CHAPTER IX.DIFFICULTIES.
The new year brought with it no increase of business to the Protector Bread and Flour Company.
On the contrary, several pairs of stones were standing idle at Stangate, and night-work was now a thing unheard of. Many men were discharged on account of “slackness,” and the labour of those that remained resulted rather in the accumulation of stock than in the execution of orders.
Orders to be executed had become, in fact, few and far between.
As for the bakehouse, it happened fortunately, perhaps, that no gentlemen of the press desired to see it in the later days of which I am writing, for it had become like one of those places in Pompeii, where, although the implements and utensils necessaryfor carrying on a trade still exist, the trade itself is a memory. Six months in London being about equivalent to six hundred years in Pompeii, the once busy court-yard and works now resembled nothing so much as a City of the Dead.
Over the Protector something worse than lava had flowed; and, although there was stock everywhere,—stock, and to spare—wheat in quantity, sacks and sacks of flour, still every one looked gloomy,—every one felt that “things were going queer.”
Half of the vans were now never pulled out of the sheds; a large number of the horses—creatures that, as we know, eat their heads off when standing idle in the stable—were sent to Gower’s and sold there by public auction; stripped of their fine liveries, many of the “Company’s servants” were now driving unornamental carts about the City, thankful to earn their guinea a week and supplemental pots of beer, wherever such terms were obtainable; most of the Company’s depôts were closed, and had large bills stuck upon the shutters, signifying “that these desirable premises wereTO LET;” the rounds were shorter than of old, and the men now stopped to get half-pints of aleanywhere they liked without reprimand or dismissal.
A cloud of general depression had settled down upon the directors, the shareholders, and the employés of the Company; there was nothing much doing at Stangate, and there was less in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. About the former establishment, Mr. Robert Crossenham walked disconsolately with his hands in his pockets; before the fire, in the latter, Arthur Dudley read theTimesdiligently, and smoked the last Havannas he was ever likely to have presented to him free of charge.
In the outer office, the clerks consumed walnuts in quantity, pelted each other with the shells, and looked at their watches, or the clock half a dozen times in the course of an hour.
Business was, in a word, as bad as the weather, and that could not by any possibility have been worse. The sky, as regarded the physical world, was leaden; the streets, sloppy; the air, raw; east winds prevalent; in the City, things were drooping; stocks, heavy; rhubarb, a drug; indigo, blue; shares, flat; corn, falling; sugars, depressed; money, dear.
The only branch of commerce, the vigour of which did not seem impaired, was that of advertising. People advertised their wares in despair, thinking, if a smash were to come, they might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,—as well face Basinghall Street with a creditable list of debts as go through the Court for a few hundreds.
It was sink, or swim, with a vast number of persons during the earlier months of the year in question, and yet the papers never were so full of advertisements. TheTimescame out with daily supplements, and theTelegraphwith its extra sheet; theStandardcurtailed its usual quantity of letterpress, and the weeklies raised their prices per line, and would not guarantee immediate insertion. Not to be out of the fashion, the Protector Bread Company, Limited, announced each morning in the columns of the daily papers, “that pure bread was obtainable nowhere excepting at the depôts of the Company;” and every now and then a copy of an analysis from Daniel Smith, Esq., M.B., Ph.D., M.A., F.R.S., &c., Professor of Chemistry in the College of the Home Counties’ Hospital, and Medical Officer of Health for Belgravia, was appended,stating that he had found a loaf of the Company’s bread to contain so much of so many things, and to be perfectly free from a certain number of other things; that all articles used were of the best quality, and that he considered the process of manufacture employed at the Stangate Works, to be highly cleanly, and satisfactory.
But all this could not make the bread sell. The tide of fortune had turned, and the waters of success were ebbing away from the goodly ship “Protector” more rapidly than they had ever flowed in on the commercial shore, where that once promising vessel now lay almost a wreck.
There was not a creature connected with it, however, who would admit that the venture was even in danger; and yet every person’s temper became, if Arthur Dudley’s report were to be believed, unbearable.
His own temper, never the most pliable, was severely tried; and now, instead of longing for each morning to dawn, in order that the business of the Protector might advance still further towards success, he hated to see day break—hated leaving his breakfast-room and going downstairs to meet thoseunpleasantnesses which had become of hourly, and momentary occurrence in his life.
Between his principals and the public, in fact, Arthur stood exposed to cross fires. He dreaded seeing a stranger enter the office; he looked forward to board-days with perfect horror.
