Toby was sitting on the edge of an old weather-beaten breakwater, now running out lop-sidedly and burying its nose in the sand, some three miles north of Stanborough-on-Sea, making an exceedingly public toilet after his swim.
His mother, old Lady Conybeare, had a charming house down here, which had, so to speak, risen from the ranks; in other words, it had originally been two cottages, and was now a sort of rustic palace. Her husband had been a man of extraordinary good taste, and both his idea and execution of this transformation was on the high-water mark of felicity. Brick with rough-cast was the delectable manner of it, and the old cottage chambers had been run one into another like the amalgamation of separate drops of quicksilver, to produce irregular-shaped rooms with fireplaces in odd corners. He had built out a wing on one side, a block on another, a dining-room on a third; the front-door was reached through a cloister open to the sea, and supported on brick pillars; and big green Spanish oil-jars and Venetian well-tops lined the terraced walk. Opposite the front-door, on the other side of the carriage sweep, was a monastic-looking, three-sided courtyard, bounded by low-arched cloisters, and an Italian tower, square and tapering towards the top, bisectedthe middle side. Close abutting on this was a charming huddled group of red roofs, with beaten ironwork in the windows, suggestive of the refectory of this seaside monastery. In reality it comprised a laundry, a bakehouse, and the dynamos which supplied the electric light. For there was in reality nothing unpleasantly monastic about the place; the cloisters were admirable shelters from sun or wind, and were heavily cushioned; the bell in the tower rang folk not to prime, but to dinner; and the peas were not put in visitors' boots, but boiled and put in dishes. The house, in fact, was as habitable as it was picturesque, a high degree of merit; it was no penance at all to stay there; the electric light seemed to brighten automatically as dusk fell, even as the moon and stars begin to shine without visible lamplighter in the high-roofed hall of heaven; and there were about as many bathrooms, with hot and cold water, as there were bedrooms.
Toby was putting on his socks very leisurely; he had been down for a dip in the sea before lunch, and having lit the post-ablutive cigarette, sweetest of all that burn, he threw his towel round his neck, took his coat on his arm, and walked slowly up the steep sandy pathway to the top of the fifty-foot cliff on which the house and garden stood. Several old fishermen were standing about at the top in nautical attitudes, hitching their trousers, folding their arms, and scanning the horizon like the chorus in light opera. One had a lately-taken haul, and Toby inspected his wares with much interest. There were lobsters in blue mail—angry and irritable, which glanced sideways at one like vicious horses looking for a good opening to kick—feebly-flapping soles,anæmic whiting, a few rainbow mackerel, and, oh, heavens! crabs.
Now, temptation and crab were the two things in the world which Toby found it idle to attempt to resist, and he ordered that the biggest and best should be sent instantly up to the house. Perhaps it would be safer if he took it himself, for the mere possibility of its miscarrying was not to be borne, and grasping it gingerly by the fourth leg, he carried it, not without nervousness, wide angry pincers all agape, up across the lawn.
He went through the cloister and in at the door leading to the servants' parts, where he met a stern, stark butler.
"Oh, Lowndes," he said, "for lunch, if possible. By the hind-leg. For the cook, with my compliments, and dressed."
The transference was effected, much to Toby's relief, and he put down his towel and on his coat. There was still half an hour to wait for lunch, but that cloud had now its proverbial silver lining. Half an hour seemed an impossible time, but the silver lining was the possibility of the crab being ready by then. How long a crab took dressing Toby did not know, but if it took no longer than he did himself—and there was more of him to dress—half an hour should be sufficient for two.
Lily, who, like himself, held firmly the wholesome creed that it is impious to stop indoors while it is possible to be out, was sure to be in the garden somewhere, and Toby walked out again in his white, sea-stained tennis-shoes to find her.
The cottage had risen from the ranks, but not less remarkable had been the promotion of the garden. What a few years ago had been an unprofitable acreageof wind-swept corn, and more suggestive, by reason of its fine poppy-bearing qualities, of an opium rather than a wheat-field, was become a flowery wilderness of delight. Buckthorn, gray and green like the olives of the South, and bearing berries as if of a jaundiced holly, had been planted in shrubberies in the centre of garden-beds as screens from the wind, robbing the sea-gales of their bitter saltness before they passed over the flowers, and letting the bracing quality alone reach the plants. Mixed with the buckthorn were the yellow flames of the golden elder, noblest of the English shrubs, and rows of aspen all a-quiver with nervous feminine energy. Thus sheltered, there ran on each side of a broad space of grass away from the house an avenue of herbaceous border. Hollyhocks and sunflowers stood up behind, like tall men looking over the heads of an average crowd; shoulder-high to them were single dahlias and scarlet salvias; below them again a row of Shirley poppies, delicate in tint and texture as Liberty fabrics, and in a happy plebeian crowd at the edge mignonette, love-lies-a-bleeding, London-pride, and double daisies.
