When Society sat down to breakfast
and unfolded the newspaper to learn of the death of the great and wonderful
philanthropist Merdle, it was almost overcome by a severe fit of choking.
Whether this was occasioned by the unchecked expression of spontaneous emotion
or a dry piece of toast cannot be definitively said, but certain it was that when
Society rose from the table it had mastered its grief (or swallowed its toast),
and was prepared to apostrophise the departed spirit of benevolence with those
self same expressions of regard with which it had anointed the mortal shell.
The report that the great man was dead got about with astonishing
rapidity. At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were known, and
of several bran-new maladies invented to meet the occasion. By about eleven
o’clock in the forenoon, something the matter with the brain, became the
favourite theory against the field; and by twelve the something had been
distinctly ascertained to be ‘Pressure’. There was a general moralizing upon
Pressure, in every street. All the people who had tried to make money and had
not been able to do it, said, There you were! You no sooner began to devote
yourself to the pursuit of wealth than you got Pressure. But, at about the time
of High ‘Change, Pressure began to wane, and appalling whispers to circulate
east, west, north, and south; and by evening it was known that the late Mr.
Merdle’s complaint had been simply Forgery and Robbery, and that he had
destroyed himself by means of a bottle of laudanum and a tortoise-shell handled
penknife.
As soon as there arose a doubt that Mr. Merdle’s wealth would not be
found to be as vast as had been supposed, Society opined the view that it had
always suspected as much, and that there had been something about the man that
it had never trusted. His eyes had been set too close together, his
handshake had been infirm, his gait evasive, his manner sly. Only the servile
worshipper of riches could have mistaken his sumptuous display of wealth for substance.
Satisfied with its perspicacity, Society sat down to dinner, and ate well.
Numbers of men in every profession and trade would be blighted by Mr.
Merdle’s insolvency, and, as the creditors circled around the carcass of the
fallen man’s ruin, those who had deposited their money and their trust in him – amongst them, Mr. Headstone – found themselves dispossessed of
both their belongings and their credulity.
