Kennedy Square Part 25

den de colonel riz up an' say Ma.r.s.e George was a beggar and a puttin'

on airs when he didn't hab 'nough money to buy hisse'f a 'tater; an' den Ma.r.s.e George r'ared and pitched--Oh I tell ye he ken be mighty sof' and persimmony when he's tame--and he's mos' allers dat way--but when his dander's up, and it suttinly riz to-day, he kin make de fur fly. Dat's de time you wanter git outer de way or you'll git hurted."

"Who did you say was the beggar?" It was all Greek to Harry.

"Why, Ma.r.s.e George was--he was de one what was gwine hongry. De colonel 'lowed dat de bank was busted an'--"

"What bank?"

"Why de 'Tapsco--whar Ma.r.s.e George keep his money. Ain't you see me comin' from dar mos' ebery day?"

"But it hasn't failed, has it?" He was still wondering what the quarrel was about.

"Wall, I dunno, but I reckon sumpin's de matter, for no sooner did de colonel git on his horse and ride away dan Ma.r.s.e George go git his hat and coat hisse'f and make tracks th'ou' de park by de short cut--and you know he neber do dat 'cept when he's in a hurry, and den in 'bout a ha'f hour he come back ag'in lookin' like he'd seed de yahoo, only he was mad plump th'ou'; den he hollered for me quick like, and sont me down underneaf yere to Mr. Pawson to know was he in, and he was, and I done tol' him, and he's dar now. He ain't neber done sont me down dar 'cept once sence I been yere, and dat was de day dat Gadgem man come snuffin'

roun'. Trouble comin'."

Harry had now begun to take in the situation. It was evidently a matter of some moment or Pawson would not have been consulted.

"I'll go down myself, Todd," he said with sudden resolve.

"Better lem'me tell him you're yere, Ma.r.s.e Harry."

"No, I'll go now," and he turned on his heel and descended the front steps.

On the street side of the house, level with the bricks, was a door opening into a low-ceiled, shabbily furnished room, where in the old days General Dorsey Temple, as has been said, shared his toddies with his cronies. There he found St. George seated at a long table piled high with law books and papers--the top covered with a green baize cloth embroidered with mice holes and decorated with ink stains. Beside him was a thin, light-haired, young man, with a long, flexible neck and abnormally high forehead, over-doming a shrewd but not unkindly face.

The two were poring over a collection of papers.

The young lawyer rose to his feet, a sickly, deferential smile playing along his straight lips. Young aristocrats of Harry's blood and breeding did not often darken Pawson's door, and he was extremely anxious that his guest should in some way be made aware of his appreciation of that fact. St. George did not move, nor did he take any other notice of the boy's appearance than to fasten his eyes upon him for a moment in recognition of his presence.

But Harry could not wait.

"Todd has just told me, Uncle George, that"--he caught the grave expression on Temple's face--"Why!--Uncle George--there isn't anything the matter, is there? It isn't true that the--"

St. George raised his head: "What isn't true, Harry?"

"That the Pataps...o...b..nk is in trouble?"

"No, I don't think so. The bank, so far as I know, is all right; it's the depositors who are in trouble," and one of his quaint smiles lighted up his face.

"Broken!--failed!" cried Harry, still in doubt as to the extent of the catastrophe, but wis.h.i.+ng to be sympathetic and proportionably astounded as any well-bred young man should be when his best friend was unhappy.

"I'm afraid it is, Harry--in fact I know it is--bankrupt in character as well as in balances--a bad-smelling, nasty mess, to tell you the truth.

That's not only my own opinion, but the opinion of every man whom I have seen, and there was quite an angry mob when I reached the teller's window this morning. That is your own opinion also, is it not, Mr.

Pawson?--your legal summing up, I mean."

The young attorney stretched out his spare colorless hands; opened wide his long, double-jointed fingers; pressed their ten little cus.h.i.+ons together, and see-sawing the bunch in front of his concave waistcoat, answered in his best professional voice:

"As to being bankrupt of funds I should say there was no doubt of that being their condition; as to any criminal intent or practices--that, of course, gentlemen"--and he shrugged his shoulders in a non-committal, non-actionable way--"is not for me to decide."

"But you think it will be months, and perhaps years, before the depositors get a penny of their money--do you not?" persisted St.

George.

Again Pawson performed the sleight-of-hand trick, and again he was non-committal--a second shrug alone expressing his views, the performance ending by his pus.h.i.+ng a wooden chair in the direction of Harry, who was still on his feet.

Harry settled himself on its edge and fixed his eyes on his uncle. St.

George again became absorbed in the several papers, Pawson once more a.s.sisting him, the visitor having now been duly provided for.

This raking of ashes in the hope of finding something of value unscorched was not a pleasant task for the young lawyer. He had, years before, conceived the greatest admiration for his landlord and was never tired of telling his a.s.sociates of how kind and considerate St. George had always been, and of his patience in the earlier days of his lease, Mr. Temple often refusing the rent until he was quite ready to pay it. He took a certain pride, too, in living under the same roof, so to speak, with one universally known as a gentleman of the old school, whose birth, education, and habits made him the standard among his fellows--a man without pretence or sham, living a simple and wholesome life; with dogs, guns, priceless Madeira and Port, as well as unlimited clothes of various patterns adapted to every conceivable service and function--to say nothing of his being part of the best society that Kennedy Square could afford.

Even to bow to his distinguished landlord as he was descending his front steps was in itself one of his greatest pleasures. That he might not miss it, he would peer from behind his office shutters until the shapely legs of his patron could be seen between the twisted iron railing. Then appearing suddenly and with a.s.sumed surprise, he would lift his hat with so great a flourish that his long, thin arms and body were jerked into semaph.o.r.e angles, his face meanwhile beaming with ill-concealed delight.

