When something like quiet was once more restored, Mr. Tallant said, “I have been your chairman now for nearly five years. I have striven to do my duty to this great corporation. Through misfortunes over which the directors could have but little control, the failure of some great houses in Bombay——”
“And your own mismanagement,” said a fierce and irrepressible shareholder, who had five thousand pounds locked up in the concern, and who thought this a sufficient warrant for being angry and insolent.
But Mr. Tallant did not appear to hear these galling remarks, howsoever deeply they may have impressed him.
“And through the failure of some great houses in Bombay,” he repeated, “our Indian branches have suffered a loss of one hundred thousand pounds.”
Loud groans, and other expressions of anger and contempt, greeted this announcement. In the midst of it the chairman, who had taken a cheque-book from his pocket, sat down, and with a trembling hand filled it up, and signed it with his well-known clear bold signature.
Raising his hand to command silence, he said, “One hundred thousand pounds represents your losses by these failures—the only losses this corporation have suffered during my presidency. Here is a cheque for the amount, and I shall—never—occupy this chair again.”
Mr. Tallant deliberately handed the cheque to the secretary of the company, who sat near him, and taking up his hat proceeded to leave the room. The shareholders and others made way for the fine old English gentleman as he passed, and in a few moments his firm steady footstep could be heard on the staircase.
Some minutes elapsed before it occurred to several friends that they ought to follow him. By the time they reached the street Mr. Tallant was nowhere to be seen. He had called a hansom, and ordered the driver to go to the Paddington Railway Station: and he sat there in the waiting-room for nearly an hour. Trains came and went whilst he sat there; people came in and out, happy mothers and children, merry West-countrymen, and London tourists, and sorrowful-looking people also.
The sunlight was struggling through the great glass roof of the station, and making the place look quite joyful and festive. White wreaths of steam from noisy engines crept up to the glass, and dispersed in a sparkling kind of mist. There was a general air of pleasantness about the place that was cheering; but the great London merchant sat in the waiting-room with his arms folded, and his head upon his breast, waiting for the train.
You have stood at a railway station and seen them shunting a train of carriages upon some weed-grown siding. It seemed as if Fate had shunted the owner of Barton Hall—as if his day were over, as if, after going bravely through the world for a long time, he had broken down, and had come to be shunted upon a siding. Not shunted, like you and we hope to be shunted some day, smoothly and quietly to rest from our labours; but roughly, ruthlessly, thrust and bumped into a line of off-rails, covered with the dust of the world, and ticketed “Not to be used.”