Lancelot did not argue the point, for he knew the prejudices of Dissenters on the subject; but it did strike him that if Tregarva’s brain had been a little less preponderant, he, too, might have found the need of some recreation besides books and thought.
By this time they were at Lancelot’s door. He bid the keeper a hearty good-night, made him promise to see him next day, and went to bed and slept till nearly noon.
When he walked into his breakfast-room, he found a note on the table in his uncle’s handwriting. The vicar’s servant had left it an hour before. He opened it listlessly, rang the bell furiously, ordered out his best horse, and, huddling on his clothes, galloped to the nearest station, caught the train, and arrived at his uncle’s bank—it had stopped payment two hours before.
CHAPTER XIV: WHAT’S TO BE DONE?
Yes! the bank had stopped. The ancient firm of Smith, Brown, Jones, Robinson, and Co., which had been for some years past expanding from a solid golden organism into a cobweb-tissue and huge balloon of threadbare paper, had at last worn through and collapsed, dropping its car and human contents miserably into the Thames mud. Why detail the pitiable post-mortem examination resulting? Lancelot sickened over it for many a long day; not, indeed, mourning at his private losses, but at the thorough hollowness of the system which it exposed, about which he spoke his mind pretty freely to his uncle, who bore it good-humouredly enough. Indeed, the discussions to which it gave rise rather comforted the good man, by turning his thought from his own losses to general principles. ‘I have ruined you, my poor boy,’ he used to say; ‘so you may as well take your money’s worth out of me in bullying.’ Nothing, indeed, could surpass his honest and manly sorrow for having been the cause of Lancelot’s beggary; but as for persuading him that his system was wrong, it was quite impossible. Not that Lancelot was hard upon him; on the contrary, he assured him, repeatedly, of his conviction, that the precepts of the Bible had nothing to do with the laws of commerce; that though the Jews were forbidden to take interest of Jews, Christians had a perfect right to be as hard as they liked on ‘brother’ Christians; that there could not be the least harm in share-jobbing, for though it did, to be sure, add nothing to the wealth of the community—only conjure money out of your neighbour’s pocket into your own—yet was not that all fair in trade? If a man did not know the real value of the shares he sold you, you were not bound to tell him. Again, Lancelot quite agreed with his uncle, that though covetousness might be idolatry, yet money-making could not be called covetousness; and that, on the whole, though making haste to be rich was denounced as a dangerous and ruinous temptation in St. Paul’s times, that was not the slightest reason why it should be so now. All these concessions were made with a freedom which caused the good banker to suspect at times that his shrewd nephew was laughing at him in his sleeve, but he could not but subscribe to them for the sake of consistency; though as a staunch Protestant, it puzzled him a little at times to find it necessary to justify himself by getting his ‘infidel’ nephew to explain away so much of the Bible for him. But men are accustomed to do that now-a-days, and so was he.
Once only did Lancelot break out with his real sentiments when the banker was planning how to re-establish his credit; to set to work, in fact, to blow over again the same bubble which had already burst under him.
‘If I were a Christian,’ said Lancelot, ‘like you, I would call this credit system of yours the devil’s selfish counterfeit of God’s order of mutual love and trust; the child of that miserable dream, which, as Dr. Chalmers well said, expects universal selfishness to do the work of universal love. Look at your credit system, how—not in its abuse, but in its very essence—it carries the seeds of self-destruction. In the first place, a man’s credit depends, not upon his real worth and property, but upon his reputation for property; daily and hourly he is tempted, he is forced, to puff himself, to pretend to be richer than he is.’
The banker sighed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘We all do it, my dear boy.’
‘I know it. You must do it, or be more than human. There is lie the first, and look at lie the second. This credit system is founded on the universal faith and honour of men towards men. But do you think faith and honour can be the children of selfishness? Men must be chivalrous and disinterested to be honourable. And you expect them all to join in universal faith—each for his own selfish interest? You forget that if that is the prime motive, men will be honourable only as long as it suits that same self-interest.’
The banker shrugged his shoulders again.