WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT.
Mr. Grey's drive to Castle Ferry had been an excursion to meet victory; his return to Daneford was a triumphant progress.
Now it seemed to him nothing short of a conspiracy between fate and accident could wreck him. The two chances which had threatened him with ruin had melted into thin air. Nothing adverse to him would be in the will, and not only that, but from the day of Sir Alexander's death until the coming of age of Miss Midharst he would have absolute control of affairs, and every chance of making good the sum he had abstracted. The gold was going to beat the lead at a walk.
The financial world was now in a state of deplorable despondency, but that condition of things could not last for ever. There was of course no prospect of his making a tenth part of the half a million profit during the twelve months; but the St. George's Bank was gone, and deposits would come flowing in, and having obliged his London agents in their need, they could not refuse him anything in reason by-and-by. After riding out the bad times his credit would be so firmly established that he could get money on the best terms to build up the horrible gap he had made. He could borrow to replace what he had stolen.
"I shall win now, and I shall win easily," he thought, as he drove through the bright fresh air towards Daneford; "and by the time there is another dissolution, who can tell but I may take one of the seats for the city, if it is offered to me."
He went straight to Mr. Shaw, and told that gentleman how Sir Alexander Midharst desired to see him with a view to making his will, and how the client, although in no immediate danger of death, was nevertheless in a state of health which made it highly desirable his worldly affairs should be put in order as quickly as possible.
Mr. Shaw visited the Castle that evening, wrote from the baronet's dictation, and on Monday, the 4th of June, 1866, the will was signed by Sir Alexander in the presence of two competent witnesses, who, in the presence of the testator and of one another, affixed their signatures.
A few days afterwards Mr. Gray met the lawyer.
"Well," said the banker, with one of his easiest smiles, "did you do what was required at the Castle?"
"Yes," answered the white-haired solicitor, who was tremulous, and had a disconcerting way of shutting his eyes and consulting imaginary internal Acts of Parliament when he spoke. He was not by nature communicative, and he held in rigid regard all professional etiquette; but Mr. Henry Walter Grey was a very exceptional man, and, moreover, the testator had told him Mr. Grey had consented to act as guardian and trustee; therefore he did not feel he committed any impropriety in adding: "Sir Alexander appears to share public feeling in your favour, and to place unlimited confidence in our most careful banker."
"You are very kind," returned Mr. Grey, with his most cordial smile. "As you know, our establishment has been a long time connected with the Castle, and when Sir Alexander asked me to act, it would look ungracious in me to refuse."
"It's a heavy responsibility."
"Oh, as far as the responsibility goes——" He did not finish the sentence in words, but with a shrug of his shoulders, as much as to say: "We bankers are accustomed to grave responsibilities." Then the two parted.
From this conversation Grey not only gathered that the will had been made, but also that under it he had been appointed executor and trustee to the document and the estate, and guardian to the heiress.
What more could he require to put his mind at rest?
And yet as the days went on he was far from easy. Many things caused him trouble and made him anxious. The gloom over the financial world deepened instead of lifting. The ordinary depositors grew shyer and shyer, as crash followed crash, and house followed house, in the awful ruin of the time.
No one breathed a word against the Daneford Bank; all who spoke of it acknowledged its position unassailable; still its business showed no vast increase, no such increase as would help Grey out of the whirlpool into which he had been drawn, although the Bank's borrowing power had been secured.
From bad, things went to worse. As the year wore on, some of his best customers began to feel the pressure of the times. Instead of finding funds flowing into the Bank in unexampled abundance, money ran out.
Old respectable firms now came to him and asked to be helped over the disastrous period. They brought this security and that, and begged for advances. If the name and fame of the Bank were to be magnified, this was the time to do it. He had still funds enough to make the Bank proof against contingency; over and above this he had a little margin, not much, but most useful.
About the middle of June the Weeslade Steamship Company quarrelled with their bankers, the Weeslade Valley Bank. The Steamship Company wanted an advance of five thousand pounds on the river steamboat Rodwell, which carried passengers between Daneford and Seacliff. The Weeslade Valley Bank refused. The Steamship Company withdrew their account from the Valley Bank, and offered their business to the Daneford Bank. The account was opened in the Daneford, and the advance was made by mortgage on the Rodwell, the Steamship Company paying interest on the advance, and depositing with the mortgage a policy of insurance against total loss by water or weather.
