If there is anything that
one loves an American for it is the way he stands certain kinds of
punishment. An Englishman and a heavy loser was being chaffed by a
Scotchman whose account at the Japan end of the line had been a trifle
overdrawn. True, he would lose in England, but the thought of the few
dollars saved here cheered him.
More men entered, sat down by tables, stood in groups, or remained
apart by themselves, thinking with knit brows. One must think quickly
when one's bills are falling due. The murmur of voices thickened, and
there was no rumbling in the skittle alley to interrupt it. Everybody
knows everybody else at the Overseas Club, and everybody sympathises. A
man passed stiffly and some one of a group turned to ask lightly, 'Hit,
old man?' 'Like hell,' he said, and went on biting his unlit cigar.
Another man was telling, slowly and somewhat bitterly, how he had
expected one of his children to join him out here, and how the passage
had been paid with a draft on the O.B.C. But now ... There, ladies and
gentlemen, is where it hurts, this little suspension out here. It
destroys plans, pretty ones hoped for and prayed over, maybe for years;
it knocks pleasant domestic arrangements galleywest over and above all
the mere ruin that it causes. The curious thing in the talk was that
there was no abuse of the bank. The men were in the Eastern trade
themselves and they knew. It was the Yokohama manager and the clerks
thrown out of employment (connection with a broken bank, by the way,
goes far to ruin a young man's prospects) for whom they were sorry.
'We're doing ourselves well this year,' said a wit grimly. 'One
free-shooting case, one thundering libel case, and a bank smash. Showing
off pretty before the globe-trotters, aren't we?'
'Gad, think of the chaps at sea with letters of credit. Eh? They'll land
and get the best rooms at the hotels and find they're penniless,' said
another.
'Never mind the globe-trotters,' said a third. 'Look nearer home. This
does for so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so, all old men; and every
penny of theirs goes.' Poor devils!'
'That reminds me of some one else,' said yet another voice, 'His
wife's at home, too. Whew!' and he whistled drearily. So did the tide of
voices run on till men got to talking over the chances of a dividend,
'They went to the Bank of England,' drawled an American, 'and the Bank
of England let them down; said their securities weren't good enough.'
'Great Scott!' - a hand came down on a table to emphasise the remark - 'I
sailed half way up the Mediterranean once with a Bank of England
director; wish I'd tipped him over the rail and lowered him a boat on
his own security - if it was good enough.'
'Baring's goes.
