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“And did she love him? What and if she did? |
THE season had not been a good one for grass. It was a very good one for wool. Save a little dust, no exception could be taken to anything. The clip was well grown; the washing simply perfection. The lambing had been a fortunate one. Counting these aspirants for the trials and triumphs to which the merino proper is foredoomed, the count stood well over sixty thousand sheep, of all ages. But a few months since, what a comfortable sum of money did they represent; whereas now—but it would not bear thinking of! The shearers even seemed to be unnaturally good and easy to manage now that no particular benefit could accrue from their conduct. Everything was right but the one important fact, which lay at the root—the price of stock. Even if that had improved, the season was going to turn and evilly entreat them; the “stars in their courses fought against Sisera;” and Jack began to consider himself as his modern exemplar—the prey of the gods!
He sent off his wool, but this year he determined not to go to town himself; with the present prices and a fast-coming drought staring him in the face, what could a man do in the Club or in Collins Street but advertise himself as an incipient insolvent? Better stick to his work, save a little money, now that it was too late, and spend the summer pleasantly in staving off bush fires, following in the dusty wake of endless hordes of starving travelling sheep, and watching the desolation of the grass famine, already sore in the land, deepen from scarcity into starvation. A pleasant programme truly, and considerably altered from that one dreamily sketched out for himself and Maud so short a year agone—ah, me!
He wrote to his agents, desiring them to sell or ship the clip at their discretion, and to pour the proceeds into the lap of the Bank of New Holland, so to speak, by the hands of Mr. Mildmay Shrood. From that gentleman he, by and by, received a missive, very soothing and satisfactory, as times went— “The wool had been sold very well, and had maintained the high reputation of Gondaree both for quality and condition. Mr. Redgrave was empowered to continue to draw upon the bank for expenses, though (he might, perhaps, be pardoned for suggesting, in the present severe financial pressure) the bank trusted that their constituents would use every effort to keep down expenses to the lowest limit consistent with efficient working. It was thought by gentlemen of experience that the present untoward season would soon break up. In the meanwhile, however, the utmost care and caution were necessary to prevent loss and depreciation of valuable securities.”
“All this is very reassuring,” said Jack, grimly, to himself, as he marked the allusion to the securities—doubtless now regarded as the property of the bank, or something nearly akin. “However, we are not quite sold up yet, and if the season would change and a little rally come to pass in the market we might snap our fingers at the men of mortgage yet. There is a chance still, I believe. The wool fetched the best price on the river; everything will depend upon the season, and how we get through the summer.”
When poor Tom Hood once wrote that the “summer had set in with its usual severity,” little thought the great humorist that he was describing the sad simple earnest of the far land, to him a terra incognita.
All places have their “hard season”—that portion of the year when the ordinary operation of the weather has power to inflict the greatest amount of damage upon dwellers or producers. In one country it is winter, which is the foe of man with unkind frosts, cruel snow-storms, hurtling blasts, or dark and dreary days. In another land it is the hurricane season, when every vessel goes down at anchor, or is lifted high and dry over bar and beach, when the town totters above the shrinking inhabitants, and when, perchance, the more awful earthquake gapes for the wretches whom the great tempest has spared. But in Australia, more especially in that great interior system of sea-like plains, where for hundreds of miles the level is unbroken, and where, doubtless, at no very distant period the surges of ocean resounded, the hard season there is the summer, more particularly the periodically recurring oppression of a dry summer following a dry winter. In that land, where the brief spring is a joy and a luxury only too transient, where the winter is a time of rejoicing—mild, fair, verdant—where autumn is the crown and utter perfection of sublunary weather, the sole terror is of the slow, unnatural, gradual desiccation which—as in the olden Pharaoh days—eats up every green herb, and, if protracted, metamorphoses plain and forest and watercourse into similitudes of the “valley of dry bones.”
Such has happened aforetime in the history of Australia. Such may, at the expiration of any aqueous cycle, happen again.
