CHAPTER XVII.
In which Mr. Pagebrook Bids his Friends Good-by
The next two or three days passed away very quickly with Mr. Robert and Miss Sudie. Robert made to his aunt a statement of the results, without entering into the details of his conferences with Miss Sudie, and was assured of Col. Barksdale's approval when that gentleman and Billy should return from the court they were attending. The two young people, however, were in no hurry for the day appointed for that return to come. They were very happy as it was. They discussed their future, and laid many little plans to be carried out after awhile. It was arranged that Robert should return to Virginia at the beginning of the next long vacation; that the wedding should take place immediately upon his coming; and that the two should make a little trip through the mountains and, returning to Shirley, remain there until the autumn should bring Robert's professional duties around again.
They were in the very act of talking these matters over for the twentieth time, one afternoon, when Maj. Pagebrook rode up. He seemed absent and nervous in manner, and after a few moments of general conversation asked to see Robert alone upon business. When the two were closeted together Maj. Pagebrook opened his pocket-book and taking out a paper he slowly unfolded it, saying: "I have just received this, Robert, and I suppose there is a duplicate of it awaiting you in the post-office."
Robert looked at the paper in blank astonishment.
"What does this mean?" he cried; "my draft protested! Why I have sixteen hundred dollars in that bank, and my draft was for only three hundred."
"It appears that the bank has failed," said Maj. Pagebrook. "At least I reckon that's what the Richmond people mean. They say, in a note to me, that it 'went to pot' a week ago. It seems there are a good many banks failing this fall. I hope you won't lose everything, though, Robert."
The blow was a terrible one to the young man. In a moment he took in the entire situation. To lose the money he had in bank was to be forced to begin the world over again with absolutely nothing; but at any rate he could pay the debt he owed to his cousin very shortly, and to be free from debt is in itself a luxury to a man of his temperament. He thought but a moment and then said:
"Cousin Edwin, I shall have to ask you to carry that protested draft for me a few days if you will. There is some money due me on the fifteenth of this month, and it is now the ninth. I asked that it should be sent to me here, but I shall go to Philadelphia at once, and I'll collect it when I get there and send you the amount. I promise you faithfully that it shall be remitted by the fifteenth at the very furthest."
"O don't trouble yourself to be so exact, Robert," replied Maj. Pagebrook. "Send it when you can; I'm in no very great hurry. Sarah Ann says we must invest all our spare money in the new railroad stock; but I needn't pay anything on that till the twenty-third, so there will be time enough. But for that I wouldn't care how long I waited."
"I shall not let it remain unpaid after the fifteenth at furthest," said Robert. "I do not like to let it lie even that long."
Maj. Pagebrook took his departure and Robert told Sudie of the bad news, telling her also that he must leave next morning for Philadelphia, to see if it were possible to save something from the wreck of the bank.
"Besides," said he, "I must get to work. There are nearly two months of time between now and the first of January, and I cannot afford to lose it now that I have lost this money."
"What will you do, Robert? You can't do anything teaching in that time."
"No, but I can do a good many things. I write a little now and then for the papers and magazines, for one thing. I can pick up something, I think, which will at least pay expenses."
He then told her of his arrangement with Maj. Pagebrook about the protested draft, and finished by repeating what that gentleman had said about the investment in railroad stock.
This troubled Miss Sudie more than all the rest, and Robert seeing it pressed her for a reason. But no reason would she give, and Robert was forced to content himself with the thought that his trouble naturally brought trouble to her. To her aunt, however, she expressed her conviction that Cousin Sarah Ann had suggested the railroad investment merely for the sake of compelling her husband to press Robert for payment. She was troubled to know that the payment must be deferred even for a few days, but rejoiced in the knowledge of Robert's ability to discharge his indebtedness speedily. It galled her to think of the unpleasant things which the amiable mistress of The Oaks would manage to say about Robert pending the payment. There was no help for it, however, and so the brave little woman persuaded herself that it was her duty to appear cheerful in order that Robert might be so; and whatever Miss Sudie believed to be her duty in any case Miss Sudie did, however difficult the doing might be. She accordingly wore the pleasantest possible smile and the most cheerful of countenances whenever Robert was present, doing every particle of her necessary crying in her own room and carefully washing away all traces of the process before opening the door.
