A Houseful of Girls

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"I have put it off too long, supposing I had the conscience to transfer
my liabilities to some simpleton who might not draw half a dozen of the
dividends of which I have drawn scores. Besides, the thing is
impossible, as I am telling you. Between you and me, the shares are far
below par."

"What is par, Jonathan?" interrupted Mrs. Millar in a praiseworthy
attempt to understand her husband.

"Oh, bother," he cried, running his hand in mild exasperation through
his white hair; "the standard value, or the original value, whichever
you like best. I should not dare to propose to sell out at such a loss;
it would not only be to impoverish myself at once in order to avoid the
risk of greater ruin, it would draw attention. It would have a most
suspicious look, and might bring the rotten affair down about our ears
instantly, while I should get the blame of the downfall."

"But some of the large foreign investments might be realized any
day--you told me the last time you spoke of business--with the first
good turn of trade," she reminded him anxiously.

"I trust so still, and I believe old Carey is an honest man and a
perfect gentleman--that is one comfort; but I cannot help thinking he
has got into bad hands. I tell you, Maria, I don't like that
brother-in-law of his who comes down from London to attend the Redcross
meetings, and tries to blarney us all round. And I cannot approve of the
bolstering up of Carey's cousins, the Carters, in their chemical works
at Stokeleigh, which it strikes me will never do much good. It--the
bolstering up--has been going on for a long time now, to what extent I
am not prepared to show. Unfortunately I have a bad head for figures,"
he shrugged his shoulders as if anticipating a reproach, "the less
reason why I should have laid out my savings on bank shares, you will
say? No doubt, no doubt, but there had been fewer troubles with banks in
my day. When I made the first investment everything appeared right, and
the dividends announced were tempting."

"I am not finding fault with what you did, Jonathan; I never thought of
such a thing," the perturbed woman found voice to reassure her husband.
"I know you did it for the best; and for that matter, I am convinced it
will all come right in the end," she ended with a little sigh.

"It is very good and pretty of you to say so, Maria," he said with a
certain old-fashioned, stiff gallantry which, while it complimented her,
treated her as a much younger and more irresponsible being than he was.
As he spoke he took up the hand which lay in her lap and held it for a
moment clasped in his. "And I can say you have been all that I could
have wished as a wife and mother, you have never once failed me during
the whole of our married life."

"Oh! thank you, thank you, Jonathan." She acknowledged his praise with a
momentary choke in her voice, and a bend of her head which was not
without a docile dignity.

"We are all in the same boat," resumed the Doctor in the deep tones
which somehow sounded like bass recitative; "the Rector, Colonel
Russell, and I--not to say Carey himself. We all wished to increase our
incomes with as little trouble and risk as possible--so it seemed then,
but if the bank comes to smash, all the old Redcross gentle-folks, as we
were pleased to call ourselves, will go with it."

"Don't mention such a thing, don't think of it," cried Mrs. Millar in
her dismay.

He went on without noticing her. "The Bishop won't let the Rector come
down, and Russell is twenty years younger than I. He is no older than
you are, though a foreign climate has told a good deal on him; still, he
is patched up, and with care ought to have lasted as long as the rest of
us. He may exert his interest, and get a post in India again, though I
should be afraid it would finish him in six months."

The poor middle-aged lady who sat listening with dry lips apart, and
pleasant hazel eyes distended with fright and distress, though she was
no older than the unfortunate colonel, had not been exposed to a foreign
climate, and had hardly suffered from a serious illness in her life, did
not look much like such an arduous undertaking as going out to India to
redeem a wrecked fortune. She pulled herself together, however, and set
herself to the good woman's business of comforting and encouraging her
husband. "I am certain it is right to go on hoping. You often say that
in your profession you have no such helpful allies as hope and courage;
you must practice what you've preached, Doctor," and the faithful soul
actually contrived to impart a playful ring to her unsteady voice. "The
Rector has not preached the duty more strenuously than you have; and
you are not going to be the first to break down, especially when there
is no real occasion. Depend upon it, Carey's Bank will pull through like
some of your most doubtful patients, with time and care."