A term of dread was apparently settling down upon the land when John Redgrave resolved to stay at home the summer-time through. Such were the prospects which confronted him as he rode from paddock to paddock, among the tens of thousands of sheep, and watched from day to day the pasturage shrivel up and disappear; the water retire into the bosom of the sun-baked earth.
The days were long, even dreary, and as the summer wore on they seemed longer and more dreary still. Hot, glaring, breezeless—there was no change, no relief—apparently no hope. There was no sign of distress among the Gondaree flocks. In that well-watered, well-pastured, well-fenced, and subdivided station the stock scarcely felt the pressure of the death-like season which was decimating the flocks in less-favoured localities. But everything that was heard, said, or thought of in that melancholy time tended to depression and despair. “This man had lost ten thousand sheep, having made too late a start for the back country, and been unable to reach water from the intervening desert. They—fine, strong, half-fat wethers—had gone mad with thirst—obstinately refused to stir—as is the manner of sheep in their extremity, and had perished to the last one. Then some one had sold three thousand weaners for ninepence a head, a well-grown lot too.”
As the panic and the season acted and reacted upon one another, by the time the summer had passed, and the autumn and the cold nights, but still dry, stern, merciless as the summer, had come, the value of stock and stations had come to be nominal.
People of imaginative temperaments began to ask themselves whether they could have been sane when they in cool blood set down 20,000 sheep and a station as value for £20,000 or £25,000. Had such prices been actually paid?
Yes, actually paid! Not in golden sovereigns, perhaps, but in good cheques upon perfectly solvent bank accounts, and in bills of exchange, which were legally strong enough to extract the last penny of their value from him whose name was written under the talismanic word “accepted.” The money had been there, doubtless; and now it seemed as if it had turned into withered leaves, like the fairy gold in the old legends.
So mused Jack on his daily rounds, as wearily he rode day after day, often on a weak and tired horse, for grass was none, and hay and corn were considerably dearer than loaf sugar; or when he lighted his pipe at night, and sat staring at the stars, while M‘Nab wrote up his accounts, and generally bore himself as if droughts were merely passing obstacles to the prosperity which must eventually attend the proprietor of well-classed sheep and a fenced-in run.
The famine year dragged on. Long will that season be remembered throughout the length and breadth of the great island-continent. Its history was written in the hearts of ruined men—in the dangerously-tasked minds of many a proprietor whom “luck and pluck” carried through the ordeal. Still the drought grasped with unrelenting gripe the enfeebled flocks—the thirst-maddened and desperate herds. The great merchants of the land were beginning to grow accustomed to the sound of the terrible word “bankruptcy.” All bank shares had fallen, and were falling, to prices which showed the usual cowardly distrust of the public in the time of trial. Rumour began to be busy with the names of more than one bank, including the Bank of New Holland, which had, it was asserted, made stupendous advances to the squatters. “Hadn’t they lent old Captain Blockstrop a quarter of a million, and even that wouldn’t do? Every day the directors met, old Billy used to talk to the manager in much the same tone of voice that he had been accustomed to use to his first mate, and demand ten, twenty, or thirty thousand pounds, as the case might be. ‘I must have it, Mr. Shrood,’ the old man would roar out, ‘if I’m to carry on, or else, sir, the house of William Blockstrop and Co. will have the shutters up to-morrow morning.’ And he got the money of course.”
“And suppose he didn’t get it?” might remark an inquiring bystander, innocent of the mighty system of involuted financial machinery.
“Not get it!” would Croker, or Downemouth, flaneurs informed in all the monetary diplomacy of the day, say— “Do you suppose that bank can afford to let old Blockstrop drop? No, sir; rotten as the commercial and pastoral interests are, they know better than to cut their own throats just yet. Other fellows may have to sell their sheep for half-a-crown a head, and take to billiard-marking, or ‘pies all hot,’ for all the bank cares; but once you’re in like old Blockstrop they can’t let you go.”
