The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  He took up his gold-topped scent-bottle for the third time, and by an effort almost heroic, though there was so little heroic in its cause, resumed a frank and unresentful manner.

  “I disagree with you utterly, Toby,” he said, “but I will do as you suggest. You don’t mind my speaking straight out what I think? No? Well, you seem to me to have interfered in a most unwarrantable manner; but as you have done so, I dare say, from excellent motives, though I don’t care a straw about your motives, I must make the best of it. I will go tomorrow morning, and I will telegraph now to Kit, to say I can’t stop here. Now, you said you didn’t wish to quarrel with me. That I hold you to. Let us remain friends, Toby, for if anyone has a grievance it is I. What I shall say to Kit, God knows; she will be furious, and if the thing comes out I shall tell her the whole truth, and lay the whole blame on you.”

  Toby rose.

  “That is only fair,” he said. “Good-bye.”

  Lord Comber smoothed his hair before the glass, when suddenly an idea struck him, so brilliant and so simple that he could hardly help smiling. He opened the door.

  “I shall just walk with you to the top of the stairs,” he said, again taking Toby’s arm. “Really I am quite sorry to leave; I have got quite attached to my dear little room, and don’t you think it’s rather pretty? So sorry I shan’t be able to come and see your mother at the cottage, and it’s all your fault. Good-bye, Toby.”

  Toby went downstairs, and Lord Comber hurried back to his room. He had no longer the smallest resentment against Toby, and a smile of amused satisfaction testified to his changed sentiments. He rang for his man, and sat down to write a telegram. It was addressed to Kit, and ran as follows:

  “Impossible to remain here. Excellent reasons. Do come to Aldeburgh instead. I arrive there tomorrow afternoon, and go to hotel.”

  He read it over.

  “Poor Toby,” he thought to himself. “What a lesson not to interfere!”

  CHAPTER XIV

  THE CHAIRMAN AND THE DIRECTOR

  During this beautiful August weather Mr. Alington was very busily employed in London. At no time was he a notable lover of the country, taking it in homœopathic doses only, and enjoying a copy of Nature by Turner far more than the original thing. He was, indeed, somewhat disposed to Dr. Johnson’s characteristic and superficial heresy that one green field is like another green field, and though he took no walks for pleasure down Fleet Street, he took many hansoms to his brokers for business. For the financial scheme which had darted like a meteor across his augur’s brain on the night on which he received his manager’s report had, meteor-like, left a shining and golden furrow. The shining furrow, indeed, had grown ever more brilliant and golden; it illumined the whole of his speculative heaven. And by the end of the month the reading of the augur was ready to be practically fulfilled.

  Now, the Stock Exchange is, justly or unjustly, supposed to be a place where sharp and shady deeds are done, but Mr. Alington, already a prince in the financial world, did not much fear bears or bulls or raids or rigging, and the market had a firm belief in his soundness.

  His board consisted of Jack Conybeare, Tom Abbotsworthy, his Australian manager, Mr. Linkwood, a man as hard-headed as teak, and himself. At that time a board constituted on such lines was a new thing, and when the prospectus was sent out there were many business men who rather raised their eyebrows at it. But the effect, on the whole, was precisely what Mr. Alington had desired, and, indeed, anticipated. Surely the names of a couple of noblemen, one of whom was a prominent supporter of the Bishops in the House of Lords, and whose wife was really synonymous with the word bazaar-opener, the other a prospective Duke, were a guarantee of the good faith of the proceeding. The British public might not be aware that Lord Conybeare knew much about mines, but that department was well looked after by Mr. Alington and his manager, as shrewd a pair as could be found between the poles. Certainly, innovation as it was, this sort of board, so reasoned its inventor, looked well.

  The British public followed these prognostications of Alington with touching fidelity, though they did not give Jack credit for ignorance about mining. Such an authority on guano must certainly be a well-informed man, and if those of the aristocracy who were in indigent circumstances were sensible enough to set themselves to make a little money, who would quarrel with them? Three acres and a gold-mine was just about what Jack was worth. Again the enemies of unearned increment were delighted. Here was a fine example, a horny-handed Marquis. A third section of the public, so small, however, as not to really have a voice at all, and who consisted chiefly of Conybeare’s acquaintances, sounded a discordant note. “God help the shareholders,” said they.

  The prospectus gave a glowing but perfectly honest account of the property called the Carmel group, for no one knew better than Alington how excellent a policy honesty is, in moderation, and in the right place. Mount Carmel lay in the centre, on one diagonal Carmel North and South, on the other Carmel East and West. A very rich vein of ore ran through Carmel North, Mount Carmel and Carmel South, extending on the evidence of bore-holes the whole length of the three. Carmel East and West were both outliers from this main reef, but in both there was a good deal of surface gold, very easy to get at, and they should soon become dividend-payers. The ore in these two, however, was much more refractory than in the main reef, and in two or three experiments which had been made it had been found possible to extract only 20 per cent. of it. In the other three the ore was very different in quality, and very rich. Experiments had yielded five ounces to the ton, but these mines could not become dividend-payers in the immediate future, as a good deal of developing work must necessarily be put through first. At one point, by a curious fault in strata, the reef came to the surface, and it was from here the specimens had been taken. There was now no difficulty about water, for a very satisfactory arrangement had been come to with a neighbouring property. A mill of a hundred stamps, which would soon be increased, if the mine developed as well as the directors had every reason to believe it would, was now in course of erection on Carmel East. Finally, they wished to draw special attention to the remarkable yield of five ounces to the ton from the vein running through Carmel North and the other two. Such a result spoke for itself.

