Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “I can’t get on without a few of my own things about me,” said Lord Comber, fussing gently about the room. “I always take some of my things with me if I am going to stay in a hotel. This place is quite nice; they are very civil, and the cooking isn’t bad. But it makes such a difference to have some of one’s things about; it makes your rooms so much more homey.”

  And he drew the curtain a shade more over the window to keep the sun out.

  “How long are you going to stop here?” asked Toby.

  “Oh, another week, I expect,” said Comber, removing the embroidery, and indicating the armchair to Toby. “Of course, it is rather lonely, and I don’t know a soul here; but I’m out a good deal on these delicious sands, and another week alone will be quite bearable.”

  “I wonder you didn’t arrange to come with somebody,” said Toby quietly.

  Lord Comber took up the gold-topped scent-bottle and refreshed his forehead. This was a little awkward, but Kit had told him to tell none of the cottage-party that she would be there. He remembered vaguely that Kit had, one evening in July, announced her intention of coming to Stanborough, but he could not recollect whether Toby was there, and, besides, at the time she had not really meant to do anything of the kind. It was only afterwards that they had made their definite arrangements. The worst of it was, that there was a letter from Kit lying on the table, and Toby might or might not have seen it.

  “Everyone is engaged now,” he said. “It is hopeless trying to get people in August. Oh, I heard from Kit this morning,” he added, by rather an ingenious afterthought. “She asked me to come down to Goring in September.”

  “Was that all she said?” asked Toby.

  “Oh, you know what Kit’s letters are like,” said he. “A delicious sort of hash of all that has happened to everybody.”

  Toby paused a moment. God was good.

  “She didn’t happen to say by what train she was going to arrive to-morrow?” he asked.

  Lord Comber made a little impatient gesture, admirably spontaneous. He had often used it before.

  “Oh, how angry Kit will be!” he said. “She told me particularly not to tell anybody. How did you know, Toby?”

  “She wrote to my mother some days ago declining her invitation to come to the cottage,” he said. “Also the thing was discussed at length in my presence. There was no question of concealment. I remember you asked if you might come too, and she said no.”

  Lord Comber laughed, quite as if he was not annoyed.

  “Yes, I remember,” he said. “What fun Kit was that night! It was at the Haslemeres’, wasn’t it? I never saw her in such form.”

  Toby sat as stiff as a poker in the armchair.

  “I can’t quite reconcile your statement that you were going to be all alone with the fact that you knew Kit was coming to-morrow,” he said. “Not off-hand, at least.”

  Ted Comber began to be aware that the position was a sultry one. Kit had distinctly told him not to tell any of the people at the cottage that she was coming, and he had said that this was the wrong sort of precaution to take. They would be sure to know, and a failure in secrecy is a ghastly failure, and so difficult to explain afterwards, for people always think that if you keep a thing secret there is something to be kept secret. No doubt she had come round to his way of thinking, and had told them herself, forgetting the prohibition she had laid on him. Altogether it was an annoying business. However, this scene with the barbarous brother-in-law had to be gone through with at once. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Kit told me not to mention it,” he said. “We were going to have a rustic little time in all our worst clothes and no maid. That is all.”

  “You have lied to me — that is all,” said Toby, with incredible rudeness.

  “That is not the way for one man to speak to another, Toby,” said Lord Comber, feeling suddenly cold and damp. “I followed Kit’s directions.”

  “Of course, it is the fashion to say that it is the woman’s fault,” observed Toby fiendishly.

  Lord Comber was quite at a loss how to deal with such outrageous behaviour. People did not do such things.

  “Did you come here in order to quarrel with me?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t want to quarrel,” said Toby, “but I intend that you shall go away.”

  “That is so thoughtful of you,” said Comber.

  He was getting a little agitated, and had recourse to the scent-bottle again. He did not like fencing with the buttons off.

  Toby did not answer at once; he was thinking of the suggestion he had made to his mother. He determined to use it as a threat, at any rate.

  “Look here,” he said; “Kit may choose her own friends as much as she pleases, but she cannot go staying alone with you at a place like this. Either you go or I telegraph to Jack.”

  Lord Comber laughed.

  “Do you really suppose Jack would really mind?” he said.

  “And do you know that you are speaking of my brother?” asked Toby.

  “I’m sure that is not Jack’s fault,” remarked Comber.

  “No. Then, as you say, if Jack won’t mind, I’ll telegraph to him at once. Have you a form here? Oh, it doesn’t matter; I can get one in the office.”

  “The fact that you telegraph to Jack implies that there is something to telegraph about,” said Comber. “There is nothing.”

  Toby did not choose to acknowledge that there could be any truth in this.

  “I don’t care a damn,” he observed. “Either you go or I telegraph. Take your time, but please settle as soon as you can. I don’t want to make things unpleasant, and if you say that your only aunt is very ill, and that you have been sent for, I won’t contradict it — in fact, I’ll bear you out if Kit makes a fuss.”

