JACK PRIOR AND MAT CRABTREE RIDE ON A JOINT ERRAND.

John Prior had to give his son a commission to execute for him next morning. The elder man, besides being fretfully anxious to hear what was passing at Newton, had business to see to in the town, while he could not bring himself to go there. His nerves were in a jarred and shattered state from having been long stretched on the rack. He felt as if he could not stand having more screws and pincers applied to his quivering flesh. He shrank even from trivial encounters, and he was beginning to cling more and more to solitude as the best refuge for a stricken man. He gave Jack a cheque to a considerable amount on Crabtree’s bank, and sent him in to Newton to cash it.

John Prior held no partnership in the bank, such as had been proposed to him at the time of Susie’s marriage. He would not countenance his son-in-law even to that extent; besides, the squire of Redcot needed all his resources for the expenses of his mines. On the other hand, he had been, for his own convenience, one of the larger depositors at the bank. Lately, after he had heard from Lambert Crabtree’s own lips what sounded confirmation strong of sundry disquieting rumours of shakiness in the affairs of the once flourishing firm, John Prior had acted like himself. He had behaved with a curious mixture of reckless disdain and generous forbearance, in only beginning to withdraw partially and gradually the amount of his ready money that was in the bank. He had taken no decisive step which could have farther endangered the concern and precipitated a crisis by removing at once, and in a lump, the sum to his credit.

It had become absolutely necessary that John Prior should act on the defensive from the positive information he had received the night before, without any breach of confidence or divulgence of professional knowledge, for Mat Crabtree was not a partner in his brother’s bank any more than John Prior was. Mat had succeeded to the position of a junior partner when he became squire of Haybridge, but almost at the commencement of his brother’s reign the elder man had differed from the younger on the question of the latter’s management of the business. Mat Crabtree had withdrawn from the responsibility of a partnership--all the sooner, no doubt, that, like John Prior, he wanted his capital for his own purposes, the improvement of his land and stock, so that Mat, too, was but a depositor in the bank which had been his father’s and grandfather’s. But he knew enough from former experience to recognise the first symptoms of serious mischief. He scarcely needed the premonitory growlings of wrath and fright from the remaining partners, who, though they were all more or less subsidiary to Lambert Crabtree, had, on the alarm of the robbery, hastily called a meeting without waiting for the return of the head of the bank.

The doubt was whether any precautionary measure would not now be taken too late; but, in time or not in time, John Prior could not nerve himself to make it personally. He could not ride in to Newton with the intention of presenting his cheque over the bank counter and see what he expected to see in the town. The words might not be spoken to him, but he would hear ringing in his ears what everybody was saying of the scandalous extravagance of Lambert Crabtree and Susie, his wife, so conspicuously displayed with a brazen face within the very week. This was an extravagance which, together with its usual accompaniment, a mad haste to grow rich, had largely contributed to a public calamity. Worse than that, he, John Prior, would be conscious in his inmost soul that it was possible he might, by a word of his mouth, have prevented ruin and misery beginning with his own flesh and blood, and spreading far and wide.

For the first time in his life the squire of Redcot shirked an absolute obligation, and called on another man to pay the penalty due from his neighbour.

True, it was Jack his father pitched upon--Jack, who knew nothing, whose scatter-brains, where the grave conduct of his life had been in question, would not have been likely to have either profited or suffered by any amount of business knowledge. If a man could not take advantage of his own thoughtless, useless son on such an emergency, what more irresponsible substitute was there any hope of his finding?

Jack complied with his father’s request without offering an objection, though he had reasons of his own which made Newton and Crabtree’s Bank highly distasteful to him that morning. The young man would rather have hung about the house at Redcot on the precious chance of another _tête-à-tête_ with Bennet Gray, perhaps a stroll with her, on the apology supplied by the presence of the children, as far as the mill, or the barn, or the cunning labyrinth which led to the rose garden. He would even have been thankful for an opportunity of coming to an explanation with his mother or Jane. But neither among Jack’s attractive qualities, nor among his failings, had there been developed hitherto a facility in saying No; and, as he looked more directly at his father when he was speaking to him, a painful conviction smote upon Jack. How his father had aged since he (Jack) had gone away, and how terribly cut up the governor must be about this abominable robbery! Poor old fellow, he had chafed sufficiently about his (Jack’s) lack of brains, how would he look if--if----. But no, such baseness and degradation could never be--it was all a hideous dream, a ghastly delusion. Of course he would do what he could to be of any use. He was secretly pleased that his father had not been above applying to him for the smallest assistance which had been John Prior’s repellent attitude to his son formerly. Jack wished to Heaven he had not been such a heedless ass, and had been a little more comfort to his father.

