“That is a mere assertion,” was Mr. Richard Tallant’s reply. “Prove it,—prove it, sir; and take this as a caution if you cannot prove it; there is an offence called slander, which is actionable at law; rely upon it, I will not allow these things to be said with impunity. If I have made a few hundred thousand pounds by speculation on the Stock Exchange, by carefully watching favourable opportunities for buying and selling, it is not my fault that others have lost, and I defy you or any other man to prove that I have done anything without the pale of legitimate speculation.”
“Did you not lend your shares in the Oriental Bank, of which you were a director, to persons who were bearing the market? Did you not throw shares upon the market, and did not timid shareholders sell, in consequence, at a heavy depreciation, and did you not afterwards buy all you could get?”
“Suppose I say yes? Had I not a right to deal as I pleased with my own shares? If I did depreciate the property of the concern—which I deny—was I not depreciating my own?”
“Why were you absent from that meeting?”
“I had unexpected business elsewhere.”
“Why have you not answered the attack which was made upon you?”
“I will answer it in a court of justice, sir,” said Mr. Richard Tallant, striking his fist upon the table. “Do you think I shall permit the thing to pass over? You shall see how I will put my detractors down. Do you think I will permit the name of Tallant to be sullied by pettifogging brokers in the City?—by twopenny-halfpenny newspapers? Do you think a man with a balance of two hundred thousand pounds at his bankers in these times is to be put down by reports and rumours, and So-and-so says, and bosh of that character? If you do, you do not know Richard Tallant. And with regard to the Meter Iron Works, how many are there who have a larger stake in the prosperity of the concern than I have myself? Who charges me with neglect of duty?”
Mr. Christopher Tallant—poor man—might almost have been proud of the way in which his clever, unscrupulous son asserted himself. One or two of the old men at the board applauded and backed him up. There were many things in which he had been useful during his father’s absence, and it was chiefly through his influence with a certain railway company that a recent extensive order for girders had come in from India. Above all, the young fellow had been successful, and there was a manliness in his stand-up fight against all opponents that seemed to carry everything before him.
The truth is, on that day when his course of knavery was exposed, he had sent a trusty messenger to the meeting to report what took place, and when he learnt the result, he quietly shut himself up in his rooms at the West End, and debated with himself upon his line of conduct. “Shall I make a bolt of it?” or “Shall I fight it out?” These were the two momentous questions which he put and argued out in a dozen different ways.
He knew that his father would never forgive him, and, despite all his ill conduct, this gave him, a pang or two of regret and sorrow. It was not until midnight was long past, that he settled his plans: the ashes of many cigars lay upon the table, and numerous sheets of paper, covered with figures, were torn up and scattered about the hearth, before the final resolve was made.