“I should not have mentioned it at all, except to you,” returned Mr. Brierly. “And only to you, because I expected the Chisholms’ money was there. Rutt is not a safe man to speak after, at the best of times. I told him I did not believe him. And I did not. Still—if anything were to happen, and I had bottled up the rumour, without giving you a hint of it, I should never cease to blame myself.”
“That is the origin of it, you may be sure; the loss of those deeds,” observed the Rector. “I know the clerks were questioned about it yesterday, and some of them must have got talking out of doors. Good day, Brierly.”
Mr. Hastings paid the rest of his visits, and drove home. In spite of himself, he could not keep his mind from reverting—and somewhat unpleasantly—to what he had heard. He believed the Bank to be perfectly solvent; to be more than solvent. Until the previous evening, when Isaac had made that communication to him, he had been ready to answer for its flourishing condition on his own responsibility, if required. He fully believed the rumour, spoken of by Rutt the lawyer, to arise from some distorted hints of the missing deeds which had oozed out, and to have no other foundation whatever: and yet he could not keep his mind from reverting to it uneasily.
The ting-tang (it deserved no better name, and Prior’s Ash gave it no other) of All Souls’ Church was sending forth its last notes as the Rector drove in. Handing over the horse and gig to the waiting servant of the friend from whom it was borrowed—a gig always at the disposal of the Rector—he made his way to the vestry, and had the pleasure of presiding at a stormy meeting. There were divided parties in the parish at that time, touching a rate to be paid, or a non-rate; and opposing eloquence ran high. Personally, the Rector was not an interested party; but he had a somewhat difficult course to steer between the two, to avoid offending either. It was half-past nine when the meeting broke up.
“Any news of the missing deeds, Isaac?” he took an opportunity of asking his son.
“I think not,” replied Isaac. “We have heard nothing about it to-day.”
“I suppose things have gone on, then, as usual?”
“Quite so. We shall hear no more of it, I dare say, in the Bank. If the bonds can’t be found, the firm will have to make them good, and there’ll be an end of it.”
“A very unsatisfactory ending, I should think, if I had to make them good,” observed the Rector. “I don’t like things disappearing, nobody knows how or why.”
He said no more. He gave no hint to Isaac of the rumour that had been whispered to him, nor questioned him upon its probable foundation. It was the best proof that Mr. Hastings assigned to it no foundation. In sober reason he did not do so.