A BROKEN BANK.

When Mr. Crabtree and Jack Prior were fairly into the town the various groups resolved themselves into a living mass through which there was difficulty in penetrating on horseback. The two men, carefully guiding their horses, had time to contemplate Newton under a third aspect--not grinning and prancing as on a yearly festival, not gaping and staring at the tale of a crime committed in the midst of them yet apart from them--but hand in pocket and heart in mouth, in sharp dread of a _theft_ which should have stolen from each man or woman his or her piece of money, hardly earned and religiously kept. For this was no gathering of the rich who could preserve their polite equanimity under the temporary locking up, or even the entire loss of considerable sums in Crabtree’s Bank; because the losers would not feel sensibly the worse of the misfortune, or else might hope to retrieve the disaster. To those who can thus lose and win by turns in the game of trade an adverse stroke comes as part of the day’s obligations, and is taken as a matter of course--to be balanced in a debit and credit account, to settle which a lifetime is needed. But this was a hand-to-mouth if respectable mob--many of its members the old, the disabled, the feeble, who had yet contrived to scrape together a pittance for a rainy day--a pittance which, if scattered to the winds, would never be painfully collected again.

Instinctively Mat Crabtree and Jack Prior shrank from individual recognition. They had no wish to know and be known by injured men and women, whose injuries the better equipped new-comers could not heal. But, as the couple slowly made their way in the centre of the throng, even Jack Prior, who was much less at home in Newton than Mat Crabtree, could not fail to identify homely figures striving for precedence with a strange, tragic element of fixedness and fatality of circumstance in their very convulsive eagerness.

Yonder was the big old yeoman, more slouching in figure and less ruddy in colour than formerly, who had sold his inheritance of Ladslove for deliverance from a debt which he had never contracted unless in becoming surety for its payment. What was left over of the purchase money had set him up as a coal agent. But even the Bank House patronage had not caused the leased coalyard, so grimy an exchange for the paternal fields, to flourish. It flourished the less, doubtless, because the ale-house had become the more congenial resort to the broken-down man. The coal bank was pledged already, and if the slender store of ready-money in Crabtree’s Bank were gone also, the ex-yeoman was in a worse condition than a day labourer, who could hire himself out to-morrow and earn enough by the sweat of his brow to keep his wife and sick daughter from starving.

The elderly woman in a thick jacket and battered straw bonnet, who was squaring her shoulders and elbowing a path for herself like a man, was Widow Maxey, who had been left an unprotected female with a house full of young children a quarter of a century before. The family’s sole means of support were the horse and cart with which her late husband had driven coals from the Kershaw heaps, before the railway and the agencies which had sprung up in its track had come into play. She had been a comely young woman then, when she put her shoulder to the wheel and entered the ranks of the carters. She had grown weather-beaten, and learned to smoke a tobacco-pipe in self-defence against the elements, but had shown no worse signs of deterioration. On the contrary, she had maintained a spotless reputation which no man dared assail, in her Amazonian occupation and surroundings. But toil and exposure had told upon her robust constitution, so that she had aged rapidly, and had been forced by rheumatism to resign her seat at the head of the cart, yield her whip to a half-grown lad, her son, and return, perforce, to the corner of the hearth. It had become as much alien ground to her as it would have been to a man overtaken by infirmity, cut off from an active out-of-doors life, and reduced to hang about the house, in which he was a useless and listless supernumerary. Widow Maxey had only become reconciled to her abdication because, as was well known, she had remained in possession of the sinews of war--that is the actual proprietorship of the horse and cart, in addition to her savings. She had been for years proposing to lay the savings out in the purchase of a new horse, to replace the worn-out animal which had in its turn replaced her husband’s old mare. She had held frequent solemn consultations on the important transaction, which was never likely to take place, with Jack Prior, for she was one of Jack’s Kershaw acquaintances. He dreaded to meet her eye now, as if he was at the bottom of her cruel disappointment.

It was still harder for Mat Crabtree than for Jack in the _mêlée_, since Mat not only knew dozens where Jack knew one person involved, but these persons, by common consent, appealed to the squire of Haybridge to see justice done. It was exactly what he was seeking to do, but in a far less effectual manner than they were quick to conceive. They knew him as one of the Crabtrees, who had always owned the bank; nay, as the elder brother of the banker. Mat had a name for liberality and kindness, and the suppliants could not realise how powerless he was in the emergency. ‘You’ll see us paid, Mr. Crabtree, won’t ye?’ was the unanimous, importunate cry. ‘We might never have had ought to do with the bank if it had not been for your name--the name of your father, as was well known far and near for a just and honourable gentleman, the friend of the people. Lord, when he were made Mayor--you must mind, squire, for you’re not a young man yourself--he found work for every idle hand in the town. His son will not see us robbed and cheated of our all.’

