"The great name of Gabriel Cassilis dragged in the dust! All your reputation gone—the whole work of your life—O sir! can't you feel even that? Can't you feel the dreadful end of it all—Gabriel Cassilis, the great Gabriel Cassilis, a Lame Duck!"
Not even that. The work of his life was forgotten with all its hopes, and the great financier, listening to his clerk with the polite impatience of one who listens to a wearisome sermon, was trying to understand what was the meaning of that black shadow which lay upon his mind and made him uneasy. For the rest a perfect calm in his brain.
"People will say it was the shock of the Eldorado smash. Well, sir, it wasn't that; I know so much; but it's best to let people think so. If you haven't a penny left in the world you have your character, and that's as high as ever.
"Fortunately," Mr. Mowll went on, "my own little savings were not in Eldorado Stock. But my employment is gone, I suppose. You will recommend me, I hope, sir. And I do think that I've got some little reputation in the City."
It was not for want of asserting himself that this worthy man failed, at any rate, of achieving his reputation. For twenty years he had magnified his office as confidential adviser of a great City light; among his friends and in his usual haunts he successfully posed as one burdened with the weight of affairs, laden with responsibility, and at all times oppressed by the importance of his thoughts. He carried a pocket-book which shut with a clasp; in the midst of a conversation he would stop, become abstracted, rush at the pocket-book, so to speak, confide a jotting to its care, shut it with a snap, and then go on with a smile and an excuse. Some said that he stood in with Gabriel Cassilis; all thought that he shared his secrets, and gave advice when asked for it.
As a matter of fact, he was a clerk, and had always been a clerk; but he was a clerk who knew a few things which might have been awkward if told generally. He had a fair salary, but no confidence, no advice, and not much more real knowledge of what his chief was doing than any outsider. And in this tremendous smash it was a great consolation to him to reflect that the liabilities represented an amount for which it was really a credit to fail.
Mr. Mowll has since got another place where the transactions are not so large, but perhaps his personal emoluments greater. In the evenings he will talk of the great failure.
"We stood to win," he will say, leaning back with a superior smile,—"we stood to win £260,000. We lost a million and a quarter. I told him not to hang on too long. Against my advice he did. I remember—ah, only four days before it happened—he said to me, 'Mowll, my boy,' he said, 'I've never known you wrong yet. But for once I fancy my own opinion. We've worked together for twenty years,' he said, 'and you've the clearest head of any man I ever saw,' he said. 'But here I think you're wrong. And I shall hold on for another day or two,' he said. Ah, little he knew what a day or two would bring forth! And he hasn't spoken since. Plays with his little boy, and goes about in a Bath-chair. What a man he was! and what a pair—if I may say so—we made between us among the bulls and the bears! Dear me, dear me!"
It may be mentioned here that everything was at once given up; the house in Kensington Palace Gardens, with its costly furniture, its carriages, plate, library, and pictures. Mr. Cassilis signed whatever documents were brought for signature without hesitation, provided a copy of his own signature was placed before him. Otherwise he could not write his name.
And never a single word of lamentation, reproach, or sorrow. The past was, and is still, dead to him; all the past except one thing, and that is ever with him.