His old enemy, General Sinclair, C.B., tormented him beyond all powers of expression. He seemed to think, that in Arthur’s hands lay the power of making the Protector a failure or a success. He frequently declared, their secretary was inefficient—his business capabilities below contempt. When once matters began to go a little wrong with the Protector, he commenced laying all the blame at Mr. Dudley’s door. He affirmed that Lord Kemms’ open repudiation of any connection with the Company, was owing entirely to the secretary’s lack of management; he called at the office, and told Mr. Dudley he considered a person, endowed with even the most moderate share of sense—an old friend and neighbour, moreover, of his lordship—might have arranged the affair without permitting it to be brought under the notice of the public; and, in the course of subsequent conversations, he more thanonce hinted his opinion, that, although the gentleman he had the pleasure of addressing might be a gentleman, he was not much better than a simpleton.
To which innuendo, delicately implied, Arthur, with more spirit than might have been expected, considering the state of his finances, replied, that General Sinclair had ample reason for thinking any person who relinquished his independence for the sake of becoming servant to a dozen masters, must be either foolish or mad.
“For my part,” added the secretary, “I believe when I was persuaded into having anything to do with the Protector, that I was both; and I can very truthfully say, if I could only get back the money I have lost by this confounded Company, I would cut the whole concern to-morrow. Meantime, sir, if you have any complaint to make of my conduct, I would thank you to bring it under the notice of the board. I am compelled to bear bullying once a week, but I will not endure it oftener.”
Upon this, General Sinclair, boiling over with rage, inquired if he (Mr. Dudley) knew to whom he was speaking?
“Yes,” Arthur answered, “I do; to that one ofthe directors of the Protector Bread and Flour Company, Limited, who took my place on the board when I resigned; and, with all my heart and soul, I wish I had never heard of the Protector, nor advanced a penny-piece for the purpose of bringing it before the public.”
And every word that Arthur said, he meant. He was sick and weary of his thankless office; of the preparation of unsatisfactory reports; of conversations with disheartened shareholders; of entering minutes of depressing proceedings.
Adversity, as has been stated, had not proved beneficial to the tempers of his directors, and stormy meetings were now the rule instead of the exception. Every man looked angrily on his neighbour; every orator believed the last speaker, and the speakers who had preceded him, wrong—practically and theoretically, root and branch; every creature had his own pet plan for restoring public confidence in the Company, and was wont to return home full of dismal forebodings, of doleful prophecies.
Mr. Black alone, perhaps, preserved his equanimity, and assured his colleagues, that, if theywould only have patience, the tide must turn. For his part, he said, he had seen so many ebbs and flows, that he did not care a snap of the fingers for any temporary depression. People had not ceased to eat bread; and, although they might for a time have changed their baker, still the best article must secure custom in the long run. He vehemently protested against the closing of shops, and the reduction of vans. “Better to have given the bread to the nearest charity,” he said, “than to have adopted such a course. Penny wise and pound foolish, he declared the policy adopted had been. He had advised putting on steam, instead of reducing the pressure, and reminded his fellow-directors of the fact; but of course,” he added, “they knew best; their experience, no doubt, was greater than his; there was no knowing, indeed, what the best plan to pursue might be, till they found out which plan led to fortune or failure.” For his part, however, he thought it was always judicious in business, as at whist, when doubtful to play a trump. He would have played a trump, and if the game were to prove a losing one, he would, at all events, have lost with éclat; but, as he said before, he deferred to thesuperior wisdom of his colleagues, and only trusted their wisdom might in the long run prove profitable to all parties interested.
But the united wisdom of the directors of the Protector did not prove profitable, and every board-day more temper was exhibited, till at length the papers began to take the matter up, and the very journals who had written leaders concerning the philanthropic and admirable construction of the Company, now found spare corners which they filled up with paragraphs, headed, “The Protector Bread Company again;” or with letters from indignant shareholders, who could not understand the gross mismanagement which must exist somewhere in a company, the directors of which declared a dividend of fifteen per cent. per annum at the first half-yearly meeting, and found their profits during the second six months only enabled them to pay with difficulty two and a half per cent.! Truth was, as Mr. Black—who practically knew a vast deal more about the mind of the British public than the rest of the directors were likely ever to evolve out of their internal consciousness—declared, the very honesty of the board swamped the Company, or, at least,hastened its extinction. No subterfuges; no cooking of accounts; no hints to the secretary, that at the moderate expense of a bottle of good ink, a few quires of paper, and a hundred of pens, things might be made to look as pleasant as any body of shareholders need desire to see them! it was all as though a doctor, being called in to see a bad case, were to lay the peril of his position before the patient—to exhibit to him, in its appalling nakedness, the poor chance he had of recovery.
