The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  But this weakness was but inconsiderable. He had attained success all down the line; the only wavering had been between completeness and more than completeness. Here, as was natural, the instinct of years stepped in. The habit of making ten pounds in complete safety was more potent than the certainty of making nine. His own large purchase had heralded the rise, the good news from the mine had shouted an endorsement, the “strong support in Australia,” the news of which had reached the market with the infallible result so long foreseen by him, had put the seal on certainty. The deal was beyond doubt.

  At last and at last! This crippling of his life was over; he was free from the necessity of money-making, free also, thank God! from the desire. He no longer wanted more than he certainly had. How much can be said of how few!

  His inward happiness seemed reflected in all sorts of small external ways. His horse was fast, his driver nimble at picking an unsuspected way, and the porters at Waterloo, miraculously recovered from the paralysis of the brain induced by Ascot week, not only were in accord as to the platform from which his train would start, but, a thing far more rare and precious, were one and all perfectly correct in their information.

  To Mr. Alington, though his nature was far removed from the cynical, this seemed almost too good to be true, till, in his benignant strolls up and down the line of carriages, he met his hostess, Mrs. Murchison. She was feeling the heat acutely, but was inclined to be talkative.

  “So you’ve come by the early train,” she said. “Well, I call that just friendly, and it’s the early bird that catches the train, Mr. Alington, and here we are. But the heat is such that if I was wicked and died this moment, I fancy I should send for a thicker mantle, and that’s a chestnut. Lady Haslemere comes down by the four something, which slips a carriage at Winchester—or is it five?—which I think perilous. They cast you adrift, the Lord knows where, for I inquired about it, without engine, and if you haven’t got an engine, where are you? A straw hat—that’s just what we are going to be; a straw-hat party like Lady Conybeare and the tea-gowns, and dinner in the garden.”

  “That will be delicious,” said Mr. Alington after his usual pause. “Dinner out of door is the only possible way of feeding without the impression of being fed. I always—”

  “Well, that’s just beautifully put,” interrupted Mrs. Murchison. “You get so much all-fresco out of doors. And that’s what I missed so much in my last visit to America, where I stopped a fortnight nearly. The set-banquet, with all the ceremonial of the Barmecides, like what Mr. Murchison rejoices in, and the colour he turns over his dinner, seems to me an utter nihilism of the flow of soul. Why, there’s Lady Haslemere! So she’s caught the early bird too.”

  Lady Haslemere, according to her invariable habit, only arrived at the station one minute before the starting of the train, in a great condition of fuss, but she pressed Mr. Alington’s hand warmly.

  “You were quite right,” she said: “I didn’t sell out two days ago, and, oh! The difference to me. I have just this moment sold at five and three-quarters. Only think!”

  “I congratulate you heartily,” said Mr. Alington, with a smile of kind indulgence; “I too am going to sell on Monday morning.”

  A shade of vexation crossed Lady Haslemere’s face.

  “Do you think it will go higher again?” she asked.

  “A shade, very likely. But possibly it may react a little. I was in two minds myself as to whether I should sell today.”

  Lady Haslemere’s brow cleared.

  “Oh, well, one can’t always sell out at the very top,” she said; “but it will be annoying to me if it goes to six. Two hundred and forty times five shillings. Ye-s.”

  “I think you have done very well,” said Mr. Alington, with just a shade of reproof in his voice.

  The financier travelled in a smoking compartment, the two ladies in a carriage to themselves, and as the train slid out towards Vauxhall high among the house-roofs, Mr. Alington felt that in more than this literal sense he was leaving London, that busy brain of the world, behind and below him. And though his parting glances were certainly not regretful, they were very kindly. He had been well treated by this inn at which he had passed so many years, laboriously building his house and the fortunes of his house. That was done; he needed hired chambers no longer. The newsboys, who at this very station had looked on him as a regular purchaser of the more financial of the evening papers, found him today quite indifferent to their wares, and even the placard “Extraordinary Scenes on the Stock Exchange” met an uninterested eye. One boy, indeed, had been so accustomed to give him the Evening Standard that, seeing his large profile against the carriage window before the train started, had without request handed him in the paper. But Mr. Alington pushed it gently aside.