Toby sauntered silent-footed over the velvet carpet of grass up to the summer-house, faced with split planks of pollarded elm, which stood at the end, but drew an unavailing cover. Thence crossing the broad gravel walk, he tried the tennis-court, and went down the steps past flowering fuchsia-trees, where two great bronze storks of Japanese work turned a world-weary eye skywards, and explored the rose-garden. This lay in a natural dip of the land, studiously sheltered, and the wirework pergola which ran through it was on these August days one foam of pink sherbet petals. On either side were rockeriescovered with creeping stonecrops, mountain-heaths, and Alpine gentians, those remote sentinels of the vegetable world. And strange to their blue eyes, accustomed to see morning break on paths untrodden of man and fields of flashing snow, must have been the soft hint of dawn in this land of tended green. But Toby saw them not, for there in a nook at the end, below an ivy-trained limb of tree, sat the queen of the rosebud garden.
Lily was not reading, in spite of the seeming evidence of an open book on her lap, for the breeze turned its leaves backwards and forwards like some student distractedly hunting up a reference. For a moment the page would lie open and unturned; then a scud of flying leaves would end in a long pause at p. 423; then one leaf would be turned very slowly, as if the unseen reader was perusing the last words very carefully, while his fingers pushed the page over to be ready for the next. Then with a bustle and scurry he would hurry on and study the advertisements at the end, and as like as not go suddenly back to the title-page.
Lily had been thinking pleasantly and idly about Toby, and the many charming things in this delightful world, when he appeared. She welcomed him with a smile in those adorable dark eyes.
"Had a nice dip?" she asked, as he sat down by her. "Oh, Toby, when we are married I shall devote my whole life to getting your hair tidy for once. Then I shall turn my face to the wall and softly expire."
"If that's your object you'll be aiming at the impossible," remarked Toby, "like that silly school-master you read me about in Browning who aimed at a million."
"Grammarian," corrected Lily, "and I'll read you no more Browning."
"Well, it does seem to be a bit above my head," said Toby, without regret. "And I bought a crab on my way up, and, oh, I love you!"
Lily laughed.
"I thought you were going to say, 'Oh, I love crab!'" she said.
"And that would be true, too," said Toby. "What a lot of true things there are, if one only looks for them!" he observed.
"That's what the Christian scientists say," remarked Lily. "They say there is no such thing as lies or evil or pain."
"Who are the Christian scientists?" asked Toby. "And what do they make of toothache?"
Lily meditated a moment.
"The Christian scientists are unsuccessful female practitioners," she observed at length. "And there isn't any toothache; it's only you who think so."
"Seems to me it's much the same thing," said Toby. "And how about lies? Supposing I said I didn't love you?"
"Or crab?"
"Or crab, even. Would that be true, therefore?"
Lily leaned forward, and put down Toby's tie, which was rising above his collar.
"Well, I think we've disposed of them," she said. "Oh dear, I wish I was a man!"
"I don't," said Toby.
"Why not? Oh, I see. Thanks. But I should like to be able to bathe from a breakwater, and buy crabs from fishermen, and have very short, untidy straight-up hair, and a profession, Toby."
"Yes," said Toby, wincing, for he knew or suspected what was coming.
"Don't say 'yes' like that. Say it as if you meant it."
Toby took a long breath, and shut his eyes.
"Yes, so help me God!" he said, very loud.
"That's better. Well, Toby, I want you—I really want you—to have a real profession. What is the use of your being secretary to your cousin? I don't believe you could say the names of the men in the Cabinet, and, as you once told me yourself, all you ever do there is to play stump-cricket in the secretary's room."
"You should have warned me that whatever I said would be used against me," said the injured Toby. "But I saw after the flowers in Hyde Park last year."
"The work of a life-time," said Lily. "I wonder they don't offer you a peerage."
