CHAPTER XXXVII. "SIC TRANSIT." dent hope of netting by it, from first to last, some 30,000l. Yet he trusted they would find elements of comfort in the case, to soften a blow that must fall heavily at best, and he should have been cheered indeed when first taken into their melancholy confidence, could he have hoped the state of things he had a certain satisfaction in reporting, would have been half so favourable. FOR the last time we assemble with the members of the fallen Company. A different gathering it was from the days when, blooded to gold, they gathered to listen to flattering tales, vote themselves dividends and bonuses, and cheer their Governor to the echo. A liquidator, with tongue drop-In the first place, he had the pleasure of ping gall instead of honey, looked down on informing them, that a member of their blank and black, instead of beaming faces. body and a fellow-sufferer, who, it apThere were visages the last month or two peared, laboured under the additional mishad drawn out by inches like the india-rub- fortune of being related by ties of blood to ber ones that change as you press them, their absconded Manager (yells, howls, from smiles to unutterable woe. There and groans of execration), — that this genwere pale cheeks and sunken eyes, quiver- tleman had exerted himself, and exerted ing lips, and slovenly toilettes, and hands himself successfully, to recover much of the that trembled as they fumbled with docu- abstracted property. Moreover, independments that had been officially circulated - ent of its very considerable actual value, one of them containing a general review of that recovery had enabled him to form a the situation, the other formally calling tolerably reliable estimate of their pros upon the contributors to show cause why pects. In making it, he had been naturally they should refuse to listen to a 67. call. led to examine cursorily into their prospectConticuere omnes, intentique ora tenebant. ive assets. Here he was happy to have it In the suspense of the coming explanation, in his power to pay a high tribute to the late pregnant with his fate, no man felt much management. He could assure the meeting disposed to talk or even to grumble: the room was pervaded with the rustle of papers and a murmur that might have come from souls moaning in the dull pains of a distant purgatory. that advances, generally, seemed to have On the elevated platform behind the liquidators, their solicitor, and a secretary detailed to read papers and minutes, sat a melancholy group of ex-Directors, unfortunates detached alike from the sympathies of one element and the other: like the flying ish, threatened at once by the monsters who gnashed on them with savage teeth from the swelling ocean below, and by the liquidators who hovered over their heads with calls and outstretched claws. There was Sir Ralph, the mere shadow of his former state; McAlpine grave and anxious; and Rushbrook alone, to outward seeming, as unconcerned as ever, twisting the paper in his fingers into a foolscap, and suggest-Shame," "Go on: through which our ing to the unappreciative Schwartzchild that friend Hugh, although his cheek might have he should move its adoption by the meeting. flushed and his brow darkened, sat otherAnd there sat Hugh Childersleigh, his ex-wise as unmoved as if his late worshippers pression not out of keeping with the deep had still been vociferating his praises). mourning he wore, yet looking round with clear steady eye that bore down, in spite of them, the angry glances it encountered from all sides. Mr. Auditt broke ground with the accustomed phrases of regret, as obligatory on similar occasions as her Majesty's health at a public dinner. No one could deplore more sincerely than he the calamity that brought them together; - he had a confi 66 After a most elaborate condescension on facts and figures, Mr. Auditt approached the engrossing question of the call. It had been the opinion of his colleagues and himself that a call was imperative; that it was eminently advisable, moreover, in the interests of the shareholders themselves, as the only means of avoiding a wholesale sacrifice of assets which, with time and care, might realize the full value they stood for in the 66 66 66 against those who had robbed him of his painfully-garnered stores. So it was with curiously blended feelings he rose to address the meeting; a straw would have turned the torrent of his words one way or the other. He laboured, moreover, under a sense of awkwardness, from which lashing Company's books. He need hardly say it | pected anything of it. Amid shouts of had been their earnest desire to press as Hear, hear!" Reynardson!" Dr. lightly on the contributories as practicable, Reynardson!" he deliberately raised himbut mature deliberation had forced them to self to his legs. Although the Doctor had the conclusion that 67. per