Autumn passed over, winter commenced—that is, the month of June arrived. The rain seemed as far off as ever. One day Jack smiled grimly as he observed the anachronism of a tolerably smart bush-fire, which was burning away merrily, not the grass, good wot, but the dried forest leaves which lay inches deep on the bare bosom of the tranced and death-like earth.
Up to this time hope had prevailed among the sore disheartened stock-owners that the weather must change. It would be unnatural, impossible, that such a season could last over the next three months. There would be some rain, and even a little rain in that strange country, where most of the trees and shrubs are edible and even fattening for stock, counts for much. Were it to last for three months more millions of sheep and hundreds of thousands of cattle would be lying dead on the bare, dusty, wind-swept wastes, which had formerly been considered to be pastures.
Could this thing be? The old colonists shook their heads. They remembered 1837–38–39—during which memorable years but little rain fell, when flour was £100 per ton, when rice even was too expensive for consumption, when more than half of the handful of stock then in New South Wales perished for lack of food. With the present heavily-stocked runs what manner of desolation might be expected now?
In the midst of this “horror of a great tempest—when men’s hearts were failing them for fear”—John Redgrave received this letter, lying innocently, anguis in herbâ, among the ordinary contents of his Monday morning’s mail-bag:—
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“BANK OF NEW HOLLAND, “John Redgrave, Esq., Gondaree, Warroo. “My dear Sir,—I have been instructed by the Board of Directors to draw your attention to the amount of your over-draft, amounting, at date, with interest, to £30,114 12s. 9d., which I am to request that you will reduce at your earliest convenience.
“I remain, |
Jack’s face turned nearly as white as when he fell fainting at the Juandah gate. He set his teeth hard as he crushed the fateful missive in his hand; and leaning back, growled out a savage oath, such as seldom passed his lips. “This was to be the end, then, of all his hopes, and plans, and work, exile, and anxiety. To be sold up now, in the very vortex of the unabated panic, in the worst month of the year, in the most depressing period of the worst drought that had been known for thirty years! No warning, no hint of such an impending stroke. The sword of Damocles had been suspended financially above his head, in his daily musings, in his nightly dreams, for many a month. But strong in sanguine anticipation of a change in the season, in a rise of the market, he had become accustomed to its presence. It had come to be as harmless as a punkah; and now—it had fallen, keen, deadly, inevitable, full upon his defenceless head.”
For he knew his position to be utterly hopeless. “Reduce his overdraft!” What a world of irony lay in the request! Even could he sell without the consent of the bank—to which abstraction every sheep, lamb, and fleece was mortgaged—how was he to realize, when best fat sheep were selling under five shillings, and ewes, as well-bred and classed as his own, were offering in any number at half a-crown a head, and unsaleable at that? God in heaven! he was a ruined man—not in the sense of those whom he had known in mercantile life, who seemed in some wonderful fashion to fail, and come forth again with personal belongings hardly curtailed to ordinary observation, but really, utterly, tangibly ruined—left without home, or household goods, or opportunity to commence afresh. A beggar and a byword for rashness, extravagance, utter want of discretion, purpose, energy, what not. Who has not heard the chorus of cant which swells and surges round a fallen man? M‘Nab was away; he would tell him the news next day. Meanwhile, he must go to town and see what could be done. Matters might be arranged somehow, though of what the “somehow” was to be composed he had not the faintest conception, even after a night cap wherein the proportion of “battle-axe” was not very closely calculated— “To bed, to bed, to bed!” Banquo, his ghost, did not more effectually murder sleep than in Jack’s case did the delicate, deadly caligraphy of Mildmay Shrood.
On the morrow he told M‘Nab what had happened, and betook himself on horseback to the stage which the mail could reach on the following day, choosing the distraction of a long ride rather than the slow torture of a whole day’s waiting.
