Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  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 l
ike 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.

  “It is granted willingly,” he said. “But please, my dear Conybeare, do not make such mistakes in the future. Let me ask you to assume that I am sincere till you have the vaguest cause for supposing I am not. The English law assumes a man’s innocence till he is proved guilty. That is all I ask. Treat me as you would treat a suspect. But when you have such cause, please come to me and state it. Much harm can be done by nursing a suspicion, by not trying to clear it up. Harm, you will remember, was nearly done to me in that way before. Luckily, I had an opportunity of explaining her error to Lady Conybeare.”

  Jack had an uncomfortable sense that this man, for all the blandness of his respectability, could show claws. He suspected that claws had been shown quite unmistakably to Kit on the occasion to which Mr. Alington so delicately alluded, for she had come upstairs, after her talk with him in the hall, with the distinct appearance of having been severely scratched. But Mr. Alington only paused long enough to let the bare justice of his demand sink in.

  “Let me explain,” he went on. “You have suspected me of insincerity, and, luckily, you have stated your suspicion with great frankness, beyond the reach of mistake. This is my case: I wanted very much an article by Metcalfe in the City Journal, and when he called that morning, I was prepared to pay as much as two hundred pounds for it, but not more. Eventually I paid him four hundred pounds, twice that sum, partly, no doubt, because it was necessary that he should not be able to say that I had attempted to bribe him; but I must demand that you believe that the fact of my thereby giving the young fellow a good chance made me pay that sum willingly. I did not haggle over it, though I am perfectly certain I could have got what I wanted for less. You believe this?”

  Jack found himself saying that he believed this, and Mr. Alington grew even more silken and seraphic.

  “I was delighted to do it,” he said, “and in my private accounts I have entered two hundred and fifty pounds as a cheque to Metcalfe senior for business purposes, one hundred and fifty pounds as charity. It was charity. I entered it as such.”

  “Certainly you must have made a friend of Metcalfe senior, and junior if he only knew,” said Jack.

  “Yes, I am delighted to have done so. I have also incidentally made Metcalfe senior a — a confederate. From a business point of view that also pleases me. How marvellously all things work together for good! It comes in the morning lesson to-day.”

  Jack felt it difficult to know what decorum demanded of him. Bribing and the morning lesson in one breath were a little hard to reconcile. But if you have assumed and stated that you believe a man to be an actor, and if he assures you he is not, and you beg his pardon, it must be understood that you accept his bonâ fides. At any rate, you have to appear to do so, and Jack, who did not consider himself more than an amateur, found the task difficult, under the eye of one who was capable of such astonishing histrionic feats, who could act so containedly before no scenery and a sceptical audience. That unctuous voice quoting the lesson for the day was a miracle, and the miracle, like that of the barren fig-tree, seemed so unnecessary. However, everyone has an inalienable right to pose, and it is the point of good manners to assume that nobody exercises it.

  Mr. Alington rose with a sort of soft alacrity, and walked across to the window. Sheets of rain were still flung against the streaming panes, and the glory of the garden was battered and beaten. A thick vapour, half steam, half mist, rose from the water of the river, warmed by its summer travel, but his careful eye detected a break on the horizon.

  “We shall have a fine afternoon,” he said to Jack. “With your leave, therefore, I will get the prospectus, for I shall be glad to run over a few points with you.”

  Jack looked out over the drenched landscape.

  “I bet you a sovereign it does not clear,” he said.

  Mr. Alington took a little green morocco note-book from his pocket.

  “Done, my dear fellow,” he said. “I will just record it. You will certainly lose. I would have given you two to one, if you had asked it.”

  He left the room, and in a few minutes returned with a sheaf of papers.

  “Now, if you will give me your attention for half an hour or so,” he said, “I will tell you all that you, as a director, need know.”

  “And as a shareholder?” asked Jack.

  Mr. Alington rattled his gold pencil-case between his teeth. He felt disposed to trust his chairman a good long way, and, ignoring the scruple-voice, “Yes, I will tell you that also,” he said. “But keep the two well apart, my dear Conybeare.”

  CHAPTER XV. THE WEEK BY THE SEA

  Toby thought it wise to call at the Links Hotel on the morning following his interview with Lord Comber, to make sure of the result of his interference, while Buck waited and grinned in the garden. They both of them wanted to bet that the worm had kept his word and gone, and both were willing to lay odds on it, and thus no wager was possible. Toby’s face was agape with smiles when he came back, and they both laughed for a full minute behind a laurel-bush.

  This was satisfactory, everybody was pleased, and it was not the least unlikely that Lord Comber himself at that moment was laughing too. He had heard from Kit the same evening in reply to his telegram that she would start for Aldeburgh (not Stanborough) next morning. All his neat and nasty little embroideries and Dresden china, his violet powder, scent-bottles, manicure brushes, and little vellum-bound indecencies of French verse, had been packed the same evening by his man, and he left Stanborough and the bowing proprietor of the Links Hotel in excellent spirits, with a new number of the Queen. Kit (she really was so clever about those things) had appeared in a gown exactly like one that was to-day
given as a novelty in the paper a full three months before, and remarkably well she had looked in it. It was of pale lilac satin — Ted always knew how dresses were made — trimmed with point-lace, and straps of narrow black velvet. The bottom of the skirt was outlined with a scroll-patterned lace insertion, and cut into scallops to fit the lace. There was a mantle which went with it — perhaps the Queen would get hold of that in another month or two — which had suited Kit admirably: whatever Kit wore suited her. He felt quite proud to know a woman who antedated novelties in this way. Art as reflected in the fashion papers may be long; art on the same authority was always late if you took your time from Kit.

  Packing and travelling by slow cross-country trains was naturally a nuisance, but, after all, how right Toby had been, thought Ted, though for wrong reasons. Stanborough was too full, and full of the wrong sort of people, those, in fact, who fill their suburban minds with the movements of the aristocracy, and he did not care at all that he should be renowned in suburban circles for doing risky things with smart women. Yes, how right Toby had been, and how marvellously had his scheme miscarried. Really, that sort of interference ought to be punishable; it was a brutal moral assault, and people ought to be taken up for such things, just as if they had kicked their wives. It was a crime with violence, and the cat, he believed, had been used with success on ruffians no more dastardly. Toby fully deserved the cat, and Lord Comber would have laughed to see him get it. Yet there was a distinctly amusing side to the affair, and it was really not possible to be angry for long with such feeble and futile attempts to interfere with his liberty and Kit’s. That red-headed, freckle-faced brother-in-law, with his large hands and idiotic smile, would be violently hitting little golf-balls over the down this morning, thinking to himself how exceedingly clever he had been, and what a fine manly fellow he was. Lord Comber hated fine manly fellows, and they returned the compliment. It would be very amusing to tell Kit all about it. How she would scream! Perhaps they might arrange some delicate and devilish revenge together on Toby, something really nasty which would rankle. And the most amusing thing was that Kit and he had gained their point, namely, a week at the seaside together, seeming all the time to have yielded. He had avoided quarrelling with Toby, and had left him, victorious himself, to think that all the honours of the field were his.