  “That is extraordinarily kind of you,” said Lord Comber. “And since when have you become your sister-in-law’s keeper in this astounding manner?”

  Toby got quickly out of his chair, and stood very stiff and hot and uncompromising.

  “Now, look here,” he said: “my name is Massingbird, and so is Jack’s, and I don’t wish that it should be in everybody’s mouth in connection with yours. People will talk; you know it as well as I do, and there is going to be no Comber-Conybeare scandal, thank you very much.”

  “You seem to be doing your level best to make one,” said Lord Comber.

  “Oh, I don’t mind a Ted-Toby scandal,” said Toby serenely. “I can take care of myself.”

  “And of Kit, it seems.”

  “And of Kit — at least, it seems so, as you say.”

  There was a long silence, and Toby drew a vile briar pipe out of his pocket. He noticed that Lord Comber, even in his growing agitation, cast an agonized glance towards it, and, putting it back in his pocket, he lit a cigarette.

  “You don’t like pipes, I think?” he said. “I forgot for the moment.”

  Toby sat down again in the big chair and smoked placidly. He intended to get an answer, and if it was unsatisfactory (if the worm turned and refused to go), he would have to consider whether he should or should not telegraph to Jack. He felt that this would be an extreme step, and hoped he should not have to take it.

  Lord Comber’s reflections were not enviable. To begin with, Toby had a most uncomfortable, angular mind and an attitude towards life which will not consent to be fitted into round holes nor adapt itself to nice easy compromises and tactful smoothings over of difficult places. He was all elbows, mentally considered — elbows and unbending joints. If he intended to carry his point, he would not meet one half-way; he held horrible threats over one’s head, which, if defied, he might easily carry out. His own argument he considered excellent. To telegraph to Jack implied that there was something to telegraph about, but this square, freckled brute could not or would not see it. It really was too exasperating. He himself conducted his own life so largely by the employment of tact, finesse, diplomacy (Toby would have called these lies), that it was most disconcerting to find himself i
n conflict with someone who not only did not employ them, but refused to recognise them as legitimate weapons. Indeed, he was in a dilemma. It was impossible to contemplate a telegram being sent to Jack: it was equally impossible to contemplate what would happen if Kit came and found him gone. And the annoyance of going, of missing this week with her, was immense. It gave him a sort of cachet to be seen staying with Kit alone at a watering-place. She was more indisputably than ever on a sort of pinnacle in his world this year, and everyone would think it so very daring. That was the sort of fame he really coveted — to be in the world’s eye doing rather risky things with an extremely smart woman.

  Moreover, in his selfish, superficial way, he was very fond of her. She was always amusing, and always ready to be amused; they laughed and chattered continually when they were alone, and a week with her was sure to be an excessively entertaining week. She had proposed that they should do this herself, and written a charming note, which he kept. “We shall be quite alone, and we won’t speak to a soul,” she had said. And that from Kit, who, as a rule, demanded a hundred thousand people around and about, was an immense compliment.

  But because all his thoughts as he debated these things, while Toby sat smoking, were quite contemptible, the struggle was no less difficult. A despicable man in a dilemma, though the motives and considerations which compose that dilemma are tawdry and ignoble, does not suffer less than a fine spirit, but, if anything, more, for he has no sustaining sense of duty to guide and reward him. Ted Comber’s happiness and pleasure in life, of which he had a great deal, was chiefly composed of trivial and unedifying ingredients, and to be intimate, not only privately, but also publicly, with Kit was one of them. And her unutterable brother-in-law sat smoking in his best armchair, after presenting his ultimatum. If a word from him would have sent Toby to Siberia, he would have gone. It would be a good deed to rid society of such an outrage.

  Again, yielding with a bad grace had its disadvantages, for though he had no personal liking for Toby, a great many people, with whom he desired to be on the best of terms, had. There were certain houses to which he liked to go where Toby was eminently at home, and though he had enemies in plenty, and thought little about them, Toby would be a most undesirable addition to them. He was perfectly capable of turning his back on one, assigning reasons, and of behaving with a brusqueness which ought, so Lord Comber thought, to be sufficient to ensure anybody’s being turned neck and crop out of those well-cushioned society chariots in which he lounged. But he knew very well, and cursed the unfairness of fate, that Toby’s social position was far firmer than his own, while, whereas he cared very much for it, Toby did not care at all. Ted made himself welcome because he took great pains to be pleasant and to amuse people, and had always a quantity of naughty little stories, which had to be whispered very quietly, and then laughed over very loud, but the whole affair was an effort, though its reward was worthy. Men, he knew, for the most part disliked him, and men are so terribly unreasonable. Once last year only, his name had been cut out of a house-party by his hostess’s absurd husband, and it was not well to multiply occasions for such untoward possibilities.

  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 to-morrow 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 to-morrow 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 th
e 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.