M‘Nab was moved, though not altogether surprised, at the intelligence. He knew that the interest must have been running up upon the bank account, when all was necessarily going out and nothing, since the clip of wool, coming in. He held as firmly as ever to his opinion that stock and stations must rise again after a time. The ship would right herself, though water-logged and dipping bows under with every sea. The thing was to know how long the storm would rage. He cautioned Jack to be cool and cautious in his dealing with the bank, and at whatever cost to procure further accommodation—time being the all-important matter in such a season. Three days’ rain would send up the value of all stock fifty per cent. at least, to rise another cent. per cent. within the year.
. . . . .
John Redgrave reached Melbourne after a journey over five hundred miles of a country which, in all but the essential features of camels and Arabs, would seem to have been translated bodily from the great desert of Sahara. Nor leaf, nor grass, reed nor rush relieved the bare, dusty, red-brown wastes. The stations, deserted by their travelling stock, looked as if built by a past generation of lunatics upon a “waste land, where no one comes or hath come since the making of the world.”
From time to time columns of dust, moving cloud-pillars, met or passed them on their way, the abodes of evil Genii, as the Bedouins told. Evil spirits were abroad, doubtless Jack thought, in sufficient numbers. The land looked as if not only there never had been any herbage whatever, but, from the total absence of the roots, as if there could by no possibility be any in the future. The mail horses were worn and feeble, threatening to leave them stranded in the midst of some endless plain. At the mail-station, no fresh animals being forthcoming, it seemed as if their journey must then and there end, or be performed on foot. But the driver, a man of resources, lounged over to the pound, and seeing therein two comparatively plump nags, one of which had certainly worn harness, set up a claim, and promptly released them upon payment of sustenance fees. With these equivocal steeds the journey was prosecuted to the railway terminus, and once more, after nearly two years’ absence, Mr. Redgrave found himself in the great city which has grown up in little more than a generation.
Pleasant would have been the change from the lone waste, in process of change into a charnel-house, but for the great overshadowing dread which dwelt with John Redgrave day by day. The fresh breezes of ocean fanned his bronzed cheek, but awoke not, as of old, the joyous pulsations of a heart free to respond to every tone of the grand harmony of Nature. The slave who feels at every step the galling of his heavy chain thanks not God for the blue sky, or the song of the soaring bird; and he who is the thrice fettered bond-slave of Debt bears a spirit steeled against all softening and ennobling influences.
Some transient gleams of the joy of new sensation and old friendship were permitted even to his hopeless condition. But even amid the welcome and the talk of old associates there ran depressing announcements.
“Times were incredibly bad. As for stock, no one would take them at a gift. Wool was down, lower than for years, and (of course) never would rise again. Hugh Brass was gone. Estate in liquidation. The Marsalays, Moreland, ditto; Heaven only knew for what amount—not that it mattered much, in these days, whether a man stopped for one hundred thousand or three. Fellow went one day to bank-manager, and actually wanted advances on a good run and twenty thousand sheep. Manager, new appointment, inquired if he had any other liabilities? Shut him up, rather. Times’ changed, eh, old boy?”
Jack admitted that they were—indeed!
The day after his arrival, Jack hied him to the portals of the enchanted castle, at which he had so confidently blown the horn in the days of careless youth. Changed, alas! was the Knight; dimmed was his armour; hacked his morion; and shorn the waving plume that had nodded to the breeze. After entering the antechamber he was compelled to wait. That purgatorial apartment was tenanted by an elderly man of the squatter persuasion, as Jack could see at a glance. He, doubtless, was awaiting his turn in the folter-kammer, and by the fixed and anxious look of the worn face his anticipations were strongly tinged with evil. A different species of pioneer this from Jack, from Stangrove, from Hugh Brass, from Tunstall. He was more akin to the Ruggie M‘Alister type. His sinewy hand and weather-beaten frame were those of a man who by long years of every kind of toil, risk, and privation had built up a modest property—a home and a competency—no more. He was the father of a family, possibly with boys at school receiving a better education than their parent, a brood of merry girls disciplined by a much-enduring governess. There would be an ancient orchard at such a man’s homestead—no doubt it was in or near the settled districts—and a large “careless-ordered” flower-garden in which the masses of bloom compensated in picturesqueness and splendour for lack of neatness. Jack could have sworn he had only incurred debt by compulsion to buy a few thousand acres immediately round his house, when the free-selectors came swarming over the flats he had discovered in old dangerous days, and ridden over as his own, winter and summer, for twenty years. He had trusted (so he told Jack) to a good season or two pulling him through, whereas now, the strong man’s voice trembled as he said—
“If they sell me up, I shall have to go out a beggar. Yes, a beggar, sir, after thirty years’ work. I could bear it, very like; but my wife and the children. Great God! what will become of us?”