  “Not today, my lad—not today,” he had said; “but here’s your penny for you.”

  The carriage was empty and, as London fell back behind the train, Mr. Alington’s spirits, usually so equable and so seldom falling below the temperate figures of content, or rising into feverish altitudes, became strangely light and buoyant. He had often wondered in anticipation how this moment—the moment of casting off from him the chains of fortune-building—would affect him. Exciting and exhilarating hours had often been his; numerous had been the triumphs which his clear-sighted scrutiny of the financial heavens had brought him. He had felt a real passion for his pursuit; but the joy of the pursuit had never blinded him to the fact that it was an object he was pursuing. He wanted a certain amount of money, and he had now got it, and already the joy of having attained had swallowed up the lesser joy of attaining. He had often asked himself whether the habit and the desire of obtaining were not becoming too integral a part of him; whether, when his purpose was achieved, he would not feel suddenly let down—put out of employment. If that should prove to be so, he felt that his life would largely be a failure: he would have elevated the means into the end.

  But the moment had come; it was his now, and he knew within himself that he had kept clear of so deplorable an error. He felt like a boy leaving school after a successful term, having won, and having deserved to win, some arduously-reached distinction. The thought gave gaiety to his glance: his eye sparkled unwontedly, he had a mind to dance. But the mood deepened; the surface gaiety became transformed into a thankfulness of a far more vital kind, and as the train devoured the miles between Clapham Junction and Waterloo, he knelt down on the dusty carpet of his carriage, and, with bared head and closed eyes, he thanked God for having given him the brain and the will to succeed, and, during that pursuit of the transient stuff, for not having let his heart be hardened at the daily touch of gold. Money-making, in the moment of this success, he still saw to be not an end in itself. The danger of that insidious delusion he had escaped. And before he rose he registered a vow to use the fortune of which he had thus been made steward temperately and wisely.

  A large party was going to gather at Mrs. Murchison’s next day, but till then there would only be the three who had come down by this train, and four or five more who had proposed to embark on the danger of the slip-carriage train, which would, if it ever came to port, land them in Winchester in time for dinner.

  Mr. Alington had eagerly accepted the earlier invitation, in order that he might spend the Saturday in examining the monuments and antiquities of the old town. He had brought with him a compendious green guide to the city, and having mastered its principal contents in the train, he was able to point out to the ladies the buildings of interest which they passed in their drive out. The college, above all, attracted his benevolent gaze, and his pale-blue eyes grew dim as they rolled by those lines of gray wall, the dimpling river which crossed beneath the road, the mellow brick of the Warden’s house, and the delicate grace of the chapel tower, which dominated and blessed the whole.

  “A priceless heritage! A priceless heritage!” he murmured. “Nothing can make up to me for not having been to one of the great public schools. The boys seem careless enough,
heedless enough, God bless them!” he said, as a laughing mob of them streamed out of the college gate; “but the gracious influences are entering and working in them every day, every hour, forming an unsuspected foundation for the after-years. The peace and the coolness of this sweet corner of the world is becoming a part of them. All that I have missed—all that I have missed!”

  He sighed softly, while Lady Haslemere yawned elaborately behind her hand. But the elaborate yawn ended in a perfectly natural laugh.

  “Dear Mr. Alington,” she said, “you are quite deliciously unexpected and appropriate. For you to be discontented with your lot is a splendid absurdity. I would have lived in a suburb all my life if today I could have sold your number of Carmel shares at the price I got.”

  Mr. Alington looked at her a moment, pained but forbearing.

  “So would I,” he said. Then, leading the talk away from anything so intimate to him, “Ah, that delicious stretch of water-meadow!” he said. “There is no green so vivid and delicate as that of English fields. And hark to the cool thunder of the weir.”