"You see, I'm not a brewer," said Toby.
"Beer, beerage—a very poor joke, Toby."
"Very poor, and who made it? Besides, I think you are being sarcastic about the flowers in Hyde Park. If there's one thing I hate," said Toby violently, "it is cheap sarcasm."
"Who wouldn't be sarcastic when a great tousle-headed, able-bodied, freckle-faced scion of the aristocracy tells one that he is employed—employed, mark you—in looking after the flowers in Hyde Park?" asked Lily, with some warmth. "Why, you didn't even water them!"
"I did the organization, the head work of the thing," said Toby. "That's the rub."
"Bosh!"
"Lily, you are really very vulgar and common inyour language sometimes," said Toby. "I have often meant to speak to you about it; it makes me very unhappy."
"Indeed! Try and cheer up. But really, Toby, and quite seriously, I wish you would settle to do something; I don't care what. Go into the Foreign Office."
"Languages," said Toby; "I don't know any."
"Or some other office, or buy a farm, and work it properly, and try to make it pay. Give your mind seriously to something. I hate a loafer. Besides, a profession seems to me the greatest luxury in the world."
"Plain folk like me don't care for luxuries," said Toby. "I'm not like Kit. Kit is perfectly happy without the necessaries of life, provided she has the luxuries."
This diversion was more successful. Lily was silent a moment.
"Toby, I'm afraid I don't like your sister-in-law," she said at length.
Toby plunged with fervour into the new topic.
"Oh, there you make a great mistake," he said. "I allow Kit is not exactly a copy-book-virtue person, but—well, she's clever and amusing, and she is never a bore."
"I don't trust her."
"There, again, you make a mistake. I don't say that everybody should trust her, but I am sure she would never do a shabby thing to you or me, or——"
"Or?" said Lily, with the straightforwardness which Kit labelled "uncomfortable."
"Or anybody she really liked," said Toby. "Besides, Lily, I owe her something; she brought us together. As I have told you, she simply insistedon introducing me, though I didn't want to be introduced at all."
Lily made the sound which is usually written "pshaw!"
"As if we shouldn't have met!" she said. "Toby, our meeting was in better hands than hers."
"Well, she hurried the better hands up," said Toby, "and I am grateful for that. If it had not been for her, we should not have been introduced at that dance at the Hungarians, and I shouldn't probably have dined at Park Lane the night after; I should have gone to the Palace instead, so there would have been one, perhaps two, evenings wasted."
"Well, I'll make an effort to like her more," said Lily.
"Oh, but that's no manner of use," said Toby. "You may hold your breath, and shut your eyes, and try with both hands, and never get a yard nearer liking anybody for all your trying. And it's the same with disliking."
"Do you dislike anyone, Toby?" asked Lily, with a touch of wistfulness, for Toby's habit of universal friendliness always seemed to her extremely enviable.
Toby considered a moment.
"Yes," he said.
"Who is that?"
"Ted Comber," said Toby.
Lily drew her brows together. Toby's promptness in singling out this one person seemed hard to reconcile with his wide forbearance.
"Now why?" she asked. "Tell me exactly why."
"He ain't a man," said Toby gruffly. "Surely, Lily, we can talk about something pleasanter."
"Yes, I'm sure we can," she replied fervently. "I quite share your view. Oh, Toby, promise me something!"
"All right," said Toby, taken off his guard.
"Hurrah! that you will instantly get a profession of some sort. Dear Toby, how nice of you! There's the gong, and I'm simply ravenous."
Toby got up rather stiffly.
"If you consider that fair," he remarked, "I wonder at you. At least, I don't wonder, for it's extraordinary how little sense of honour women have."
"I know. Isn't it terrible?" said Lily. "Toby, it was nice of you to order that crab. I adore crab. Oh, there's mamma! I suppose she must have crossed last night. I didn't expect her till this evening."
Mrs. Murchison had been to the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth, and was very communicative and astounding about it. She began by saying how delicious it had been at Beyrout, and Lily, whose real and tender affection for her mother did not blunt her sense of humour, began to giggle helplessly.
"Bayreuth, I should say," continued Mrs. Murchison without a pause. "Lily dearest, if you laugh like that you'll get a piece of crab in your windgall. Well, as I was saying, Lady Conybeare, it was all just too beautiful. You may be sure I studied the music a good deal before each opera; it is impossible to grasp it otherwise—the life-motive and all that. Siegfried Wagner conducted; they gave him quite an ovarium. But some people go just in order to say they have been, without thinking about the music. Garibaldi to the general, I call it."
