half hoped Herbert would go with her, and for a moment he had
thought to do so. But his father had just come up, puffing and blowing
with heat and impatience, and glad that the thing was over and Grey
going quietly home.
“This must seem kinder nateral to you, seein’ ’tain’t long sence you was
in the same boat,” Nancy Sharp said, as she elbowed her way up to him.
The Judge glared at her, but made no reply. He had never forgotten the
poor old man whom she pitied, and had raised her rent a dollar a month
in consequence of the part she had played in the run. He knew her twenty
silver dollars were in Grey’s bank, and did not feel particularly sorry
for her. She had lost it, of course, and after he passed her something
impelled him to turn and say, “How much are you out?”
“Not a red cent,” she answered. “I’m a preferred creditor, I be. Mr.
Grey done the square thing by me, same as he did by you, and here in his
trouble you stalk away without a word to these folks thet they’d better
go home. I’ve been advisin’ ’em, but they won’t hear me.”
For a moment the judge hesitated. He did not want them standing around
in front of his bank. It reminded him too much of a day he would like to
forget, and he finally said, “What are you waiting for? You can’t get
your money to-day, if you ever do. You’d better go home. There’s no good
standing here, gaping at the bank!”
Most of them took his advice, and went home with heavy hearts as they
thought of their hard earnings gone through the recklessness of a man
they had trusted implicitly, and who was lying in his own house, white
and still as the dead, speaking to no one and only answering in
monosyllables when spoken to.
He had not seen his wife. The physicians did not think it best, as she
was growing quiet when he came, and the sight of him would set her off
again with hysterics, which, complicated with heart trouble, might prove
serious.
Louie had a double task, caring for her father and mother, and she faced
it bravely. She saw Mr. Blake when he came in the afternoon and heard
from him how little there was left of the wreck, and asked for a list of
the depositors, especially the smaller ones—the working women and men to
whom their loss meant more than to Godfrey Sheldon. She called the four
servants together—the coachman and cook and laundress and housemaid—and
said to them:
“We can pay you up to Saturday night. After that we can’t afford it, and
you must go.”
“What will you do?” they asked, and she replied:
“I am young and strong. I can get along somehow.”
The coachman and laundress knew they were not necessary, but the cook
and housemaid felt that they were, and said:
“We will stay a few days, and matters may brighten.”
Louie thanked them, but knew that things would not brighten. She had
talked with her mother, and made her understand how poor they were, and
won her consent to sell everything which belonged to them, and pay the
small depositors as far as possible. She was reckoning on paper how much
the house and furniture and horses and carriage and diamonds and piano
and plate would probably bring, when Herbert was announced. The moment
she was alone with him Louie began to cry. Then, repressing her tears,
she said, “It was kind in you to come. I knew you would, but you know
everything is ended now.”
“What do you mean?” Herbert asked, pretending not to understand her.
“I mean,” she said, with a catch between every breath, “I cannot expect
you to think of me as you have done, after what has happened. You asked
me once if father was a gambler, and I was very angry. Now, I am too
hurt to be angry at anyone. I feel as if every nerve was bruised with a
sudden blow. We shall never rise above this disgrace, and you must not
share it. You cannot. You are free, except as a friend. I do want you
for that. Oh, Herbert!”
She broke down a little, then rallied, and her eyes bright with tears
looked at the young man, who was silent a moment; then he said, “You
mistake me if you think I wish to be free. I do not, but am so hedged in
that I cannot do what I ought to do—come out openly as your future
husband and stand by you. Father is like a raging lion. I must give him
time to cool, and then I’ll tell him the truth, but give you up—never!”
He meant what he said, but he seemed depressed, and his visit was on the
whole unsatisfactory, as he had no comfort to offer, except that others
had failed besides Mr. Grey and come out all right, and that in any
event he should love her always. He had not passed a very happy day, but
he did not tell her so, or of the wild stories afloat with regard to the
failure and its cause. Speculation and gambling were words freely used,
and from being the most popular man in town, Mr. Grey was dragged so low
that Louie would have shuddered had she heard all that was said of him.
Herbert had heard, but what affected him most was his father’s attitude.
“Sorry? Of course I am. I am always sorry for the dog that is under, and
Grey is so far under that he’ll never get up again,” he said to some men
who were discussing the failure. “I always guessed he wasn’t square, and
now I know it. There’s a family come to town, who lived in Denver. Quiet
folks, who mind their own business. They didn’t know Grey personally,
but they heard of him as a gambler. Yes, sir—a gambler, who kept a room
on purpose for it, where young men went and old ones, too. They weren’t
going to blab, but they’ve told it now he’s burst. Yes, sir—a gambler,
and has kept it up with other folks’ money, I’ll bet you, and see what
he’s got by it.”
This was told in the bank, while to Herbert, when alone, he said:
“See what your fooling with that girl would have come to if you had gone
on. I haven’t been so blind as you think, and I know you’ve been with
her a sight. Nice enough girl, but Tom Grey’s daughter—a man who may go
to State’s prison. There’s that in the air, already, headed by Sheldon,
who is madder’n a March hare. Serves him right, and Blake don’t give
much hope of a dividend. I tell you, if things between you and that girl
had amounted to anything, you’d been in a hole; and if you’d stuck to
her, by the Lord Harry, I’d cut you off! Yes, sir!”
Had Herbert been Fred Lansing, he would have said to his father: “Louie
Grey is my promised wife, and I shall stand by her.”
But he was not Fred Lansing, and he made no reply, although tempted to
blurt out the truth. He had no thought of giving Louie up, but he had
not the moral courage to face the storm by her side, and she was left to
stem the tide alone.