As it neared one o'clock, I could see my ancient friend the Abbey clock with not a wrinkle in his old face, staring at me through the bare Abbey trees. I began to feel rather anxious. I went into the deserted office; and thence, none forbidding, ensconced myself behind the sheltering bank blinds.
The crowd had scarcely moved; a very honest, patient, weary crowd dense in the centre, thinning towards the edges. On its extremest verge, waiting in a curricle, was a gentleman, who seemed observing it with a lazy curiosity. I, having like himself apparently nothing better to do, observed this gentleman.
He was dressed in the height of the mode, combined with a novel and eccentric fashion, which had been lately set by that extraordinary young nobleman whom everybody talked about—my Lord Byron. His neckcloth was loose, his throat bare, and his hair fell long and untidy. His face, that of a man about thirty—I fancied I had seen it before, but could not recall where,—was delicate, thin, with an expression at once cynical and melancholy. He sat in his carriage, wrapped in furs, or looked carelessly out on the scene before him, as if he had no interest therein—as if there was nothing in life worth living for.
"Poor fellow!" said I to myself, recalling the bright, busy, laughing faces of our growing up lads, recalling especially their father's—full of all that active energy and wise cheerfulness which gives zest to existence; God forbid any man should die till he has lived to learn it!—"poor fellow! I wish his moodiness could take a lesson from us at home!"
But the gentleman soon retired from my observation under his furs; for the sky had gloomed over, and snow began to fall. Those on the pavement shook it drearily off, and kept turning every minute to the Abbey clock—I feared it would take the patience of Job to enable them to hold out another quarter of an hour.
At length some determined hand again battered at the door. I fancied I heard a clerk speaking out of the first-floor window.
"Gentlemen"—how tremblingly polite the voice was!—"Gentlemen, in five minutes—positively five minutes—the bank will—"
The rest of the speech was drowned and lost. Dashing round the street corner, the horses all in a foam, came our Beechwood carriage. Mr. Halifax leaped out.
Well might the crowd divide for him—well might they cheer him. For he carried a canvas bag—a great, ugly, grimy-coloured bag—a precious, precious bag, with the consolation—perhaps the life—of hundreds in it!
I knew, almost by intuition, what he had done—what, in one or two instances, was afterwards done by other rich and generous Englishmen, during the crisis of this year.