"You know, Henry, thousands of men have had to face such things, and have come out of their difficulties without a stain or a hard word——"
"In my case that is impossible. I tell you, mother, they would have no more mercy on me than on a snake. The Bank is a private one, the property of one person, and on that one person all the wrath would fall. It is not like a joint stock, or a limited liability, where many are concerned as principals or shareholders or directors. It would be a case between an individual and his creditors. It would look as if I had borrowed money privately of all the people I knew, and spent it or gambled in dangerous foreign speculations, until I had dissipated their last pennies and left the people beggars. No, mother; the day I shut the Bank door I open the gate of Eternity with a bullet."
He was walking up and down his mother's drawing-room, with his hands clasped behind his coat, his eyes bent on the ground, and a look of concentrated thought upon his usually placid and beaming features.
"I will not hear you say that again, Henry," cried the mother, stamping her foot impatiently on the floor. "Listen to me. You know my two thousand a year is clear of the Bank——"
"Thank Heaven and my father for that!" cried Grey earnestly.
"Can't you shut up the Bank, and you and Bee"—Beatrice, his wife—"come and stay with me for a while? We could leave England and live on a thousand a year in the south of France, or anywhere you like, and save up a thousand a year to start you again——"
"I would die ten thousand deaths, dear mother, rather than touch your money," he cried fervently, catching her hand and holding it in both his, and opening his hands now and then to kiss the shrivelled hand which had once, when soft and full, joined his—then softer and fuller—in prayer, and now, when he was strong and she was weak, tried to shield and succour him as in the days when he was a little child.
"Don't be sentimental at such a crisis," cried his mother petulantly. "You shall do as I say; or if you like, when the Bank affair is settled, we can sell the annuity. I know I'm old, and it's not worth many years' purchase; but we should get a few thousand for it, and that would give you a fresh start in some other business. Now I tell you this is what shall happen. Do you hear me? I will not wait for your consent; this very day I will see about selling the annuity—what do you call it? capitalising it? Go, Henry, and no more nonsense about gunpowder and bullets. Such things are only fit for the stage or the Continent, and are quite beneath the notice of a sensible English man of business."
He rose to his feet and cried: "You shall not, you must not, mother. I have been making out things worse than they really are. I am depressed and ill. Believe me, there is no need for doing what you say. There is one venture of mine, in no way connected with the late war, the greatest of all my ventures; and although I do not look on it as a very safe or sound venture, it may come all right yet. I shall know in a fortnight. You must promise me to do nothing until then. Promise me, my dear mother!"
He spoke eagerly, passionately; and as he uttered the final words he caught both her hands in his, and looked beseechingly into her eyes.