Harrowing details were spread out without disguise for Mat Crabtree’s reluctant inspection. A long, lean man, a gardener, who had been conspicuous for his aggressive respectability and the crustiness which has distinguished all gardeners since Adam partook of the fatal apple, was the first to be betrayed into sentiment. ‘It was my lad’s money--my lad as were wild and went off to be a sodger,’ said the father with trembling lips; ‘but he has taken up and riz to be a corporal, and we were main proud, the lad’s mother and me, afore the neighbours, when he kept sending us home shares of his pay as he fought and bled for. We didn’t spend a farthing of the money; bless you! we would have starved first. We kept it against Ned’s return, that it might be all awaiting him though we were in our graves. Surely, sir, no strange swindler, let alone a townsman, one of the old country gentry, would touch what was the price of a brave man’s blood?’

‘You must mind us, Mister Crabtree, my sister Ann and me,’ pled a scarecrow of a little woman, with a bunch of faded roses stuck jauntily in the round hat meant to cover her grey head. ‘I’d never have been so bold as to bring us back to your recollection, though we did do plain sewing for Madam, your mother, when she came in from Haybridge to the Bank House in winter, as the family were wont to do in your honoured father’s lifetime. But Ann has gone blind, and there is only me to trust to, as is not so strong as I ’ave been. We would have been in the workhouse afore now, if it had not been for the legacy a well-to-do cousin were worked on to leave us. We took the advice of your respected brother, Mr. Lambert, and he bought a bank share with our legacy, for which we drew the interest regular. We had not wished to touch the principal as long as we could help it. We kep’ it to bury the last of we two. Oh, sir, Ann won’t see the road she’s going--that’s one comfort, but it will break her poor heart--as were broken already in her youth by the false lies of a journeyman tailor--to die in a workhouse.’

What could Mat Crabtree do but push forward, looking neither to right nor left, and muttering, ‘Yes, yes,’ as the Iron Duke looked and spoke, when he was beset by the London populace clamouring for nothing more personal than justice to foolish, hardly used Queen Caroline.

As Jack Prior had conjectured, the clock on the church tower close to the bank had not struck the hour for the bank’s opening. But the pressure was so great round the building that he had some trouble in following his companion’s example. They had to edge in their horses like mounted policemen on a public show-day, so as not to produce another description of panic and stampede, till the riders found themselves stationed as if on guard on each side of the great bank doors. Other horsemen and a variety of vehicles were in attendance, but none had got so far forward, none had been made way for like these two.

Jack spared a passing thought that it was a mercy Susie was not within the Bank House, which was left to the servants and the police, for no woman’s heart, however innocent, could well have stood the sight. Then he set himself to endure in company with Mat Crabtree a bad quarter of an hour.

From their saddles the two men commanded a sea of heads which filled an open space into which the street suddenly spread after the fashion of some old-world streets. It left room for a small green, with an old elm in the centre, and behind it the parish church, with its square Norman tower. This was the aristocratic as well as the ecclesiastical centre of Newton. Good old houses, with white facings round the long French windows, and pillared entrances to extensive gardens, marked the quarter. The house next the church was the vicarage, other houses belonged to the principal doctor, the principal lawyer, the retired military and naval officers--a few specimens of whom are generally found settled in a country town. But the bank and the Bank House, quite a spacious pile of masonry, cast all the other buildings into the shade. This bit of Newton, even on market days, when the chief business was done at the bank, preserved an air of dignified repose which was not easily disturbed. The present scene formed a remarkable contrast. Fustian jackets jostled lingering smock frocks, country-made coats kept rustic plaid shawls in company, and tradesmen in shirtsleeves lent countenance to respectable women with no other covering for their heads than the housewives’ caps, in which the wearers would not willingly have been seen abroad on any occasion save one of life and death. But men and women had been suddenly infected with the fever which was raging, and had rushed out as they were dressed, from behind their counters and from their domestic work, without so much as waiting to whip on coats and bonnets. Many of the mothers were of necessity lugging children, and the unconscious creatures, unaffected by the silence and suspense tugging at every mature heart, raised at intervals a clamour of their own, which broke with startling discordance on what was by comparison the unnatural quiet.

As the crowd waited--growing always denser, a stir and motion fluttering its edges, the turning of many faces and a hum of suppressed exclamation, showed that by some of those unaccountable modes of communication that convey news of general import with the speed of lightning, fresh tidings had reached the throng. The train had arrived with the London newspapers, and in the list of bankrupts figured the name of ‘James Metcalfe, Gentleman.’ This was the bank partner to whom Mat Crabtree had referred in conversation with Jack Prior half an hour before as a man who cut a dash like Lambert, who had been going at such a pace for years that only a bank behind him could have kept him up. James Metcalfe had spoken the first word in the controversy about to be entered upon between himself as a bank partner and the other partners and customers of the bank. He had frankly announced himself impecunious as a private person, whatever he was as a public character.

Smothered groans of jealous rage responded to this further darkening of the horizon. ‘He were in the town driving four-in-hand not a month agone,’ cried one voice. ‘His wife and daughter were presented to the Queen this very spring,’ cried another. ‘I seed his name, leastways his horse’s, in a list of the runners at some dashed races,’ chimed in a third.

‘Ay, races and balls, fine clothes, and fine eating, them’s the ways of the gentlefolks, and we pay the piper,’ growled a humble cynic.