"With all my heart," he said, absently taking off his spectacles,
polishing, and replacing them. Then he resumed his former line of
thought. "Tom Robinson is out of the mess. He, and his father before
him, found other ways of disposing of their capital where it was more
under their own inspection and control. If that foolish girl of ours,
Maria, could only have brought herself to listen to Robinson," he worked
himself up into a fresh access of vexation, "the liking would have come
in good time. I did not expect her to have a fancy for him on the spot,
for quiet, steady young fellows like him are not apt to take girls'
fancies--the worse for the girls."

"But, father"--remonstrated Mrs. Millar, involuntarily bestowing on her
husband the title the girls gave him--she drew herself up as she spoke,
and again destroyed the equilibrium of her cap--"you cannot surely think
that Tom Robinson would have been a fit match for Dora, or any of her
sisters. He is well enough in himself, I say nothing against him, but he
has not gone into a profession, instead he has identified himself with
'Robinson's'--that shop;" a shade of ineffable disgust stole into her
ordinarily good-humoured voice.

"Showed his good sense and manliness," said the Doctor gruffly. "I wish
every one else had been as wise. I wish all of us had big paying shops
at our backs instead of Carey's shaky bank. I for one would swallow the
indignity cheerfully. Why, my father kept on his dispensary in the days
when the practice was at its best. The greater fool I to give it up. I
tell you England will never be what it was till it gets rid of this
rubbish of despising trades and shops. Don't you help to put it into
these silly girls' heads. It makes me sick to think how they may live to
wish they were connected with an honest, solvent shop."

"My dear, I think you are going a little too far." Mrs. Millar fired up
in defence of her young like a ruffled mother-pigeon. "I should be very
sorry to teach the girls to look down on anybody; but that there are
different sorts and conditions of men, they may learn from their very
Bibles and prayer-books. There are such things as education and
culture--not to speak of good birth. You yourself, Dr. Millar, are
fairly well born and well connected for a professional man." She
instanced this with an imperceptible bridle and toss of her matronly
head, which hinted broadly, "If it had not been so, Jonathan, I should
never have been Mrs. Millar." The movement threatened to deposit her cap
on the carpet behind her, but she recovered it in time, and took up the
thread of her discourse by quoting the much-prized family
distinction--"There was your Aunt Penny, who married into the county."

"Oh! are you at that humbug?" he cried, with a man's disrespectful
impatience. "I thought it had seen its day, and was long over and done
with. I could not have conceived that you--" ("were such a fool," he was
going to say, when he caught himself up.) He was quick-tempered and
impulsive, but he was also suave by nature, and his long habit of
courteous indulgence to his wife caused him to alter the phrase. "I did
not know that you had so lively an imagination as to persist in
believing that old myth, Maria."

"But your Aunt Penny did marry one of the Beauchamps of Waylands,"
insisted Mrs. Millar.

"Certainly; and she made the poorest marriage of anybody that I have
ever had to do with, though I have always understood that he was not a
bad sort, beyond being as thick-headed as his brother the squire or an
officer of dragoons. He get on at the bar! I dare say not. And he was no
quicker-witted or longer-sighted in Australia. You must have heard me
say how grieved I was once when I came across a fellow from Sydney who
had been up the country, and remembered something of the Beauchamps and
their straits. They were regularly hard up, and went through no end of
trouble. Poor Aunt Penny seldom had a woman-servant--women-servants were
more difficult to get out there in those days. She had to wash, cook,
and scour for the men at the station."

"Why didn't they come home?" inquired Mrs. Millar rather weakly.

"Come home! They had nothing to come home with, or to. You don't suppose
his brother, the squire, with a wife and family of his own, would have
kept them, though the Beauchamps had received her civilly enough at the
time of the marriage! She had to milk the cows when the cow-man was
otherwise wanted. I do not say that many a better born woman than she
was has not done as much and thought little of it, only it was not in
Aunt Penny's line. I can just remember her when I was a small boy, a
pretty creature who read Italian, sang to her guitar, and made bread
seals for her amusement. She had such a mortal terror where cows were
concerned that she would run like a lapwing when she heard one come
lowing up the lane behind the house. Paton, the man from Sydney who
remembered them, thought they did a little better towards the end, when
they got a store, and Mrs. Beauchamp kept it. Do you hear that, Maria?"
cried the Doctor, with a half-humorous, half-indignant emphasis.

"Yes, I hear," replied Mrs. Millar, with an obstinate inflection of her
voice which said, "I am of my own opinion still." She illustrated this
by adding, in an undertone, "They were in Australia."

