Bannatyne Club

“ Tytler was one of the founders of the Bannatyne Club and of the English Historical Society. He died at Great Malvern on the 14th of December 1849. His life (1859) was written by his friend, John W. Burgon, dean of Chichester. ”

“ He leaned back against the cushions, trying to achieve a coolness of mind and body. But the heat of the day kept him unpleasantly soluble, and dismay, that perspiration of the soul, refused to be absorbed by the pocket-handkerchief of philosophy.
Bailey Bannister was a young man who considered the minding of other people’s business a duty not to be shirked. Life is a rocky road for such. His motto was “Let me do it!” He fussed about the affairs of Bannister & Son; he fussed about the welfare of his friends at the club; especially, he fussed about his only sister Ruth. ”

“ As The Record was bitter upon reform, its proprietor having been sadly disillusioned in youth by a lofty but abortive experiment in perfecting human nature from which he never recovered, Bunny lost no opportunity to damn all reformers.
“Can’t you imagine the dirty little snob,” he was saying, as Banneker entered, “creeping and fawning and cringing for their favors? Up for membership at The Retreat. Dines with Poultney Masters, Jr., at his club. Can’t you hear him running home to wifie all het up and puffed like a toad, and telling her about it?” ”

“ Maradick had told him in the Club. Not the original Mr. Bannister who has made the place what it is. He is, alas, dead and gone. Had he been still there and you had mentioned my name he would have done wonders for you. I don't know this fellow, and for all I know he may have ruined the place.
However, the original Bannister could not have been politer. Harkness was always afraid of hotel officials, and it was only when the invasion had broken up and begun to scatter that he came forward. But Mr. Bannister knew all about him—indeed was expecting him. His luggage had already arrived. ”

“ James Bannatyne is not a man easily feared, but not for the Earldom o' Cassillis wad he gang that shore road to Ballantrae his lane.'
And, indeed, there were in the countryside enough tales of wayfarers who had disappeared there, of pools of blood frozen in the morning, of traveller's footsteps that went so far and then were lost in a smother of tracks made by naked feet running every way. But I kept on with my questions. I wanted to hear the bruit of the country, and what were our chances. ”

“ It’s an off day and we probably won’t have two full teams. Let me rig you out, and you try it.”
Banneker shook his head. “I’m here on business. I’m a reporter with a story to get.”
“All right; it’s up to a reporter to stick until he gets his news,” agreed the other. “You dismiss your taxi, and stay out here and dine, and I’ll run you back to town myself. And at nine o’clock I’ll answer your question and answer it straight.”
Banneker, gazing longingly at the bright turf of the field, accepted.
Polo is to The Retreat what golf is to the average country club. ”

“ We were all hard at work upon our hands and knees, when we were surprised by the sound of a rifle-shot, fired at no great distance in the Wood, in a northerly direction.
Bannister got slowly to his feet, and stood listening; and then, although he turned in my direction, it was as if he spoke quietly to himself.
"One shot," said he. "And one shot only."
That was all he said.
"Trust was never armed," said I.
"That signifies nothing," answered Bannister. "Amos is loaded down by gold. If he carried a rifle, Trust may have wrenched it from his hands." ”

“ It can be done gracefully. Do you not agree?"
"Moralise as much as you like," laughed Bannister. "It amounts to no more than this: you have failed dismally, and are glad enough to find yourself alive. You are wise to accept the situation as it is. That's all the same to me. Henceforward, you are under my orders, and I expect prompt obedience."
"I shall be charmed," said Forsyth, with a mock bow. "And what of Rushby?"
"He lies some way to the north," said Bannister. "I am alarmed at his condition. The wound in his leg is septic, and it is very doubtful whether he will recover." ”

“ Just when the reformer was breathing his last, Bannatyne is said to have addressed his beloved master thus: 'Now, Sir, the time yee have long called to God for, to witt, an end of your battell, is come, and seeing all naturall powers faile, give us some signe that yee remember upon the comfortable promises which yee have oft shewed unto us.' 'He lifted up his one hand, and incontinent thereafter rendered his spirit about eleven hours at night' (Calderwood's History, iii. 237) . ”