Towards the end of June the Daneford Bank's London agent failed, by which the Bank lost a clear twenty thousand pounds, besides losses by delay in getting a dividend. This was very serious. It caused a run on the Daneford Bank. In three days thirty thousand pounds were withdrawn in excess of average draughts.
On the morning of the third day the Daneford Bank issued a circular which took the town by storm. The circular was brief, and ran as follows:
"Thursday, 28th June, 1866.
"The Daneford Bank.
"Take notice, owing to the fact that a run has begun on the Daneford Bank, the offices of that Bank will be opened every morning at eight instead of nine, and will be closed at seven instead of four p.m., until this run has ceased.
"Henry Walter Grey."
This circular was town talk the next day. The admirers of Wat were more enthusiastic than ever in their praises of his boldness and wisdom. This circular killed the panic, and on Saturday of the same week the drawings had shrunk back to an average. Yet for another week the Bank was kept open from eight in the morning till seven in the evening.
On Monday, the 9th of July, a second circular was issued from the Bank, saying that as the run had ceased for a week the office hours for the future would be as of old, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
But, although the run had ceased, upwards of thirty thousand pounds had been withdrawn, and only five thousand found its way back again, and that was decidedly bad. The Bank was not in the least jeopardy. Sir Alexander Midharst's half a million had saved it; but the baronet's money was not only not returning, but the balance of it in hand began to run low.
Notwithstanding all this business pressure and the perilous position in which Grey stood, no one could detect in his face or manner a clue to the anxiety which consumed him. Still he was the same joyous companion, the same jovial host, the same considerate employer, the same liberal patron.
To his mother he displayed the best view of his position. He showed her how the steamship business had fallen in to him because he was in funds and could give accommodation beyond the power of his local rival. He admitted the loss in London, but pointed out how the loss and the run, taken together, must end in great advantage to his Bank.
She heard not only his story, but, from all who spoke to her on the subject, congratulations upon the Bank's position and his great prudence and good sense. He told her the money from Boston had not only saved him, but had so improved his resources that the Bank was now in fully as good a position as at any time during his father's lifetime.
Hard as the business affairs of Mr. Grey pressed upon him, and difficult as he felt the burden, they were not all the troubles he had to endure.
In order to prevent bankruptcy he had committed fraud. Up to this time he had carried on that fraud without exciting a hint of suspicion. The man whose money he had appropriated to his own use not only felt no misgivings as to the safety of his vast hoard, but had recently lavished upon him, Grey, the last proofs of implicit confidence when placing practically all that fortune and the care of the heiress in his hands.
But, as well as the pressure of his business and the weight of his crime, he had other difficulties to endure. He still entertained his friends with his usual hospitality and good grace, but the condition of the inner circle of his domestic life grew daily harder and harder to bear.
The eccentricity of Mrs. Grey developed with time, and, still more unfortunately, the terrible infirmity to which she had given way increased upon her with the years.
She was childless; she was alone all day in that great strange house; few people called upon her, and she rarely went out. Her husband was always kind in manner towards her, and she could ask for nothing he would not get her. But she knew he and she were not one, that they never had been one, that they never could be one.
Mr. Grey did not lunch at home, so that Mrs. Grey usually had luncheon by herself, except upon the rare occasions when one of her few acquaintances called and stayed.
Seldom Mr. Grey dined out; often he had someone to dine with him, and often he gave parties. All this caused Mrs. Grey to be much by herself, and solitude was, for one of her disposition and tendency, fatal.
By little and little the disastrous habit grew. It was most carefully concealed from the servants. At first Grey had tried to effect a cure; then, despairing of that, he strove with all his skill to avoid a scandal.
