And the India House, like the Bank of England, was a terrible foe. Once launched on the slope, let the cell door once close on him, he might slip with fatal ease from stage to stage, until the noose hung dark and fearful before him, and all the influence, all the help he could command, might then prove powerless to save him! It was a terrible machine—the law! The cell, the court, the gallows, with what swiftness, what inevitableness, what certainty, did they not succeed one another—dark, dismal stages on the downward progress! How swiftly, how smoothly, how helplessly had that other banker traversed them! How irresistibly had they borne him to his doom!
He shuddered. The officer of the law, who a few minutes before had been his servant, fee-bound, obsequious, took on another shape. He grew stern and menacing, and was even now, it might be, observing him, and conceiving suspicion of him. Arthur’s color ebbed at the thought and his face betrayed him. The peril might be real or unreal—it might be only his imagination that he had to fight. But he could not face it. He moistened his dry lips, he forced himself to speak. He surrendered—sullenly, with averted eyes.
“Have it your own way,” he said. “Take it.” And with a last attempt at bravado, “I shall appeal to your father!”
“That is as you will,” Clement said. He was not comfortable, and sensible of the other’s humiliation, his only wish was to bring the scene to an end as quickly as possible. He took up the bag and signed to the officer that they were ready.
“It’s some hundreds short. You know that?” Arthur muttered.
“I can’t help it.”
“He’ll be the loser.”
“Well—it must be so.” Yet Clement hesitated, a little taken aback. He did not like the thought, and he paused to consider whether it might not be his duty to return to the brokers’ and undo the bargain. But it would be necessary to repeat all the formalities at a cost of time that he could not measure, and it was improbable that he would be able to recoup the whole of the loss. Rightly or wrongly, he decided to go on, and he turned to the officer. “I take on the business now,” he said, sharply. “Where is the hackney-coach? In Bishopsgate? Then lead the way, will you?” And, the bag in his hand, he moved towards the crowded street.
But with his foot on the threshold, something spoke in him, and he looked back. Arthur was standing where he had left him, gloom in his face; and Clement melted. He could not leave him, he could not bear to leave him thus. What might he not do, what might he not have it in his mind to do? Pity awoke in him, he put himself in the other’s place, and though there was nothing less to his taste at that moment than a companionship equally painful and embarrassing, he went back to him. “Look here,” he said, “come with me. Come down with me and face it out, man, and get it over. It’s the only thing to do, and every hour you remain away will tell against you. As it is, what is broken can be mended—if you’re there.”
Arthur did not thank him. Instead, “What?” he cried. “Come? Come with you? And be dragged at your chariot wheels, you oaf! Never!”