The chairman fidgetted uneasily in his seat: sundry anonymous letters making grave charges against his son, several questionable monetary transactions in which he had reason to suspect he was engaged, and one or two recent little disputes which he had had with his son, occurred to him, and he began to fear that the disclosure of the absentee’s name would be a very painful one to himself.
At length the financial orator, after raising his hand for silence, said deliberately, “the gentleman to whom I refer is Mr. Richard Tallant;” and then there went a whisper all about the room—“The chairman’s son!” In the public mind the name of Tallant had been so generally associated with everything that was honourable and true until now, that it seemed as if the bank was really broken indeed. London men looked silently and inquiringly at each other. Country shareholders, who had never previously attended these half-yearly meetings, looked on in amazement, and wondered what would be the next turn in the mysterious wheel of fortune.
All this occurred in much less time than it occupies you to read what we have written by way of narrative. Not many moments elapsed before the chairman rose. He beckoned the speaker who had denounced his son, and the gentleman came up and began expressing regret at being compelled to take a course which must be so painful to the chairman.
“Nay, nay, make no apologies, sir; you have simply discharged your duty,” said Mr. Tallant. “What proofs have you?”
The honourable proprietor handed to the chairman a bundle of papers. Having carefully examined these through his eye-glass, and apologised for detaining the meeting, Mr. Tallant, in a voice which fully indicated the mental agony of the speaker, said—“Gentlemen, you will readily understand what a blow this is to me. When I rose to order it was not for a moment with any idea of screening my son——”
“Query,” said a wretched shareholder, who was hissed, and hustled, too, in a moment.
“It has been my pride,” said the chairman, heedless of the interruption, “throughout my long business career, to make the name of Tallant one of strength in this great metropolis, and a name which should be synonymous with wealth and with honour. My ambition was unbounded, you may say, but surely it was a laudable ambition. I say surely it was, more now by way of question than by way of assertion; perhaps the standard which I set up was too high. But until to-day I seem to have reached the acme of all my pride and hope; for never before, I believe, has a word been even whispered against the honour, and integrity, and soundness of a Tallant.”
Cries of “Hear, hear!” and a weak attempt at cheering, greeted the fine old man, as he looked round the room with something like an air of triumph in his misery.
“I have held a high place amongst you now for many years; but we have fallen upon bad times. We are in the midst of a financial crisis which is not only breaking banks but friendships; which is not only carrying wreck and ruin to the weak and the false, the fool and the knave, but which is shaking the reputations of men of probity and honour. The suggestion of an honourable proprietor, made this day, that I should resign, was greeted with a sufficient sound of approving voices to determine me in my course, before this attack upon my son. It had been my full intention to resign (cries of “No, no!” and “Yes, yes!”). I have no other alternative.”
Here the cries of “No, no!” and “Yes, yes!” broke out afresh, and somebody said, “How do we know he isn’t as bad as his son?”