So the young squire of Redcot rode in betimes on a sultry, cloudy, summer morning to Newton, and there he saw such a sight as amidst more personally overwhelming spectacles he never afterwards forgot. In the first place, he met Mat Crabtree also on horseback. He had turned aside, and was spurring along in order to intercept John Prior or his representative. The road was not in general much frequented, leading, as it did, only to a few scattered country houses and cottages, and as yet there were not many wayfarers. Nobody was within hearing when the elder man drew bridle the instant he spied the other rider, and called to him--‘Make haste, Jack, the whole town and country are up and flocking to the High Street. Your one chance is to push through on your beast as far as the bank door, and be among the first comers. You must do it. Your father cannot be left penniless.’

‘But it is not bank hours,’ protested Jack; ‘the bank doors will not be open.’

‘Ay, my lad; but there is a host of claimants waiting for the opening. You must get into the front rank and head the host.’

Mat Crabtree had turned, and was riding rapidly along with Jack. He looked eager, flushed, and excited. His manly face seemed to have recovered the lines of its earlier manhood; instead of looking older he held his whitening head erect and squared his broad shoulders. He was in the thick of the battle, and he warmed to it, and would fight it to the end, though he knew it was a losing game. And behind this morning’s struggle and clamour there lay a load as of lead on his breast, a burden which would send him scouring the country on a hopeless quest before the sun went down.

‘I remember something of the same kind in 18--,’ Mat Crabtree told Jack Prior out of the elder man’s experience, mentioning a year memorably fatal in trading and banking annals, ‘but it was a trifle to this. There was still something to be done. The case was by no means beyond recovery. I was a partner then, and was with some of the other partners in the bank parlour, when the crowd came streaming into the street. But we were able to meet the run. Old Fairfax was alive, and he was wonderfully shrewd and cool. He had anticipated the panic after the failure of Ford & Wetherby. He had gone up to London for gold, and got it and brought it down by a special engine after midnight. We kept one half of the door shut, and admitted the applicants in single file, paying in full without a moment’s delay. Before the afternoon half of the people had gone home ashamed to present their books or our paper, and the throng was no greater than on an ordinary market day.’

‘Can’t it be done again?’ Jack asked naturally enough.

Mr. Crabtree shook his head, and his face fell like a soldier’s when he has been beguiled into giving the tactics of a past victory, but is recalled to face the signs of an impending defeat.

‘Is it the robbery which has played the deuce?’ asked Jack, his voice sinking and thickening, while he kept his eyes fixed on his horse’s head. ‘At the same time, I do not see how that can be when the money has been recovered.’

‘It is the robbery in part,’ answered Mat Crabtree shortly, in the tone of a man referring to a subject which he did not care to discuss any more than Jack cared. ‘It shook the public confidence, which was already tottering, and did not recover from the shock, though it turned out that the bank had sustained no loss. The attempted robbery gave the alarm, and between you and me, Jack--for I believe there is no further possibility of concealment--everything is in a mess; long-drawn bills that ought never to have been granted, rotten securities which ought not to have been taken up, funds wasted. My brother was always rash and absurdly sanguine. Metcalfe is no better, and he, too, has been betting on the turf and indulging in similar vices and follies for a man in his position. He has been cutting a dash and going at a pace which would have brought him down any time these five years had it not been for the unfortunate bank at his back. There was a mighty difference in my father’s day, but that is a story long gone by. Only one of that set of partners survives, poor old superannuated Hutchinson, and he is trustworthy enough, though he may not be able to retain the clutch of his money-bags which he has gripped so long. The younger men will have to account, and Lambert first of all,’ said Mat Crabtree, setting his face sternly.

Jack Prior could only mutter he was sorry, without any absorbing pity for his brother-in-law. He had a tolerable share of what was likely to be the public’s sweeping condemnation of the man who had bidden for its favour swaggeringly and with a fair amount of success, while the delusion lasted.

‘The worst of it is Coplestone’s bonds,’ said Mat Crabtree, almost with a groan, fain to make a clean breast of it, even to no more qualified a councillor than Jack Prior, before the two entered on the sharp contest. ‘These bonds had been taken from the safe, and were not found with the bank notes after the robbery. The police have not discovered any trace of the papers. The poor beggar--a good sort who never considered himself--is invalided. He has stayed too long at his post out in India, where he has been baked and battered, seeing service far up the country in order to make the future safer for his wife and children. Now, when he has more reason than ever to be convinced that soldiering is a poor trade, he returns--I expect him on the scene at any moment, he may arrive in the middle of the racket, this very morning, though God forbid--to find the nest-egg on which he married gone, and his family not provided with more than bread and water after all.’

‘What are you going to do, Mr. Crabtree?’ inquired Jack doubtfully.

