"The claims lodged against you, Bannister, amount to exactly one pound
twelve shillings and eightpence; but I think you told me that the
tuck-woman was also a creditor. If so, she ought to be here."
[Illustration: "THE TOTAL LIABILITIES ARE EXACTLY TWO POUNDS," SAID
GIDEON.]
"I have spoken to her," I said, "and she says that I owe her seven
shillings and fourpence. That is the figure. I told her that I was
going to have a meeting of creditors, and she said I was beginning early
and that she wished she could let me off, but that she had an invalid
husband and twenty small children at home--or some such number."
"Then the debt ranks good," said Gideon. So he added the seven and
fourpence to the one pound twelve shillings and eightpence.
"The total liabilities are exactly two pounds," said Gideon. "Now,
Bannister, as the debts are admitted to be two pounds, the next question
is, what are the assets? I may tell you kids," he continued, turning to
Corkey minimus, and Fairlawn and Frost, who were the smallest of the
creditors in size and age, "that the word 'assets,' which you very
likely do not know, means what Bannister has got to pay you with. You
have made him a bankrupt and he owes you two pounds; so now the simple
question is how much can he pay of that money? Of course he can't pay
it all--else he wouldn't be a bankrupt--but he is going to pay according
to his assets. Now, Bannister," he concluded, turning to me, "you'd
better tell the meeting what your assets are. Does everybody
understand?"
Everybody understood, or said they did, except Frost, and he kept on
saying over and over again, like a parrot, "Fivepence and a lead pencil,
five-pence and a lead pencil," till Gideon at last had to tell him to
shut up and not interfere with the meeting.
Then I spoke. I said, in finite a quiet sort of way, as if it was an
everyday thing--
"I have decided to pay something in the pound, Gideon."
But Gideon was rather impatient.
"We all know that. That's what we're here for," he said.
"You couldn't all know it," I answered, "because none of you knew that
I'd got a pound. You can't pay something in the pound unless you've got
one. And I thought it might interest the creditors at this meeting to
know that I have got one."
They were frightfully interested, naturally, and even Gideon was. I put
it into his hand and he looked at it and turned it over and nodded.
"The assets are a pound," said Gideon; "I've no doubt you'll all be glad
to hear that."
The chaps evidently felt very different to me when they heard the assets
were a pound, because most of them, as they told me afterwards, didn't
know there were any assets at all. They got rather excited, in fact,
and Fowle even asked if there might be any more assets.
But I said, "No. There is only this pound. When I became bankrupt I
determined that I would pay something in the pound, and I wrote to
private friends and put the position before them, and they quite agreed
with me and sent the pound; and now I am going to pay something in it.
I don't quite know what that means, but it is an honourable and proper
thing to do; and Gideon does know what it means, and I shall be very
much obliged to him if he will say what I am to pay in it."
"It is quite easy," said Gideon. "You have a debt; you can't pay it
all, so you pay so much in the pound."
"That's what I'm going to do," I said.
"The question is, how much you're going to pay in the pound," said
Forrest, who had made more row than all the rest of the creditors put
together, though I only owed him a penny.
"I know that's the question without your telling me," I answered.
"Gideon has the pound, and he will say what I am to pay in it."
Gideon looked rather puzzled.
"You don't seem to understand even yet, Bannister," he said. "You don't
pay so much in the pound of the assets; you pay so much in the pound of
the debts."
I didn't pretend to understand what Gideon meant by this complicated way
of putting it, and told him so.
"All I want," I said, "is to do the strictly honourable thing and pay so
much in the pound, which I have handed over to Gideon for that reason."
But Gideon, much to my surprise, seemed to feel rather annoyed at this.
"I wish you'd try and understand the situation," he said. "When you
speak of so much in the pound, it's a figure of speech in a sort of way.
It isn't a real, single, solitary pound."
"It's real enough," I said; "Thwaites gave it to me in exchange for a
postal order."
"_This_ pound is real, but----" Then Gideon broke off in a helpless
sort of way, and then he began again.
"You owe two pounds--d'you see that?"
"Of course," I said. "That's the whole thing."
"And you've got one pound--d'you see that?"
He held it up, as if he was going to do a conjuring trick with it.
Of course I said I did see it.
"Then, if you owe two pounds and can only find one, how much are you
going to pay in the pound?"
"Whatever you think would be sportsmanlike, Gideon," I said.
"It isn't a question of being sportsmanlike, it's a question of simple
arithmetic," he said. "You've got twenty shillings, and you owe forty;
you owe just twice as many as you've got; therefore it follows that
you'll pay ten shillings in the pound; and that's a good deal more than
many people can."
"I'll pay more than that," I said. "I'll pay fifteen shillings."
"What an ass you are, Bannister!" answered Gideon. "You _can't_ pay
fifteen shillings, you haven't got it to pay."
"My Dear chap," I said, "I've got a pound."
"You've got nothing at all," he said. "You pay ten shillings in each of
the two pounds you owed, and then there's nothing left."
After that I began to see; and when we went into it all and got change,
and paid each chap exactly half of what I owed him, it turned out that
Gideon was perfectly right, and there wasn't a farthing left over.
Everybody was fairly well satisfied except the tuck-woman, but nobody
seemed much obliged to me; and I couldn't help thinking that though
Gideon had been awfully decent about it, and managed it all frightfully
well, nevertheless a grown man would have managed it even better.
Because, take my father's bankruptcy and look how jolly different that
turned out to mine. I don't know what he paid in the pound, but I do
know there was enough left over for him to buy a bottle of champagne,
and for my mother to say "Thank God!" Whereas my bankruptcy appeared to
have left me exactly where I was before, and there was nothing whatever
left over to buy even a bottle of ginger beer.