With that view he had a little cupboard fitted up in the only room furnished in the Tower. For this cupboard he got two keys—one for himself, and one for his wife. In giving her the key he had said quietly:
"In future you will find the wine for ordinary purposes in the new cupboard; so that you may not have the trouble of sending to the cellar for it, or in case I am out and you want more than is decanted, you can get it there. You will always have some there without sending to the cellar for it."
"But we don't want any more than is decanted—so few people call," said the wife tremulously.
"I know, I know. But someone may call, and as I keep the key of the cellar you might find yourself in a difficult position. Take this key of the cupboard, and here is the key of the room itself; there is only one other key, and I have that. The room is the quietest in the whole house. The door locks on either the in or the outside. The room is comfortably done up, and you can make any use you please of it. If you feel worried, or not very well, and wish to get away from the annoyance of the servants, you can go and lie down a while there."
These precautions were deplorable and degrading. All the love he had once borne this woman had died; and although he carefully concealed his feelings towards her, he had at last come to regard her with loathing.
She was in no way responsible for the disasters which had fallen on his business; she furnished no excuse for the crime he had committed, but she was one of the elements in his misfortune; and now that she had fallen into an odious fault, he resolved to put no impediment in her downward career, so long as her descent did not become apparent or public.
It was a sad development of the romantic and chivalric story of Wat Grey's wooing. But then, so long as Daneford knew nothing of the decay of that romance or the decline of that chivalry, the fact that both were going—gone, was of little moment to Wat Grey.
His embezzlement of the money had taught him that damaging facts had no injurious influence with the public—so long as the facts were carefully concealed. He found crime an easier burden than he had expected, and in place of his old dread of crime itself he had now a dread of disclosure only. If he had grown to hate his wife, what then—so long as no one knew of it.
Up to this point Fate seemed to have played deliberately into his hands. He had ruined himself in Southern expectations, Fate had put more than half a million of money into his power, and he had extricated his fortune. An unlucky turn of the die might have betrayed him, and given him up to worse destruction than the former, but all came round as though he had the ordering of events. Not only was there to be no immediate call for that money, no immediate investigation into accounts with a checking of documents and an examination of affairs, but he was appointed supreme custodian of the whole property, and, for upwards of a year from the old man's death, no enquiry disadvantageous to him could be set on foot.
Suppose the old man were to die soon, and business were to keep on the disastrous lines it had adopted of late? What then?
What then?
Many and many a day he put that question to himself in the morning before he broke his fast; and again at night before he went to bed he repeated this terrible question—unanswered.
And the more he pondered over this question the less he liked to look at the answer. Not that the simple and direct answer appalled him, for that had been familiar to his mind for some time; the simple answer was, Ruin—Self-imposed Death.
That was the positive answer to the question; but that did not affright him now, though it had terrified him at first.
He was still what might be called a young man, for he carried his five-and-forty years more easily than many another man carried thirty. He was not a whit insensible to the many physical and social personal advantages he possessed. He knew he was a favourite wherever he went. He knew he was good-looking. He knew he was clever.
He knew he was married.
His wife had brought him nothing worth speaking of—not position, happiness. He had been everything to her, and how poorly had she requited him! It was only by the utmost care he avoided a damning scandal alighting upon his name through her.
Fortune had favoured him up to this. Would Fortune be his friend still further? Was it too much to hope that another great piece of good luck might await him?
There was one sure way out of all his danger and difficulties, if he had only been a single man: there was Maud.
If, when Sir Alexander died, he were a bachelor, he might marry Maud. She knew nothing of the world, and he knew she liked him. There would be no need for his ruin if he were only a bachelor.
It was beyond the power of Fate to make him a bachelor; but suppose Fate should take away that unloved wife, that great danger to his name, that great stumbling-block in the way of his successful progress?
Then? What then? Answer: He should marry Maud, and so wipe out the history of his crime.
Would chance or accident, would Heaven or Hell, or whatever else he might call it, take away from him this woman who was a curse and burden, and give him that woman who would bring him deliverance?
Such thoughts had long haunted his mind before he had heard on that 17th of August the voices which assailed and tempted him in tremendous tones; that day on which the fate of the steamboat Rodwell and of Beatrice his wife, of the Weird Sisters and the Towers of Silence, became sealed together for ever.