‘Nothing, sir, save see fair play,’ answered Mat Crabtree grimly. ‘What can I do? I may be mortally ashamed that I resigned my trust and sold out nearly twenty years ago, though I did no wrong. I cannot see yet, while I keep my senses, that it was not the best thing I could do.’

‘I don’t see how anybody can find fault with you,’ said Jack. ‘How could you guess what would happen a score of years beforehand?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mat Crabtree bitterly; ‘yet, upon my soul, lad, I had rather at this moment that I had remained a partner, because of the name I bear. I might have restrained Lambert, though he was at the head of the concern, if only by being a drag upon him. But now, though I were to sell Haybridge to-morrow, and divide it piecemeal among the poor creatures who have been robbed of their savings and deprived of their incomes, it would not be a mouthful to each. What would become of your sister Susie and her children? It is not just, it is not honest, that every burden should fall on your father.’

‘My father will do his part,’ said Jack hastily and gruffly. ‘Your brother may not have been the only person to blame. I mean,’ he added quickly, ‘Susie is as good at cutting a dash and throwing away money as the best.’

Mat Crab tree was following the current of his thoughts, and not paying much heed to the hesitating plea, put in awkwardly, and as with a reservation of meaning no less than of determination.

‘The most needy,’ went on Mat Crabtree, ‘may have the benefit of what little money is lying in my name, though the greater probability is that it is the greedy and importunate who will chiefly profit by it. But anyhow I would not have the face to anticipate them and make good my claim. There have been no bonds hitherto over Haybridge, and I can raise the wind in that way as well as many another and better man, I daresay,’ he said with a sigh, speaking more to himself than to Jack Prior. ‘And after I have stood guard over the weakest in this morning’s work, I shall follow the principal offender though he were ten times my brother, and bring him back to do what he can to atone for his offence, if he has a man’s heart left in him.’ Mat Crabtree ground the last words through his teeth. ‘That is about the sum-total of what I am able to do for the sufferers by the failure of Crabtree’s Bank.’

Not a word had Mat Crabtree or Jack Prior spoken of Bennet Gray; not a thought had they spent on her. For, though love stands between birth and death the greatest earthly factor in human existence, the giant power is at rest for long intervals and does not by any means pervade every idea and action of the man.

The two riders were already on the outskirts of the town where it was entered from the railway station. As the men came in sight of the road, ‘Look there, Jack,’ said Mat Crabtree, indicating numerous groups of old and young, men and women, some of them in working clothes, the pedestrians making their way as fast as they could hurry towards the church end of the High Street, in which the bank stood. There was in addition a considerable sprinkling of market-carts, dog-carts, and old-fashioned gigs heavily freighted with human cargoes.

Crabtree’s Bank stood in a peculiar relation to the town and neighbourhood. At the date of its establishment there had been no other bank in the place, and the gentleman who founded the firm, a man at once sagacious and kindly, had afforded the greatest facilities which the laws and customs of banking would allow for the use of the bank by the smallest admissible depositors, thus antedating the savings bank, which had only taken a slight hold on Newton. Crabtree’s Bank had included in addition to its richer clients a large leaven of the small tradesmen, yeomen--farmer, well-to-do mechanic, and upper servant class. In later years when available investments multiplied on all sides, and still more recently, when suspicions of the bank’s stability began to be whispered warily, those most in the way of hearing the whispers and most able to do what they would with capital, had withdrawn to a considerable extent from the old enterprise. The threatened calamity was likely to fall most heavily on the less well-provided, well-informed folk, who in other circumstances would have patronised a savings bank. It was this portion of the community, apt to be impulsive and demonstrative, whose

Manners have not the repose Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere,

that were rapidly assembling in Newton streets.

There was no loitering, dallying holiday air about the gathering crowd. Their faces were like flint, as had been said of men of old. The wayfarers pressed on as if goaded by an errand which would not let them rest. It forbade them to turn their eyes to the right or the left. It gagged even women’s mouths, so that the tongues within wagged only on the one engrossing topic, and did that in jerking sentences and single monosyllables There would be time enough for those interested to pour out their souls in shame-faced repentance or in righteous indignation and fierce denunciation when the devouring anxiety gnawing at every heart was allayed or when all was lost. Now breath was wanted for speed and caution--nay, cunning came into request, that each candidate might gain on another, and, if possible, outrun his neighbour.

Some of the women carried market baskets to conceal the bearers’ real intent, or from a mechanical notable habit of improving every opportunity of visiting the town. Others, the more reckless or the weaker vessels, openly held fast by slim little books, treasured and conned as few weighty tomes have been faithfully studied, or clutched homely purses stuffed with bank notes, which had been as good as gold this morning, yet might be little better than waste-paper before night.