Lady Conybeare, a fresh-faced, dark-eyed woman of not more than fifty, healthy as a sea-wind, and inher wholesome way as tyrannical, cast an appealing look at Toby. Toby was one of the few people who did not in the least fear her, and she was proportionately grateful. She had tried to spoil him as a child, and now depended on him. He had warned her what calls would be made on her gravity during Mrs. Murchison's visit, and she had promised to do her best.
"So few people appreciate Garibaldi," she said with emphatic sympathy.
"Yes it is so," said Mrs. Murchison, flying off at a tangent. "When I was a girl I used to adore him, and wore a photograph of him in a locket. But that is all gone out; it went out with plain living and high thinking;" and she helped herself for the second time to Toby's crab and drank a little excellent Moselle.
"But Bayreuth was very fatiguing," she went on; "or is it Beyrout? Until one has heard the operas once, it is a terrible effort of attention.C'est le premier fois qui coûte.Really, I felt quite exhausted at the end of the circle, and I was so glad to get back to dear, delightful, foggy old London again, where one never has to attend to anything. And it looked so beautiful this morning as I drove down the Embankment. I see they have put up a new statue at the corner of Westminster Bridge—Queen Casabianca, or some such person."
Toby choked suddenly and violently.
"I've said something wrong, I expect," remarked Mrs. Murchison genially. "Tell me what it is, Lord Evelyn, or I should say Lord Toby."
"Toby, please."
"Well, Toby—— Dear me! how funny it sounds, considering I only saw you first in June!Ah, dear me, since first I saw your face, what a lot has happened! But if it's not Casabianca, who is it?"
"Boadicea, I think," said Toby.
"Dear me! so it is. How stupid of me! She comes in the Anglo-Saxon history, does she not? and she used to bleed beneath the Roman rods in the blue poetry book—or was it pink? I never can remember. But how it all comes back to one! Caractacus, too, and Alfred and the cakes, and the seven hills."
Mrs. Murchison beamed with happiness. She knew very well the difference between being a unit among a large house-party, and staying as an only guest, and this cottage by the sea seemed to her to be the very incarnation of the taste and culture of breeding. She knew also that several rich and aspiring acquaintances of hers were spending a week at Stanborough, and she proposed after lunch to stroll along the beach towards there, and perhaps call at the hotel on the links. Her friends were sure to ask where she was staying, and it would be charming to say:
"Oh, down at the cottage with Lady Conybeare. So delicious and rustic; there is no one there except Lily and dear Toby. Of course we are very happy about it. And don't you find a hotel quite intolerable?"
In the pause that followed Mrs. Murchison ran over her plans.
"What a charming place this is," she went on; "and how delightful to be near Stanborough! Lord Comber is there; he told me he was going on there from Beyrout. At the Links Hotel, I think he said."
Toby looked up.
"Is Comber there?" he asked. "Are you sure?"
His cheerful face had clouded, and his tone was peremptory.
"Of course I am sure," said Mrs. Murchison. "Dear me, how annoyed you look, Lord—I mean Toby. And I thought he was such a friend of your sister-in-law's and all. What is the matter?"
"Nothing—nothing at all," he said quickly.
But he looked at his mother and caught her eye.
"What a very odd place for Lord Comber to come to!" said Lily, who had grasped "watering-place" with greater distinctness than Mrs. Murchison.
"I am sure I don't see why," said she. "Stanborough is extremely bracing and fashionable. I saw they had quite a list of fashionable arrivals there in the World yesterday. Isn't it so, Toby?"
"Perhaps he has come to play golf," said Toby in a tone of resolute credulity.
"Golf?" asked Mrs. Murchison vaguely. "Oh, that's the game, isn't it, where you dig a sandpit, and then hit the ball into it and swear? So somebody told me. It sounds quite easy."
Toby laughed.
"A very accurate description," he said. "I'm going to play this afternoon. Hear me swear!"
Lady Conybeare rose, as they had finished lunch.
"Come and see me before you go out, Toby," she said.
Lily looked from one to the other, and saw the desire of a private word between them.
