Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  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 to-day 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 to-day 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.

  But the sequel to this unparalleled rise was even more remarkable. Buying, as had been stated, was much stimulated by the news of strong support in Australia (indeed, it was this that had been the signal for the rush); but about four o’clock, when the shares were at their highest, and some considerable realizations were being made, though the buying still went on, a sudden uneasiness was manifested. This was due to the fact that the telegram announcing the strong support in Australia was contradicted by another and later one, saying that the market in Carmel was absolutely inactive. Upon this, first a general distrust of the telegrams from the mine itself was manifested, and then literally in a few minutes a panic set in, as unaccountable as the previous rise; business came to a standstill, for in half an hour everyone was wanting to sell Carmel, and buyers could not be found. A few of the heaviest plungers cleared out, with thousands to their credit, but the majority of holders were caught. The shares became simply unnegotiable. The market closed on a scene of the wildest confusion, and when the Exchange was shut the street became impassable. To a late hour a mob of excited jobbers continued trying to sell, and just before going to press came a report that Mr. Alington, who had left town that day, but suddenly returned, was picking up all the shares he could lay hands on at a purely nominal figure. Settling-day, it would be remembered, occurred next week. A committee of the Stock Exchange was going to investigate the matter of the false telegram.

  Kit and Jack had come down to Goring that day to join Toby and his wife there. Kit was steadily gaining strength, but this evening, being a little tired, she had gone to bed before dinner, and now, dinner being just over, Lily had left the others to see how she was. Neither Jack nor Toby was given to sitting over wine, and as soon as Lily went upstairs, they removed into the hall to smoke. The evening paper had just come in, and Jack took it up with some eagerness, for his stake in Carmel was a large one. He read through the account of what had taken place quite quietly, and leaned back in his chair thinking. Unlike Lady Haslemere, a few nights ago, he did not let his cigarette go out. At length he spoke.

  “I expect I have gone smash, Toby,” he said. He threw him over the paper. “Read the account of what happened to-day on the Stock Exchange,” he added.

  Toby did not reply, but took the paper.

  “The only thing to be thankful for is that I didn’t sell out just before the panic,” remarked Jack.

  Toby read on in silence till he had finished it.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because it would look as if I had known that the first telegram was false. What extraordinary nerve Alington must have! Do you see that he has been buying every share he can lay hands on?”

  “I don’t understand about the first telegram,” said Toby.

  “Nor do I, thank God!”

  “Supposing it is a real smash, will you have lost much, Jack?”

  “Eight thousand pounds — more than that, indeed, unless the price goes up again before settling-day, for I’ve only paid for about half my shares.”

  Toby was silent a moment, wondering how Jack had ever had eight thousand pounds to invest of late years. The latter understood the silence, and acknowledged the justice of his difficulty.

  “I made three thousand over Carmel East and West,” he explained. “That with my year’s salary as director, makes eight. I invested it all, and bought more.”

  Toby looked up.

  “Did that fellow give you five thousand a year as director?” he asked.

  “That fellow did.”

  Toby whistled.

  “A committee of the Stock Exchange is going to investigate the whole affair, it appears,” he said. “Won’t that be rather unpleasant if they get into salaries?”

  “Exceedingly. Mind you don’t let Kit know, Toby, until one has more certain news.”

  He took a turn up and down the room in silence.

  “Extremely annoying,” he said, with laudable moderation; “and I can’t imagine what has happened, or who is responsible for the first telegram. Alington cannot have caused it to be sent merely to make the market active, for it was certain to be contradicted.”

  A man came into the room with a telegram on a salver, and handed it to Jack.

  “Reply paid, my lord,” he said.

  Jack turned it over in his hand without opening it, unable to make the effort. Then he suddenly tore it open, and unfolded the thin pink sheet. It was from Alington.

  “Can you meet me to-morrow morning at my rooms, St. James’s Street?” it ran.

  He scribbled an affirmative, and gave it back to the man.

  “I shall have to go up to-morrow,” he said to Toby; “Alington wants me to meet him in London; I shall go, of course. What a blessing one is a gentleman, and doesn’t scream and sweat! Now, not a word to anyone; it may not be as bad as it looks.”

  Jack started off early next morning, and drove straight to Alington’s rooms. Sounds of piano-playing came from upstairs, and this somehow gave him a sense of relief. �
�People in extremis do not play pianos,” he said to himself, as he mounted the stairs. Alington got up as soon as he came in.

  “I am glad you were able to come,” he said; “it was expedient — necessary almost — that I should see you.”

  “What has happened?” asked Jack.

  Mr. Alington took a telegram from his pocket, and handed it to him.

  “The unexpected — it always does: this, in fact.”

  Jack took it and read:

  “Chavasse left for England by P. and O. yesterday.”

  “You don’t understand, my dear Conybeare, do you?” he said. “It is a very short story, and quite a little romance in its way.”

  And, in a few words, he told Jack the story of the burglary, Chavasse’s confession, and his idea of using him as an independent operator in Australia.

  “I make no doubt what has occurred,” he said. “The man has drawn out the somewhat considerable balance I left at Melbourne for him to invest when ordered, and has taken it off with him. He has also, I expect, got hold of his own confession — a clever rogue.”