"A store," continued the Doctor, "is the rudest, most uncouth kind of
shop; and Beauchamp was not fit to keep it, he had to turn it over to
his wife, who was thankful to serve shepherds and bush-rangers for aught
I know. She lost one child in the bush, God help her! The little thing
wandered away and was never heard of again; and her other child, a boy,
who grew up, did not turn out well. I tell you, I never like to think or
speak of the mother."

"Poor Aunt Penny!" said Mrs. Millar hastily. "But there is one
thing"--with a sudden accent of triumph in the perception that she had
the advantage of her husband at last--"your Aunt Penny married the man
she cared for; she got her choice, and in that light she had no reason
to complain, though she had to abide by it."

The Doctor was a little taken aback. "I do not know that she
complained--at least her people at home heard nothing of it. And you
must do me the justice of owning that I have done nothing to force
Dora's inclinations. Indeed, I am not clear that I have done my duty. I
ought to have reasoned with the girl. Robinson is not only a good man,
he is also a gentleman, every inch of him, so was his father before
him."

"In the choice of Jenny Coppock, of Coppock's Farm, for a wife!"
exclaimed Mrs. Millar, still rebellious, even satirical and disdainful.

"He was entitled to choose whom he would, I suppose, so long as she was
an honest woman, and Jenny Coppock was that quite as much as her husband
was a gentleman. She made him happy, I believe, strange as it may sound
to some people, as ladies do not always make their husbands happy--you
know I mean nothing personal, Maria. Whether she was quite happy herself
is a different question, of which I have had no means of judging. But I
have heard you yourself say that she never presumed on her rise in rank,
or sought to thrust her comely, kindly face where it was not wanted. Her
son has a look of her, without her good looks. Poor Mrs. Robinson! I was
with her in her first and last illness, as you are aware, and a more
courageous, self-forgetful soul I had never the privilege to attend."

Mrs. Millar turned back in the conversation, and took to dogmatizing.
"People who are well-informed and well-bred will never descend to a
lower level without great discomfort and serious loss. I for one, though
I have not profited by the advantages the girls have commanded, and I
daresay have not their brains"--she made the frank admission with
womanly, motherly humility--"though I could not to save my life make one
of Rose's beautiful water-colour sketches, or read Greek and Latin like
'little May,' or even talk to the point on every subject under the sun
like Annie, still I should not be happy if I had to keep company with
Wilkins the butcher's or Ord the baker's wife, and they would not be
happy either. It would not matter, in one sense, though I knew they were
respectable, worthy women, and were ever so much better off as to money
than I. That would not keep me from feeling thoroughly out of place and
having hardly an idea in common with my neighbours in their
plush-trimmed gowns and fur-lined mantles. I could not stand such
degradation for my girls," she protested, with rising agitation. "I had
far rather that they and I should be the poorest ladies in the land,
should have to pinch and deny ourselves all round."

"It is little you know of it," muttered Dr. Millar, shaking his white
head, and pensively contemplating his finger-nails.

"While we still retained the position to which we were born, and the
associations among which we were reared," ended Mrs. Millar, with a
gasp.

"Bless the woman, what does she mean?" cried Dr. Millar after his lively
fashion, with an air of injured innocence. "Does she pretend that Tom
Robinson has not been educated--stamped, for that matter, with the last
university brand, to which he does credit, I must say? Stay, there goes
the night-bell. I am wanted for somebody."

"You'll never go out again to-night, Jonathan," pleaded Mrs. Millar,
"after all your worry, when you have not had more than a couple of
hours' rest." She was already reproaching herself keenly for having
contradicted and argued with him. She had never been able to comprehend,
for her comfort, that to a man like him an argument is both rousing and
refreshing. In the middle of her remorse she instinctively held up her
head, and balanced her cap as a Dutchwoman of the last century balanced
her milk-pail, or a girl of the Roman Campagna her sheaf of grass and
wild flowers. "It is a shame," she reflected indignantly; "it is very
likely nothing of any consequence, just one of those inconsiderate
people who think that a professional man ought to be always at their
beck and call."