  The directors proposed to put this property on the market in the following manner: Two companies were offered for subscription, the one owning Carmel East and West, the other the North, South, and central mines. The two groups would respectively be called Carmel East and West, and Carmel. The vendor, Mr. Alington, received fifty thousand pounds down, and fifty thousand pounds’ worth of shares, and the rest of the shares, after certain allotments made to the directors, were thrown open to public subscriptions, and the capital to be subscribed for was three hundred thousand pounds in Carmel East and West, five hundred thousand pounds in Carmel. Half a crown was to be paid on application, half a crown on allotment, and the remaining fifteen shillings for special settlement at not less time than two months. Cheques to be paid into the Carmel Company, Limited, at their account with Lloyd’s.

  This prospectus was quietly but favourably received; the public, as Mr. Alington had seen, were nearly ready to go mad about West Australian gold, but he was not ill-pleased that the madness did not rise to raving-point at once. His new group he fully believed was a genuine paying concern; that is to say, supposing he had floated one company embracing all the mines, and that company was judiciously and honestly managed, the shareholders would be sure of large dividends for a considerable number of years. But the scheme he had formed did not have as its end and object large dividends for a considerable number of years, though it did not object to them as such, and this quiet, favourable reception of the prospectus pleased him greatly. He very much valued the reputation of a steady, shrewd man, and it would not have suited his plans nearly so well if one or other group had gone booming up immediately.

  The whole of the capital was very soon subscribed, and a large purchase or two had been made from
Australia. This looked well for the company; it showed that on the spot the Carmel groups were well thought of. A friend of Mr. Alington’s, whom he often spoke of as one of the acutest men he knew, a Mr. Richard Chavasse, was one of these large holders, and this gave him a great deal of satisfaction, so he told Jack. He himself was down at Kit’s cottage in Buckinghamshire on the first Sunday in September, alone with Lord Conybeare, and they had a good talk over the prospects of the mines, and collateral subjects. He and Jack got on excellently alone, and were already in the “my dear Conybeare and Alington” stage.

  “I could not be better pleased with the reception the market has given to the Carmel group,” said Alington. “I see you have followed my advice, my dear Conybeare, and invested largely in the East and West Company.”

  Jack was lounging in a long chair in the smoking-room. The morning was hopelessly wet, and violent scudding rain beat tattooes on the windows, and scourged its glory from the garden.

  “Yes, I have paid ten thousand half-crowns twice,” he said. “Even half-crowns mount up, and I used to think nothing of them. I have followed your advice to the letter, and I can no more pay the special settlement than I can fly.”

  “You were quite right,” said Alington. “I assure you there will not be the slightest need for that. By the way, the Stock Exchange have given us the special settlement at the mid-October account. Dear me! What an opportunity poor Lord Abbotsworthy has missed! He would not take my advice. Even now the shares are at a slight premium. You have invested, in fact, the larger half of your first year’s salary.”

  “Exactly. By the way, I don’t want my salary to be printed very large in the balance-sheet. Put it in a sequestered corner and periphrase it, will you? People won’t like it, you know, and the whole concern will be discredited; they are so prejudiced.”

  “That also need not trouble you,” said Alington. “In fact, I have paid your salary myself. It does not appear at all in the balance-sheet.”

  Lord Conybeare frowned.

  “Do you mean you pay me five thousand pounds a year out of your own purse?”

  “Certainly. Your services to me are worth that, and I pay it most willingly, which the shareholders undoubtedly would not do. Indeed, my dear Conybeare, the benefit that your name and Lord Abbotsworthy’s—yours particularly—have done me is immense. The British public is so aristocratic at heart and at purse; and unless I am some day bankrupt, which I assure you is not in the least likely, no one will ever know about your—your remuneration.”

  “I don’t know that I altogether like that,” said Jack in what Kit called his “scruple voice,” which always irritated her exceedingly.

  “A child,” she said once, “could give points to Jack in dissimulation.”

  To Alington also the scruple voice did not seem a thing to be taken very seriously.

  “I really do not see that that need concern you,” he said, after his usual pause. “In fact, I thought we had settled to dismiss such matters for me to manage as I choose. You consented to be on my board. As a business matter, I am quite willing to give you this sum in return for your services. Now, the shareholders would not, I think, rate you at that figure. Shareholders know nothing about business; I do.”

  Jack laughed.

  “How unappreciated I have been all these years!” he said. “I think I shall put an advertisement in the Times: ‘A blameless Marquis is willing to be a director of anything for a suitable remuneration.’”