Robert made all his preparations for departure that afternoon, and on the following morning was driven to the Court House in the family carriage. When he arrived there he got what letters there were for him in the post-office, read them, and talked a few moments with Ewing Pagebrook, who had spent the preceding night with Foggy and Dr. Harrison, and was now deeply contrite and rather anxious than otherwise that Robert should scold him. There was no time, however, even for the giving of advice, as the train had now come, and Robert must go at once. A hasty hand-shaking closed the interview, and Robert was gone.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Mr. Pagebrook Goes to Work
When Robert arrived in Philadelphia his first care was to make inquiries with regard to the bank in which his money was deposited. He learned that it had suspended payment about one week before, and that its affairs were in the hands of an assignee. This was all he could find out on the afternoon of his arrival, and with this he was forced to content himself until the next day, when he succeeded with some little difficulty in securing an interview with the assignee. To him he said: "My only purpose is to ascertain the exact state of the bank's affairs, in order that I may know what to do."
"That I cannot tell you, sir. The books are still in confusion, and until they can be straightened out it is impossible to say what the result will be."
"Tell me, then, are the assets anything like equal to the liabilities?"
"That is exactly what the books must show. I can't say till we get a statement."
"You can at least tell me then," said Robert, provoked at the man's reticence, "whether there are any assets at all, or not."
"No, I can make no statement until the books are examined. Then a complete exhibit of affairs will be made."
"Pardon me," said Robert, "but this question is one of serious moment to me. You have been examining this bank's affairs for a week, I believe?"
"Yes, about a week."
"You must have some idea, then, whether or not there is likely to be anything at all left for depositors, and you will oblige me very much indeed by giving me your personal opinion on the subject. I understand how impossible it is to give exact figures; but you cannot have failed to discover by this time whether or not the assets amount to anything worth considering, as compared with the amount of the bank's liabilities. I would like the little information you can give me, however inexact it may be."
"My dear sir," said the assignee, "I'm afraid you don't understand these things. Our statement is not ready yet, and I can not possibly tell you what its nature will be until it is."
"When will it be ready, sir?" asked Robert.
"That I can not say as yet, but it will be forthcoming in due time, sir; in due time."
"Will it require a week, or a month, or two or three months? You can, at least, make an approximate estimate of the time necessary for its preparation."
"Well, no," said the man of business, "I should not like to make any promises; I am hard at work, and the statement will be ready in due time, sir; in due time."
Robert left the man's presence thoroughly disgusted. Thinking the matter over he concluded that the affairs of the bank must be in a very bad way. Otherwise, he argued, the man would not be so silent on the subject.
Now the assignee was perfectly right in saying that Robert did not understand these things. If he had understood them he would have known that the reticence from which he thus argued the worst, meant just nothing at all. Business men are not apt to commit themselves unnecessarily in any case, and especially in such a case as the one concerning which Robert had been inquiring. The bank might have been utterly bankrupt or entirely solvent, and that assignee would in either case have given precisely the same answers to our young friend's questions. He knew nothing with absolute certainty as yet, and could know nothing certainly until the last column of figures should be added up and the final balances struck. Then he could make a statement, but until then he would say nothing at all. He acted after his kind. Business is business; and, as a rule, business men know only one way of doing things.
Robert, however, was not a business man. He knew nothing about these things, and accordingly, making no allowance for a business habit as one of the factors in the problem, he proceeded to argue that if the affairs of the bank were in the least degree hopeful the man would have said so. As he had carefully and persistently avoided saying anything of the kind, Robert could only conclude that there was no hope at all to be entertained.
He quickly determined, therefore, to waste no more time. Abandoning his sixteen hundred dollars as utterly lost, he packed his valise and went at once to New York to find work of some kind. How he succeeded we shall best see from his letter to Cousin Sudie, from which I am allowed to quote a passage or two.