share was the an impetuous not to say evil - temper, lowest figure which would meet the exi- one which had been so constant a snare to gencies of the occasion. If payments were him, that at last he had come to let it trip prompt and general, he would venture to him up when it pleased with the passive hazard a personal opinion—it must be dis- resignation of a martyr, yet he was largely tinctly understood he committed himself to gifted with intelligence and common sense. nothing further that the shareholders He was conscious his philippic on the might dismiss from their minds any appre- former occasion had hurt himself much more hensions of further liability. than Childersleigh, and, so far, he sincerely Mr. Auditt resuming his seat was the sig- regretted it. Besides, no man had a more nal for a score of excited orators bounding religious respect for dignitaries, and he reto their feet. For three-quarters of an hour pented having invited the thrusts and enthere was nothing but abuse, lamentation, mity of a man in the position of Rushbrook. and recrimination, varied by questions But, then, he had seen the fruits of a lifewhere the general ignorance of business time consecrated to sacred eloquence and evinced by the querists was only surpassed good works, all swamped in the Crédit by the special innocence of facts exhibited Foncier, and he was profoundly moved by the professional respondents. At last Lord Rushbrook seized the ears of the meeting. His Lordship reminded them that on the last occasion on which he had had the honour of addressing them, he had failed in an attempt to persuade them that a motion urged by a reverend gentleman,- he was happy to see him present, had been ill-himself into a passion appeared the readiest advised and wholly uncalled for. He believed, in fact, he had even ventured to denounce it as a gross and gratuitous insult to his near relative, their late Governor, who, he was glad to say, was also with them upon this occasion to speak for himself. The motion of submitting the conduct, and consequent liability, of Mr. Childersleigh for the opinion of council had been carried, and it would be satisfactory to himself, and doubtless to the shareholders, to learn its result from the reverend gentleman, who had been chairman of the committee he had moved for. If that opinion were of the tenor he had been given to understand it was, he was quite sure no one would rejoice more at the opportunity of proclaiming it than the reverend gentleman himself. Dr. Silke Reynardson's own professions must have convinced them that, next to Mr. Childersleigh and Mr. Childersleigh's immediate friends, he had suffered more intensely than any one from the language only an imperative sense of duty could have driven him to employ, and that he would feel a pleasure equally intense in availing himself of this public opportunity of retracting it. means of extraction. Standing in that shattered temple of Mammon, the sinner was in the ascendant for the time, and the chances were he would sorely buffet the saint, and leave him with ample matter for repentance. His lordship only did him justice, said Dr. Reynardson, in giving him credit for having suffered more keenly than any of his listeners while he discharged the most painful duty he had ever been driven to. Whereupon even Childersleigh smiled, while as for Rushbrook, when he composed himself comfortably for the expected treat, his face expressed appreciation, amounting to enjoyment. Other gentlemen looked or whispered in a similar sense; and Dr. Reynardson, feeling that in his noble nature he had soared high above the sympathies of his audience, came tumbling back to the earth, and cast himself savagely into the clutches of the powers of passion and evil. But his lordship was egregiously in error, he proceeded, in assuming it to be his desire or intention to retract one word he had uttered then. His words had been too conscientiously weighed to be lightly withdrawn. On a single point he had erred, and he was not ashamed to confess it. He was a clergyman, and no lawyer, untrained to split hairs and catch at words, to sever equity from justice, and separate the laws of conscience and morals from those of St. If Dr. Reynardson felt the pleasure his lordship credited him with, he must have had his countenance in better command than his tongue; certainly none of the numerous gentlemen who turned to regard him sus-Stephen's and the statue-book. It was his desire to revere the law and respect its in- | to it by representations strangely belied by terpreters, and he had fondly trusted that results, transforms himself in two brief for flagrant wrong the law had fitting rem- years from a pauper to a millionnaire, and edy. That illusion was dispelled. In the interest of the widow and the orphan, of the desolate hearth and the shivered rooftree, he had urged that