John Halifax, Gentleman Part 89

I noticed this latter fact to John.

"Yes, I was sure it would be so. Jessop's bank has such a number of small depositors and issues so many small notes. He cannot cash above half of them without some notice. If there comes a run, he may have to stop payment this very day; and then, how wide the misery would spread among the poor, G.o.d knows."

His eye wandered pitifully over the heaving ma.s.s of anxious faces blue with cold, and growing more and more despondent as every minute they turned with a common impulse from the closed bank door to the Abbey clock, glittering far up in the suns.h.i.+ny atmosphere of morning.

Its finger touched the one heel of the great striding X--glided on to the other--the ten strokes fell leisurely and regularly upon the clear frosty air; then the chimes--Norton Bury was proud of its Abbey chimes--burst out in the tune of "Life let us Cherish."

The bells went through all the tune, to the very last note--then ensued silence. The crowd were silent too--almost breathless with intent listening--but, alas! not to the merry Abbey chimes.

The bank door remained closed--not a rattle at the bolts, not a clerk's face peering out above the blind. The house was as shut-up and desolate as if it were entirely empty.

Five whole minutes--by the Abbey clock--did that poor, patient crowd wait on the pavement. Then a murmur arose. One or two men hammered at the door; some frightened women, jostled in the press, begun to scream.

John could bear it no longer. "Come along with me," he said, hurriedly. "I must see Jessop--we can get in at the garden door."

This was a little gate round the corner of the street, well known to us both in those brief "courting days," when we came to tea of evenings, and found Mrs. Jessop and Ursula March in the garden watering the plants and tying up the roses. Nay, we pa.s.sed out of it into the same summer parlour, where--I cannot tell if John ever knew of the incident, at all events he never mentioned it to me--there had been transacted a certain momentous event in Ursula's life and mine. Entering by the French window, there rose up to my mental vision, in vivid contrast to all present scenes, the picture of a young girl I had once seen sitting there, with head drooped, knitting. Could that day be twenty-five years ago?

No summer parlour now--its atmosphere was totally changed. It was a dull, dusty room, of which the only lively object was a large fire, the under half of which had burnt itself away unstirred into black dingy caverns. Before it, with breakfast untasted, sat Josiah Jessop--his feet on the fender, his elbows on his knees, the picture of despair.

"Mr. Jessop, my good friend!"

"No, I haven't a friend in the world, or shall not have an hour hence.

Oh! it's you, Mr. Halifax?--You have not an account to close? You don't hold any notes of mine, do you?"

John put his hand on the old man's shoulder, and repeated that he only came as a friend.

"Not the first 'friend' I have received this morning. I knew I should be early honoured with visitors;" and the banker attempted a dreary smile. "Sir Herbert and half-a-dozen more are waiting for me up-stairs. The biggest fish must have the first bite--eh, you know?"

"I know," said John, gloomily.

"Hark! those people outside will hammer my door down!--Speak to them, Mr. Halifax--tell them I'm an old man--that I was always an honest man--always. If only they would give me time--hark--just hark! Heaven help me! do they want to tear me in pieces?"

John went out for a few moments, then came back and sat down beside Mr.

Jessop.

"Compose yourself,"--the old man was shaking like an aspen leaf. "Tell me, if you have no objection to give me this confidence, exactly how your affairs stand."

With a gasp of helpless thankfulness, looking up in John's face, while his own quivered like a frightened child's--the banker obeyed. It seemed that great as was his loss by W----'s failure, it was not absolute ruin to him. In effect, he was at this moment perfectly solvent, and by calling in mortgages, etc., could meet both the accounts of the gentry who banked with him, together with all his own notes now afloat in the country, princ.i.p.ally among the humbler ranks, petty tradespeople, and such like, if only both cla.s.ses of customers would give him time to pay them.

"But they will not. There will be a run upon the bank and then all's over with me. It's a hard case--solvent as I am--ready and able to pay every farthing--if only I had a week's time. As it is I must stop payment to-day. Hark! they are at the door again! Mr. Halifax, for G.o.d's sake quiet them!"

"I will; only tell me first what sum, added to the cash you have available, would keep the bank open--just for a day or two."

At once guided and calmed, the old man's business faculties seemed to return. He began to calculate, and soon stated the sum he needed; I think it was three or four thousand pounds.

"Very well; I have thought of a plan. But first--those poor fellows outside. Thank Heaven, I am a rich man, and everybody knows it.

Phineas, that inkstand, please."

He sat down and wrote: curiously the att.i.tude and manner reminded me of his sitting down and writing at my father's table, after the bread riot--years and years ago. Soon a notice, signed by Josiah Jessop, and afterwards by himself, to the effect that the bank would open, "without fail," at one o'clock this day,--was given by John to the astonished clerk, to be posted in the window.

A responsive cheer outside showed how readily those outside had caught at even this gleam of hope. Also--how implicitly they trusted in the mere name of a gentleman who all over the country was known for "his word being as good as his bond,"--John Halifax.