  A far-away rapture illumined his stout face, and Mrs. Murchison, who had made a speciality of Nature, struck in:

  “There is a solidarity about English landscape which I do not find in our country,” she said. “Like Mr. Alington, I could listen to that weir till I became an octogeranium. ‘Peace with plenty,’ as Lord Beaconsfield used to say. I was down at Goring yesterday with dear Lily, and we sat on the lawn till midnight, or it might have been later, and I had a long discussion with Jack Conybeare about the duties of the London County Council. Most rural and refreshing it was! Ah, dear me!”

  Mrs. Murchison sighed, not because she was sad, but because her feelings outstripped her power of expression.

  “So green and beautiful!” she murmured, as a sort of summary.

  Lady Haslemere put up her parasol, extinguishing the view for miles round.

  “Mr. Alington, do give me a hint as to what to go for next week. Will there be a rise in South Africans, do you think?”

  The rapture died from Mr. Alington’s face, but it gave place to a purely benignant expression. He shook his head gently.

  “I cannot say,” he answered. “I have followed nothing during these last weeks except the fortunes of Carmel. But any broker will advise you, Lady Haslemere.”

  Mrs. Murchison’s house stood high on the broad-backed down, to the south of the town, and up at this height there was a wonderful freshness in the air, and the heat was without the oppressiveness of London. A vast stretch of rolling country spread out on every side, and line upon line of hills followed each other like great waves into the big distance. Though the drought had been so severe, the reservoirs of the sub-lying chalk had kept the short, flower-starred grass still green, and the long-continued heat had not filched from it its exquisite and restful colour.

  Alington took off his hat and let the wind lift his rather scanty hair. It was an extreme pleasure to him to get out from the overheated stagnation of London streets into this unvitiated air, and he wondered at the keenness of his enjoyment. He had never been a great lover of the country, but it seemed to him today as if a heavy accumulation of years had been lifted off him, disclosing capacities for enjoyment which none, himself perhaps least of all, had suspected could be his. He gently censured himself in this regard. He had made a mistake in thus stifling and shutting up so pure and proper a source of pleasure. He would certainly take himself to task for this, and put himself under the tuition of country sights and sounds.

  They had tea under the twinkling shade of a pine copse at the end of the lawn, and presently after Mr. Alington again took his straw hat, with the design of a stroll in the fresh cool of the approaching evening. The other two ladies preferred to enjoy it in inaction, waiting for the arrival of the adventurous slip-carriage guests, about whose fate Mrs. Murchison reiterated her anxiety.

  So Mr. Alington, secretly not ill-pleased, started alone. He was about half-way down the drive, when he met a telegraph-boy going towards the house, and, in his expansive, kindly manner, detained him a moment with a few simple questions as to his name and age. Finally, just as he turned to walk on, he asked him for whom he was delivering a telegram, and the boy, drawing it out of his pouch, showed him the address.

  Mr. Alington opened it slowly, wondering, as he had often wondered before, why the envelope was orange and the paper pink. It was from his brokers, and very short; but he looked for some considerable time at the eight words it contained:

  “Terrible panic in Carmels. Shares unnegotiable. Wire instructions.”

  At first he read it quite blankly; it seemed to him that the words, though they were simple and plain enough, conveyed nothing to his mind. Then suddenly a huge intense light, hot and dazzling beyond description, appeared to have been uncovered somewhere in his brain, and the words burned and blinded him. He let the pink paper fall, bowing and sidling on the gravel of the drive, then stooped down with a curious groping manner and picked it up again. He put it neatly back inside the envelope, and asked the boy for a form, on which he scribbled a few words.

  “Do nothing,” he wrote. “I will come up immediately.”