Mr. Childersleigh's clear moral responsibility-ay, he repeated it boldly to his face, as he had said it honestly behind his back-that Mr. Childersleigh's moral liability should be enforced by the machinery of justice. If that machinery were not radically defective, it had lamentably broken down. The counsel they had consulted-eminent, he believed, they were considered had given it as their opinion that the late Governor, sheltered behind a rampart of technicalities, might enjoy as best he could the riches he had filched. "May I ask the rev. gentleman if he quotes the precise language of the opinion ? " interposed Rushbrook. Or if it is brief, as I am given to understand it is, perhaps he will forgive me if I request him to read it." The rev. gentleman seemed strangely loth to gratify this reasonable request, but the feeling of the meeting was unmistakable. The opinion, signed by her Majesty's Solicitor-General and a learned brother, was clear and concise: "On the statement submitted, we are of opinion that no action whatever can lie against Mr. Childersleigh." I have to apologize sincerely for having troubled the rev. gentleman," resumed Lord Rushbrook, blandly; "his singularly candid rendering of the sense and scope of the document in question ought to have satisfied me." finally slips like a rat from the house he has too good reason to know is falling. Gentlemen, it would appear that we cannot drag our Governor to the bar of justice, or invoke the civil power to compel him to the surrender of his gains. Yet something we can do we can force him before that tribunal of social opinion, which holds the issues of life or death for men like him. We can poison the enjoyment of his wealth which has been to him swelled by the mites of the widow, steeped in the tears of the orphan; and I, for one, solemnly pledge myself to uplift my humble testimony in my lowly sphere until trials and sorrows shall stifle my feeble accents." In one way or another, the clergyman's peroration brought down the house. There were indignant utterances indeed, but they were rare, and while a good many of his auditors sat silent and doubtful, a great number applauded vociferously. Some of the more sensitive had dissolved in tears, and regarded Rushbrook, who was evidently in a most enviable state of enjoyment, as a mocking Mephistopheles. Dr. Reynardson had thrown down the glove, and Hugh hastened to take it up. The violent personal attack had given him the opportunity for personal explanation; he felt his advantage and meant to use it. The champion of the sufferers had hit hard, yet the spirit of fair-play was general enough to assure him a more patient hearing than he could otherwise have hoped for, and the mass of the audience forgot, for a moment, the disagreeables of their situation in the interest always excited by a fair stand-up fight. As Hugh rose before him, with head slightly thrown back, and kindling eye that swept the room, the Doctor was troubled by some inward qualms, and glanced uneasily from the Governor to the reporters. He knew he had laid himself terribly open. To return to where I broke off when the noble lord interrupted me," resumed Dr. Reynardson in some confusion, and with a look of poison. "I was referring to the wealth his honourable relative, the Chairman, had gathered in our service, I will not say from our pockets, although the system of commission by which he enriched So far as his fears went of having viohimself seems to me little better than legal-lence met with violence, and personalities ized pilfering. I am satisfied to waive all retorted with personal sarcasm, he might allusion to the colourable suspicions engen- have spared them. If Hugh was tempted dered by his close friendship with our he refrained, although his reply was perworthy Manager, although they are entertained, as I bave reason to know, by many of the most intelligent of our body. I will content myself with asking whether your verdict endorses that of the lawyers, whether it argues unblemished honour, or does not rather imply some slight degree of moral turpitude, when a man founds a Company like this, courts public confidence VOL. XIX. 836 LIVING AGE. haps none the less telling for its studied moderation. Lightly touching on the tone, be thanked his assailant with dignity for the matter of the remarks which gave him an opening he had ardently longed for; which cheered him with the hope of freeing his mind from the weight which had long oppressed it. He had laboured hard to deserve their good opinion, and the feeling that he had lost it, however innocently, had yet let me remind you that it was you who been, he owned to them, very painful. ratified the one and the other, and let me He had suffered deeply from the knowledge that his profound sympathy with their misfortunes was suspected, that there were circumstances that gave some faint colour