Out of the inner room came a plump, well-shaven townsman. He was evidently in good spirits; he hummed a tune, rubbed his hands, looked benevolently at Jack and the older bushman, and passed forth into the atrium. He was a stockbroker; his paper was all right till the fourth of next month. What could man wish for more? It was an eternity of safety. What changes in the market might take place by that time! He lit a cigar, looked at his watch, and lounging over to the café, ordered a somewhat luxurious lunch, to which, and to a bottle of iced moselle, he did full and deliberate justice. About the time when the broker had finished his soup, and was dallying with his amontillado, the door of the bank sanctum opened, and forth walked, or rather staggered, the pioneer squatter, with clenched teeth and features so ghastly in their expression of hopeless woe that Jack involuntarily rushed to his aid, as to a man about to fall down in a fit. The old man looked at him with eyes so awful in their despair that he shuddered—his lips moved, but no sound came from them. Waving his hand, with a gesture as deprecating remark, the unhappy man, like one in his sleep, passed on.
Jack walked in with a quick, resolute step, and an appearance of composure he was far from feeling, and saluted the man of doom.
There was a flavour of bygone cordiality in Mr. Shrood’s greeting, but his face instantly assumed an expression of decorous gravity, mingled with the stern resolution of irresponsible power. Jack at once crossed swords, so to speak, by producing the fatal letter. “I received this from you a week since, Mr. Shrood. What am I to understand from it?”
Before this momentous interview proceeds further we may let our readers into a secret which was necessarily hidden from John Redgrave and the outside world—as the discussions of the terrible conclave preceding the dread fiat at the Vehmegericht.
The bank directors had held a general meeting, with the president in the chair, having in view the circumstances of the country and the securities and liabilities of the bank. Among those present were some of the best financial intelligences of the day, men of ripe experience, keen calculation, and sound logical habit of mind. Many were the pros and cons. There was some difference of opinion as to the mode of operation; none whatever as to the fact of the danger of the position. One of the oldest directors had opened the proceedings. He asserted that never before in the history of the colony had the indebtedness of all classes of constituents been so large. It had coincided with an altogether unparalleled period of financial loss and depression in England—he might add, in Europe; and, with a heavy fall in the price of wool, stock, and stations, a war of stupendous magnitude in the new world had not been without effect upon previous monetary relations. From all these causes had the great pastoral interest of Australia suffered, and the suffering was more intensified by the operation of a drought, still unbroken, and of a severity unknown for thirty years. He felt the deepest sympathy for the pastoral interest, for the gentlemen who had invested their capital—he might almost say their lives—in these mighty and fascinating adventures. He trusted he might not be accused of sentimentalism—but the pastoral tenants had paid in health, strength, and all the powers of manhood, to the credit of this account, and spent their blood freely in its support.