  Mr. Alington held up his hand, a gesture frequent with him.

  “Ah! That I should object to very strongly,” he said. “Consider your remuneration a retaining fee, if you like, but we must keep our directors exclusive. I cannot have you joining any threepenny concern that may be going about, or, indeed, any concern at all. Carmel—you belong to Carmel,” he said thoughtfully.

  Jack took a copy of the Mining Weekly from the table.

  “Have you seen this?” he asked. “There is a column about the Carmel mines, all most favourable, and written, I should say, by someone who knows.”

  Mr. Alington did not appear particularly interested.

  “I am glad they have put it in this week,” he said. “They promised to make an effort.”

  “You have seen it? Don’t you think it is good?”

  “I wrote it—practically, at least, I wrote it. The City editor, at any rate, was kind enough to write it under my suggestions—I might say under my dictation.”

  “One can’t have too many friends,” observed Conybeare.

  “Well, I can hardly call him a friend. I never set eyes on him till two days ago, and then he was more an enemy. He called and tried to blackmail me.”

  “My dear Alington, what have you been doing?” asked Jack.

  Mr. Alington paused and laughed gently.

  “He tried to blackmail me not because I had been doing anything, but because I had not done something—because I had not offered him shares, in fact; but I squared that very easily.”

  “You paid him?” asked Jack.

  “Of course. He was comparatively cheap, and he became like Balaam. He came to curse, and he went away blessing me and the mine, and Australia and you, with a small cheque in his pocket and copious notes for this article to which you have been referring.”

  “Do you mean to say that you are liable to be called on by any City editor, and made to give him money not to crab the mine?” asked Jack incredulously.

  “Well, not by any City editor,” said Mr. Alington, “though I wish I was, but certainly by a fair percentage. It is a most convenient custom. When one is doing things, as I am, on a fairly large scale, it matters to me very little whether I pay the Mining Weekly a hundred pounds or so. That article is worth far more to me than that, just as you, my dear Conybeare, are worth far more to me than the paltry sum I give you as my director and chairman.”

  Mr. Alington spoke with silken blandness, yet with an under-current of proprietorship, as if he was a pupil-teacher delivering an address to school children, and was telling them beautiful little stories with morals.

  “I see you are surprised,” he went on. “But really there is nothing surprising about it. A paper gives an opinion; what matter whose—mine or the editor’s? The editor probably knows nothing about it, so it is mine. And if a small cheque change hands over the opinion, that is the concern of me and my balance. It is worth my while to pay it, and it appears to be worth the editor’s while to accept it. I only wish the custom went further—that one could go direct to the Times, say, and ask what is their price for a column. Sometimes one can do that—I don’t mean with the Times—but it is always a little risky. I was very anxious, for instance, last week to get a good notice of this prospectus of ours in the City Journal, and I did what was perhaps rather rash, though it turned out excellently. Mr. Metcalfe, their second editor, is slightly known to me, and I know him to be poor and blessed with a large family. Poor men so often are. He has a son whom he wants to send to Oxford.”

  Mr. Alington paused again, with a look on his face like that which the embodied spirit of Charity Organization may be supposed to wear when it hears of a really deserving case. Jack listened quite attentively, though long speeches were apt to bore him. He felt as if he was learning his business.

  “The lad is a charming young fellow,” went on Charity Organization; “clever too, and likely to get an exhibition or scholarship. Well, I asked his father to call on me, and offered him two hundred pounds for such an article as appears in the Mining Weekly which you have in your hand. He was indignant, most indignant, and wondered how I had the face to make such an offer. He said he would not do what I had suggested for twice the money. I took that, rightly, to mean that he would, and I gave it him. Four hundred pounds will help very considerably, as I pointed out to him, in his son’s expenses at Oxford. And he went away, after a little further conversation, with tears of gratitude in his eyes—tears of gratitude, my dear Conybeare. Two days afterwards there appeared in the City Journal a
very nice article, if I may say so, considering I wrote the greater part of it myself—really a very nice article about Carmel. And I was glad to help the young fellow, to give him a chance—very glad. I told his father so, putting it in exactly that way.”

  Mr. Alington sighed gently and modestly at this reminiscence, like a retiring man humbly thankful for the opportunity of aiding in a good work, and Jack for a moment was puzzled. Then, remembering he was dealing with a man of business, he laughed. The thing was excellently recited with praiseworthy gravity.

  “The stage has lost an actor,” he observed, “even if the world has gained a director. Admirable, my dear Alington. But why, why keep it up with me? I assure you I am not shocked.”

  Mr. Alington looked up in surprise.

  “An actor? Not shocked? Keep it up?” he queried. “I do not understand.”

  “You are inimitable,” said Jack.

  Mr. Alington got up.

  “You don’t understand me,” he said with a certain warmth, “and you wrong me. I gather from your words that you have doubts of my sincerity. By what right, if you please?”

  Jack was grave in an instant.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I see that I was in the wrong.”

  The heat died out of Mr. Alington’s face; there was no reproach in his mild, benignant eye. A kind, Christian gentleman looked gently at Jack.