“The fall in prices is sure to be permanent, then?” the old man asked.
“It will last for some years, any way,” Ezra answered. “The Jagersfontein gravel is very rich, and there seems to be plenty of it.”
“And within a few months we must repay both capital and interest. We are ruined!” The old merchant spoke in a broken voice, and his head sank upon his breast. “When that day comes,” he continued, “the firm which has been for thirty years above reproach, and a model to the whole City, will be proclaimed as a bankrupt concern. Worse still, it will be shown to have been kept afloat for years by means which will be deemed fraudulent. I tell you, my dear son, that if any means could be devised which would avert this—any means—I should not hesitate to adopt them. I am a frail old man, and I feel that the short balance of my life would be a small thing for me to give in return for the assurance that the work which I have built up should not be altogether thrown away.”
“Your life cannot affect the matter one way or the other unless it were more heavily insured than it is,” Ezra said callously, though somewhat moved by his father’s intensity of manner. “Perhaps there is some way out of the wood yet,” he added, in a more cheerful tone.
“It’s so paying, so prosperous—that’s what goes to my heart. If it had ruined itself it would be easier to bear it, but it is sacrificed to outside speculations—my wretched, wretched speculations. That is what makes it so hard.” He touched the bell, and Gilray answered the summons. “Listen to this, Ezra. What was our turn over last month, Gilray?”
“Fifteen thousand pounds, sir,” said the little clerk, bobbing up and down like a buoy in a gale in his delight at seeing the junior partner once again.
“And the expenses?”
“Nine thousand three hundred. Uncommon brown you look, Mr. Ezra, to be sure, uncommon brown and well. I hopes as you enjoyed yourself in Africa, sir, and was too much for them Hottenpots and Boars.” With this profound ethnological remark Mr. Gilray bobbed himself out of the room and went back radiantly to his ink-stained desk.
“Look at that,” the old man said, when the click of the outer door showed that the clerk was out of ear-shot. “Over five thousand profit in a month. Is it not terrible that such a business should go to ruin? What a fortune it would have been for you!”
“By heavens, it must be saved!” cried Ezra, with meditative brows and hands plunged deep in his trouser pockets. “There is that girl’s money. Could we not get the temporary use of it.”
“Impossible!” his father answered with a sigh. “It is so tied up in the will that she cannot sign it away herself until she comes of age. There is no way of touching it except by her marriage—or by her death.”
“Then we must have it by the only means open to us.”
“And that is?”
“I must marry her.”
“You will?”
“I shall. Here is my hand on it.”
“Then we are saved,” cried the old man, throwing up his tremulous hands.
“Girdlestone & Son will weather the storm yet.”
“But Girdlestone becomes a sleeping partner,” said Ezra. “It’s for my own sake I do it and not for yours,” with which frank remark he drew his hat down over his brows and set off for Eccleston Square.
