by E. F. Benson
West Australian mining at this time was but in its infancy. A few reports only had reached England about unexplored goldfields of extraordinary richness, and, as is incident to first reports, they had gained but slender credence. But Mr. Alington had only just come back from Queensland; he had seen gold-bearing quartz, he had made a few tentative experiments to prove the richness of the ore, and had subsequently bought a very large number of claims at a comparatively low cost. Some of these he fully expected would turn out to be worthless, or scarcely worth the working; others he soberly believed would be found to be very rich. And when he opened his manager’s report on the night of the Hungarian ball, he had no more certain information about them.
The manager advised, consonantly with Alington’s own desire, that a group of five mines should be started, which together embraced all his claims. In number one (see map) there was, as Alington would recollect, a very rich vein of gold, which had now been traced in bore-holes through numbers four and five. Numbers two and three were outliers from the direct line of this vein, but in both a good deal of outcrop gold might be profitably worked. All, so said the manager, were, as far as could be at present seen, well worth working, for the two on which the deeper vein did not lie had gold in smaller veins close to the surface, which could be got at with comparatively little cost. It was not yet known whether there was any deeper vein in them.
Then followed a good deal of technical advice. The main difficulty, as Mr. Alington would remember, was water, and they must be prepared for heavy expenses in this item. But otherwise the property could not be better. Of the specimens sent at random for examination, those from numbers one, four, and five were very rich, and the yield appeared to be not less than five ounces to the ton. This was very high, but such were the results. The reef from which they were taken was five feet thick. Then followed some discussion as to processes; there was certainly much to be said for cyanide, but he would not recommend corrosion. It was tediously long, and there was some talk of prohibiting women from being employed in it. Certainly the white lead produced by it would bring it under the head of dangerous trades. In numbers two and three the ore was very refractory, and it was curious to find a vein so difficult in the matter of gold extraction close by the vein of one, four, and five. Hitherto, in spite of repeated experiments, they had only been able to recover 20 per cent. of the gold it contained. But a new process was being tried in certain mines in the Rand—the Bülow, was it not?—perhaps Mr. Alington would go into it and cable results. The worst of these chemical processes was that they were so expensive.
Mr. Alington looked more than ever like a butler of superior benevolence, as he sat at his table by a green-shaded reading-lamp, and made himself master of this excellent report. As he read, he inscribed from time to time neat little notes in pencil on the margin of the page, and from time to time jotted down some figures on his blotting-pad. His rooms, above a gunmaker’s in St. James’s Street—a temporary premise only—were admirably furnished for the wants of a business man of refined tastes and simple desires. A large revolving bookcase full of works of reference stood at his elbow, and a telephone was on the table before him. He was something of a connoisseur in pictures, and in his house on the Sussex Downs, to which he was extensively adding, he had a really fine collection of English masters. But the London fogs and corrosive smoke spelled death to pigments, and here in his modest quarters in London he had only prints. But these were truly admirable. Reynolds’ Lady Crosby undulated over the fireplace; Lady Hamilton smiled irresistibly on him from under her crown of vine leaves if he looked at the opposite wall; by her sat Marie Antoinette in an old-gold frame of French work, and Mrs. Siddons was a first state with the coveted blotted edge.
But tonight Mr. Alington had no eye for these enchanting ladies; he sat long and studiously with the report in front of him, his broad, intelligent face alert with his work. From time to time he reached out a firm, plump hand to take a cigarette from a silver box which stood by his telephone, but often he sat with it unlit for ten minutes or so, absorbed in the page; or, again, he would put it down still only half smoked, as he made one of his little calculations, forget about it, and reach his hand out absently for another. In this way before midnight there were some half-dozen in his ash-tray scarcely touched. A spirit-case and a siphon stood on a tray to his right, and an hour before he had mixed himself a mild whisky-and-soda, which he had not yet tasted.
The silver bell of his Sèvres clock had already struck one when he took up the report, folded it carefully, and put it back in its registered envelope. The map, however, he spread out on the table in front of him, and continued to study it very attentively for ten minutes more. That, too, he then put in the envelope, and, leaning back in his chair, lit a cigarette in earnest and smoked it through. He was a little short-sighted, and for reading, particularly at night, he wore gold-rimmed spectacles, which gave him a scholastic, almost a theologian aspect. But these had long ago been pushed up on his forehead; the theologian had evidently some great matter in debate.
At length he rose, still slowly, and stood for a moment in profound thought. Then, with a sudden briskness, as of a man who had made up his mind, he took the envelope, and, putting it into a drawer in his knee-hole table, turned the key upon it.
“It will be one of the very biggest deals,” he remarked to himself.
A grand piano by Bechstein stood at the other side of the room, and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion Music was open upon it. Mr. Alington took it up and turned over the pages with a loving reverence. He paused a moment, and hummed in his beautiful tenor voice the recitative of “And Peter went out,” and then, lighting the candles, played a few crescendo chords, and plunged into the intricacies of the great double chorus of the lightnings and thunders. The sonorous and terrible fugue grew and grew under his deft hands, rising from crescendo to crescendo with its maddened, tumultuous ground-bass. A pause of a bar, and with a great burst he attacked the second part. He sang the air of “the bottomless pit” with full voice, while his hands quivered mistily in the frenzied chromatic accompaniment. The appalling terrors of the music possessed him; he seemed like a man demented. In the last six bars he doubled the bass as if written for pedals, and with the tierce de Picardy finished in a crashing chord.