to the dishonouring accusations that had been launched at him. Of these, Dr. Reynardson had no doubt conscientiously made himself the exponent, and he repeated he had reason to be grateful to him. The expressions of dissent elicited by so many passages of Dr. Reynardson's speech had assured him he could still count on friends among those he had the pleasure of knowing neither by sight nor name; that there were members of their body who still refused to believe he would lightly stain a stainless name or belie the conduct of a lifetime. In consenting to defend himself he felt something of the humiliation of pleading guilty, but he would pray of them to suspend, as a body, the judgment some of them might have hastily passed; to strive to imagine that the relation which had once existed between them was yet unchanged, to let him believe them still his friends, while he addressed them with perfect candour. If they condemned him when they had heard him to an end, he could not say he would bow to their sentence, but, acquitted by his conscience, he would bear it as best he might. He would ask them, to begin with, was there a conceivable motive for his risking himself in questionable transactions? He had made a large fortune by their Company; he was wealthy still; and, as he was unbosoming himself, he would tell them he could look forward with reasonable certainty to inheriting a great succession in a few weeks' time. (Here there was a general murmur, and even Hugh's friends looked blank. He had been candid with a vengeance, and now actually touched on the very point that had stirred the bitterest animosity.) "I have alluded advisedly to the subject of the money I have gained by you, and intend, with your permission, to return to it; in the meantime let me defend the means by which I have made and kept it." Then he took up charge after charge with a detail into which we shall not follow him; but, although he spoke not unsuccessfully to their reason, their hearts were effectually closed to him by the wealth he acknowledged to have saved from the common wreck. He went on: "You have discovered, gentlemen, that the system of remuneration by commission was a mistake, and my share of it an exorbitant one. Possibly; assure you, laying my hand on my heart, that self-interest, if I know myself, never influenced me in any of the transactions I arranged on your behalf. The highest legal authorities have told you in the plainest terms, that what I have gained I gained honestly." (Murmurs and expressions of dissent.) "Gentlemen, I claim a patient hearing as a right, and I am assured you will not deny it. They have decided it was gained honestly, and for myself I will venture to add honourably, as well. In brief, gentlemen, the sole points on which I am disposed to reproach myself arise from my connection with our defaulting Manager. That connection, from first to last, was a purely business one. Yet, while I distinctly repudiate any responsibility for that unhappy man, I do feel that in the eyes of the public our connection may well have appeared closer than it was; that such reputation as I possessed may have plausibly been made to stand guarantee for his. Latterly, indeed, I had to a certain extent withdrawn my confidence from him, and done my best to limit his exercise of power; but in that, I must add, I was guided merely by suspicion which might well have been prejudice, and I was in possession of no tangible facts which would have justified me in bringing the matter officially before your Board. Still, enlightened after the events and after the unfortunate chances which prolonged my absence, and although a Chairman, with an able body of coadju tors and an efficient staff of subordinates, might well consider a few days of relaxation fairly earned by months of painfully assiduous application; still, I say, enlightened after the event, I shall never cease to reproach myself with that absence as the indirect cause of the ruin of a noble business. Upon my heart and conscience that I hold to be the head and front of my offending, and for that I stand here willing to make the extreme compensation the law could have exacted of me had I been criminal ten times over. I cannot absolutely promise to spare you entirely the painful necessity of a call, for my means may be scarcely equal to my will. what I can do I will, and I intimate my intention of sealing my unwavering devotion to your interests by an immediate transfer to your liquidators of my entire property real and personal. With the exception of family pictures, and a few heirlooms I shall beg permission to select, I pledge myself the cession shall be absolute. And now, gentlemen, may I express a hope But that we part on terms at least as friendly as those on which we began our unfortunate acquaintance, and may I take leave of the Crédit Foncier in the belief that I have