He was there when Delaroche making on his own responsibility a bad debt which shook the concern to its rotten foundations, was turned off penniless and characterless; he was there when various other managers and subs obtained, who either in due course of time shifted themselves, or were shifted by the powers then supreme; and, to cut short a long list, he was there when the united wisdom of the directors appointed Forde, General in command.

One of the directors had looked with exceeding favour upon Forde. Having known him fill various subordinate positions in the trade creditably, he concluded he was precisely the man wanted at that period at the General Chemical Company.

Outwardly Mr. Forde made little of the honour conferred; inwardly he was uplifted.

If men and women, who, having been to the manner born, are able to bear worldly promotion without entirely losing whatever small amount of sense God may have seen fit to give them, could only understand the mental effect, the fact of being placed in a position of power produces upon those who have hitherto served in the rank and file of life's army,--I fancy managers and housekeepers and confidential employes of all descriptions would be chosen from a far different rank than is the case at present.

You, sir, who having had the use of a carriage all your life, would much rather walk to your destination than be driven thither,--do you suppose you can comprehend what driving even in another person's carriage means to the man who has all his life looked upon an equipage of the kind with mingled feelings of admiration and envy.

No, you cannot! But I, who have been practically taught the lesson, may inform you that it is utter folly to open the door and let down the steps, and permit the poor simpleton I have indicated to fancy himself a great fellow, lounging on your cushions, or the cushions you have helped to place for him.

If he is able, in God's name let him buy a carriage for himself if nothing less will content him. By the time he has done so, he will have conjugated all the moods and tenses connected with its possession, and may, perhaps, go on safely to the end; otherwise he is very apt to loll back with legs outstretched and arms crossed on his way to that place the name of which on earth is, beggary.

Was it the fault of Forde that he was placed in a square hole, he being essentially fitted to fill a round one; that he, being poor, should have visions of opulence thrust upon him; that he, being in a very settled and respectable and useful rank of society, should, _nolens volens_, have visions of a far different rank presented to him.

I think not. A man is scarcely responsible for his weakness and his folly.

The credulity of those who believed in Forde, may be open to wonder; that Forde failed to verify their belief, seems to me the most natural thing in the world.

If a country squire, accustomed to horses and their vagaries, accustomed likewise to stiff fences, broad watercourses, and awkward bullfinches, mounted a cockney, who says he can ride, on a hunter acquainted with his business, would he be surprised to see that cockney carried home crippled or dead.

Certainly, he would not; and why in business a man who has hitherto only ambled along on the back of a spiritless old cob, should be considered fit to control a thoroughbred passes my comprehension.

When Forde accepted the situation offered to him, he undertook a task too great for his abilities. It was a repetition of the old fable of the ox and the frog, and with a like ending; the frog burst his skin.

Into the offices of the General Chemical Company, Limited, Mr. Forde walked, determined to do his duty and push the concern.

He saw at a glance where others had failed; it does not require long sight for this operation. Naturally, he was tolerant of their errors, since to those errors he owed his own preferment; and he meant, so he declared, to send up the dividend to something which should astonish the shareholders. It is only just to state he at first performed this feat; as a true chronicler, it saddens me to add, that eventually he brought down the shares to something which astonished them still more.

Mr. Forde caught at any and all business which offered. At first he believed in the legitimacy of many schemes with which the General Chemical Company was connected; when enlightenment came he had to make the illegitimate children pass muster by some means; and so at length--the downward descent is one neither pleasant nor profitable to follow--step by step the General Chemical Company, Limited, became a sort of refuge for the destitute--a place where rogues and vagabonds did congregate to transact very suspicious business; a concern with which voluntarily no solvent man dealt; which was in a fair way of becoming in the City a by-word and a reproach.

And all the time, Forde, incompetent, miserable, was keeping a brave face to the world and a false one to his employers,--was fighting a losing game with all the strength he possessed, and calling it to himself, and every one who cared to listen to him, success.

Failure meant a great deal to him. It does to most men who have risen to what may be called in their own station, eminence, through adventitious circumstances, instead of their own cleverness, or roguery, or force of character.

If a person be possessed of energy, or plausibility, or cleverness, or enormous industry, it is utterly impossible for any reverse short of broken health to crush him so utterly that he may not hope to come up in the front some day again; but if a fellow have got a chance, merely through a fluke, and have sense enough to know this, how he will cling to it with tooth and nail and hand and foot, till he and it drop down unpitied together. For my own part, I cannot tell why such men receive no pity. They never do. The only reason which presents itself to account for this is that in their descent they spare nor friend nor foe. Into their abyss they would drag the nearest and dearest, could he retard the striking of the inevitable hour by five minutes.