"There, Maria, you're scoring another point for trade," said the little
doctor, getting on his feet, and buttoning up his coat as a preliminary
to obeying the call. "I'll warrant Wilkins and Ord will be toasting
their toes, and retiring to bed with the comfortable conviction that
their night's rest will not be disturbed; since Wilkins's head-man
attends to the slaughter-house, and the eldest journeyman baker sees to
the setting of the sponge. Why don't you say, _noblesse oblige_, Maria?
But I think I know the name of the inconsiderate individual who has
interrupted our conversation, and I assure you he would not if he could.
It is little Johnny Fleming--Fleming the grocer's son--whose case is
critical, I fear. I told his mother if he got worse to send for me at
once. When I am out, at any rate, I'll just look in on old Todd, in
Skinners' Buildings. He appeared in a dying state this morning; but as
the family have not sent to let me know of the death, if he has hung on
so long, the chance is he will rally and come round this bout. I'll be
some time; don't sit up for me, my dear."

"It is too bad," Mrs. Millar fretted. "They ought to send at night for
Newton or Capes from Woodleigh--it is only a step for any of the young
doctors, instead of disturbing a man of your age."

"Good heavens! don't breathe such a thing. I could not afford it. I
thought of taking a young partner twenty years ago, but I put it off
till it was too late. Perhaps it was a mistake; we all make mistakes,"
he sighed. "An active young practitioner, well up to date, might have
kept the business better together."

"Nonsense!" cried his wife energetically. "Nobody would have looked at
him when they could have had your skill and experience."

"Then be thankful I'm still fit for work--one must take the bad with the
good. It is the fortune of war, Maria," said the gallant old doctor as
he departed.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CRASH.

Within a month Carey's Bank broke, not altogether unexpectedly. The
breaking carried dismay and desolation into not a few households in
Redcross, and administered a sharp shock--productive of much startled
speculation, and roused distrust, even in those quarters which had not
suffered financially by the bankruptcy. The stoppage of a bank, with
little hope of its resuming its functions, is like the stoppage of a
heart which will never beat again. It may have been dreaded as a
possible calamity, and occasionally hinted at in awed whispers; but when
the blow falls it does so with a stunning, crushing force because of its
irreparable nature and far-reaching ruin.

There was just a little preparation to herald the catastrophe. Poor
Carey, an honest, weak tool of dishonest speculators and birds of prey
in the shape of needy, unscrupulous relations, when the appalling
tidings reached him which could only betoken immediate wreck, did all
that there was left to him to do. He called a meeting of the Redcross
shareholders. These were the leading professional men in the town who
had invested their savings, and a small proportion of the neighbouring
country gentlemen who had put a little capital--not often to spare in
those days--in a concern once regarded as sound and incapable of
collapse as the Bank of England itself. With a faltering tongue and a
hanging head the nominal head of the firm told to those nearly concerned
what was coming on them. Nobody reproached him; either no man had the
heart, or all felt the uselessness of reproaches. Certainly these
shareholders' silence was his heaviest punishment.

They made a hasty examination, as far as they could, for themselves, and
then the meeting broke up. Its members did not even linger to consult,
being well assured that consultation, like reproaches, would be of no
avail; the failure was so much more extensive and complete than their
worst fears had led them to anticipate. The men looked blankly in each
other's whitening faces and sought the refuge of their own houses at
first. There would be time enough for outcry, for desperate plans and
schemes a little later.

Poor Dr. Millar had not even this breathing space. It happened to be a
particularly busy day with him. Various neutral individuals, in no way
concerned with Carey's Bank, even when its misfortunes should be made
public, took that inconvenient time for falling ill, and their medical
man had to attend upon them with spasmodic promptitude and mechanical
attention--projected, as it were, against the dazed and confused
background of his brain. After all he was glad of his profession with
its outward and immediate calls, taking him out of himself in the hour
when he had heard the worst. He preferred to be about the town doing
battle with this man's attack of paralysis and that woman's symptoms of
typhoid, even though his ears were ringing with clamorous questions
which no one else could hear or answer. How was he to pay up the
liabilities of his bank shares from his dwindling practice? What about
inexperienced young girls driven out to make their own way in the world,
and the gentlewoman (in every sense of the word) whom he had loved and
cherished for four-and-twenty years, soon to be left a desolate, all but
unprovided for widow? But better a thousand times to be dragged in
different directions than to be sitting like Russell, locked in his
room, his little children and their young mother shut out, holding
between his hands the erect head of a soldier who had come out of many a
hard battle, but none so hard as this ambuscade which had been sprung
upon him after he had been invalided a dozen years before, and returned
home to spend his declining years in peace. Better than to have to write
sermons and read prayers, like the Rector, and pause between every
sentence to take himself sternly to task. Was it common forethought and
prudence, with the necessity of providing for the wants of a household,
which even the apostle Paul had commended, or was it worldly-mindedness
and greed which had brought him, a beneficed clergyman, a priest in holy
orders, the vowed servant of a King whose kingdom was not of this world,
to this lamentable pass? Yes; he would be dishonoured in the eyes of
men, a debtor who could not pay his debts, and even with the support of
his bishop would be scarcely able to weather the storm, while he must
make up his mind, as he was an honest man, that he and his should endure
the pinch of poverty for the rest of his days.