"Oh, mother, let me take you to the rose-garden!" she said. "Shall we have coffee there as usual, Lady Conybeare?"
"Yes, dear. Take your mother out."
The two left the room, and Lady Conybeare turned to Toby.
"Well, Toby," she said.
"I don't wish to be either indiscreet or absurd, mother," he answered.
"Nor I," said she. "Kit told me she was coming to Stanborough for a week, and I asked her, of course, to stay here. She said she had made arrangements to stay at the Links Hotel. Jack is not coming."
Toby made two bread pellets, and flicked them out of the window with extraordinary accuracy of aim.
"Damn Kit!" he said. "She comes to-morrow, and that beast, I suppose, came a day or two ago. I saw somebody in the distance the day before yesterday who reminded me of him, but I didn't give another thought to it. No doubt it was he."
There was a pause.
"But Jack——" said Lady Conybeare, and it cost her something to say it.
"Oh, Jack's a fool!" said Toby quickly. "You know that as well as I do, mother. Of course, he's awfully clever, and all that; but I'll be blowed if my wife ever stops at a seaside hotel with a Comber-man."
Lady Conybeare stretched out her hand.
"Thank God, I have you, Toby!" she said.
"What a fool Kit is!" said Toby thoughtfully. "There are hundreds of people there, as Mrs. Murchison says. Telegraph for Jack, mother," he said suddenly.
Lady Conybeare shook her head.
"We have no right, no reason to do that," shesaid. "Toby, take the thing in hand. Do your best."
Toby looked out of the window and hit an imaginary opponent with his closed fist.
"Perhaps we could manage something," he said. "Don't say a word to Lily, mother, or to Mrs. Murchison."
Lady Conybeare smiled rather bitterly.
"Nor wash my dirty linen in public," she said. "Is that my habit, dear?"
Toby got up and kissed his mother lightly on the forehead.
"I'll do my best," he said.
"I know you will."
And they went out to coffee in the rose-garden.
Half an hour later Toby was on his way to Stanborough, where he was to meet a friend at the club-house, and play a round of golf with him. As soon as that was over, he proposed to make a call at the Links Hotel and demand an interview with Ted Comber. Lily, in this as in all else above the common level of womankind, made no suggestion that she should come round with them. In fact, she voluntarily repudiated such a possibility.
"No proper man wants a girl hanging about when he is playing a game," she had said. "So if you ask me to come with you—if, in fact, you don't forbid me to—you'll be no proper man. Now, shall I come with you? I want to, awfully."
"Yes—I mean, no," said Toby, wavering, but deciding right.
Toby was playing with a friend after his own heart, who had just left Oxford, more to the regret of undergraduates than of tutors, and so presumably his departure was really regrettable. He was a hater of cities and five-o'clock teas, capable of riding whatever on this unruly earth had been foaled, but perfectly incapable of what he called "simpering and finesse," meaning thereby the pretty little social gifts. Furthermore, he was possessed of so much common-sense that at times he might have been unjustly suspectedof being clever. Him, as they played, Toby determined to consult under secrecy as to what must be done with the ineffable Comber, and "If Buck and I," thought he, "aren't a match for that scented man, I'll brush my teeth with my niblick. Lord, what a lark!"
Toby, it must be confessed, rather enjoyed the mission with which his mother had entrusted him. He was not naturally of a punitive or revengeful disposition, and, indeed, Lord Comber, had never done anything to him, except exist, which called for vengeance. But the thought of his discomfiture was sweet in his mouth, and, though he had not yet formed the vaguest idea as to how it was to be accomplished, he felt a serene confidence that he and Buck would be able to hatch something immensely unpleasant between them.
Here was no case, he thought gleefully to himself, that called for tact or diplomacy, or any lady-like little weapons, which Comber probably possessed. Brutal means must be used, and he should use them. He regretted intensely that both he and Comber were past the age when their difference could be settled with the straightforward simplicity which says, "Will you go of your own accord, or do you prefer to be kicked?" Dearly would he have liked that, for, indeed, his fists itched after the man.
