The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton [113]
On the Wednesday morning, when he reached his office, Mr. Letterblair met him with a troubled face. Beaufort, after all, had not managed to “tide over”; but by setting afloat the rumor that he had done so he had reassured his depositors, and heavy payments had poured into the bank till the previous evening, when disturbing reports again began to predominate. In consequence, a run on the bank had begun, and its doors were likely to close before the day was over. The ugliest things were being said of Beaufort’s dastardly maneuver, and his failure promised to be one of the most discreditable in the history of Wall Street.
The extent of the calamity left Mr. Letterblair white and incapacitated. “I’ve seen bad things in my time; but nothing as bad as this. Everybody we know will be hit, one way or another. And what will be done about Mrs. Beaufort? What can be done about her? I pity Mrs. Manson Mingott as much as anybody: coming at her age, there’s no knowing what effect this affair may have on her. She always believed in Beaufort—she made a friend of him! And there’s the whole Dallas connection: poor Mrs. Beaufort is related to every one of you. Her only chance would be to leave her husband—yet how can anyone tell her so? Her duty is at his side; and luckily she seems always to have been blind to his private weaknesses.”
There was a knock, and Mr. Letterblair turned his head sharply. “What is it? I can’t be disturbed.”
A clerk brought in a letter for Archer and withdrew. Recognizing his wife’s hand, the young man opened the envelope and read:
“Won’t you please come up town as early as you can? Granny had a slight stroke last night. In some mysterious way she found out before anyone else this awful news about the bank. Uncle Lovell is away shooting, and the idea of the disgrace has made poor Papa so nervous that he has a temperature and can’t leave his room. Mamma needs you dreadfully, and I do hope you can get away at once and go straight to Granny’s.”
Archer handed the note to his senior partner and a few minutes later was crawling northward in a crowded horse-car which he exchanged at Fourteenth Street for one of the high staggering omnibuses of the Fifth Avenue line. It was after twelve o‘clock when his laborious vehicle dropped him at old Catherine’s. The sitting room window on the ground floor, where she usually throned, was tenanted by the inadequate figure of her daughter, Mrs. Welland, who signed a haggard welcome as she caught sight of Archer; and at the door he was met by May. The hall wore the unnatural appearance peculiar to well-kept houses suddenly invaded by illness: wraps and furs lay in heaps on the chairs, a doctor’s bag and overcoat were on the table, and beside them letters and cards had already piled up unheeded.
May looked pale but smiling: Dr. Bencomb, who had just come for the second time, took a more hopeful view, and Mrs. Mingott’s dauntless determination to live and get well was already having an effect on her family. May led Archer into the old lady’s sitting room, where the sliding doors opening into the bedroom had been drawn shut, and the heavy yellow damask portières dropped over them; and here Mrs. Welland communicated to him in horrified undertones the details of the catastrophe. It appeared that the evening before something dreadful and mysterious had happened. At about eight o‘clock, just