“Enough to kill the man at once!” remarked the promoter to Mr. Robert Crossenham; “and enough to kill a company, if it had as many lives as a cat. What the devil do we want with directors or any board? If they would only find the money, I swear I’d find the brains. It is such a mistake, having so many masters. Well, if the ‘Protector’ goes smash, I shall always say, one of the finest pots of broth ever a man brought to boiling-point was spoiled by too many cooks having a hand in dishing it.”
As for Mr. Stewart, he even, had his fits of irritability—his hours when he came to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and treated Arthur to his opinions.
He said, he felt perfectly confident there wassomething radically wrong about the Company, and he seemed to imagine Arthur could help him to discover where the wrong existed, if the secretary would only set his brains to work.
Some short time after Lally’s death, he remarked, a little apologetically it is true,—
“I wish to Heaven, Dudley, you would bestir yourself! Surely, it is as much your interest as mine to find out what game Black is playing—for that he is playing some game, I am satisfied.”
“If he be, I am ignorant of it,” Arthur answered. “I presume you do not suspect me of playing into his hands?”
“No, Mr. Dudley, I do not,” the director answered; and from that day Mr. Stewart came seldom to Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Whatever suspicions he might entertain concerning Mr. Black’s immaculate honesty, he did not again take Arthur into his confidence, but left the secretary in undisturbed enjoyment of his office, where he had at least the variety of seeing the ship containing his fortunes sink a little lower, week by week.
But trade was bad with every one—so Mr. Blackdeclared—so even Mr. Raidsford stated on one occasion, when he and Arthur, meeting in Lombard Street, the pair commenced singing a mutual Jeremiad over the state of things in the City.
“There is a general distrust,” remarked the contractor, “for which I am quite at a loss to account, and a pressure for money, even upon good houses, which is unprecedented, at all events, in my experience. No doubt, as the spring advances, business will improve, and I most sincerely hope your shares may then feel the effect of greater commercial confidence.”
All of which was said in the City oracle style, which, unwittingly, perhaps, Mr. Raidsford had contracted, and which impressed country people with the idea that he was a power in the state—a man who had risen quite as much by talent as by industry; and yet, spite of his mode of settling everything which was to occur in the future, Mr. Raidsford was more humble on that occasion than Arthur had ever before seen him.
He had less of the “I am the people, and wisdom shall die with me” manner, which had often angered the Squire in days gone by, than formerly; indeed,if such an expression be not out of place in speaking of so great a man, his tone was almost humble; and while he sympathised heartily with Arthur’s anxiety, he forbore reading him a lecture on the instability of all human companies, and did not, even from the heights of his own superior position, look down and say—“I told you how it would be. I, of course, who always see what is going to occur, told you;—don’t blame me.”
No, instead of this, he remarked, “it was a wonder the ‘Protector’ did not succeed, since the Company’s bread was so good, and people must eat, you know.” He added, “Certainly, however, a company, like an individual, adopting, and strictly adhering to, the system of ready cash, must be prepared to stand a considerable amount of knocking about at first; but I do hope things will brighten with you after a little—I really do;” having finished which speech, Mr. Raidsford went his way, and Arthur proceeded on his, thinking he liked the contractor better during that interview than he had ever done before, and regretting to see his former neighbour looking so thin, and anxious, and careworn.
Which facts, when, in due time, Arthur communicatedthem to Mr. Black, produced a careless comment, to the effect, “that very probably his Majesty had cause for uneasiness; people do say things are going deucedly queer up there; but there is no use talking,” added Mr. Black, “things are queer with everybody. I never was so hard up in my life; discount is a thing past praying for. If you take a bill to the bank now, with, say, even my Lord Mayor’s name on it, the manager looks at you as if you were no better than a thief. It is no good being down-hearted, though; if care killed the cat, I still see no reason why care should kill us. We shall find the ‘Protector’ looking up yet, never fear, and the shares at a premium again. Deuce a share is at a premium in the City, I think, at this present minute of speaking. Where the money gets to, every now and then, passes my understanding. The parsons talk about riches taking unto themselves legs or wings, and fleeing away, or something of that kind, don’t they? If their reverences were in my office for a month, they would find out there is more truth in the statement than most of them actually believe. Fly! by Jove! that’s no word to express the pace they go at. Electricity is a fool toit;” and so Mr. Black rattled on, till Arthur, utterly overwhelmed, bade him “Good-day,” feeling much too dispirited to put the question he had intended about those bills which would soon be falling due once again.