He knew that the liability of the bank connected with the indebtedness of this class of constituents—was very great. But so, likewise, were the resources of their old, stable, and securely-founded establishment. The squatters had, on the whole, been their best, their most solvent customers. Let all be helped now, in their hour of need, except those who were manifestly unreliable, incapable, or too deeply involved. A favourable change might take place within the year. If so, the bank would always receive the praise of having stood firm in danger, and having helped to save from ruin a deserving, an honourable, and an indispensable class of producers. Here Mr. Oakleigh paused, and a murmur as nearly resembling approbation as could be expected to emanate from the august assembly, came from the listeners. One would have concluded that the advocate of mercy and continuous accommodation had carried his point. But a still more reverend senior, no other than the president himself, during the debate, left his place with the deliberation of age, and, adjusting his spectacles, thus spoke:
“He had listened with great pleasure to the lucid statement of facts presented to the Board by their friend and valued director, Mr. Oakleigh. His suggestions did him honour. They might congratulate themselves upon the possession of such an intellect, so high a tone of feeling, in their council. But,” and here the speaker changed his position, and inserted one hand into his ample white waistcoat, “he must be pardoned for representing to gentlemen present that the laws which governed sound banking institutions, such as their own, did not admit of consideration for individuals or for classes of constituents, however deserving of sympathy. The logic of banking was inexorable. Economic laws were unvarying; they had stood the test of years, of generations. By them, and them only, could he consent to be governed.” Here he applied himself to his snuff-box, and proceeded. “It would be clearly apparent to all now present that the liabilities of the bank were unusually large; they were daily increasing. The reserve fund was being seriously, he might say dangerously, lowered. If such a course were persevered with, in the present state of the money market, but one result could be looked for. The credit of the bank would be endangered; even worse might follow, to which he would not at present allude. Such being the case, and it could not in his opinion be denied, what was their plain, undoubted, inevitable course of action? He had had many years of experience as a merchant, and as director and president of the Bank of New Holland, which latter position he had had the honour to hold for a term exceeding the lifetime of some present. From the teaching of these long and chequered years, not unmarked by financial tempests, such as they were now contending with, he submitted his opinion, which was fixed and unalterable. The bank must close all pastoral accounts under a certain amount. They must realize upon such securities promptly, and without respect to persons. It would be for the directors to fix the sums, but obviously the larger accounts must be called in. But this course, once decided upon, must be inflexibly adhered to. Cases of great individual hardship would occur; it was unavoidable in the operation of all such acts of policy. No one, speaking as an individual, felt more deeply such consequences of a protective policy than he himself. But he would remind gentlemen present that they owed a justice to families of shareholders in the bank, rather than what might be considered mercy to those who had assumed a voluntary indebtedness. The action he had indicated comprehended safety to the bank, to the shareholders, and to the more important constituents. Temporizing would, in his opinion, involve the bank and all concerned in eventual ruin.”
The president took off his spectacles, wiped them carefully with a spotless handkerchief, and sat solemnly down. His arguments were felt to be incontrovertible. His great age, his long experience, his unfailing success in the management of all affairs with which, for half a century, he had been connected, his high character, added weight to his arguments, of themselves not easily to be controverted. But little more was said, and that chiefly in a conversational manner. Before the Board separated, a motion was carried that the manager be instructed to close all pastoral accounts under thirty-five thousand pounds. In the event of non-payment to realize upon securities without delay.
Such had been the preliminary debate—such had been the bill before the oligarchs of the Council of Currency—the potentates who coerce kings and resist nations, who render war possible or truce compulsory—with whom peace and prosperity or “blood and iron” are matters of exchange.
Such was the court, such the gravely-debated proposition, such the irreversible verdict arrived at, before Jack reached Melbourne. All “unconscious of his doom,” though full of intuitive dread, did he then demand of Mr. Mildmay Shrood what he was to understand by the letter he had received. That gentleman might have saved many words, and some anxiety to his interlocutor, by simply replying “Ruin!?”—but an answer so laconic would not have justified the reputation for politeness which the manager of the Bank of New Holland, in common with managers of banks generally deservedly held.
He used no insincerity when he answered that it gave him much pain to be compelled to state that the bank felt it necessary to call upon him to reduce, or indeed, to extinguish his liability to them without delay.
“And, if I am unable—in the teeth of this detestable season and this infernal panic, which the London money-mongers seem to have got up on purpose to take away our last chance, what then?” demanded Jack, commencing to boil over.
“I must again express my unfeigned regret,” said Mr. Shrood, “but I cannot disguise from you that the bank will at once realize upon the security which it holds for your advances.”
