The Debtor's Daughter CHAPTER 2.
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"Wilkins protested! Impossible!"
"It is true, sir. I saw the notary in at Weston's."
"Some oversight perhaps."
"That is possible."
"How much of his paper have we?"
The clerk to whom this was said, referred to the Bill Book of the house, and after a brief examination, replied. "Ten thousand dollars."
"So much?"
"Yes sir."
"I did not suppose it was over five thousand."
"He has bought heavily of late. His last bill was nearly three thousand dollars."
"And made last week!"
"Yes."
"The goods are all delivered and the notes taken?"
"Oh, yes."
"Protested? That looks bad."
"He's been hard run for money during the past two or three months," said the clerk.
"Ah? How did you hear this?"
"They told me so at Weston's."
"Indeed! What do they think of this protest?"
"That it is a failure."
"Are they in to any amount?"
"About as much as we are."
"Well; all I have to say is, that if Wilkins has failed, he's a cheat, and he'll get no mercy from me. A man who will buy three thousand dollars worth of goods from a single business, just on the eve of smashing up, is a scamp!"
"Men struggle, sometimes, Mr. Putnam," said the clerk, who had once failed in business himself, "up to the day they stop payment, in the hope of meeting all their engagements. It is hardly just to pronounce a man a cheat, who tries to do right, and only ceases his struggles when all his strength is exhausted."
"All that is well enough said," replied Mr. Putnam — for it was this gentleman we have before introduced, "and may apply in some cases. But, it won't apply here."
While he was yet speaking, a lad came in and handed him a note. It desired his attendance, on the next morning, at a meeting of the creditors of Manny Wilkins.
"So he has gone by the board, sure enough!" said Mr. Putnam, in a growling voice, as he tossed the note from him. "I am invited to a meeting of his creditors. I will be there, depend on it. Herman Putnam is never absent on these interesting occasions. And if he doesn't give Mr. Manny Wilkins something to dream over for the next twelve months, he's mistaken!"
"And so Wilkins has gone by the board," said Mr. Putnam, on meeting a mercantile friend an hour afterwards.
"Oh no! Surely not!" was replied.
"Too true sir." And Mr. Putnam compressed his lips and frowned ominously.
"I thought him perfectly solvent."
"So did I; and honest too."
"Honest!" said the other with some evidence of surprise.
"Yes; I say honest!" replied Putnam, sharply.
"Will he not be able to show a fair statement?"
"He bought three thousand dollars worth of goods from me last week. That does not look very well."
"I sold to him the day before yesterday."
"You did!"
"Yes."
"And do you suppose," said Mr. Putnam, "that Wilkins didn't know at the time he made the purchase, that he was insolvent?"
"I shall wait until I see his statement, before I come to any conclusions against him," replied the other. "In all my dealings with him, I never saw anything which would lead me to doubt his integrity."
"As for me, I never thought a great deal of him," replied Putnam, "and I only wonder that I was the fool to let him get into me so deeply. But, if he gets off with his plunder, he will be a good deal smarter than I think him."
"Your judgment is too hasty in this matter," was answered. "In most cases of mercantile embarrassment, our utmost charity is needed."
"I grant you that," said Putnam. "Charity for those who have all the loss to bear."
"No; charity for him who fails. He loses everything, the others only a part; and, in most cases, a part that gives no pain in the removal. The creditor loses not a single domestic comfort. The loss reaches no member of his household. All goes on with him, as if no disaster had occurred. But, the unhappy debtor is stripped of everything; and his family, raised, it may be in luxury, driven out of their pleasant home and from among a cherished circle of friends, to sink into obscurity and poverty. Ah sir! When I hear that a man has failed, my first thought is one of pity for his family."
"And my first thought," replied Putnam, with a strange pride in his own lack of sympathy with the unfortunate, "is whether I hold any of his paper!"
"Do you not think of his family?" asked the mercantile friend. "Do you never ask yourself how you would feel, if it were you in so painful a condition?"
"No sir! I never mean to be in such a condition. My regard for my family leads me to avoid all mistakes in business. I never speculate; nor run risks; nor make false calculations. I see to my own affairs narrowly, and leave other people to take care of theirs. When a man who owes me fails, I see that the loss is as small as possible; and, if I am satisfied that he has been acting badly, I show him no mercy."
"Why should you persecute a fallen man, even if he has erred too widely?"
"I go for the moral effect in business circles. Make a man feel, to the full extent, the consequences of his own acts — and it will prove a warning to others likely to fall into the same position. Moreover, when a man cheats me — and he who buys my goods one day and fails the next, is a cheat — I have an account to settle with him which I never let run a day longer than I can help. You will be at the meeting tomorrow of course."
"Oh yes."
"I trust you will come prepared to do your duty as a merchant."
"And you as a man," was answered. The two men separated.
"Is it true," asked Mrs. Putnam of her husband, when the latter came home in the evening, "that Mr. Wilkins has failed in business?"
"Too true," replied the merchant, in a sober voice. His brows contracted as he spoke.
"Oh, I am so sorry?" fell from the lips of Mrs. Putnam in a tone of sympathy.
"And so am I," returned her husband, "for he owes me ten thousand dollars!"
"So much? But you will not lose it all?"
"I trust not." There was a kind of menace in the tone with which this was uttered. "Wilkins has not acted honestly; of that I am well satisfied; and I shall hold him to a strict account."
"That pains me worst of all," said Mrs. Putnam. "Poor Mrs. Wilkins! I could bear anything except to have the good name of my husband tarnished."
"I will blast his good name!" fell from the merchant's lips with an emphasis that caused the heart of his wife to bound with a single quick throb.
"I will . . . . "
"Oh, do not say that!" she returned in a pleading voice. "Spare him for the sake of his family."
"I cannot spare him, Margaret, on any plea. It is due to justice and the whole mercantile community, to expose fraud wherever it intrudes itself among us. And on this principle, I will expose everything that is unfair in this man's business. As for his family; he is their protector, and should be their best friend. Their misfortune is in having such a protector and friend. It would be a weakness in me to let him escape through the mere impulse of pity for his family."
"Oh! it will be such a change for them!" murmured the wife, speaking partly to herself. "Such a change! Poor Mrs. Wilkins! I esteem her as one of the best of women; and she has a sweet family of children. Grace has sprung up into a lovely girl. Ah! When I see misfortune come upon a family like this, I think of how it would be with my own little ones, were the pressure of adversity to fall upon us."
"Give yourself no trouble on that score," replied Mr. Putnam, a little impatiently. "I will take good care never to get into a condition like that of Wilkins."
"Sometimes our best intentions fail," remarked Mrs. Putnam.
"Good intentions are worth nothing, unless carried out with the requisite wisdom. There's too much good intention in the world, and too little good action."
"Even for men's weakness and inefficiency, we should have charity," urged the wife.
"I don't know about that. This false charity that so much abounds, is only an inducement for men to be weak and inefficient. I have no idea of being compelled to drag along with me, some half a dozen of such people. The moment I find them clinging to me, I throw them off to shift for themselves."
Mrs. Putnam argued no further with her husband. But her own views and feelings were not in the least changed by what he said. All the evening, she was silent and thoughtful. Poor Mrs. Wilkins! Her image was not a moment from before her mind.
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