Anyhow, the cause was good. Comber was to be sat upon, and Kit saved from making an egregious fool of herself. Married women of her age and appearance, reasoned Toby, do not stay alone with people like Comber at watering-places like Stanborough, and Kit's brother-in-law did not intend that she should do risky things of this description if he could prevent it. Toby's laudable determination onthis point was not due, it must be confessed, to moral scruples. He did not know, and he did not care to know, whether Kit's flirtation with this man was serious or not. But people, he was aware, talked about them, and certainly, if she and he stayed in a Stanborough hotel for a week in August together, people would have an excellent reason for talking. Still less had he any fancy, supposing the worst came to the worst, for seeing, as his mother said, Conybeare linen, marked very plain, in the public wash-tub.
Also he hated Comber with all the fine intensity with which a healthy, normal young man hates, and is right to hate, those smiling, wobbly, curled and scented of his sex, who powder themselves and take pills, and read ladies' papers, and are at their best (or worst) in a boudoir—lap-dogs of London. Some women, and perhaps their Creator knows why, appeared, so Toby thought, to like them. Kit liked Comber—here was an instance of it that thrust sore at him. Now, Jack was no saint (here again Toby was not judging on moral grounds), but he was a man. He would shoot straight or ride straight all day, and in the evening he would make himself, it might be, quite scandalously agreeable to other people's wives. It was not right, and Toby did not defend him, but, anyhow, he behaved like a male. That was where the difference lay.
He remembered how they had all howled at Kit when one evening she had announced that she was going to Stanborough for a week in August to get braced. No, she was not going to take any of her friends with her, and very likely she would not even take a maid. She proposed to live in some stark hotel swept by all the winds that blow, in a bedroom with only a small square of carpet, one damp sandytowel, and windows looking due north, and kept always wide open. She intended to bathe daily before breakfast in the cold, salt, terrible German Ocean, to sit and walk on the sands all day, and go to bed directly after an eggy high tea, about seven. She would have eggs with her tea, and eggs with her breakfast, and cold roast beef for lunch, and possibly beer. She would not go to stay with Jack's mother, which was the obvious thing to do, because the house was so comfortable, and she knew she would only sit indoors, and get up late and go to bed late if she did. She wanted to be cold and uncomfortable and early-birdish, and come back braced with a bronzed complexion like a sailor, and blowzy hair. It would be immensely healthy and exceedingly unpleasant.
Toby recollected these amazing plans of Kit's very precisely. Ted Comber, he also remembered, had been there when she had enunciated them, and when he asked if he might come too, had received an unqualified negative. Thus, whether Kit had or had not made this subsequent arrangement with him mattered not at all. If she had, the Perseus-Toby was coming hot-foot over the downs to deliver her from her self-forged fetters; and if Comber had come without being asked, still more peremptory should be his dismissal. What was to be done was clear to demonstration; how it must be done was a matter for council.
Toby found several friends at the club-house—it was of common occurrence that he found friends in casual and unlikely places—and got generally chaffed and slapped and offered various mixed and stimulating drinks warranted to improve his putting and shut the jaws of the bunkers. But in the course of time they got clear, and drove up the steep hill leadingto the first hole. Once started, Toby gave the outlines of the problem to Buck, who was highly and justifiably indignant with him.
"It's a shabby trick, Toby," he said, "to bring me up on to this fine turf under the pretence of playing golf, if you want to talk morals. Good God! fancy talking moral problems on a golf links! If this was a lawn-tennis court, and you were a parson, I could understand it."
"Oh, don't be a fool, Buck!" said Toby; "the whole thing is stated—I have told you all—in ten words, and you needn't allude to it again till we get in. Then you shall say what you advise me to do. But it must be settled to-day; my sister-in-law comes to-morrow. Just let it simmer."
Buck grunted, waggled, frowned heavily at his ball, and laid the iron shot dead.
"There, it's all rot saying that to think of something puts you off," said Toby. "Blast it all!" and his scudding half-topped ball ran very swiftly into the bunker.
"Of course, talking is one worse," said Buck, a little soothed.
Fifty yards separated the first green from the second tee, and Toby recapitulated the salient points of the problem. The man of few words answered nothing, and immediately afterwards drove a screamer.
