The Merivale banks

A week passed, and the town was full of rumors of every description. That the assets could not begin to meet the liabilities was a certainty, and the losers were furious. Mr. Grey was called a liar, a cheat, a spendthrift and gambler, who had used the money of the poor to enrich himself.

A little lull occurred when it was known that his house was for sale, with his horses and carriage, his wife’s and Louie’s diamonds, the grand piano, and Louie’s wheel, and that the proceeds were to go toward liquidating the debts.

“That’s fair, and they or’to pay me first,” Godfrey Sheldon said, when he heard of it. “All them gimcracks without the house, will bring more’n two thousand dollars, the sum I have in the bank now. Fool that I didn’t take it all out. I’ll go at once and see ’em.”

Harnessing his horse, he drove to the Greys’ residence and asked to see Mr. Grey. It was Louie who met him and told him her father was ill, and saw no one but Mr. Blake and the doctor.

“Then I’ll see your mother,” Mr. Sheldon said.

“She is ill, too,” was Louie’s reply.

“Well, who in thunder can I see?” was the next question, roughly spoken.

“Me!” Louie answered, with quiet dignity. “What can I do for you?”

“Pay me my two thousand dollars,” was the rude reply, which brought the hot blood to Louie’s face; but she answered calmly:

“I wish we might, but it is impossible at present.”

“Why impossible? I hear your house, with its fixin’s, is for sale. Is that so?” Mr. Sheldon asked.

“Yes, that is so.”

“And they belong to your mother, or you?”

“Yes, to mother.”

“Horses, and carriages, and all?”

“Yes.”

“And the pianner, and wheel, and diamonds?”

“Yes—the piano and wheel were mine, and are already sold, the diamonds are in Boston, to be disposed of.”

“Jess so. I call that honest on your part. They all or’to fetch a nice sum, and don’t you think that, as the biggest creditor, I or’to be paid out of it? I do.”

It seemed to Mr. Sheldon that Louie grew two inches in height as she replied:

“The money will belong to mother and me, to do with as we please, and we shall pay the small depositors first—the poor people, who worked hard for their money, and cannot afford to lose it. What is left will go in with the assets, and you will have your share.”

“Heavens and earth! Do you think I can afford to lose two thousand dollars? No, sir!” Mr. Sheldon exclaimed, beginning to get angry. “Assets! There won’t be any, if the truth is told; the way you’ve lived—four servants, and two bath-rooms, with porcelain tubs. I s’pose you keep ’em still—the hired help, I mean.”

“I don’t know that you have any business to ask me that question,” Louie said, with a gleam in her eyes which warned the rude man that he was going too far.

“Mebby I hain’t,” he replied, “but when a man has lost two thousand dollars, he don’t feel very fine, I tell you. Look a here, girl,” he continued, as Louie showed signs of leaving him, “I want them horses and carriage. Name a fair price, and I’ll take ’em, turnin’ it toward my debt, and mebby I’ll take the house if the figger ain’t too high.”

Louie shook her head. “The poor men and women must be paid first. I have already paid some with my piano and wheel money,” she said.

Finding that he could not move her, and must take his chance with the rest, Mr. Sheldon left the house in a very angry state of mind. When Judge White slighted him he had taken his revenge by withdrawing his money from the bank and creating a panic. Now he had no money to withdraw. It was gone—lost—and he had no redress, unless he took it on Grey himself.

“And he deserves it,” he said, as he drove into the village. “He or’to be made to tell what he did with the money, and then sent to prison. I’ll do my best to get him there, too.”

It did not take long for Mr. Sheldon to bring others beside himself into his state of mind. Something should be done to Grey, who was probably shamming sickness to keep out of sight. They’d call a meeting, anyway, and decide what to do.

The meeting was called for the next night, and, as it was not kept secret, the news reached Louie in the morning, brought by Nancy Sharp, who, having espoused the cause of the Greys, was taking the place of the cook, who had left, and kept them posted with whatever was being said or done in town, thinking it a kindness to do so. On this occasion her report was, of course, exaggerated. There was to be a meeting of the creditors in the village hall that night at half-past eight, she said, and they were going to decide when to arrest Mr. Grey and take him to prison; probably it would be the next day, or two days later at the farthest.

