Let us be serious.--Business!

The new scene plunges us head foremost into the affairs of theLevant trading-house of Pizzituti, Turlington & Branca. What onearth do we know about the Levant Trade? Courage! If we have everknown what it is to want money we are perfectly familiar with thesubject at starting. The Levant Trade does occasionally get intodifficulties.--Turlington wanted money.

The letter which had been handed to him on board the yacht wasfrom his third partner, Mr. Branca, and was thus expressed:

"A crisis in the trade. All right, so far--except our businesswith the small foreign firms. Bills to meet from those quarters,(say) forty thousand pounds--and, I fear, no remittances to coverthem. Particulars stated in another letter addressed to you atPost-office, Ilfracombe. I am quite broken down with anxiety, andconfined to my bed. Pizzituti is still detained at Smyrna. Comeback at once."

The same evening Turlington was at his office in Austin Friars,investigating the state of affairs, with his head clerk to helphim.

Stated briefly, the business of the firm was of the widelymiscellaneous sort. They plied a brisk trade in a vast variety ofcommodities. Nothing came amiss to them, from Manchester cottonmanufactures to Smyrna figs. They had branch houses at Alexandriaand Odessa, and correspondents here, there, and everywhere, alongthe shores of the Mediterranean, and in the ports of the East.These correspondents were the persons alluded to in Mr. Branca'sletter as "small foreign firms;" and they had produced theserious financial crisis in the affairs of the great house inAustin Friars, which had hurried Turlington up to London.

Every one of these minor firms claimed and received the privilegeof drawing bills on Pizzituti, Turlington & Branca for amountsvarying from four to six thousand pounds--on no better securitythan a verbal understanding that the money to pay the billsshould be forwarded before they fell due. Competition, it isneedless to say, was at the bottom of this insanely recklesssystem of trading. The native firms laid it down as a rule thatthey would decline to transact business with any house in thetrade which refused to grant them their privilege. In the ease ofTurlington's house, the foreign merchants had drawn their billson him for sums large in the aggregate, if not large inthemselves; had long since turned those bills into cash in theirown markets, for their own necessities; and had now left themoney which their paper represented to be paid by their Londoncorrespondents as it fell due. In some instances, they had sentnothing but promises and excuses. In others, they had forwardeddrafts on firms which had failed already, or which were about tofail, in the crisis. After first exhausting his resources inready money, Mr. Branca had provided for the more pressingnecessities by pledging the credit of the house, so far as he_could_ pledge it without exciting suspicion of the truth. Thisdone, there were actually left, between that time and Christmas,liabilities to be met to the extent of forty thousand pounds,without a farthing in hand to pay that formidable debt.

After working through the night, this was the conclusion at whichRichard Turlington arrived, when the rising sun looked in at himthrough the windows of his private room.

The whole force of the blow had fallen on _him_. The share of hispartners in the business was of the most trifling nature. Thecapital was his, the risk was his. Personally and privately, _he_had to find the money, or to confront the one other alternative--ruin.

How was the money to be found?

With his position in the City, he had only to go to the famousmoney-lending and discounting house of Bulpit Brothers--reportedto "turn over" millions in their business every year--and tosupply himself at once with the necessary funds. Forty thousandpounds was a trifling transaction to Bulpit Brothers.

Having got the money, how, in the present state of his trade, wasthe loan to be paid back?

His thoughts reverted to his marriage with Natalie.

"Curious!" he said to himself, recalling his conversation withSir Joseph on board the yacht. "Graybrooke told me he would givehis daughter half his fortune on her marriage. Half Graybrooke'sfortune happens to be just forty thousand pounds!" He took a turnin the room. No! It was impossible to apply to Sir Joseph. Onceshake Sir Joseph's conviction of his commercial solidity, and themarriage would be certainly deferred--if not absolutely brokenoff. Sir Joseph's fortune could be made available, in the presentemergency, in but one way--he might use it to repay his debt. Hehad only to make the date at which the loan expired coincide withthe date of his marriage, and there was his father-in-law's moneyat his disposal, or at his wife's disposal--which meant the samething. "It's well I pressed Graybrooke about the marriage when Idid!" he thought. "I can borrow the money at a short date. Inthree months from this Natalie will be my wife."

He drove to his club to get breakfast, with his mind cleared, forthe time being, of all its anxieties but one.

Knowing where he could procure the loan, he was by no meansequally sure of being able to find the security on which he couldborrow the money. Living up to his income; having no expectationsfrom any living creature; possessing in landed property only somethirty or forty acres in Somersetshire, with a quaint littledwelling, half farm house, half-cottage, attached-- he wasincapable of providing the needful security from his own personalresources. To appeal to wealthy friends in the City would be tolet those friends into the secret of his embarrassments, and toput his credit in peril. He finished his breakfast, and went backto Austin Friars--failing entirely, so far, to see how he was toremove the last obstacle now left in his way.

The doors were open to the public; business had begun. He had notbeen ten minutes in his room before the shipping-clerk knocked atthe door and interrupted him, still absorbed in his own anxiousthoughts.

"What is it?" he asked, irritably.

"Duplicate Bills of Lading, sir," answered the clerk, placing thedocuments on his ma ster's table.

Found! There was the security on his writing-desk, staring him inthe face! He dismissed the clerk and examined the papers.

They contained an account of goods shipped to the London house onboard vessels sailing from Smyrna and Odessa, and they weresigned by the masters of the ships, who thereby acknowledged thereceipt of the goods, and undertook to deliver them safely to thepersons owning them, as directed. First copies of these papershad already been placed in the possession of the London house.The duplicates had now followed, in case of accident. RichardTurlington instantly determined to make the duplicates serve ashis security, keeping the first copies privately under lock andkey, to be used in obtaining possession of the goods at thecustomary time. The fraud was a fraud in appearance only. Thesecurity was a pure formality. His marriage would supply him withthe funds needed for repaying the money, and the profits of hisbusiness would provide, in course of time, for restoring thedowry of his wife. It was simply a question of preserving hiscredit by means which were legitimately at his disposal. Withinthe lax limits of mercantile morality, Richard Turlington had aconscience. He put on his hat and took his false security to themoney-lenders, without feeling at all lowered in his ownestimation as an honest man.

Bulpit Brothers, long desirous of having such a name as his ontheir books, received him with open arms. The security (coveringthe amount borrowed) was accepted as a matter of course. Themoney was lent, for three months, with a stroke of the pen.Turlington stepped out again into the street, and confronted theCity of London in the character of the noblest work of mercantilecreation--a solvent man.*

The Fallen Angel, walking invisibly behind, in Richard's shadow,flapped his crippled wings in triumph. From that moment theFallen Angel had got him. ----------- * It may not be amiss toremind the incredulous reader that a famous firm in the Cityaccepted precisely the same security as that here accepted byBulpit Brothers, with the same sublime indifference to troublingthemselves by making any inquiry about it.