CHAPTER XXVII.

A LITTLE crowd of persons stood in front of
the old Bank, looking half stupified at the
shutters, and at a piece of paper pasted on them
announcing a suspension, only for a month or so,
and laying the blame on certain correspondents
not specified.

So great was the confidence inspired by the
old Bank, that many said it would come round,
it must come round, in a month: but other of
Mr. Hardie's unfortunate clients recognised in
the above a mere formula to let them down by
degrees: they had seen many statements as hopeful
end in a dividend of sixpence in the pound.

Before the day closed, the scene at the Bank
door was heartrending: respectable persons,
reduced to pauperism in that one day, kept arriving
and telling their fellow-sufferers their little all
was with Hardie, and nothing before them but
the workhouse or the almshouse: ruined mothers
came and held up their ruined children for the
Banker to see; and the doors were hammered at,
and the house as well as the Bank was beleaguered
by a weeping, wailing, despairing crowd.

But, like an idle wave beating on a rock, all
this human misery dashed itself in vain against
the Banker's brick walls and shutters, hard to
them as his very heart.

The next day they mobbed Alfred and hissed
him at the back door. Jane was too ashamed
and too frightened to stir out. Mr. Hardie sat
calmly putting the finishing strokes to his
fabricated balance-sheet.

Some innocent and excited victims went to the
mayor for redress; to the aldermen, the
magistrates: in vain.

Towards afternoon the Banker's cool contempt
for his benefactors, whose lives he had darkened,
received a temporary check; a heavy stone was
flung at the Bank shutters: this ferocious blow
made him start, and the place rattle: it was the
signal for a shower; and presently tink, tink,
went the windows of the house, and in came the
stones starring the mirrors, upsetting the chairs,
denting the papered walls, chipping the mantelpieces,
shivering the bell-glasses and statuettes,
and strewing the room with dirty pebbles, and
painted fragments, and glittering ruin.

Hardie winced: this was the sort of appeal to
touch him. But soon he recovered his sang
froid: "Thank you," said he, "I'm much obliged
to you; now I'm in the right and you are in
the wrong." And he put himself under
protection of the police; and fee'd them so royally
that they were zealous on his behalf, and rough
and dictatorial even with those who thronged the
place only to moan and lament and hold up their
ruined children: " You must move on, you
Misery," said the Police. And they were right;
Misery gains nothing by stopping the way;
nothing by bemoaning itself.

But if the Banker, naturally egotistical, and
now entirely wrapped in his own plans, and fears,
and well-earned torments, was deaf to the anguish
of his clients, there were others in his house who
felt it keenly and deeply. Alfred and Jane were
heartbroken: they sat hand in hand in a little
room, drawn closer by misfortune; and heard
the groans at their door; and the tears of pity
ran down their own cheeks hot with shame; and
Alfred wrote on the fly-leaf of his "Ethics" a
vow to pay every shilling his father owed these
poor people —before he died. It was like him,
and like his happy age; at which the just and
the generous can command, in imagination, the
means to do kindred deeds.

Soon he found, to his horror, that he had seen
but a small per-centage of the distress his father
had caused; the greater griefs, as usual, stayed
at home: behind the gadding woes lay a terrible
number of silent, decent, ruined homes, and broken
hearts, and mixed sorrows so unmerited, so
complicated, so piteous, and so cruel, that he was
ready to tear his hair to know them and not be
able to relieve them instantly.

Of that mere sample I give a mere sample:
divine the bulk then; and revolve a page of
human history often turned by the people, but too
little studied by statisticians and legislators.

Mr. Esgar, a respectable merchant, had heavy
engagements, to meet which his money lay at the
old Bank. Living at a distance he did not hear
the news till near dinner-time: and he had
promised to take his daughters to a ball that
night. He did so; left them there; went home,
packed up their clothes and valuables, and next
day levanted with them to America, taking all
the money he could scrape together in London:
and so he passed his ruin on to others. Esgar
was one of those who wear their honesty long;
but loose: it was his first disloyal act in
business: " Dishonesty made me dishonest," was
his excuse. Valeat quantum.

John Shaw, a steady footman, had saved and
saved, from twenty-one years old to thirty-eight,
for " Footman's Paradise," a public-house. He
was now engaged to a comely barmaid, who
sympathised with him therein, and he had just
concluded a bargain for the " Rose and Crown" in
the suburbs. Unluckily for him the money
had not been paid over. The blow fell: he lost
his all; not his money only, but his wasted life.
He could not be 21 again; so he hanged himself
within forty-eight hours, and was buried by the
parish, grumbling a little, pitying none.

James and Peter Gilpin, William Scott, and
Joel Paton, were poor fishermen, and Anglo-
Saxon heroes; that's heroes with an eye to the
main chance; they risked their lives at sea to
save a ship and get salvage; failing there they
risked their lives all the same, like fine fellows as
they were, to save the crew. They succeeded,
but ruined their old boat. A subscription was
raised, and prospered so, that a boat-builder
built them a new one on tick, price eighty-five
pounds; and the publicans said, " Drink, boys,
drink; the subscription will cover all: it is up
to 120 already." The subscription money was
swallowed with the rest, and the Anglo-Saxon
heroes hauled to prison.