The Angry Tide (Poldark Book 7) by Graham Winston

Author:Graham, Winston [Graham, Winston]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2011-08-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

I

Harris Pascoe said: ‘My dear Ross, it has been a very miserable business, and I agree that if more of my friends had been on hand we might have w-weathered the storm. But in some circumstances life does not admit of grades of success or failure. If I were captain of a ship that had been wrecked it could be argued that two more lights at the harbour mouth would have enabled me to avoid the rocks. But if the ship is lost, it is lost and the captain bears the responsibility.’

‘For treachery? For false lights? For desertions of the crew?’

‘You carry the analogy too far. In fact I am getting on in years and shall not feel a lessening of responsibility altogether unwelcome. Money? Yes, I have lost it all, but my sister is unmarried and has a c-competence. I regret most the loss of reputation. One does not want to take one’s exeat after thirty years in a town with a cloud on one’s good n-name.’

Ross tapped his boot. ‘You sit there in such apparent calm. It doesn’t become you. If you don’t think of yourself, what of your clients? – all those who have relied on you for judgment and advice: they don’t disappear overnight.’

‘Basset, Rogers & Co. will take over the business, and the accounts will be automatically transferred unless a client expressly wishes different. They are also taking over the liabilities – though I think these, apart from my own losses, will be negligible. It is a little early to be sure yet – much good stock was thrown on the market at a loss – and we had to discount bills at 15 per cent – of course liquidations are expensive in many ways – but I would have thought all debts could eventually be met in full. Eventually. So I don’t think your money – even the last eight hundred pounds, which your wife with such noble generosity paid into the bank on the Friday – will ultimately be lost. It may be a few months—’

‘Then for God’s sake, why cannot the bank be reconstituted as before? Harris, that must be possible!’

Pascoe narrowed his eyes. ‘With what capital? I have no capital now. A bank – and the partners in that bank – must possess a large sum of money of their own before they begin to accept the responsibility of lending and borrowing other p-people’s. There must be a – a large nucleus, free of encumbrance, as it were. It is from that nucleus that the whole system of credit springs. It may be wrong. In my case, as you have observed, it has proved disastrous. But that is the way it has all grown up. There is not a bank in the country, I venture to believe, that could meet all its creditors at the same time. But they do not need to, for their creditors have sufficient faith in them.’

Ross glowered at Miss Pascoe’s ginger cat, which was performing genuflections round a table leg, and asking for his attention.

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