RETURNS TO THE MEETING AT THE LONDON
TAVERN.
The honourable proprietor continued to keep back his secret for some
time, in face of all opposition; several directors drew various devices
on the blotting pads before them; the reporters for the London papers
smiled, took notes, sharpened their pencils, and nibbed their pens; the
Yorkshire cleric insisted upon knowing the position of the bank, and
the stalwart layman from the same county loudly proclaimed his opinion
that it was just simply “dommed nonsense to go on like this.”
The financial orator was a gentleman of experience; he had fought
shareholders and directors before now, and he was not going to give way
to these Eastern Bank fellows: he said this in a quiet whisper to a
friendly M.P. who was standing by his side. Then turning towards the
directorial seats, he said that a certain empty chair at the board that
day did not at all surprise him.
“Name! name!” cried a few shareholders again; and then suddenly, for
the first time, the chairman looked round the room nervously, as if he
sought an absent face; and the shareholders gradually became quiet.
“The gentleman who is most conspicuous by his absence on this occasion
is the absentee to whom I refer,” said the financial orator.
Still the shareholders were at fault; some shook their heads, others
looked as if they knew all about it; and the poor parson, in a moment
of exhausted patience, again insisted upon knowing the position of the
bank.
The chairman fidgetted uneasily in his seat: sundry anonymous letters
making grave charges against his son, several questionable monetary
transactions in which he had reason to suspect he was engaged, and one
or two recent little disputes which he had had with his son, occurred
to him, and he began to fear that the disclosure of the absentee’s name
would be a very painful one to himself.
At length the financial orator, after raising his hand for silence,
said deliberately, “the gentleman to whom I refer is Mr. Richard
Tallant;” and then there went a whisper all about the room--“The
chairman’s son!” In the public mind the name of Tallant had been so
generally associated with everything that was honourable and true until
now, that it seemed as if the bank was really broken indeed. London men
looked silently and inquiringly at each other. Country shareholders,
who had never previously attended these half-yearly meetings, looked
on in amazement, and wondered what would be the next turn in the
mysterious wheel of fortune.
All this occurred in much less time than it occupies you to read what
we have written by way of narrative. Not many moments elapsed before
the chairman rose. He beckoned the speaker who had denounced his
son, and the gentleman came up and began expressing regret at being
compelled to take a course which must be so painful to the chairman.
“Nay, nay, make no apologies, sir; you have simply discharged your
duty,” said Mr. Tallant. “What proofs have you?”
The honourable proprietor handed to the chairman a bundle of papers.
Having carefully examined these through his eye-glass, and apologised
for detaining the meeting, Mr. Tallant, in a voice which fully
indicated the mental agony of the speaker, said--“Gentlemen, you will
readily understand what a blow this is to me. When I rose to order it
was not for a moment with any idea of screening my son----”
“Query,” said a wretched shareholder, who was hissed, and hustled, too,
in a moment.
“It has been my pride,” said the chairman, heedless of the
interruption, “throughout my long business career, to make the name of
Tallant one of strength in this great metropolis, and a name which
should be synonymous with wealth and with honour. My ambition was
unbounded, you may say, but surely it was a laudable ambition. I say
surely it was, more now by way of question than by way of assertion;
perhaps the standard which I set up was too high. But until to-day
I seem to have reached the acme of all my pride and hope; for never
before, I believe, has a word been even whispered against the honour,
and integrity, and soundness of a Tallant.”
Cries of “Hear, hear!” and a weak attempt at cheering, greeted the fine
old man, as he looked round the room with something like an air of
triumph in his misery.
“I have held a high place amongst you now for many years; but we have
fallen upon bad times. We are in the midst of a financial crisis which
is not only breaking banks but friendships; which is not only carrying
wreck and ruin to the weak and the false, the fool and the knave, but
which is shaking the reputations of men of probity and honour. The
suggestion of an honourable proprietor, made this day, that I should
resign, was greeted with a sufficient sound of approving voices to
determine me in my course, before this attack upon my son. It had been
my full intention to resign (cries of “No, no!” and “Yes, yes!”). I have
no other alternative.”
Here the cries of “No, no!” and “Yes, yes!” broke out afresh, and
somebody said, “How do we know he isn’t as bad as his son?”