‘Hold on,’ remonstrated a volunteer, a self-complacent little man, who was loyal in his self-complacency, and at the same time oppressed by the consciousness that the squire of Haybridge and young Prior of Redcot were at his elbow. ‘Gentlefolks ain’t all alike any more than we are. I take it there are good, bad, and indifferent among them as among smaller fry, and I for one won’t hear a word till it be fairly proven against the Colonel. I’m a volunteer. I ain’t in any ways ashamed of it, and Colonel Crabtree is as hearty and free as any gentleman or officer need be. It is a mean dodge--yes, I say it is a low, dirty trick to come down upon him like this, when his back is turned too, after all he has done for the troop and the town--just because he has had the misfortune to have his bank robbed.’

‘We are seeking no more than our own,’ his hearers defended themselves with one voice--dull, decisive, and striking with sledge-hammer weight. ‘It is better to be just than to be generous.’ ‘His back is turned? Whose fault is that? Why don’t Mr. Lambert Crabtree show face and render up his accounts?’

Mat Crabtree sat like a stone while he tried to turn a deaf ear. Jack Prior winced and fumed and involuntarily kicked with his heels till he was recalled to what he was about by his long-suffering horse threatening to rear.

Another pause and another commotion aroused the pent-up crowd. ‘Eh! what was it? What do you say?’ ‘Old Mr. Hutchinson taken with a fit--doctor galloping out like mad--not thought patient will live over the day--another of the bank partners!’ ‘The judgment of Heaven, do you think? But the old man were clean past business. He were the age of father, I’ve heard him tell. Judgment should begin nigher-hand with the able-bodied and capable.’

The brooding heat of a lowering, sultry morning made the circumstances harder to bear. The whole outlook suggested a bad thunderstorm--another sign to the ignorant and credulous, who are fond of signs of the wrath of God against the unrighteous dealings of men. Would the church clock never strike? Had it been tampered with too? Had its machinery run down to defer the evil hour which must come?

At last, with a creak and swing, the ponderous double doors opened, and revealed pale, anxious faces of bank officials at their posts before the human tide began to pour in. Jack sprang from his horse, a bank porter took the bridle, instinctively a passage was yielded to ‘young Prior of Redcot’ till he reached the counter and had his father’s cheque cashed in the gold and Bank of England notes--of which there were piles and rolls ready to meet the demand upon them. But as for the Crabtree bank notes they were nowhere, except in the hands of many of the applicants. It was clearly understood that as an issue from the bank they were utterly rejected, till their credit should be restored, if that day ever dawned.

When Jack struggled out he saw Mat Crabtree still immovable, to some extent stemming the rush and preventing the stronger from pushing aside and bearing down the weaker.

‘Fair play,’ Jack heard him call, in his authoritative voice. ‘Englishmen like fair play.’

‘We’ll be fair enough if your brother the banker act fairly to us,’ was called back roughly in the passion of the moment, and the squire of Haybridge stiffened into silence as before.

Jack extricated himself and his horse, and lingered on the outskirts of the company. He was fain to see the end of the day’s work, whether the eager flow would relieve the current eddying in one direction with fatal concentration--whether the supply would meet the demand after all. If the bank were saved so far as to escape being violently brought down, it would have time given it to wind up its affairs calmly and in a sound mind, with the least injury to all concerned. But even as Jack waited and looked, by a quick strategic movement, taking the pushing crowd unawares, the heavy doors swung to in the very faces of the front rank making good their entrance, and presented to horror-stricken faces a placard already affixed--‘Crabtree’s Bank has stopped payment till further notice.’

A muffled roar of baffled desire and despair rose on the heavy air. Men gesticulated furiously. Women hid their faces and wept aloud. Jack could distinguish Mat Crabtree’s voice again from where he still sat on his horse by the bank-doors. ‘Men and women, I can do nothing for you at this moment,’ he told those who pulled themselves together to listen. ‘Nobody can do anything in the meantime. But go home. Have patience. A bank is not crushed out of existence in a day. It has funds and debts of its own to realise. There will be dividends more or less, and the depositors are paid first. It is the law of the land. Take heart. I wish to heaven I could give you more assurance. But I have another word to say to you. I heard some of you say my brother would not show face. Whether that be true or not, I am going after him, and if he is alive he will be here to answer to you.’ He was gone the next moment, steering his way so skilfully through the crowd that it seemed as if it fell apart and dissolved in its hopelessness and heavy-heartedness. Mat outstripped Jack. The latter had been detained by an inclination which he could not resist. A cripple who had over-exerted himself and was struck to the heart by the fruitlessness of his exertions, staggered so wildly, and showed himself so faint that he had to be dragged out of the press. Jack cleared a way and helped the man out, clinging to his stirrup.

‘Thank you, governor,’ said the poor fellow, wiping his wan face, ‘it were the heat, and the haste, and the money for the rent, which I might have got yesterday, God help me, if I had knowed to come in time.’

Jack fumbled in his breast pocket and secretly thrust some of his father’s guineas into the shaking hand. ‘Take that in your strait. It is my father’s, not mine; but he would give it to you willingly if he were here.’