Mr. Alington pushed his rather scanty hair back from his forehead and gave a great sigh full of reverential awe, the sigh of a religious artist. He was a true musician, and his own admirable performance of the wonderful text moved him; it smelled of the flames. Then after a moment he turned to the last chorus, the most perfect piece of pathos ever translated into sound, and played it through with all the reticence and sobriety of his utmost art. The wailing cadences, the simple phrases, touched him profoundly. Unlike Mrs. Murchison, he did not consider himself bound to worship Wagner, although the operas did not sound to him the least alike. He would have told you that he thought him artistically immoral, that he violated the canons of music, as binding, so he considered, on musicians as is the moral code on a civilized society. “A brilliant savage,” he said once of that master; “but I know I am unfashionable.”
He sat for a long minute perfectly still when he had finished the chorus, as absorbed in the thought of it as he had been in the mines half an hour before. Unaffected moisture stood in the man’s eye; his face was that of a stout and rapturous saint in a stained-glass window contemplating some beatific vision. He was alone, and perfectly honest with himself. At length he shut the piano very softly, as if afraid of disturbing the exquisite sweetness and melancholy beauty of the music by any other sound, and, candle in hand, went to his bedroom. An admirable reproduction of Holman Hunt’s “Lux Mundi” hung over his fireplace; the “Triumph of the Innocents” was directly above his anchorite-looking bed. They were favourite pictures of his, not only for their subject, but for the genuineness of their feeling. They seemed to him to have grasped something of the simplicity of the real pre-Raphaelite school—something of its soberness, its constant
love of form, its childlike straightforwardness. There was an old oak prie-dieu by his bedside, with several well-thumbed books of devotion on it, and he knelt there a full ten minutes before he got into bed. He was thankful for many things—his health, his wealth, his perseverance, his brains, his power of appreciating beautiful things; and he prayed for their long continuance and well-being fervently.
Mr. Alington was a sound sleeper and an early riser, and neither his new and dizzy schemes nor the pathos of the Passion Music kept him awake. He had various appointments in the City on the following morning, and was going to lunch with Lord Conybeare at White’s. Jack was not there when he arrived, and he had to solace his waiting moments with the inspection of the room set aside for the reception of strangers. It was furnished with a table, on which stood an empty inkstand and a carafe of stale-looking water, two horsehair chairs, a weighing-machine, and a row of hat pegs hung up inside a shelfless bookcase. He hoped, however, that he would not in the future have to confine himself to the stranger’s room when he made an appointment there, since Jack had put him up for the membership of the club, got Tom Abbotsworthy to second him, and had induced a large number of members to append their noble names to his candidature.
Jack came in before long, looking as he always looked, even in the most broiling weather—perfectly cool, unharassed, and ill to quarrel with. He never seemed to get either hot or dirty, even in the underground; smuts passed him by, and settled on the noses of his less fortunate neighbours.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “Let us have lunch at once. You have not been here long, I hope.”
“Only a few moments,” said Alington; “and I fancy I was here before my time.”
“A fine habit,” murmured Jack. “How punctual we should be between us!”
They entered the dining-room, which was rather empty, and took their seat at a small table a little removed from other lunchers.
“I did not see you last night at the Embassy,” said Jack. “I thought you were sure to be there. Kit told me she had an invitation sent you, and busy men like you always seem to have time for everything.”
“One has all the time there is,” said Alington; “and I meant to go. But the mail brought me news—important news from Australia.”
“Indeed? Good news, I hope.”
“Excellent news. We shall very soon require your services.”
“Ah! What will you drink?”
“Thanks, I never touch wine at lunch. A little water, please. I am a bit of an ascetic in certain ways. Yes, the news was excellent. I shall get out a prospectus at once, and float the companies. Out of the five mines, the same reef, a very rich one, runs through three. The other two are outliers from this reef, but there appears to be a good deal of surface gold. They ought to begin paying at once almost. I propose making two groups out of these five mines—one comprising the outliers, the other three the main reef. Or we might amalgamate them later. I strongly recommend your purchasing these outliers in large quantities. That, at least, is what I intend to do myself.”
Jack laughed.
“It is easy to recommend my making large purchases,” he said; “and I wonder if I could run up a bill for them. But circumstances over which I have long ceased to have any control—”
Mr. Alington held up his large white hand.
“You will not need to cover,” he said. “Pay the first call, or, at most, the first two calls. I assure you that that will be all that is necessary. Unless I am much more mistaken than I have ever been in my life, the price will rise very soon and very considerably. You must remember that you draw a salary as a director. If you wish, I will advance that for this year.”
“That would be very convenient,” observed Jack with truth and candour.
“The first call will be half a crown,” continued Alington. “A thousand pounds will thus enable you to command eight thousand shares.”