convinced you of the integrity of my conduct and the purity of my motives ? " perhaps not sorry at heart to think he might be spared the worst of the sacrifice. But Dr. Silke Reynardson stood before them again. With heartfelt satisfaction he had listened to the speech of a man he was proud again to entitle his honourable friend, So thoroughly was the meeting stunned and, imitating Mr. Childersleigh's frankby the startling climax of the Governor's ness, he begged to retract every word that, speech that, for a space, they sat gaping on under erroneous impressions, he had felt it him and each other open-mouthed, as if his duty to utter to his disparagement. As questioning whether their ears had played they had seen in the generous nobility of them false. Then their feelings vented his nature, Mr. Childersleigh had been themselves in Protean variety of form. obviously eager to disclaim the well-intenThere was cheering and waving of hats. tioned but he would say it— the most illpounding of feet and umbrella-ferules, advised interference of his colleague, Mr. weeping, blessing, praying, and swearing McAlpine. He would venture to interpret that the Governor was something greater Mr. Childersleigh's mind, and implore of than the divinity they had always taken him them, in Mr. Childersleigh's name, not to for. The peroration of Hugh's speech was dim the lustre of a grand sacrifice. Mr. well worth that of Dr. Reynardson. Some Childersleigh had freely offered them his of the more suspicious and saturnine shook family place, and for Mr. Childersleigh's their heads; they would greatly like to see own sake, he would entreat of them as the deeds executed that should give effect freely to accept it. (Cries of "No, no," to the eloquent orator's intentions; to be persuaded of the existence of the property he so generously transferred; and although his speech had otherwise sounded rational enough, they were much inclined to share Lord Hestercombe's doubts as to his sanity. Rushbrook and McAlpine seized him by either arm and dinned remonstrances into his ears." Too late, altogether too late, my good fellows," was the reply; and don't forget I gave you an opportunity of arguing me out of my intention." 66 “hear, hear.") He was sure they could not misjudge his motives, and he would recall to them the statement of Mr. McAlpine that the estate was so heavily burdened as to reduce its value to a minimum-a reason the more, he must remark in passing, for hesitating to impose on Mr. Childersleigh the costly burden of maintaining it. (Expressions of dissent and disapprobation.) But one other word, and he had done. If he were rightly informed of cireumstances only known to him by hearsay, "A wilful man will have his way," Mr. Childersleigh might be entitled in a moaned McAlpine, feeling he might just as few weeks to claim a valuable property well attempt to move the pillar behind him, upon certain conditions. Might he put it and acknowledging, moreover, that Hugh to Mr. Childersleigh whether, in the interwas irretrievably committed by his speech.est of the shareholders, he would not see "But you must let your friends do what it his duty to make good his claim to that they can for you in spite of yourself;" and property previous to executing to them a with that he sprang to his feet and ad- transfer of the whole? (An emphatic dressed a stirring appeal to the meeting."No" from Mr. Childersleigh.) Then he Mr. Childersleigh had taken a course of would not press that delicate point, but he absolutely unparalleled generosity, and beg-would conclude with an amendment to Mr. gared himself—yes beggared himself-in McAlpine's motion-"That this meeting obedience to the dictates of an over-sensi- accept with cordial gratitude the liberal tive honour, and, in answer to reproaches proposals of their late Governor, and dewhich his conscience told him were utterly sire to enter on their minutes an expression unjust. Were they to take a paltry advan- of their profound esteem for his character tage of him, and clutch at the uttermost and conduct." farthing he offered? He pled earnestly for the old place that had been in the Childersleigh family for centuries. Mortgaged as it was, the difference would be little to them although immense to the owner; and he concluded with a motion that it, at least, should be left him. Hugh would have risen again, but his friends almost angrily insisted he was out of court in the matter, and literally forced him to keep his seat Rushbrook was whetting the razors of his sarcasm when McAlpine stopped him. “Trust me, the best way of disposing of that is to leave it to the vote; better they should condemn that scoundrel Reynardson than you. I see, Budger seconds himand just like him; but they'll scarcely find a third man to go along with them." The worthy chieftain had hardly calculated on the feelings of impoverished share |