by E. F. Benson
He had anticipated events with the precision of a great general. The market had rushed, like starving folk when a granary is opened, at Carmel East and West, and after they had reached their highest point, and the big sales began, there had followed something like a panic. West Australian mines were still new to the public, and the greater financiers viewed them with suspicion. This sudden scare over Carmel East and West suited Mr. Alington exactly, for it would be sure to bring down the price of the second Carmel group—namely, the North, South, and Central mines. He had seen this six months ago, and had worked for this very end. At present he had no holdings in Mount Carmel, except those shares which he held to qualify as a director, and he had delayed any purchase in them till the panic created by the mercurial behaviour of the sister group should have brought down the price. The lower it went, the better would he be pleased, for he intended to make a coup over this compared to which what he had pocketed over Carmel East and West should be a mere bagatelle. But for Carmel he required no adventitious aid from marquises, and consequently the sudden resignation of Tom Abbotsworthy from his board, which event had taken place the day before, did not trouble him at all, nor did he care to know what cause “his regret to find that press of work prevented him” covered. The mine he knew was a magnificent property, quite able to stand on its own feet, and in the prospectus he had purposely understated its probable value. In doing so, he was altogether free from possible censure; the mine had seemed to him promising, and he had said so, and when the shares were suitably low he intended to buy all he could lay hands on. Purposely, also, he had undercapitalized it; eventually he meant to issue fresh shares. The five hundred thousand pounds already subscribed was not more than sufficient to work Carmel North, and both Mount Carmel and Carmel South of the same group he believed to be as remunerative as the others. The panic over Carmel East and West had already affected the other group, and yesterday evening the one-pound shares, after a week’s decline, stood at fifteen shillings. He proposed to let them go down, if they kindly would, till they had sunk to ten shillings or thereabouts, then buy for all he was worth, and send a telegram to Mr. Richard Chavasse to do the same. And at the thought of Mr. Richard Chavasse he put his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, leaned back in his chair, and laughed aloud with a great mellowness of sound.
In certain respects Mr. Alington, for all his staid conversation and butler-like appearance, was a true humorist; in this instance, at any rate, that he alone should appreciate his own joke was sufficient for him, and he required no sympathizer. Indeed, it would have spoiled it all if other people had been able to appreciate it. Though a modest man, he considered the Chavasse joke very entertaining, and the Chavasse joke was all his own, and the point of it as follows:
Some years ago, out in Australia, he had a Swiss valet, a clever, neat-handed rogue in his way, who one night was sufficiently ill-advised to open the house to burglars. But the alarm was given. Mr. Alington, with a revolver and pyjamas, came mildly but firmly downstairs, and though the burglars escaped, he held his valet in the hollow of his hand. The man stood detected, and, hoping to make the best of his miscarried job, confessed his complicity to his master. Mr. Alington made him give his confession in writing, and sent it to his bank for safe keeping, but for the time took no further steps.
But not long before the formation of this new company, four or five months only before his own departure for England, he parted company with his servant, who left Melbourne at once. Three months afterwards a gentleman with a fine moustache and a short beard appeared—a personal friend, it would seem, of Mr. Alington’s, and a man of wealth, interested in Australian mines. A few weeks only after his arrival Mr. Alington left for England. Mr. Richard Chavasse, however, remained, cultivated and linguistic, and lived in Alington’s house at, it was supposed, a suitable rent. Altogether he may be best described as a creation.