“In plain words, your bank, without warning of any kind, demands a very large sum of money, advanced during several years, and sells me up without mercy, in the midst of a grass famine and a money famine.”
“I am afraid, though you put it strongly, and perhaps not altogether fairly as regards the bank, that your view of their action as regards yourself is correct.”
“And can you talk of fairness?” said Jack with quivering lip and blazing eyes, as he stood up and faced the calm, decorous man of business. “Was I not led to imagine when this money was advanced with such apparent willingness, that I should have time, accommodation, all reasonable assistance if required, for the repayment? All the money has been faithfully invested in stock and permanent improvements. No run in the country, at this moment, is in better order or more cheaply managed. Can any one say that I have been extravagant in my personal expenses? It is hard—devilish hard—and unfair to boot.”
Mr. Shrood was quite of the same opinion. He was a man of kindly though disciplined impulses, and what men call “a good fellow,” underneath his armour of caution and official reserve. He did not intend to explain the policy of the bank. It was his to obey, and not to criticize, though within certain well defined limits he had much discretionary power. But he had always liked Jack, and was as sorry as he could afford to be, with so many unpleasantnesses of similar character to deal with, for his gravitation towards the bad, which he doubted could not be arrested.
Still, he thought he would make one effort with the directors in favour of John Redgrave, whose property he knew was thoroughly good of its kind, and whose particular case he felt to be one of “real distress.”
“I can but reiterate my expressions of regret, my dear Mr. Redgrave,” returned he; “nothing but the extreme, the unprecedented financial disorganization could have led the bank authorities to countenance so harshly restrictive a policy. I cannot speak of it in any other terms. But I will make a special effort to obtain further accommodation for you, though I do not advise you to rest any great hope upon a favourable response. On Wednesday the Board sits again. If you will call on Monday morning next, I will inform you of their ultimatum.”
Jack thanked the banker from his heart, and went forth to spend two or three days after a rather less melancholy fashion. We know that John Redgrave was so enthusiastic a votary of the present that, unless that genius was manifestly overshadowed by the awful future, he was apt to cry ruthlessly— “Stay, for thou art fair.”
So he ate of the unaccustomed, and drank of the choice, and otherwise solaced himself, carrying a good hope of the success of Mr. Mildmay Shrood’s intercession, the prestige of which he overrated sadly, until Monday morning.
His heart commenced to register a low tide of electricity—dark doubts, akin to despair, began to throng and rise; there was “a whisper of wings in the air,” altogether non-angelic, as he stood once more in the presence of Mildmay Shrood, and of—Fate. One look at the fixed expression of the features of the manager was sufficient to settle the question of concession. All hope and expectation died out of Jack’s heart. He nerved himself for the blow.
“I regret more deeply than I can express——” commenced Mr. Shrood.
“It is not worth while to go on,” interrupted Jack. “I believe that you have tried to do what you could for me, and I thank you sincerely for it. The question is now, what time can I have to make arrangements with another bank, or a mercantile firm, to carry me on—if such an unlikely thing comes to pass?”
“The bank will take no action for one month—so much I can guarantee; at the end of that period no further cheque will be paid, and the bank will sell or take possession of the stock and station, as mortgaged to them.”
“What about current expenses?”
“They will be paid as usual—if not exceeding ordinary amounts.”
“Well, thank God,” said Jack, “my people, the few there are of them, are paid up. I shall not have to trouble you for much. I wish you good morning.”
The banker walked over to him, and looked full in the face of the man who was going forth, as he believed, to utter, inevitable ruin. He knew that only by a miracle could any one obtain assistance in the present state of finance. All the other banks, all the great mercantile squatting houses, bankers themselves in all but name, had been throwing over dead weight, dropping small, doubtful, or not vitally necessary accounts, for months past.