  He gave the boy a shilling, waving away the change, and then, going to the grassy bank that bounded the drive, he sat down. Except for that moment, when his brain, no doubt instantaneously stunned, refused to tell him the meaning of the words, it had been absolutely composed and alert. The telegram gave no hint as to the cause of this panic, but without casting about for other possibilities, he put it down at once to his one weak point, Mr. Chavasse. That determined, he gave it no further thought, but wondered idly and without much interest what he felt. But this was beyond him. He had no idea what he felt, except that he was conscious of a slight qualm of sickness, so slight and so purely physical, to all seeming, that he would naturally have put it down, had it not appeared simultaneously with this news, to some small error of diet. Otherwise his brain, though perfectly clear and capable of receiving accurate impressions, was blank. There was a whisper of fir-trees round him, and little points of sunlight flickered on the yellow gravel of the drive as the branches stirred in the wind. Lady Haslemere’s voice sounded thin and high from the lawn near—he had always remarked the unpleasant shrillness of her tones—and his straw hat had fallen off. He was conscious of no dismay, no agony of regret that he had not sold out two hours ago, no sense of disaster.

  He sat there five minutes at the outside, and then went back to the lawn. The ladies looked up in surprise at the quickness of his return, but neither marked any change in his sleek features nor uncertainty in his step. His voice, too, when he spoke, was neither hurried, unsteady, nor differently modulated.

  “Mrs. Murchison,” he said, “I have just received the worst news about—about a venture of mine, which is of some importance. In fact, there has been, I fear, a great panic on the Stock Exchange over Carmel. May I be driven back to the station at once? It is necessary I should return to London. It is a great regret to me to miss my visit. Lady Haslemere, I congratulate you on your promptitude in selling.”

  He stood there bland and respectable for a moment, while Mrs. Murchison murmured incoherent sympathy, surprised at the extraordinary ease with which polite commonplace rose to his lips. The courteous necessary words seemed to speak themselves, without any direction from him. The blow that had fallen upon him must, he thought, have descended internally, for his surface behaviour seemed as equable as ever. He was conscious only of the continuance of the qualm of sickness, and of a little uncertainty in movement and action.

  He had intended, for instance, as far as he intended anything, to go away as soon as he had said good-bye, and wait for the carriage alone. But he found himself lingering; his feet did not take him away, and he wondered why. His straw hat was in his hand, and he fanned himself with it, though he did not feel hot. Perceiving this, yet still holding it, he stopped fanning, and bit the rim gently; then, aware that he was doing that, he
put it on again.

  “So good-bye,” he said for the second time. “Ah, Lady Haslemere, you asked me for a tip. Well, if this panic is really serious—and I have no doubt it is—buy Carmels at the lower price, for all you are worth, if you have the nerve. I assure you that you cannot find a better investment. Good-bye, good-bye again. Perhaps—oh no, it doesn’t signify. May I order the carriage, then, Mrs. Murchison? Thank you so much!” He lifted his hat, turned, and went to the house.

  CHAPTER IX

  THE SLUMP

  The London evening papers that day were full of the extraordinary scenes that had taken place on the Stock Exchange. Before the opening of the market that morning Carmel had been eagerly inquired for, owing to the activity produced by the very extensive purchases on the day before, and an hour before mid-day news had been cabled from Australia that there was very strong support in the market there for the same, Mr. Richard Chavasse alone having purchased fifty thousand pounds’ worth of the shares. Closely following on this came news from the mine itself: the last crushing had yielded five ounces to the ton, and a new, unsuspected reef had been struck. The combination of these causes led to one of the most remarkable rises in price ever known. The market (so said one correspondent) completely lost its head, and practically no business was done except by the mining brokers. The shares that day had started a little above thirty shillings, and by four o’clock they had reached the astounding figure of £5 12s. 6d. A well-known broker who had been interviewed on the subject said that never in the course of a long experience had he known anything like it. Sober, steady dealers, in his own words, went screaming, raving mad. A boom in Westralian gold, it is true, had long been expected, but nothing could account for this extraordinary demand. No doubt the fact that Mr. Alington had purchased largely the day before had prepared the way for it, for he was considered among mining operators the one certain man to follow.