Here, again, as in so many of the dealings of Providence with man, Mr. Alington often marvelled to see the working of all things together towards good. In the first instance there had not been wanting to his forbearance to give Mr. Richard Chavasse over to the police a vague feeling of compassion at the thought of those deft, shirt-studding hands given over bleeding to oakum-picking and the sewing of mail-bags; and how amply was that sweet pity rewarded! A man bound to him by fear was a far safer repository for the large sums of money, amounting sometimes to forty or fifty thousand pounds, over which Mr. Chavasse had control, than someone over whom he held no such check. Should Mr. Chavasse attempt to get off with the money, or even—so stringent were Alington’s regulations for the strict and sober conduct of his life—leave the colony, a wired word from him to the bank would place the ex-valet’s confession of complicity in the burglary in the hands of the police. Alington, in fact, had speculated largely in Chavasses, and he had the wit to see from the beginning that the more comfortable position he gave him, the more man of wealth and mark he made him, the securer he himself would be. A beggar with power of attorney may easily decamp with the spoils, and possibly baffle pursuit, but for the solid man interested in mines, though slightly recluse and exclusive, it is hardly possible to evade capture. Besides, who in their senses would not prefer to live delicately than to dodge detectives? Certainly Mr. Chavasse was completely in his senses, and did not attempt escape. What Alington meant to do with him after the grand coup in Carmels he had not yet certainly determined.
In the interval Mr. Chavasse, ex-valet, lived in his house in Melbourne rent-free, and cost Mr. Alington perhaps eighty pounds a month. But how admirable an investment was that; and how small a percentage of his coinings for his master did that eighty pounds a month represent! Already it had often happened, as in the case of Carmel East, that Alington in England wanted to run up the price of some mine, and strong support in Australia was exactly what was needed to give a hesitating market confidence. Thus he exercised a dual control: here in England, no doubt, many investors followed his lead, for he was known to be an extremely shrewd man, with the instinct bred of knowledge equalled by none, and invariably his purchases seemed to herald a general advance. For as surely as Mr. Alington bought in London, so surely did a cable go out to Mr. Chavasse, “Invest balance,” or “Invest half balance,” and in due course came the answer, not necessarily to Alington—indeed, seldom to him—“Strong support in Australia.” The plan was simple—all practical plans are: the valet had his choice between two courses of life—the one to live extremely comfortably in Alington’s delightful house in Melbourne, passing pleasant, independent days, and occasionally, as the telegram came from England, making large purchases for this mine or that, or selling still in obedience; the other, to leave his comfortable house, and start off in an attempt to outrun the detectives: for as surely as he tried to escape, so surely would his confession lying at the bank pass into the hands of the police. Once a month, indeed, he had to send to England the statement of his accounts, and now and then he had been told that his cigar-bill was too large, or that whisky-and-soda for lunch would be a pleasant change from an expensive Moselle. On leaving Australia, Mr. Alington had transferred to him absolutely certain shares, certificates and balance at the Melbourne bank in payment, it was supposed, of some large purchase; and not infrequently he could, if he chose, draw a cheque for as much as fifty thousand pounds to self. Thus, for a few weeks, perhaps, he would be able to career over the world; but from that moment he would be Mr. Richard Chavasse no longer, that solid, linguistic gentleman, but the man Chavasse, earnestly wanted by the police for burglary.
There was risk on both sides. Alington knew that to convict the man, if he was so insane as to try to escape, meant exposure of his own side of the bargain and good-bye to the dual control. In his heart of hearts, indeed, he had hardly determined what to do should Chavasse make so deplorable a blunder. No doubt he could be caught, no doubt his identity could be proved, and he could be landed in the place of tread-mills and oakum-picking, but there would be other revelations as well, n
ot all touching Chavasse. However, he never seriously contemplated such possibilities, for he did not believe that the man would ever try to escape. He was comfortable where he was, and comfortable people will think twice before they risk a prosecution for burglary. Alington was far too acute to think of frightening him or keeping him continually cowering; exasperation might drive him to this undesirable ruin. Instead, he gave him a very fair allowance, and complaints as to the length of his cigar-bill were few. Indeed, he had gauged the immediate intentions of his ex-valet very correctly. Mr. Richard Chavasse had no present thoughts of attempting to liberate himself from his extremely tolerable servitude, and probably get in exchange something far less soft, while that confession of his lay at the bank. He had the dislike of risks common to men who have been detected once. If, however, he could by any plan, not yet formulated, manage to remove those risks, his conscience, he felt, would not tell him that he was bound in gratitude to Mr. Alington never to do anything for himself.