When something like quiet was once more restored, Mr. Tallant said, “I
have been your chairman now for nearly five years. I have striven to
do my duty to this great corporation. Through misfortunes over which
the directors could have but little control, the failure of some great
houses in Bombay----”
“And your own mismanagement,” said a fierce and irrepressible
shareholder, who had five thousand pounds locked up in the concern, and
who thought this a sufficient warrant for being angry and insolent.
But Mr. Tallant did not appear to hear these galling remarks,
howsoever deeply they may have impressed him.
“And through the failure of some great houses in Bombay,” he repeated,
“our Indian branches have suffered a loss of one hundred thousand
pounds.”
Loud groans, and other expressions of anger and contempt, greeted
this announcement. In the midst of it the chairman, who had taken a
cheque-book from his pocket, sat down, and with a trembling hand filled
it up, and signed it with his well-known clear bold signature.
Raising his hand to command silence, he said, “One hundred thousand
pounds represents your losses by these failures--the only losses this
corporation have suffered during my presidency. Here is a cheque for
the amount, and I shall--never--occupy this chair again.”
Mr. Tallant deliberately handed the cheque to the secretary of the
company, who sat near him, and taking up his hat proceeded to leave the
room. The shareholders and others made way for the fine old English
gentleman as he passed, and in a few moments his firm steady footstep
could be heard on the staircase.
Some minutes elapsed before it occurred to several friends that they
ought to follow him. By the time they reached the street Mr. Tallant
was nowhere to be seen. He had called a hansom, and ordered the
driver to go to the Paddington Railway Station: and he sat there in
the waiting-room for nearly an hour. Trains came and went whilst he
sat there; people came in and out, happy mothers and children, merry
West-countrymen, and London tourists, and sorrowful-looking people also.
The sunlight was struggling through the great glass roof of the
station, and making the place look quite joyful and festive. White
wreaths of steam from noisy engines crept up to the glass, and
dispersed in a sparkling kind of mist. There was a general air of
pleasantness about the place that was cheering; but the great London
merchant sat in the waiting-room with his arms folded, and his head
upon his breast, waiting for the train.
You have stood at a railway station and seen them shunting a train of
carriages upon some weed-grown siding. It seemed as if Fate had shunted
the owner of Barton Hall--as if his day were over, as if, after going
bravely through the world for a long time, he had broken down, and had
come to be shunted upon a siding. Not shunted, like you and we hope to
be shunted some day, smoothly and quietly to rest from our labours;
but roughly, ruthlessly, thrust and bumped into a line of off-rails,
covered with the dust of the world, and ticketed “Not to be used.”
It was a bitterly hard lot for Christopher Tallant, in his prime and in
his glory, but he knuckled down to it manfully, and bent his head to
the storm.
The train came at last, and carried the merchant away to the station
nearest Barton Hall. The porters were in a state of great excitement
because there was no carriage as usual to meet Mr. Tallant; he took
no notice of their inquiries and suggestions beyond the courtesy of a
passing nod, but walked quietly to the principal hotel. Thence he sent
a messenger requesting a local lawyer to attend him at Barton Hall,
whither he departed as quickly as a hired conveyance would permit.
They had heard of the panic at this little out-of-the-way town, and
concluded at once that Mr. Tallant had received some great financial
injury in the crisis. The town was alive with rumours all the night,
and by bed-time Mr. Tallant was reported to have lost a million of
money in railways. But on the following day the true story was told by
the London papers, or by one of them at least; for the majority had
excluded the point of the denunciatory speech which ended with the name
of Richard Tallant.
The law of libel, as it affects newspaper proprietors, is peculiar with
regard to the publication of public sayings and doings. The reporter
may set down the most scurrilous and libellous speech which counsel
or solicitor may make in a court of justice, and the newspaper editor
may publish it in his columns without a shadow of legal responsibility
resting upon him; but anything said at a public meeting which in any
way affects the character or reputation of a private individual or a
public man, is published at the editor’s peril: so that several of the
London journals refrained from chronicling all that took place at the
Eastern Bank meeting. One editor, bolder than the rest, published the
meeting at length; and his paper it was which enlightened the people in
the Avonworth Valley with regard to the unusual manner and conduct of
the famous proprietor of Barton Hall.