Lottie was white as death when she heard it. She had just come from her father’s room, where, since the day of the failure, he had lain, with his hands folded on his breast, his eyes closed, and seldom moving or speaking, except to Louie and his wife, who had insisted upon being with him, and was lying in the same room, almost as white and still as her husband. The blow had struck her hard, for her love for and faith in her husband had been great, and no suspicion whatever of his integrity had ever entered her mind. Now, in the light of recent revelations, she had begun to look backward, understanding some things which, in her confiding and rather weak nature, she had scarcely thought of before. Her love was the same for the erring man, but her faith in him was gone, and when, with outstretched hands, he had said to her when they first met, “Fanny! oh, Fanny, I am so sorry,” she had answered him, “Thomas, how could you, when we trusted you so?” Then she had collapsed entirely and gone into by hysterics, as she had done when she first heard the news. Now, however, she was more calm, and stayed in the room with him, while Louie ministered to them both.

On this morning, as if something had told him what was in the air, or else because he was delirious, her father had roused a little and said to her:

“Don’t let them, Louie. I shan’t last long, and it will do no good. It will not bring back their money.”

Louie had returned from her interview with Nancy, and her face grew whiter as she asked:

“Do what, father?”

“Oh-h, I don’t know. I think I was dreaming of prison and that they were taking me there; but you will save me,” he moaned.

“Yes, father,” she said, kissing his pallid face. “I will save you. But how?” she asked herself, while a thought of Herbert crossed her mind.

He had been there every day, or, rather, evening—for, like Nicodemus, he chose the night for his visits, and it seemed to her that every time he came he appeared more and more under constraint. Still, he was very kind, and had said to her more than once:

“I am so sorry; and I wish I could help you. Command me if I can.”

Remembering this, there came into Louie’s mind the thought: “He can help me. They will listen to him.”

She did not expect him till evening, and then it might be too late. She could not go for him, but she could telephone, and she did, first to the house, and then to the bank, from which the judge’s voice, asking, “Who are you?” came back so loud that it made her start.

“Louie Grey,” was the response.

“What do you want?”

“I want Herbert.”

“The devil you do!” the judge said, in an aside; then, through the ‘phone, “He is in the street. What shall I tell him?”

“Please say that I want to see him at once. I am in great trouble,” Louie answered, frankly and fearlessly, with no thought of the storm she was provoking.

Taking his son into the rear office when he came in, the judge said to him:

“Don’t you call it pretty brassy for a girl to send word to a young man that she wants to see him at once?”

“What do you mean?” Herbert asked, with a thought of Louie.

“I mean that Grey girl has ‘phoned that she wants you at once. That looks as if she had a claim, or thinks she has; and, by the Lord Harry, if that is so, you are no son of mine. I’ve told you that a dozen times, and I mean it, too. You must choose between me and that Grey girl.”

He did not ask direct questions, and Herbert was glad, for he could not tell a square lie, and he dared not acknowledge his engagement. So he listened in silence until his father paused a moment, and then replied:

“It is hardly worth your while to expend so much breath on me. I know enough to study my own interest. But if Louie has sent for me, it certainly would be very unmanly in me not to go to her. Remember what she did for us.”

“I do remember, and if I didn’t it has been thrown in my face often enough; but that is no reason why she should be my daughter-in-law, and I tell you I won’t have it. No, sir; I won’t have it; and if you’ve got entangled with the daughter of a gambler and a thief, and maybe a State-prison bird, get disentangled, for I tell you I won’t have it!” the judge answered, angrily, going from the room and leaving Herbert alone.

It was very indiscreet in Louie to telephone, but he must go to her, he thought, and he was soon at the house, asking why she had sent for him, and why she was looking so terrified.

She was white as marble, and trembling like a leaf, for Nancy Sharp had come with more news of the excitement in town, and of Godfrey Sheldon’s threat to leave no stone unturned till Grey was punished.

“Oh, Herbert,” she said, bursting into tears and leaning her head on his arm, “have you heard they are to meet to-night to talk about arresting father?”

Herbert said he had heard something of the kind, but did not think it was true.

“It is true,” Louie cried, in a tremor of distress, “and you must stop it!”