"I am very busy with some topical articles, as the newspaper folk call them. That is to say, I am visiting factories of various kinds and writing detailed accounts of their operations, coupling with the facts gathered thus, a gossipy account of the origin, history, etc., of the industry. I find the work very interesting, and it promises to be quite remunerative too. I fell into it by accident. About a year ago I spent an evening with a friend, Mr. Dudley, in New York, and while at his house his seven year old boy showed me some of his toys – little German contrivances; and I, knowing something about the toys and the people who make them – you know I made a summer trip through Europe once – fell to telling him about them. His father was as much interested as he, but the matter soon passed from my mind. When I came over here a week ago to look for something to do I visited the office of this paper, hoping that I should be allowed to do a little reporting or drudgery of some sort till something better should turn up. Who should I find in the editor's chair but my friend Dudley. I told him my errand, and his reply was:
"'I haven't a moment now, Pagebrook, but you're the very man I want; come up and see me this evening. We dine at half-past six, and over our roast-beef I can explain fully what I mean.'
"I went, as a matter of course, and at dinner Dudley said:
"'Our paper, Pagebrook, is meant to be a kind of American Penny Magazine. That is to say, we want to fill it full of entertaining information, partly for the sake of the information but more for the sake of the entertainment. Now I have tried at least fifty people, in the hope of finding somebody who could tell, in writing, just such things as you told our Ben when you were here a year ago. I never dreamed of getting you to do it, but you're just the man, and about the only one, too, I begin to think. Now, if you've a mind to do it, I can keep you busy as long as you like. I don't mean to confine you to this particular kind of work, but I'd rather have articles of that sort than any others, and the publishers won't grumble if I pay you twenty dollars apiece for them. They mustn't exceed two of our columns – say two thousand words in all – but if you can't tell your story in any particular instance within those limits, you can make two articles out of it. I've already told your toy story, but you can easily hunt up plenty of other things to tell about. Common things are best – things people see every day but know nothing about.'
"I set to work the next day, and have been busy ever since. I like to visit factories and learn all the petty details of their operations, and I find that it is the petty details which go to make the description interesting. I like the work so well that I almost wish I had no professorship, so that I might follow as a business this kind of writing, and some other sorts in which I seem to succeed – for I do not confine myself to one class of articles, or to one paper either, for that matter, but am trying my hand at a variety of things, and I find the work very fascinating. But it is altogether better, I suppose, that I should retain my position in the college, even if I could be sure of always finding as good a market as I do just now for my wares, which is doubtful. I have lost the whole of my little reserve fund – as the bank seems hopelessly broken; and if I had nothing to depend upon except the problematic sale of articles, I would do you a wrong to ask you to let our wedding-day remain fixed. As it is, my salary from the college is more than sufficient for our support, and as my expenses from now until the time appointed will be very small indeed, I shall have several hundred dollars accumulated by that time; wherefore if Uncle Carter does not object, pray let our plans remain undisturbed, will you not, Sudie?"
The rest of this letter, which is a very long one, is not only personal in its character, but is also of a strictly private nature; and while I am free to copy here so much of this and other letters in my possession as will aid me in the telling of my story, I do not feel myself at liberty to let the reader into the sacred inner chambers of a correspondence with which we have properly no concern, except as it helps us to the understanding of this history.
CHAPTER XIX.
A Short Chapter, not very interesting, perhaps, but of some Importance in the Story, as the Reader will probably discover after awhile
When the letter from which a quotation was made in the preceding chapter came to Miss Sudie, that young lady was not at Shirley but at The Oaks, where Ewing was lying very ill. He had been prostrated suddenly, a few days before, and from the first had been delirious with fever. The doctor had appeared unusually anxious regarding his patient ever since he was first summoned to see him, and Cousin Sarah Ann having given way to her alarm at the evident danger in which her son lay to such an extent as to be wholly useless to herself or to anybody else, Miss Sudie had been called in to act as temporary mistress of the mansion.
The very next mail after the one which brought her letter, had in it one from Robert addressed to Ewing himself. Miss Sudie, upon discovering it in the bag, carried it to Cousin Sarah Ann, and was very decidedly shocked when that estimable lady without a word broke the seal and read the letter, putting it carefully away afterwards in Ewing's desk, of which she had the key. Miss Sudie said nothing, however, and the matter was almost forgotten when in the evening the doctor came and sat down by the sick boy's bed.