To Mr. Forde further failure meant more than it does to the generality of men in his position. He had been raised so high that he could not even contemplate the other side of the canvas. He knew the General Chemical Company was rotten, root, branch, and leaf, but he thought, if he could keep up the appearance of prosperity long enough, he might obtain some other appointment before the crash came.

In a very ancient book there is a parable written concerning an unjust steward.

According to his light, Mr. Forde tried to emulate the tactics of that old world swindler, but with indifferent success.

Those who owed money to my Lords the Chemical Company had taken Mr.

Forde's measure tolerably accurately at an early period of his stewardship; and when the end came it turned out that no one, except the rogues, had made much of the falsifying of their accounts; which was all very hard on Mr. Forde who had really worked with might and main for himself and his employers; only, as seemed natural, for himself first.

Afternoon had arrived, and Mr. Forde sat alone in that office which, so long as he remained manager at St. Vedast's Wharf, he had a right to call his.

It was a handsomely-furnished if somewhat comfortless-looking room. All new offices smell for an unconscionable time of paint, varnish, French polish, and new carpets.

That office was no exception to the general rule, but to Mr. Forde, the smell of newness had a sweet savour in his nostrils.

As the business happened about that time to be doing about as badly as it could, it had been deemed expedient to spend a considerable sum of money in renovating the premises; and the varnish and the polish, and the newly-laid carpets and the sticky oil-cloths in and leading to the manager's office were parts of the result.

So long as the precipice was fringed with flowers, the manager could not realize it hung over an abyss, and he therefore, on the afternoon in question, sat before his table writing with a marvellous serenity, though he had that day received two warnings of evil to come that might well have shaken a braver and wiser man.

But they were over. To a certain extent Mr. Swanland had been right when he said, "Forde is mentally short-sighted," but he would have proved a more correct delineator of character had he styled him, "wilfully short-sighted."

The natural sequence of events Mr. Forde utterly declined to study; in the chapter of accidents he was as much at home as in the fluctuations of the Stock Exchange.

Still two alarming events had occurred that day--first, a new director had given him to understand he intended personally to examine the accounts and securities of three customers whose solvency he doubted.

Amongst the directors, however, disunion meant safety to the manager; and as no two of them ever agreed, Mr. Forde had found it a matter of little difficulty to set the whole of them so utterly by the ears on some utterly unimportant point that the unsatisfactory clients were for the time forgotten.

Still Mr. Forde knew that the subject must crop up again sooner or later, and he meant to lead the tardy debtors a weary life until "he had something tangible to show his directors."

The second matter was more serious. After the last of his directors had left, a gentleman tall, dignified, and elderly, inquired in the outer office if he could speak to Mr. Forde.

"Certainly not," Mr. Forde said in answer to the clerk who asked if he were at liberty, "I can see no one at present."

Mr. Forde was not engaged in any matter of the slightest importance, but this was one of his devices for maintaining the dignity of position.

Amongst the recent chronicles of St. Vedast's Wharf was a legend that on one occasion an entire stranger to the Company and the manager, finding the outer office unoccupied, penetrated to the inner _sanctum_ and there surprised Mr. Forde industriously reading the 'Times.'

Whereupon the manager rose and said, "How dare you sir, come in here? I must request you to leave my office immediately."

But the stranger stood his ground. "Don't excite yourself, pray. I have come to speak to you about a little matter of business, and I can wait until you are cool. I am going to take a seat, and if you follow my advice you will do the same."

And suiting his action to the word, the madman, as Mr. Forde afterwards called him, pulled forward a chair, sat down and calmly eyed the manager until that gentleman asked, "What the----he wanted?"

Mr. Forde's present visitor was, however, a man of a different stamp.

"Take my card to Mr. Forde," he said, "and ask him to name an hour this afternoon when he will be at leisure."

Now the name engraved on the card was that of a City magnate, and Mr.

Forde at once with many apologies came out to greet him.

In the revulsion of his feelings he would have shaken hands, but the visitor failed to perceive his intention; neither did he make any answer to Mr. Forde's inquiries as to what he could do for him until they stood together in the private office with the door shut.

With great effusion of manner, Mr. Forde pressed one of the highly-polished, hair-stuffed, morocco-covered chairs upon the magnate's attention, and the magnate seated himself upon it, put his hat and gloves on the table, placed his gold-headed cane between his knees, and then after deliberately drawing out a pocket-book remarked,

"I have come to speak to you about a rather unpleasant piece of business, Mr. Forde."

"I am very sorry to hear it," said the manager. And for once he said what was not false. He did not want any more unpleasant subjects presented to his notice at that time than those he was already obliged to contemplate.

"After all," he thought, "what Kleinwort says is quite true; it is never the thing you expect but the thing you do not expect which proves the trouble."

Prophetic words, though spoken only mentally; words he often recalled in the evil days that were then to come.