Mr. William Vernon was a venerable, benevolent-looking man of seventy
years of age. His hair was white, his figure slightly stooped, his
manner gentle, kindly, plausible.
Until the crash came, everyone believed he was the most prosperous man
in the city of Dublin. He had three fine private houses--one in
Dublin, a seaside residence at Bray, and a castle in Monaghan. His
income was believed to be somewhere between twenty and forty thousand
a year, and it was believed that he lived well within it. His savings
were said to be enormous, and the general conviction was that he could
retire in splendour on his money, invested at home and abroad.
Now all was confusion and dismay among those connected with him in
business. So great was the excitement, two policemen had to be told
off to guard the door of the bank. Men and women, too, who were
depositors or shareholders, refused to believe the news, and came down
to the bank to see with their own eyes confirmation of the report.
There, sure enough, were the massive oak, iron-studded doors closed in
their faces, never again to be opened.
As the hours rolled on, the depth and breadth of the calamity
increased steadily. People who were supposed to have had nothing
whatever to do with the bank divulged, in the excitement of the
moment, the secret that they were shareholders or depositors. The
credit of the whole city was shaken. Who could be safe when the great
house of Vernon and Son had collapsed?
Before nightfall three other large houses had suspended payment. They
had gone down into the vortex. Then it began to be realised that not
only had the shareholders lost all their money invested in shares, but
that every man who, as principal or trustee, held even one of these
shares, was liable to the last shilling he had in the world.
It had over and over again been suggested by outside shareholders that
the business should be formed into a limited company. William Vernon
always shook his head at this, and said that if you limit the
responsibility you limit the enterprise, and so reduce the profits.
They were paying twelve per cent. on capital--did they want to cut
down the earnings to eight? He assured them it would cripple the whole
concern seriously, and he, for one, would retire from any
responsibility if such a course were urged upon him. It had been
suggested to him, in advocacy of this scheme, that limiting the
company would enormously diminish the risk of the shareholders in case
disaster should overtake the bank. He had replied to this with a shrug
of his shoulders, a smile of half pity, half amusement, and said: "If
you have any fear, why not sell out? If you have any confidence in my
word of honour, you need have no occasion for fear."
Mr. William Vernon had the reputation of unblemished honour. He was,
moreover, an exceedingly pious man, belonging to one of the most rigid
forms of dissent. No one questioned his word; no one sold out; and now
all were ruined.
Mr. Vernon had married late in life. Mrs. Vernon was twenty-five years
his junior. His elder daughter, Ruth, was now fifteen years of age;
his younger, Miriam, twelve. He had but these two children.
Mrs. Vernon was a large, florid, comely woman, who, twenty years ago,
when she was married, had been considered a beauty. She was now no
longer beautiful. She was a well-favoured matron of forty-five, with
an exaggerated notion of the importance of her husband, her children,
and herself. He was courteous, insinuating, with a dash of
infallibility. She was dignified, not to say haughty, with a great
notion of the high position she occupied in the social world. She was
not harsh or cantankerous with servants, but she never for one moment
allowed them to think they were anything but servants--that is to say,
beings of an immeasurably inferior order.
During the time Miss Creagh had been in Mrs. Vernon's house as
resident governess to her two daughters, the mistress had shown the
governess respect in the form of conscious condescension. She had
never for a moment allowed anyone to slight Nellie, and even she
herself had never slighted her. But, then, she never was by any means
genial or cordial, or anything but rigidly polite; and rigid
politeness is the perfection of rudeness.
Nellie had not, however, been unhappy in that house. She had conceived
a great respect for Mr. Vernon, and had grown to love the two
children. Ruth was her favourite. The elder girl was flaxen-haired,
blue-eyed, fair and pink, with a tendency to sentimental poetry and
enthusiasm, and with a most excellent heart. Miriam, on the other
hand, was a brunette, brown-haired, brown-eyed, vivacious, invincibly
loquacious, with a thorough contempt for everything that was not
material to comfort, and with a heart which beat so fast for its own
excitements, that it rarely had time to concern itself with anything
else.
Mr. Vernon had that summer postponed their going to their house at
Bray a month beyond the usual time. The crash had not come upon him
unexpectedly. He and a few others knew for some time that it could not
be avoided, but it might be put off. He was loath to leave Dublin; and
as his family never went to Bray without him, he thought it better
they should not go now, as if they did it might cause talk. Bray is
but half-an-hour or so from Dublin; but he did not like to sleep so
far away from the bank, for now important telegrams were coming at all
hours of the day and night, and the delay of an hour might hasten the
disaster.
The immediate cause of the ruin was the failure of a trader in
Belfast, who owed the bank considerable sums of money, and had been
encouraged by Mr. Vernon to play a risky business on the chance of
making large profits. In fact, the relation between the Belfast and
Dublin houses would not bear the light of day, and the large profits
which, it was said, enabled the Belfast house to pay a fancy price for
money, had all been taken out of the capital lent by the bank.