This morning, as Alington sat working in his well-lighted room, or looked out with kind and absent gaze into the snowy, sordid street, or laughed with pleasure at the thought of Mr. Richard Chavasse, he felt extremely secure, and humbly thankful to the Providence which had so guided his feet into the ways of respectability and wealth. Without being a miser in the ordinary usage of the word, he had that inordinate passion (in his case for money) which marks the monomaniac. Yet he remained extremely sane; his willingness to provide himself not only with the necessaries but also the luxuries which money will buy, remained, in spite of his passion for it, unimpaired. He was not extravagant, for extravagance, like other excess, was foreign to his mild and well-regulated nature, and had not been induced by the possession of wealth, but a scarce print he seldom left unpurchased. He gave, moreover, largely to charitable institutions, and the giving of money to deserving objects was a genuine pleasure to him, quite apart from the satisfaction he undoubtedly felt at seeing his name head a subscription list. In addition to his own great passion also, he had a thousand tastes and interests, a gift that even genius itself often lacks, and it may have been these on the one hand pulling against the lust for money on the other that kept him so well-balanced, just as the telegraph post is kept straight by the strain on both sides. As well as the one great thing, the world held for him hundreds of desirable objects, and the hours in which he was not devoted to his business were not, as they are to so many, a blank and a pause. He closed his ledger and opened the passion music; he shut his piano and untied his portfolio of prints, and his sleek, respectable face would glow with inward delight at each. A certain kindliness of disposition, which was part of his nature, it must be confessed, he kept apart when he was engaged in business. This lived in an attic and never descended the stairs if he was at his desk. To give an instance, he had not the slightest impulse to help Kit in her difficulty, though a word from him would have shown her how in the next few months to make good her losses. She had chosen to mix herself up in business, and he became a business man from head to heels. It even gave him a little pleasure to see her flounder in so stranded a fashion, for he had not effaced, and did not mean to efface, from his mind the very shabby thing she had chosen to do to him on the night of the baccarat affair. Being very wealthy, it did not really matter to him whether she cheated him of a hundred pounds or a threepenny-bit, but he quite distinctly objected to being cheated of either. Had the last trump summoned him on the moment to the open judgment-books, he might have sworn truthfully enough that he had forgiven her, for he did not ever intend to make her suffer for it, even if he had the opportunity of doing so. Certainly he forgave her; he would not ever attempt to revenge himself on her, and he had not told a soul about it.
But her difficulties aroused no compassion in him, nor would they have done so even if she had never cheated him at baccarat. Business is business, and a statue of sentiment has no niche hewn in the mining market. One can do one’s kindnesses afterwards, he said to himself, and, to do him justice, he often did.
For the present there was a lull in the Carmel transaction, and after a very short spell at the ledgers Mr. Alington closed them with a sigh. There were several receipts lying on his table, and he took them up, read each, and docketed it. One was for a considerable sum of money paid to a political agency. He hesitated a moment before putting the docket on it, and finally wrote on the top left-hand corner:
“Baronetcy.”
CHAPTER III
LILY DRAWS A CHEQUE
Toby was sitting after breakfast in the dining-room of his house in town reading the Times. It had been settled for him by Lily before their marriage that he was to have some sort of a profession, and, the choice being left to him, he had chosen politics. He was proposing to stand for a perfectly safe borough in about a month’s time, and though hitherto he had known nothing whatever about the public management of his country’s affairs, since he was going to take a hand in them himself, he now set himself, or had set for him, day by day to read the papers. He had just got through the political leaders in the Times with infinite labour, and had turned with a sigh of relief for a short interval to the far more human police reports, when Lily came in with a note in her hand.
“Good boy,” she said approvingly, and Toby rustled quickly back to the leaders again.