For things had come to such a pass, that Squire Dudley was compelled to cut down his expenditure by every possible means. Even at Berrie Down he never more scrupulously looked at a sovereign before changing it than now, when it occurred to him not merely as a possibility, but as a probability, that there might be a terrible reverse to the speculative picture to which, while the Protector was still a myth of the promoter’s fancy, Mr. Black had acted as travelling showman.
No more visions of wealth and position for Arthur—no more dreams of standing for the county, of re-establishing the Dudleys as great people—of keeping up a certain state at Berrie Down—of ease, and comfort, and competence.
His ideas in many respects were much changed since he came to London; and had it only been possible for him to see a way of ridding the Hollow of all the encumbrances he had thrustupon it, the secretary would have been a happy man.
Like the prodigal, he had gathered all together, and travelled into a far country—a strange country, where he met with those who helped him to waste his substance and devour his living.
And now, behold, the days of famine were at hand, when no man would give unto him; when he fell into even a worse plight than the poor sinner who would fain have satisfied his hunger with the husks the swine did eat; for the prodigal had a home to which he could return, while Arthur had none.
Longingly, sickeningly almost, his thoughts turned back to Berrie Down as he walked through the streets of the accursed City (so he styled London), where he had come to seek his fortune.
If the past could only be restored to him, he moaned in spirit, how differently he would act! If he only could have foreseen his present strait—if he only could have imagined such a termination to his hopes!
If—if—if! So the impotent, feebly-repentant strain ran on; if—if—if—although the measure of his misery was as yet nothing like full.
Berrie Down was still mortgaged for only half its value. He had his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields—his regularly paid salary—his shares, which might yet bring him in some return.
He was not involved past hope of extrication. Before his bills fell due again, Mr. Black would more than probably be able to meet them. The future did not lie shrouded in total darkness before him; but as he had been unreasonably sanguine, so he was now unreasonably depressed. He knew more about business, too, than had formerly been the case; he understood better that there were risks in it as well as certainties—blanks as well as prizes, and he could not blind himself to the truth that Fortune had not hitherto favoured him with so many smiles, as to justify his imagining she would never dishearten him with her frowns.
Besides all this, he was for the first time since his marriage wretched in his home. He could not bear to see his wife’s sorrow—a sorrow in which she gave him no chance of sharing.
The changed, worn face—the eyes heavy with weeping, the weary, unelastic step—the silent grief which found no relief in words—were so many tacitreproaches for the cold selfishness which had kept them apart through the course of the years gone by.
Vaguely it began to dawn upon his understanding that nothing earthly can live for ever—that there is no plant so strong but the keenness of a prolonged frost may kill it; that if men do not enjoy and prize a blessing while it is blooming beside them, the day will surely come when they shall sigh for its fragrance, and its beauty all in vain.
He had neglected his wife’s love in the years when that bright stream flowed through the fields of his existence, nourishing and making green as it poured its treasures on his unthankful heart; and now the fountain gushed no longer; the spring was dried up, the waters made no gladness in the land. Where there had been life, there was lifelessness; where there had been devotion, there was indifference; where there had been championship, there was resentment,—and Arthur did not know how to put the wrong right. He had not strength sufficient in his character to set about winning Heather for the second time—wooing the woman as he had wooed the girl.
She had no idea her husband was in such trouble;she was ignorant of his fears as she had been of his hopes. No one told her Berrie Down was mortgaged—that it must be let, in order to pay the interest—that the Protector was tottering—that trade was wretched, that money was almost an extinct currency.
Mr. Black was the only person, indeed, she ever heard mention financial matters at all, and the words he spoke conveyed very little meaning to her understanding.
“Money,” said that gentleman to Arthur one day when she chanced to be present—“money, what is it like? Can you remember ever having seen the article? The first five-pound note which comes my way, I intend to frame and keep by me, lest I should never behold another. Some people must be laying up for themselves a lot of treasures; but who they can be, puzzles my brain. According to his own account, not a soul I meet has sixpence in his pocket to keep the devil out of it. Do you happen to know any one, Mrs. Dudley, who has money, for I do not? As for me, I am thinking of applying for out-door relief—sending Mrs. B. up to the workhouse for a couple of loaves. We are coming to it, fast as we can run.”
“Some people have money, I suppose,” answered Heather, remembering at that very moment she had a good round sum locked up in one of her drawers—which sum proved a perpetual plague to her—a plague and yet a comfort.