“ She lunched with him at his downtown club, dined with him at Sherry’s, met him at The Retreat and was driven back home in his car, sometimes with Archie Densmore for a third, not infrequently alone. Considerate hostesses seated them next each other at dinners: it was deemed an evidence of being “in the know” thus to accommodate them. The openness of their intimacy went far to rob calumny of its sting. And Banneker’s ingrained circumspection of the man trained in the open, applied to les convenances, was a protection in itself. ”

“ The lad's face flushed furiously.
"I don't know what there is to see in Bannisdale," he said hotly. "It's a damp, dark, beastly hole of a place."
"I prefer Bannisdale to this, thank you," said Laura, making a little face at the very ample bronze gentleman in a frock coat who was standing in the centre of a great new-built empty square, haranguing a phantom crowd. "Oh! how ugly it is to succeed—to have money!"
Mason looked at her with a half-puzzled frown—a frown that of late had begun to tease his handsome forehead habitually.
"What's the harm of having a bit of brass?" ”

“ Sighting Banneker at luncheon a few days later, Horace Vanney went so far as to cross the room to greet and congratulate him.
“A master-stroke,” he said, pressing Banneker’s hand with his soft palm. “We’re glad to have you with us. Won’t you call me up and lunch with me soon?”
At The Retreat, after polo, that Saturday, the senior Masters met Banneker face to face in a hallway, and held him up.
“Politics is politics. Eh?” he grunted.
“It’s a great game,” returned the journalist. ”

“ No one ever spoke of him as Mr. Bannister; they always said the Miss Bannisters' Brother. If you could see the Miss Bannisters, especially Miss Selina, you would understand this; but although they had deep, gruff voices, they were really very kind.
As time went on, and the Miss Bannisters' Brother did not seem to grow any better, or to be likely to take up his gardening and his pigeons again, the Miss Bannisters had racked their brains to think of some employment for him other than reading, which is not good for anyone all day long. ”

“ Graydon Bansemer, on leaving Yale with a diploma and some of the honours of his class, urged his father to take him into his office, and ultimately to make him a partner in the business. James Bansemer never forgot the malicious grin that crossed the face of Elias Droom when the young fellow made the proposition not more than a fortnight before the Bansemer establishment picked itself up and hastily deserted New York. That grin spoke plainer than all the words in language. Take him into the office? Make this honest, grey-eyed boy a partner? ”

“ At length Bannatyne, tiring of this state of insecurity, and in despair of escaping such repeated plots, and also feeling remorse for the crime to which he had been accessory, resolved rather to submit himself to the severity of the law than remain the object of the principal criminal’s practices. He surrendered himself to the Earl of Abercorn, and was conveyed to Edinburgh, where he confessed before the king and council all the particulars of the murder of Dalrymple, and the attempt to hide his body by committing it to the sea. ”

“ I shall never forget that moment, for it was the only occasion upon which I saw John Bannister afraid, and Mr. Forsyth alive--a living, sentient being--in every fibre of his body.
"This madman must not live!" he shouted.
Bannister answered slowly, in the same quiet voice in which he had spoken before.
"I am inclined to think you right," said he. "His very existence upon the face of the earth is a blot upon Creation. The sound of that hideous laughter robs the wilderness of all its beauty." ”

“ John Bannister had changed greatly since the days when I knew him first. He looked as big and strong as ever, but had become pitifully thin; and I thought his hair was greyer, and there were deeper lines upon his forehead. His mouth I could not see, for he had grown a great beard, more than touched with grey. And this beard, merged into his long moustache, was spread like the beard of a paladin upon his chest.
We directed our way northward in a bee-line, so far as we could judge, towards the ravine where we had left William Rushby ”