“A most important speech by the Screamer,” he announced, honouring by this name a prominent member of the Cabinet. “He seems to suggest an Anglo-Russo-Germanic-French-Italian-American alliance, and says with some justice that it ought to be a very fairly powerful combination. It is directed, as far as I can make out, against Mr. and Mrs. Kruger.”
Lily looked over his shoulder for a moment, and saw the justice of the résumé.
“Yes, read it all very carefully, very carefully indeed, Toby,” she said. “But just attend to me a moment first; I shan’t keep you.”
Toby put down the paper with alacrity. The Sportsman tumbled out from underneath it, but he concealed this with the dexterity bred of practice.
“What is it?” he asked, vexed at the interruption, you would have said, but patient of it.
“Toby, speaking purely in the abstract, what do you do if a man wants to borrow money from you?” she asked.
“In the abstract I am delighted to lend it to him,” he said. “In the concrete I tell him I haven’t got a penny, as a rule.”
“I see,” said Lily; “but if you had, you would lend it him?”
“Yes; for, supposing that it is the right sort of person who asks you for money, it is rather a compliment. It must be a difficult thing to do, and it implies a sort of intimacy.”
“And if it is the wrong sort of person?” asked Lily.
“The wrong sort of person has usually just that shred of self-respect that prevents him asking you.”
Lily sighed, and pulled his hair gently, rather struck by his penetration, but not wishing to acknowledge it.
“Door-mats—door-mats!” she observed.
“All right; but why be personal? Who wants to borrow money from you, Lily?”
“I didn’t say anyone did,” she replied, throwing the note of her envelope into the grate. “Don’t be inquisitive. I shall ask abstract questions if I like, and when I like, and how I like. Read the Screamer’s speech with great care, and be ready by twelve. You are going to take me to the Old Masters.”
She went out of the room, leaving Toby to his politics. But he did not at once pick up the paper again, but looked abstractedly into the fire. He did not at all like the thought that someone was borrowing money from his wife, for his brain involuntarily suggested to him the name of a possible borrower. Lily had held a note in her hand, he remembered, when she came into the room, and it was the envelope of it, no doubt, which she had thrown into the grate. For one moment he had a temptation to pick it up and see whether the handwriting confirmed his suspicions, the next he blushed hotly at the thought, and, picking up the crumpled fragment from the grate with the tongs, thrust it into the hotte
st core of the fire.
But the interruption had effectually destroyed his power of interesting himself in this world-wide combination against Mr. and Mrs. Kruger. There was trouble in the air; what trouble he did not know, but he had been conscious of it ever since he had gone down one day late in last December to stay with Kit and Jack at Goring, and they had been blocked by the snow a couple of stations up the line. He had noticed then, and ever since, that there was something wrong between Kit and his brother. Kit had been unwell when they were there: she had hardly appeared at all during those few days, except in the evenings. Then, it is true, she had usually eaten and drank freely, screamed with laughter, and played baccarat till the small hours grew sensibly larger. But underneath it all lay an obvious sense of effort and the thundery, oppressive feeling of trouble—something impossible to define, but impossible not to perceive. In a way, supposing it was Kit who wanted to borrow money from his wife, it would have been a relief to Toby; he would have been glad to know that cash alone was at the bottom of it all. He feared—he hardly knew what he feared—but something worse than a want of money.
He sat looking at the fire for a few minutes longer, and then, getting up, went to his wife’s room. She was seated at the table, writing a note, and Toby noticed that her cheque-book was lying by her hand. He abstained carefully from looking even in the direction of the note she was writing, and stood by the window with his broad back to the room.
“Lily,” he said, “will you not tell me who it is who wants to borrow money from you? For I think I know.”
Lily put down her pen.
“Toby, you are simply odious,” she said. “It is not fair of you to say that.”
Toby turned round quickly.
“I am not a bit odious,” he said. “If I had wanted not to play fair, I could have looked at the envelope you left in the dining-room grate. Of course, I burnt it without looking at it. But I thought of looking at it. I didn’t; that is all.”