It was not her own, it was trust-money; and how the amount chanced to come into her hands, Heather never told to any one for many a day afterwards—for many and many a long day. And yet there was no particular mystery about the matter. Heather had the money from Mr. Douglas Croft, and it was given to her in this fashion:—
After due time, he came to condole with her on the death of Lally, and then his visits were repeated and repeated until Heather, who could not avoid guessing the nature of the feeling which drew him towards any of Bessie’s kith or kin, began to grow uncomfortable—to imagine she ought to cut short the intimacy somehow, though it was beyond her imagination to conceive how she ought, under the circumstances, to do so.
Perhaps her manner showed her difficulty; perhaps Mr. Croft fancied truly, as the days went by, there was less cordiality in her smile, in the touch of herhand, in the tone of her voice! Anyhow, be that as it will, he took courage one day, and made his confession.
He attempted no apology; he did not strive to whiten the blackness of his sin to her. He did not even speak the name of the woman he had wronged. He merely said, “Some day she may come to you; some day she may want money. Let me leave a sufficient sum in your hands to keep her—if she be living—from absolute poverty. Be to me my good angel! do not believe my repentance insincere because I cannot talk much about it. You are my last hope. If it be impossible for me to reach her through you, then indeed my case is desperate.”
Naked he laid his sin out before her—naked as the new-born child, and yet he prayed her not to look askance upon it, but to pity and forgive. Well he understood—this man to whom the world and its ways were roads he knew from beginning to end, from the first chapter to the last—that to the woman whom he addressed the book of sin was almost as a dead letter, as a language unlearned, as a science incomprehensible.
Passion died out in her presence, vice found nodefence sustainable when pleaded before that calm, impartial judge. She could not go with him in his agony of love, of struggling virtue, of wicked strategy, of unavailing repentance—she, whose life had never known the rush and tumult of an overpowering affection, who had never been adored, idolized, wronged, by any man, as it was in Douglas Croft’s nature to adore, idolize, and wrong,—she, who was pure in thought and deed, pure almost as one of God’s angels—how could he tell her of the over-mastering love which had overleapt all boundaries of prudence, all restraints of society, all divine laws, all human restrictions?
But he could appeal to her pity, and to her generosity. He could lay his future at her feet, and pray her to do with it as she would; to give him Bessie’s address, if it came to her knowledge, or to withhold it; to mention his name to Bessie, or to preserve silence concerning him; to say, if Bessie ever wrote or came near, or to ignore her existence, as she pleased—as she deemed best.
“I make no conditions, I ask no mercy, Mrs. Dudley,” he said. “I place myself in your hands; and I merely entreat that you will do whateverseems to you best, regardless of my feelings. If I could only know she is living!” he added.
“She is living,” Heather interrupted.
“Then you have seen her!” he said, eagerly; “is she in London?”
“You must not question me,” Mrs. Dudley replied. “All I can tell you is—that—the girl, whose future you have made so wretched, is living. The greatest kindness you can do her now is to forget that such a person ever existed. I will keep this money, if you wish, in case she should ever really be in want of it. At present, I know, she would not take sixpence from you, and I cannot wonder at, her feeling as she does towards you.”
“Then you have seen her?” he inquired.
“Yes, and talked with her; and guessed who stole her from us—stole her away to shame, and grief, and suffering——”
At that point he interrupted her, vehemently, “Why should she be ashamed,” he asked, “for that which was no fault of hers? and was she not better, as she lived with me, believing herself to be a wife, than legally married to Harcourt—a man forwhom she never cared two straws? Is not anything, any sin, any disgrace, any suffering, preferable to a loveless marriage? Answer me, truly, Mrs. Dudley,” he persisted; “do you not believe it is?”
With her cheeks on fire, Heather rose and answered him—“Why do you put such a question to me, Mr. Croft—to me, of all women living?” and then she covered her face, and wept aloud—wept for the life she could never live over again, and which had been so poor a counterfeit of existence that she might almost—but for her early training, but for the conviction, that it is better to “suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season”—have wished to change places with Bessie, in order to experience the sensation of being loved wildly and passionately, even though it were sinfully, and so round off the incompleted paragraph of her life; have the sad seventh resolved into the legitimate chord.
Heaven help her! she felt very weak and very miserable, surrounded by people, whose stories seemed all more perfect than her own; and Douglas Croft, listening to that unexpected outburst, felt inhis soul there were more ways of deceiving a woman than by a sham marriage; more means of breaking a loving heart than by deceit, and falsehood, and wrong.
“God pardon me,” he thought, as he walked slowly home; “but yet, have I been worse than Dudley? Is it more sinful to love and betray a woman, than to marry her without love?” and, as is usual with all such questions, he decided the matter in his own favour—never reflecting that two wrongs cannot make a right, that a volume of platitudes will never patch up a woman’s reputation, nor enable her to go back again through the years, and begin her life anew.