"I think it my duty to tell you," said he to Cousin Sarah Ann, "that the crisis of the disease is rapidly approaching, and I must wait here until it passes. Your son is in very great danger; but we shall know within a few hours whether there is hope for him or not. I confess that while I hope the best I fear the worst."
Mrs. Pagebrook was thoroughly overcome by her fright. She loved her son, in her own queer way; and being a very weak woman she gave way entirely when she understood in how very critical a condition the boy was. It was necessary to exclude her from the room, and the doctor remained, with Miss Sudie and Maj. Pagebrook. About midnight he stood and looked intently at the sick man's features, listening also to his hard-coming breath. He stood there full half an hour – then turning to Miss Sudie, he said:
"It's of no use, Miss Barksdale. Our young friend is beyond hope. He cannot live an hour. Perhaps you'd better inform his mother."
But before Miss Sudie could leave the bedside, Ewing roused himself for a moment, and tried to say something to her.
"Tell Robert – I got sick the very day – twenty-one – "
This was all Miss Sudie could hear, and she thought the patient's mind was wandering still, as it had been throughout his illness. And these incoherent words were the last the young man ever uttered.
About a week after Ewing's death Cousin Sarah Ann said to Maj. Pagebrook:
"Cousin Edwin, are you ever going to collect that money from Robert? He promised to pay you on or before the fifteenth of November, and now it's nearly the last of the month and you haven't a line of explanation from him yet. I told you he wouldn't pay it till we made him. You oughtn't to've let him run away in your debt at all, and you wouldn't either, if you'd a'listened to me. Why don't you write to him?"
"Well, I don't like to press the poor fellow. He's lost his money you know, and I reckon he finds it hard to pull through till January. He'll pay when he can, I reckon."
"O that's always the way with you! For my part I don't believe he had any money in the bank; and besides he said there was some money coming to him on his salary, and he promised faithfully to pay you out of that. I told you he wouldn't, because I knew him. He tried to make out he was so much superior to the rest of us, and talked about 'reforming' poor Ewing, just as if the poor boy was a drunkard and – and – and – if you don't write I will, and I'll make him pay that money too, or I'll know why."
The conversation ended as such conversations usually did in Maj. Pagebrook's family, namely, by the abrupt departure of that gentleman from the house.
Cousin Sarah Ann evidently meant what she said, and her husband was no sooner out of the house than she got out her desk and wrote; not to Robert, however, but to Messrs. Steel, Flint & Sharp, attorneys and counselors at law, in New York city. Her note was not a long one, but it told the whole story of Robert's indebtedness from a not very favorable point of view, and closed with a request that the attorneys should "push the case by every means the law allows." This note was signed not with Cousin Sarah Ann's own but with her husband's name, and her first proceeding, after sealing the letter, was to send it by a servant to the post-office. She then ordered her carriage and drove over to Shirley.
CHAPTER XX.
Cousin Sarah Ann Takes Robert's Part
Cousin Sarah Ann talked a good deal. Ill-natured people sometimes said she talked a good deal of nonsense, and possibly she did, but she never talked without a purpose, and she commonly managed to talk pretty successfully, too, so far as the accomplishment of her ends was concerned. In the present case, while I am wholly unprepared to say exactly why she wanted to talk, I am convinced that this excellent lady's visit to Shirley was undertaken solely for the purpose of securing an opportunity to talk.
Arrived there, she greeted her friends with her black-bordered handkerchief over her eyes, and for a time seemed hardly able to speak at all, so overpowering was her emotion. Then she said:
"I wouldn't think of visiting at such a time as this, of course, but Shirley seems so much like home, and I felt like I must have somebody to talk to who could sympathize with me. Dear Sudie was so good to me during – during it all."
After a time Cousin Sarah Ann composed herself, and controlled her emotion sufficiently to converse connectedly without making painful pauses, though her voice continued from first to last to be uncomfortably suggestive of recent weeping.
"Have you had any news of Robert lately?" she asked; "I do hope he's doing well."