Should any one of St. George's personal friends accompany him--men like Kennedy, or General Hardisty, or some well-known man from the Eastern Sh.o.r.e--one of the Dennises, or Joyneses, or Irvings--the pleasure was intensified, the incident being of great professional advantage. "I have just met old General Hardisty," he would say--"he was at our house," the knowing ones pa.s.sing a wink around, and the uninitiated having all the greater respect and, therefore, all the greater confidence in that rising young firm of "Pawson & Pawson, Attorneys and Counsellors at Law--Wills drawn and Estates looked after."

That this rarest of gentlemen, of all men in the world, should be made the victim of a group of schemers who had really tricked him of almost all that was left of his patrimony, and he a member of his own profession, was to Pawson one of the great sorrows of his life. That he himself had unwittingly helped in its culmination made it all the keener. Only a few weeks had pa.s.sed since that eventful day when St.

George had sent Todd down to arrange for an interview, an event which was followed almost immediately by that gentleman in person. He remembered his delight at the honor conferred upon him; he recalled how he had spent the whole of that and the next day in the attempt to negotiate the mortgage on the old home at a reasonable rate of interest; he recalled, too, how he could have lowered the rate had St. George allowed him more time. "No, pay it and get rid of them!" St. George had said, the "them" being part of the very accounts over which the two were poring. And his patron had showed the same impatience when it came to placing the money in the bank. Although his own lips were sealed professionally by reason of the interests of another client, he had begged St. George, almost to the verge of interference, not to give it to the Patapsco, until he had been silenced with: "Have them put it to my credit, sir. I have known every member of that bank for years."

All these things were, of course, unknown to Harry, the ultimate beneficiary. Who had filled the bucket, and how and why, were unimportant facts to him. That it was full, and ready for his use, brought with it the same sense of pleasure he would have felt on a hot day at Moorlands when he had gone to the old well, drawn up the ice-cold water, and, plunging in the sweet-smelling gourd, had drank to his heart's content.

This was what wells were made for; and so were fathers, and big, generous men like his Uncle George, who had dozens of friends ready to cram money into his pocket for him to hand over to whoever wanted it and without a moment's hesitation--just as Slater had handed him the money he needed when Gilbert wanted it in a hurry.

Nor could it be expected that Harry, even with the examination of St.

George's accounts with the Patapsco and other inst.i.tutions going on under his very eyes, understood fully just what a bank failure really meant. Half a dozen banks, he remembered, had gone to smash some few years before, sending his father to town one morning at daylight, where he stayed for a week, but no change, so far as he could recall, had happened because of it at Moorlands. Indeed, his father had bought a new coach for his mother the very next week, out of what he had "saved from the wreck," so he had told her.

It was not until the hurried overhauling of a ma.s.s of papers beneath his uncle's hand, and the subsequent finding of a certain stray sheet by Pawson, that the boy was aroused to a sense of the gravity of the situation. And even then his interest did not become acute until, the missing doc.u.ment identified, St. George had turned to Pawson and, pointing to an item halfway down the column, had said in a lowered tone, as if fearing to be overheard:

"You have the receipts, have you not, for everything on this list?--Slater's account too, and Hampson's?"

"They are in the file beside you, sir."

"Well, that's a comfort, anyhow."

"And the balance"--here he examined a small book which lay open beside him--"amounting to"--he paused--"is of course locked up in their vaults?"

Harry had craned his head in instant attention. His quickened ears had caught two familiar names. It was Slater who had loaned him the five hundred dollars which he gave to Gilbert, which his father had commended him for borrowing; and it was Hampson who had sold him the wretched horse that had stumbled and broken his leg and had afterwards to be shot.

"Slater, did you say, Uncle George--and Hampson? Aren't they my old accounts?"

"Quite right, Mr. Rutter--quite right, sir." St. George tried to stop him with a frown, but Pawson's face was turned towards Harry and he failed to get the signal. "Quite right, and quite lucky; they were both important items in Mr. Gadgem's list, and both checks pa.s.sed through the bank and were paid before the smash came."

The tones of Pawson's voice, the twisting together of his bony hands in a sort of satisfied contentment, and the weary look on his uncle's face were the opening of so many windows in the boy's brain. At the same instant one of those creepy chills common to a man when some hitherto undiscovered vista of impending disaster widens out before him, started at the base of Harry's spine, crept up his shoulder-blades, s.h.i.+vered along his arms, and lost itself in his benumbed fingers. This was followed by a lump in his throat that nearly strangled him. He left his chair and touched Pawson on the shoulder.

"Does this mean, Mr. Pawson--this money being locked up in the bank vaults and not coming out for months--and may be never--does it mean that Mr. Temple--well, that Uncle George--won't have enough money to live on?" There was an anxious, vibrant tone in Harry's voice that aroused St. George to a sense of the boy's share in the calamity and the privations he must suffer because of it. Pawson hesitated and was about to belittle the gravity of the situation when St. George stopped him.

"Yes--tell him--tell him everything, I have no secrets from Mr. Rutter.

Stop!--I'll tell him. It means, Harry"--and a brave smile played about his lips--"that we will have to live on hog and hominy, may be, or pretty nigh it--certainly for a while--not bad, old fellow, when you get accustomed to it. Aunt Jemima makes very good hominy and--"

He stopped; the brave smile had faded from his face.

"By Jove!--that's something I didn't think of!--What will I do with the dear old woman--It would break her heart--and Todd?"