“I stop it! How?” Herbert asked, and Louie replied:

“Go to the meeting, and plead for him. Tell them how sorry and broken he is. Tell them it will all be paid in time, if I live. I can do it, and I will. Tell them everything we have will be sold, if they will only leave father alone. You will do this for me?”

She was looking at him now, with the tears running down her cheeks, and her lips quivering with the pain it gave her to ask this of her lover, whose hesitancy she saw before he spoke. If she had asked him to walk through a fire he could have done it more readily than to attend the meeting of angry citizens and plead for Mr. Grey. It would be too marked, and life would be intolerable with his father when he heard it, as he was sure to.

This he tried to explain, and Louie understood him, and knew she must stand alone. There was no one to help her, and in her eyes, dry now, and very bright, there was a look, which Herbert would never forget, and in coming years he would give much if he could recall the words which had brought it there.

“Father will be wanting me, and I must go to him,” she said, when he tried to detain her while he explained, further why it would be of no use for him to do her bidding. “I shall only be one against many, and I am sorry to say some of the creditors have lost their good sense with their money, and they would only laugh at me if I told them you would pay the debts. How can you do it?”

“I know,” was Louie’s reply, as she drew away from him.

He did not try to caress her. She would not have permitted it had he tried. In her mind there was fast forming the idea that he was a weak reed to lean upon—that her idol was falling from its pedestal, and there was a constraint in her voice and manner as she bade him good-by and went to her father, who was growing delirious and talking of stocks, and prison, and a dead face with a bullet in the brain. This she did not understand, unless it referred to his thought to kill himself. The prison she understood, and tried to soothe and quiet him by saying he would never go there—that she would save him from it. How she could do it she scarcely knew. There seemed to be but one way. She must face that night session alone, and beg them to spare her father. It was a terrible ordeal, and she shrank from it with inexpressible dread, for she must do it, and her resolution was kept up by the news Nancy Sharp brought her at intervals during the day of the arrangements making for the session and the intensity of feeling among the people as the sense of their losses grew upon them.

“Don’t tell me any more, or I shall go crazy, and I need all my wits about me,” Louie cried at last when Nancy came late in the afternoon with more harassing details of what was being done in town.

“I done my best to shet ’em up,” Nancy said, “but land’s sake, ’tain’t no use. They are jest ravin’. But I’d like to see ’em try to take your father, sick as he is. They’d walk over my body fust, and I told ’em so, but they jest laughed in my face, and that sneak of a Sheldon said it was all very well for me, a preferred creditor, to feel that way, but if I’d lost all he had I’d talk out of ‘tother side of my mouth. The hound! He’s settin’ ’em on.”

Nancy was doing her duty religiously, and had been in two or three fights with boys and innumerable quarrels with others in her zeal to defend the Greys. And Louie knew it, and while she felt grateful for the old woman’s kindness, she grew sick at heart and more and more nervous as she thought of what she must do, and wondered how she could face a set of men as excited and determined as Nancy represented them to be. She had known them all as friends, and to meet them now as enemies was hard to do, but she must do it.

As the sun went down a heavy rain began to fall, and the night closed in dark and stormy, with gusts of wind which shook the house and bent the trees and shrubs in the yard, breaking some of the smaller limbs and scattering the leaves in showers. It was a wild night for any woman to be out, and much less for a young girl like Louie. Her wheel was sold, and, though the horses were still in the stable, she dared not take them out, for Nancy Sharp had brought her rumors of stones and eggs laid up for the carriage, should it appear in the street. She must walk and go alone, for the one servant who had not left them must stay with her father and mother, and she would not take Nancy with her.

Nancy had said the meeting was to be at half-past eight, and at quarter-past she started in her waterproof cloak, the hood of which was drawn over her head the better to shield her from the rain, and from observation, too, as she did not care to be recognized by any she chanced to meet.

There was little danger of her meeting anyone, for few were abroad that night except the men who had the appointment at the village hall, and no one noticed the slight figure moving rapidly through the street and keeping as much as possible in the shadow until the hall was reached.

There was a light shining from the windows and streaming down upon the walk where Louie stood for a moment, trying to gather courage for the trial.

“God help me, and give me strength and success,” she said, and then ascended the stairs to the upper hall, which was dimly lighted by a defective gas jet.