“It is a long time since I have had eight thousand anythings,” remarked Jack; “Of course, I don’t count debts. I never count debts. But what will happen to me if the shares do not go up?”
“The shares will go up,” said Alington dryly. “I should advise you to put yourself entirely in my hands about this. I simply cannot be wrong. As a director, you are bound to hold shares. I recommend you to put the greater part of them into these two outlying mines.”
“I ask nothing better than to be guided by you,” said Jack. “Many thanks for the hint.”
Mr. Alington waved the thanks away, as if they were disproportionately large to the favour bestowed.
“And I should like to have a meeting of the directors on Tuesday,” he said, “if that will suit you and Lord Abbotsworthy. I am going to see him this afternoon. I propose to employ my own brokers, men whom I have dealt with for years.”
By degrees the room filled up, and, as the tables near them had begun to be occupied, they dismissed for the present the subject of the mines. Jack was more than content to leave his own financial venture in Alington’s hands, for he felt convinced that he was playing fair with him. Habitually somewhat cynical, he would have thought twice about going bail for his most intimate acquaintance; but he believed that Alington, as he himself candidly said, was acting for his own interests in making it worth a Marquis’s while to join the board. About Alington’s ability he had found no two opinions; extensive inquiries showed him that on all hands he was considered the shrewdest of the shrewd. The market had already got hints about the new issue, and was waiting with some impatience for the publication of its prospectus. And the interest extended far beyond the professional operators; the British public, as Alington had said, were nearly ripe to go mad on the subject of Australian gold, and he had chosen his moment well.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SIMPLY NOBODY
The “quiet dinner, simply nobody,” to which Kit had invited the gratified Mrs. Murchison and her daughter the night before had grown like a rolling snowball during the hours of the Hungarian ball. If you are having a quiet dinner, one more does not make any difference or change the character of the entertainment, and there had been many such. Among others, Kit had met Alice Haslemere in the Park next morning, and the latter had made an appeal ad misericordiam to her.
“I am bidden to meet a Serene Transparency or a Transparent Serenity of some sort tonight,” she had said. “Who? Oh, some second-class little royalty made in Germany, and I don’t intend to go, and have said so. I gave an excuse, Kit; I gave you as my excuse, because you are a sort of privileged person, and even royalty lets you do as you choose. How do you manage it, dear? I wish you would tell me. Anyhow, I said that you asked me to dine tonight six weeks ago. You see, I owe you one over that disingenuous way you treated me about Jack and the baccarat. So you did ask me, didn’t you?”
Kit slowed down; she was riding a white bicycle picked out with crimson.
“Seven weeks ago, Alice,” she said; “and if you had forgotten I should never have forgiven you. Quite quietly, you know; and so we are quits. Lady Conybeare’s dinner,” she said with some ceremony, “will be served as usual at eight-thirty.”
They were both riding the wrong side of the road, and Lady Haslemere cast an offended look at her father’s coachman, who did not recognise her, and made way for the carriage.
“I knew it was an old, old engagement,” she said, with feeling. “And who is coming? I forget; it is so long since you told me.”
“Murchison mère et fille,” said Kit; “and the fille is going to marry Toby. You just see. Also Ted and Toby and the baccarat man. Jack is very thick with him just now, and my ladyship smells money. Oh, Alice, we might play baccarat again tonight; I was thinking that it would be rather tiresome having to play gooseberry to Toby all the evening, but a hand at cards would help to pass the time, would it not? Let’s see, baccarat is the game where you have to try and get nine, isn’t it? How pleasant! There are some other people coming, too, and there will probably be more before evening. I notice that when there
are dinners for Transparencies people ask me to ask them. I am a sort of refuge from royalty.”
“Yes, and how transparent!” remarked Lady Haslemere.
“Isn’t it? and what a bad joke! But wear a tea-gown, Alice, because I told Mrs. M. to do so. Yes, we’ll play detectives on the Alington this evening. I hope he’ll cheat again. It must be so amusing to be a real detective. I think I shall become one if all else fails. And most things have failed.”
“To see if shopping takes so long, and whether the club accounts for late hours,” quoted Lady Haslemere, with a touch of regret. “But, Kit, what a blessing it is that one does not feel bound to watch one’s husband! Haslemere is so safe, you know; one might as well watch St. Paul’s Cathedral to see if it flirted with St. Mary Magdalene’s. It would bore me to death watching him. Only once have I seen him at all excited.”
“Who was the happy lady?” asked Kit, with interest.
“It wasn’t a lady at all—not even me. It was a wire puzzle, and he said it was mathematically impossible, and woke me up about three in the morning to tell me so. He was really quite feverish about it. But in demonstrating to me how impossible it was he accidentally did it, upon which he became perfectly normal, and we lived happily ever afterwards.”
They turned into the road north of the Serpentine by the Achilles statue, and quickened their pace.
“One always does live happily ever afterwards,” said Kit thoughtfully. “Truth is quite as strange as fiction. There’s the old Duchess—what a cat! And just look at her wig all sideways! But I am also thankful that one’s husband is not a detective. Jack would make such a bad one. I should be ashamed of him.”