“ Bannon replied. "This night business lays them out." He put his head in at the door. "You'd better give checks to any new men that we send to the window, Miss Vogel; but keep the names of the old men, and if they show up in the morning, take them back on the job. Now, boys"—to Peterson and Max—"pick up the men you see hanging around and send them over. I'll be at the office for a while. We'll push the cribbing on the main house and start right in on the annex bins. There ain't much time to throw around if we're going to eat our Christmas dinner." ”

“ Bannister told me that he feared for Rushby's life, since he was sure that Amos and the others would return to the ravine with all possible speed, so soon as ever they discovered that I had escaped from their clutches. I thought by now that I had a fair knowledge of the topography of the Wood; but I soon found that Bannister knew as much, or even more, than I. In the night we must have fled towards the south; for we had not gone far upon the route that we had chosen before we came upon the Brook of Scarlet Pebbles. ”

“ Bannon, who, since the days when he was chief of the wrecking gang on a division of the Grand Trunk, had made a business of rising to emergencies, was obviously the man for the situation. He was worn thin as an old knife-blade, he was just at the end of a piece of work that would have entitled any other man to a vacation; but MacBride made no apologies when he assigned him the new task—"Go down and stop this fiddling around and get the house built. See that it's handling grain before you come away. If you can't do it, I'll come down and do it myself." ”

“ It is natural the school-fellow, fellow-student at the Academy, and familiar intimate through life, of such a talented English performer as Bannister, should have resented the artificial taste which heaped wealth on comparatively obscure aliens, with whose art plain John Bull could have slight sympathy, while the most rarely gifted of his countrymen were left to struggle through life without a due acknowledgment, in a pecuniary sense, proportioned to the extent of their merits, as contrasted with the abilities of their foreign rivals, and the fabulous salaries they received. ”

“ There were sounds which suggested a row at the station-door, but the agent, called at that moment to the wire, could not investigate. The train came and went, and he saw nothing more of the ex-railroader from the West.
Although Mr. Horace Vanney smiled pleasantly enough when Banneker presented himself at the office to make his report, the nature of the smile suggested a background more uncertain.
“Well, what have you found, my boy?” the financier began.
“A good many things that ought to be changed,” answered Banneker bluntly.
“Quite probably. No institution is perfect.” ”

“ Ballantyne: As the mother of a girl myself, I was wondering if I ought not to talk to Fanny, perhaps. Goodness knows, it’s a miserable affair, but the world is what it is, and it’s no use shrinking from these things.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans (displeased) : As it was I who made this very sad and perplexing discovery, I think I had better be the person to see the business through. Naturally, one consults the Committee, but I can’t help feeling that there had better be only one intermediary between the Committee and the girl’s family. It’s more business-like, and one must be business-like. ”

“ Unfolding the inclosure, he read a date a week old, and two lines requesting him to communicate with his legal adviser upon "a matter of pressing moment."
"Bother!" said Maitland. "What the dickens—"
He pulled up short, eyes lighting. "That's so, you know," he argued: "Bannerman will be delighted, and—and even business is better than rushing round town and pretending to enjoy yourself when it's hotter than the seven brass hinges of hell and you can't think of anything else.... I'll do it!" ”

“ Bannister always managed his bills so delicately that you expected to find a poem by Suckling or Lovelace on the back of them. When Peter had been last in Treliss The Man at Arms had scarcely existed, but he was now utterly unconscious of it, and stood in the dim square hall talking to Mr. Bannister like a man in a dream. ”

“ Indeed, it was only the thought that Amos Baverstock or one of the others would get up to go, and then discover me, that made me shift from where I had been hiding; and no sooner was I out of earshot than I set off running as if pursued by fifty fiends. I never ran so fast before or since. Over the sand-hills, stumbling amidst the shingle, breaking my way through gorse and hedgerow, I came at last to John Bannister's cabin, lying in a hollow by the sea.
"Mr. Bannister!" I cried. "Mr. Bannister! Something dreadful is about to happen!" ”