Annie and Dora had been out on a shopping expedition, and were coming in
talking and laughing as usual, when they were startled by the apparition
of their mother standing in the doorway of her room, and motioning to
them to come in directly and speak with her. The poor lady really looked
like a ghost, as she stood there with her fine colour gone, beckoning to
her daughters with her hand, as if the power of speech had suddenly
forsaken her.

"What is it, mother?" cried the alarmed girls in one breath, hurrying
towards her. "Has anything happened? Is anybody ill?"

"Hush! hush, my dears," said Mrs. Millar in a low tone, carefully
shutting the door of her room behind the girls, as if she were ready to
guard her secret with her life--at the same time painfully sensible that
the bad news would be all over Redcross the next day, or the next after
that. "I thought it would be better to tell you myself; nobody in the
house knows anything of it yet, except your father and me."

"But what is it, mother; you have not told us?" Annie urged; while Mrs.
Millar sank down in a low wicker chair, and her daughter Dora
instinctively stooped over her, and began to set her vagrant cap right.

"Never mind my cap, my love," said Mrs. Millar hurriedly, and then she
grew incoherent. "What does it matter, when perhaps I may not long have
a cap to wear."

Annie and Dora stared at each other in consternation. Was their mother
going out of her senses?

"It is the bank, Carey's Bank," said Mrs. Millar, recovering herself,
"Oh dear! I am afraid it is in a very bad way."

"Is that it?" cried Annie vaguely but gravely, opening wide her brown
eyes. "Is it going to fail?" She, too, spoke of the bank as if it were a
responsible being.

"Annie, Annie, take care what you say. Girls are so heedless. I tell you
it is very dangerous to make such broad statements. You do not know what
harm you may do by a single word when you are so childishly outspoken."
Mrs. Millar felt bound even yet to give her own words the timid
qualification, though she was forced to add the next moment, "Your
father has suspected things were going wrong for some time, and spoken
of his suspicions to me repeatedly. He has just come back from a private
meeting of the Redcross shareholders. He says in consequence of some
additional losses in South America, I think, and inability to realize
capital there, the bank cannot meet two or three heavy calls at home. I
daresay I am not telling you rightly, for I don't understand business,
and I don't suppose you do."

"I understand so far, that if this is not failure, I don't know what
is," said Annie.

"Don't, Annie," said Dora; "let mother tell us in her own way; it is not
easy for her, it is a dreadful misfortune."

"You may say that, Dora," exclaimed her mother. "Your father does not
believe the bank can hold out for another week; it may stop payment
to-morrow, since there are rumours afloat which will destroy what credit
it has left."

"Will no other bank help it?" cried Annie shrewdly.

"I believe not," said Mrs. Millar dolefully.

"Then there will be a run, like what one has read of in similar
circumstances--a rush of the people, and a riot in the town," suggested
Annie, getting excited over the idea. "The police may have to guard the
bank and the Bank house--soldiers may have to come from Nenthorn!"

"Oh, surely not," cried Dora; "the poor Careys--who could treat them so
cruelly?"

"No, no," said Mrs. Millar; "there is one good thing, your father does
not think there will be much ill-feeling, or anything like an angry mob,
or tumult--not even when the people see the closed doors. There has
always been such confidence in Carey's Bank, the Careys have been
respected for generations; even now it is James Carey's misfortune and
not his fault, though he may have been misled and imposed upon; and,
after all, the depositors are tolerably sure of their money in time. But
your father is afraid," she ended, her voice sinking, "that it will go
hard with the shareholders."

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