"We've had no letters since Sudie's came while she was at your house," said Colonel Barksdale. "He was doing very well then, I believe, though he thought there was no hope of recovering anything from the bank."
"I'm so sorry," said Cousin Sarah Ann, "for I love Robert. He was so like an older brother to my poor boy. I feel just like a mother to him, and I can't bear to have anybody say anything against him."
"Nobody ever does say anything to his discredit, I suppose," said Col. Barksdale. "He is really one of the finest young men I ever knew, and the very soul of honor, too. He comes honestly by that, however, for his father was just so before him."
"That's just what I tell Cousin Edwin," said Cousin Sarah Ann. "I tell him dear Robert means to do right, and will do it just as soon as ever he can. Poor fellow! he has been so unfortunate. Somebody must have made Cousin Edwin suspicious of him, else he wouldn't think so badly of poor Robert."
"Why, Sarah Ann, what do you mean?" asked Col. Barksdale. "Surely Edwin has no reason to think ill of Robert."
"No, that he hasn't; and that's what I tell him. But he's been prejudiced and won't hear a word. He says nothing about it to anybody but me, but he really suspects Robert of meaning to cheat him, and – "
"Cheat him!" cried all in a breath, "Why, how can that be?"
"O it can't be, and so I tell Cousin Edwin; but he insists that Robert told him he would pay that three hundred dollars on or before the fifteenth, and I reckon the poor boy hasn't been able to do it, or he would."
"Why, Sarah Ann, you don't tell me that Robert has failed to pay Edwin that money!" said the Colonel.
"Why, I thought you knew that, or I wouldn't have told you about it. No, he hasn't sent it yet; but he will, of course, if I can keep Cousin Edwin from writing him violent letters about it."
"Hasn't he written to explain the delay?" asked the Colonel.
"No; and that's what Cousin Edwin always reminds me of when I try to take Robert's part. He says if he meant to be honest he would have written. I tell him I know how it is. I can fully understand Robert's silence. He has failed to get money when he expected it, I reckon, and has naturally hated to write till he could send the money. Poor boy! I'm afraid he'll overwork himself and half starve himself, too, trying to get that money together, when we could wait for it just as well as not."
"There certainly can be no apology for his failure to write, after promising payment on a definite day," said Col. Barksdale; "and I am both surprised and grieved that he should have acted in so unworthy a way!"
With this the Colonel arose and paced the room in evident anger. Robert's champion, Cousin Sarah Ann, could not stand this.
"Surely you are not going to turn against poor Robert without giving him a hearing, are you, Cousin Carter? I thought you too just for that, though I should never have mentioned the subject at all if I hadn't thought you all knew about it, and would take Robert's part like me."
"I shall give him a hearing," said the Colonel; "but in the meantime I must say his conduct has been very singular – very singular indeed."
"O he's only thoughtless!" said the excellent woman, in her anxiety to shield "dear Robert."
"No; he is not thoughtless. He never is thoughtless, whatever else he may be. If you wish to defend him, Sarah Ann, you must find some other excuse for his conduct. Confound the fellow! I can't help loving him, but if he isn't what I took him for, I'll – "
The Colonel did not finish his threat; perhaps he hardly knew how.
"Now, Cousin Carter, please don't you fly into a passion like Cousin Edwin does," said Cousin Sarah Ann, pleadingly, "but wait till you find out all the facts. Write to Robert, and I'm sure he will explain it all. I wish I hadn't said a word about it."
"You did perfectly right, perfectly," said Colonel Barksdale. "If Robert has failed in a point of honor, I ought to know it, because in that case I have a duty to do – a painful one, but a duty nevertheless."
"O you men have no charity at all. You're so hard on one another, and I'm so sorry I said anything about it. Good-by, Cousin Mary. Good-by, Sudie dear. Come and see me, won't you? I miss you so much in my trouble. Come often. Come and stay some with me. Do. That's a dear."
And so Cousin Sarah Ann drove away, rejoicing in the consciousness that she had vigorously defended the absent Robert; and perhaps rejoicing too in the conviction that that gentleman could not possibly explain his conduct to the satisfaction of Colonel Barksdale.