John Redgrave’s quest would be that of a drowning man who solicits the inmates of dangerously laden boats, in the worst possible weather, out of sight of land, to have pity upon him and to risk their lives, manifestly for his sake. He might not encounter the precipitate phraseology of the British tar, but a crack with an oar-blade would, metaphorically, represent his reception.
Mr. Shrood was not, of course, any more than the officer of any other service, likely to divulge the inner workings of official action; but he wrung Jack’s hand with an emphasis not all conventional, as he wished him success, and bade him a genuine farewell.
“It is precious hard upon that young fellow, I must say,” said he, half aloud. “I really did not think I could be so unbusinesslike as to flurry myself about a single account, with the half-yearly balance coming on too. It must be near lunch-time.”
Mr. Mildmay Shrood opened an inner baize-embellished door, and disappeared into a long passage, which led to his private suite of apartments. He then and there threw himself into a game of romps with his daughters, aged six and eight years respectively, and informed his wife that there would be a flower-show on the following Saturday, to which, if nothing materially affecting his health, or the weather, took place in the interval, he intended to have the honour of escorting her.
Mrs. Shrood expressed her high approval of this announcement, and at the same time stated her opinion that he looked rather fagged, asked if the affairs of the bank were going on well, and if he would like a glass of sherry.
“What bank, my dear? Yes, thank you; the brown sherry, if you please. What bank do you allude to?”
“Nonsense, Mildmay! Why, our bank, of course.”
“Madam,” replied the husband gravely, draining the glass of sherry with zest and approbation, “I have before had the honour to remark to you that, once inside that door, I know of the existence of no bank, either in New Holland or New Caledonia. And further, O partner of my cares and shares—I was about to say—but suppose we say Paris bonnets, àpropos of one that’s just come in, unless, madam, you wish to come and see me periodically at Gladesville, you will not mingle my private life, in any way or form, with my existence in that——other place.”
Here Mr. Shrood, who had in his earlier days been a staunch theatre-goer, waved his wine glass, and, putting himself in the attitude of “first robber,” scowled furiously at his wife.
That sensible matron first threw her arms round his neck, and told him. not to be a goose, and then, after arranging her ruff, rang the bell for lunch, to which Mr. Shrood, having by this time, like a wise man, got Jack’s stony face and gloomy eyes out of his thoughts, did reasonable justice.
Mr. Redgrave, with his customary hopefulness, recovered from the first misery of his position sufficiently to go about to all likely places, and to test the money-market most exhaustively, as to the accommodation needed for a squatter with an undeniable property and a heavy mortgage. His agents, Drawe and Backwell, were first applied to. They had nothing to learn, as his relations with them had always been of a confidential nature, since the old, the good old days of Marshmead. They had always given him good advice, which he did not always want, and money, which he always did. They had always helped him to the limit of safety, and would have done anything in reason for him now; but, like many others, they were not able. Their capital and reserve fund were strained to the fullest extent. Times and the seasons were so bad that no one without the resources of the Count of Monte Christo, combined with the business talents of a Rothschild, could have done the pastoral community much good in that year. They had a smoke over it in the back office; but nothing, in the shape of relief, was found to be practicable.
“You see, old fellow,” said Backwell, who, as old squatter himself, understood every move in the game, “we could find four or five thousand pounds for you, but what good would that be? You would have to sell twenty thousand of your best sheep to meet the acceptances, and, of course, the bank won’t stand your reducing the stock much. Then—though that would have been a good payment to account a year or two back—they won’t thank you for it now. They want the whole of their advances to you, and less won’t do. There are plenty more in the same boat. People say they are shaky themselves. They have some fearfully heavy accounts—old Blockstrop and others—we all know. They can’t afford to show any mercy, and they won’t. What stock will come to, unless the drought breaks up, no man can say. We are not what I should call a very solvent firm at present; and so I tell you. They must have some fellows to sell stock, you know, or we should have a note to settle our little account in quick sticks. Let me drive you out to St. Ninian’s to-night, and we’ll have a taste of the sea-breeze, and look at Drawe’s dahlias; they’re all he has to live for now, he says.”