In a little recess, where he was unobserved, a young man was standing, or, rather, sitting, on a dry-goods box, motionless as a statue, and with a curse in his heart for his own cowardice. He had been there a long time, watching the men as they came up, now half resolving to join them and do Louie’s bidding, and now held back by the fear of his father, with whom there had been a second interview stormier than any which had preceded it. At lunch the judge, who seemed unusually irritable, had said to him:

“Did you go to see that Grey girl?”

“Yes, sir; I did,” was Herbert’s answer, and his father continued:

“More fool you! What did she want?”

He hesitated a moment and then replied, “She thought, perhaps, I could do something to quiet the men who are to meet to-night to take steps with regard to her father.”

For a moment the judge could not speak. His anger was so great that it brought on a fit of coughing, and the big gulp of claret he had taken was thrown out upon the napkin tucked under his chin.

“Strike me on the back, can’t you! and not sit staring at me while I choke to death,” he gasped.

Herbert struck him on the back with so good effect that the paroxysm was soon passed, and after two or three sneezes, he began:

“Great Peter! Why did you hit me so hard. You nearly broke my spine. Mad, I s’pose, because I asked you about the Grey girl—a pretty kind of modest piece, too, I must say, to think you’d appear as her advocate. I like that! Yes, I do! Did you tell her you’d go? If you did and do go, I’ve told you what’s what, and I mean it, too. Asked you to plead for that wretch, who deserves State’s prison—if ever a feller did!”

“So do a great many who are not there,” Herbert answered, adding, “I did not tell her I’d go. It would do no good, but it would be different with you. They would listen to you if you advised them not to arrest Mr. Grey. They would have to take him on a stretcher, he is so ill. I wish you’d go, I know Fred Lansing would if he were here.”

Herbert was growing courageous as he talked, with a thought of Louie’s face as it had looked at him an hour before. Something had brought Fred Lansing to his mind with a wish that he were there. Fred would not hesitate to brave the whole town, and, knowing the esteem in which he was held by his father, Herbert had used his name as an argument. But Fred was promptly consigned to perdition, and Herbert was sent after him in very emphatic language, and the interview was closed by Herbert’s leaving the table. He had intended going to Worcester that afternoon to attend a concert in the evening, but he gave that up and went instead into the town, dropping into three or four places of business, ostensibly to look at something, or make some little purchase, but really to hear if anything was said of the expected investigation. Only once was allusion made to it or the failure, and then a dry-goods merchant asked if he had heard there was to be a meeting of Mr. Grey’s creditors that night?

“Yes,” he replied, “and I am sorry, and hope they will decide not to molest him. It can do no good, and I suppose you know he is very ill. They would never attempt to touch him in his present state. Give him time if he lives, and I dare say he will try to pay every thing he owes.”

This was quite a speech for Herbert in Mr. Grey’s behalf, and after he had made it he felt that he had done a good thing for Louie, especially as the merchant to whom he was talking and who was not a heavy loser by the failure, replied, “That’s so. Grey is a good sort, and I don’t s’pose he has done worse than hundreds of bankers are doing all the time. He had bad luck and was caught, that’s all the difference. I had only fifty in the bank, and I’d rather lose that than see him dragged to prison as a few hot-heads seem to want to do; but I guess they won’t.”

There was comfort in this. Others might feel like this man. Matters were not so threatening as Louie feared. There might not be a meeting after all, and if there were nothing rash would be done. His presence was not needed, even if he were willing to go, and reasoning thus Herbert went home in a comparatively quiet state of mind. When dinner was over he started again for the main street of the town. If there was to be a meeting he would like to know it and see who attended it himself unseen. He accordingly took his post in the dark alcove and watched to see who came, wondering that there were so many and fearing a little for the result. He heard Louie’s step as she came up the stairs, but did not suspect who it was until as she stopped under the gas jet to shake the water from her dripping cloak and push her damp hair from her forehead, he saw her face, and nearly fell off the box in his surprise.

He knew why she was there, and his first impulse was to go to her and stand by her and make her cause his own. Then, thinking that perhaps he would go in later, and that she would produce a better effect at first without him, he let her go alone, and felt himself growing cold and dizzy, when the door opened and the light streamed for a moment out into the hall, showing him several men inside, with Louie in their midst; then the door was closed, and he was in darkness again.