The Belfast house had, some years ago, an extraordinary stroke of
luck. It legitimately doubled its income in a year. It depended almost
wholly on its export trade. It sent most of its goods to India and the
Colonies. During the good year it could not manufacture as quickly as
it could sell. Then it borrowed in order to increase its manufacturing
powers. It built and set up new machinery. It exported more than it
had orders for and stored abroad. This went on for some years, the
output being in excess of the demands of the prosperous year, the
sales less than before the prosperous year. The result of this could
be seen--bankruptcy.
Nothing else was talked of in Dublin all that day, all that night, in
the clubs, in the hotels, between the acts at the theatre, in the
private houses, in the tramcars, in the streets. No class seemed to be
unaffected by the gigantic catastrophe. Widows and orphans were
ruined, trustees rendered penniless. Commercial fabrics which had cost
generations to build up, were now tottering to the fall.
All this dreadful day Mr. Vernon sat in his study, a large back room
on the first floor of his Fitzwilliam Square house. He now fully
realised his own position. He had directly ruined hundreds, and
indirectly, through them, thousands. For years the bank had
practically been in a bankrupt state. For years the fact had been kept
secret by means of false balance-sheets. For years the pious, bland
William Vernon had been the author of a gigantic fraud.
What was coming now to him? An indictment? Imprisonment? Were a common
prison and common prison diet coming to him in his seventieth year?
All this time that he had been issuing false balance-sheets he had
lived in splendour. He had kept his three houses, his horses, his
domestic servants, his gardeners, his grooms, his coachmen. He
had given dinners which were the talk, the admiration, the envy of
Dublin. His wines were the finest. He had a French cook; he had
footmen of the shapeliest forms and politest manners. Was he about to
have, instead of his three stately houses--the city jail? Instead of
his dining-room--a prison cell? Instead of his courteous footman--a
gruff turnkey? Instead of cliquot--gruel? Instead of respect, honour,
reverence--contumely, scorn, and curses?
The present was bad enough. The future looked much worse. He did not
allow himself to waste any of his energies in grieving for those who
had lost through him. He said to himself: "They speculated and lost.
They only lost money. I have lost all the money I once had, all the
reputation, and now in my old age it is not unlikely I may lose my
liberty. I have done the best I could. Had I reduced my establishment,
suspicion would have been aroused at once, and the blow would have
come much sooner. If I had earlier exposed the position of the bank,
ruin would have come then just as now. If after the first loss in
Belfast I sanctioned wild, mad speculation, it was in the desperate
hope of recovering what had already been sunken. What I did, I did for
the best. O'Donnell will, of course, be the heaviest sufferer, but he
has had his twelve per cent. for many years. I dare say he will not be
able to save a penny out of his whole fortune. Neither shall I out of
mine."
Just as he came to the end of these self-justification reflections,
these comfortable sophisms, Mrs. Vernon entered the room, dressed for
going out.
"Going out, Jane?" he cried all in astonishment.
"Yes," she said. "The house is so dull, I thought I'd take the
brougham and call upon the Lawlors."
"Take the _brougham_," he cried, "and call upon the Lawlors! Don't you
know the Lawlors are shareholders in the bank, and that they, too, are
ruined?"
"But," said Mrs. Vernon, drawing herself up, "the Lawlors were old
friends of mine. I knew them before you did. We were children
together. They will be glad to see me, although you have been
unfortunate in business."
"Glad to see you! Woman, they would thrust you out of doors with
curses. When people are ruined they do not pay much heed to
friendship, nor are they over nice in the way they express their
anger. As to the brougham," he said, "I have been stupid not to tell
you, but I cannot think of everything. We could never with decency use
the brougham, or anything of the sort, again." He threw himself back
in his chair and laughed harshly for a few seconds.
"I see nothing to laugh at in this disgrace and worry," said his wife,
who thought herself the most injured person of all. "I am sure I am
very sorry for you, William, when I consider the respectable position,
the eminent position you held. I am sure you cannot say I was
extravagant, or that I brought up the children extravagantly. You told
me yesterday that my five thousand pounds are secured by the marriage
settlement. Why should I lose my old friends any more than the money
my father gave me when we were married?"
"Because," he said, laughing harshly again, "you married what the
world will agree to call a fraudulent scoundrel. When I laughed a
moment ago at the thought of the brougham, the idea which occurred to
me was--it is rather painful. Shall I tell you?"
"Yes, you had better tell me, I suppose. _Everything_ is painful now."
"Well," he said, "I thought that the next member of the family likely
to drive would be myself, and the next vehicle in which I was likely
to drive would be a Black Maria."
"Black Maria, William," she said. "I do not understand you."
"Black Maria, my dear," he explained, "is slang for a prison van. What
is the matter, Jane? You seem weak. Help, outside there, Mrs. Vernon
has fainted."
The door opened. A footman entered.
"If you please, sir, the brougham is at the door."
The old man started and looked up, became suddenly pallid. "What did
you say, James?"
"I said, sir, that the brougham was at the door."
"Ha! ha! ha! As I live, James, I thought you said the Black Maria.
Fetch Mrs. Vernon's maid instantly. The mistress has fainted."