The banker breathed freer; but his respite was short: an imperative message came from the gentlemen above-stairs, desiring his presence.

With a kind of blind dependence he looked towards John.

"Let me go in your stead. You can trust me to manage matters to the best of my power?"

The banker overwhelmed him with grat.i.tude.

"Nay, that ought to be my word, standing in this house, and remembering"--His eyes turned to the two portraits--grimly-coloured daubs, yet with a certain apology of likeness too, which broadly smiled at one another from opposite walls--the only memorials now remaining of the good doctor and his cheery little old wife. "Come, Mr. Jessop, leave the matter with me; believe me, it is not only a pleasure, but a duty."

The old man melted into senile tears.

I do not know how John managed the provincial magnates, who were sitting in council considering how best to save, first themselves, then the bank, lastly--If the poor public outside had been made acquainted with that ominous "lastly!" Or if to the respectable conclave above-stairs, who would have recoiled indignantly at the vulgar word "jobbing," had been hinted a phrase--which ran oddly in and out of the nooks of my brain, keeping time to the murmur in the street, "Vox populi, vox Dei"--truly, I should have got little credit for my Latinity.

John came out in about half an hour, with a cheerful countenance; told me he was going over to Coltham for an hour or two--would I wait his return?

"And all is settled?" I asked.

"Will be soon, I trust. I can't stay to tell you more now. Goodbye."

I was no man of business, and could a.s.sist in nothing. So I thought the best I could do was to pa.s.s the time in wandering up and down the familiar garden, idly watching the h.o.a.r-frost on the arbutus leaves, and on the dry stems of what had been dear little Mrs. Jessop's favourite roses--the same roses I had seen her among on that momentous evening--the evening when Ursula's bent neck flushed more crimson than the sunset itself, as I told her John Halifax was "too n.o.ble to die for any woman's love."

No--he had lived for it--earned it--won it. And musing over these long-ago times, my heart melted--foolish old heart that it was! with a trembling joy, to think that Providence had, in some way, used my poor useless hand to give to him this blessing, a man's chiefest blessing of a virtuous and loving wife--which had crowned his life for all these wonderful years.

As it neared one o'clock, I could see my ancient friend the Abbey clock with not a wrinkle in his old face, staring at me through the bare Abbey trees. I began to feel rather anxious. I went into the deserted office; and thence, none forbidding, ensconced myself behind the sheltering bank blinds.

The crowd had scarcely moved; a very honest, patient, weary crowd dense in the centre, thinning towards the edges. On its extremest verge, waiting in a curricle, was a gentleman, who seemed observing it with a lazy curiosity. I, having like himself apparently nothing better to do, observed this gentleman.

He was dressed in the height of the mode, combined with a novel and eccentric fas.h.i.+on, which had been lately set by that extraordinary young n.o.bleman whom everybody talked about--my Lord Byron. His neckcloth was loose, his throat bare, and his hair fell long and untidy. His face, that of a man about thirty--I fancied I had seen it before, but could not recall where,--was delicate, thin, with an expression at once cynical and melancholy. He sat in his carriage, wrapped in furs, or looked carelessly out on the scene before him, as if he had no interest therein--as if there was nothing in life worth living for.

"Poor fellow!" said I to myself, recalling the bright, busy, laughing faces of our growing up lads, recalling especially their father's--full of all that active energy and wise cheerfulness which gives zest to existence; G.o.d forbid any man should die till he has lived to learn it!--"poor fellow! I wish his moodiness could take a lesson from us at home!"

But the gentleman soon retired from my observation under his furs; for the sky had gloomed over, and snow began to fall. Those on the pavement shook it drearily off, and kept turning every minute to the Abbey clock--I feared it would take the patience of Job to enable them to hold out another quarter of an hour.

At length some determined hand again battered at the door. I fancied I heard a clerk speaking out of the first-floor window.

"Gentlemen"--how tremblingly polite the voice was!--"Gentlemen, in five minutes--positively five minutes--the bank will--"

The rest of the speech was drowned and lost. Das.h.i.+ng round the street corner, the horses all in a foam, came our Beechwood carriage. Mr.

Halifax leaped out.

Well might the crowd divide for him--well might they cheer him. For he carried a canvas bag--a great, ugly, grimy-coloured bag--a precious, precious bag, with the consolation--perhaps the life--of hundreds in it!

I knew, almost by intuition, what he had done--what, in one or two instances, was afterwards done by other rich and generous Englishmen, during the crisis of this year.

The bank door flew open like magic. The crowd came pus.h.i.+ng in; but when John called out to them, "Good people, pray let me pa.s.s!" they yielded and suffered him to go in first. He went right up to the desk, behind which, flanked by a tolerable array of similar canvas bags, full of gold--but nevertheless waiting in mortal fear, and as white as his own neck-cloth--the old banker stood.

"Mr. Jessop," John said, in a loud, distinct voice, that all might hear him, "I have the pleasure to open an account with you. I feel satisfied that in these dangerous times no credit is more safe than yours. Allow me to pay in to-day the sum of five thousand pounds."