These great sea-blown downs, over which the wind scours as shrill and salt as in a ship's rigging, are admirably predisposing towards lucidity of thought. The northern airs cleanse and vivify the brain; they set the blood trotting equably through the arteries, they tone down overstrung nerves, and raise the slack to the harmonious mean, and in a naturallysane mind lodged in an extremely sane body they produce extraordinarily well-balanced results. And golf above all human pursuits gives full play to what is known as the subliminal self, a fine phrase, denoting that occult and ruling factor in man's brain—unconscious thought. The body is fully and harmoniously occupied; so, too, the conscious mind. The eye measures a distance; the hand and muscles take its order, and direct the swinging of the club. Meantime that mysterious twin of entity, the inner brain, goes scenting along its private trails, without let or hindrance from the occupied conscious self. Each goes his own way, on roads, maybe, as diverse as those of Jekyll and Hyde, unharassed by the other. Once only in the round did Buck laugh in a loud and appreciative manner for no clear cause. His inner brain had caught a hare, and sent the message to the golfer.
It was still only a little after five when they returned to the club-house, and Toby ordered tea in a sequestered corner.
"Of course you'll go and call on this worm now," remarked Buck.
"Yes, that is what I meant to do. Got anything for me to say?"
"Toby, can you lie?"
"Like the devil, in a good cause."
"Well, tell the Comber man that you are coming to stay at the Links Hotel with your sister-in-law by her invitation. Do the thing properly, and be prodigal of details. It's a pity you have such a despicable imagination. Say that she wrote to you in despair because she would be bored to death with no one there to speak to, but that Conybeare insisted on her going. Nasty for the worm that? Eh?"
Toby pondered a moment.
"That's not up to much, Buck," he said. "It wouldn't drive the man away unless he went simply from pique. And supposing he tells me Kit didn't write to me? Perhaps he has had a letter from her saying what fun they'll have."
"Oh, of course, if he says you lie," said Buck suggestively.
"Do you know the man?" asked Toby with rapture. "He is quite beautiful, with curly hair, rings, and scent, and I expect, if we knew all, stays."
Buck, it is idle to blink the fact, spat on the ground.
"Yes, I know him," he said. "Hell is full of such. By the way, I haven't seen you since you were engaged to be married. What an idiotic thing to do!"
"That happens to be your opinion, does it?" asked Toby mildly.
"Yes. I'm delighted, really. Congratulations. But the plan doesn't seem to suit you."
"No; it's rotten," said Toby. "I want something certain. This easily might not come off."
"He's a real worm, is he?" asked Buck. "I only know him by sight."
"Genuine, hall-marked," said Toby.
"Well, then give him a chance. Oh, not a chance of getting off. I mean, give him a chance of lying to you. Tell him as news that Lady Conybeare is coming here to-morrow, and perhaps he may appear surprised to hear it. That will give you an opportunity. You can say things to him then."
"Yes, there's more sense in that," said Toby. "Oh! come and dine to-night."
"All right. Is the She there?"
"Yes; you'll like her."
Buck looked at him enviously.
"What infernal good luck you have, Toby!" he said.
"Oh, I know I have," said Toby. "Lily——"
"Don't know her yet. But about the worm. Probably there will be a row. You've got to frighten him away, remember that. Worms are always nervous."
"There'll be a row afterwards with Kit, I'm afraid," said Toby.
"Oh, certainly. But it's all for her good. Introduce me when she comes, and I'll say I have been her guardian angel."
Toby looked at Buck's strong brown face for a moment in silence.
"You'd look nice with wings and a night-shirt," he remarked. "Pity Raphael or one of those Johnnies isn't alive."
"If by Johnnies you refer to the Italian school of painters," said Buck, "it isn't worth while saying so."
"I know; that's why I didn't say so. Good-bye; I'm off to the Links Hotel. Dinner at eight."
Lord Comber was in, and would Toby come up to his sitting-room? He met him at the top of the stairs, like a perfect hostess, and took him down the broad passage, stopping once opposite a big glass to smooth his carefully-crimped hair. Then he took Toby's arm, and Toby bristled, for he did not thrust his hand inside the curve of his elbow and let it lie there, but inserted it very daintily and gently, as if he was threading a needle, with a slight pressure of his long fingers.
"It's quite too delightful to see you, Toby," hesaid; "and how splendid you are looking! I wish I could get as brown as that. You must let me do a sketch of you. Yes, I'm here all alone, and I've been terribly bored. I wonder if your mother would allow me to come and see her. Is Miss Murchison there, too?"
"Yes; she came a couple of days ago."
"How nice! I do want to see more of her. Everyone is frightfully jealous of you. And I hear your mother's house is quite beautiful. Round to the right."
Ted Comber firmly held the creed that if you flatter people and make yourself pleasant you can do anything with them. There is quite an astonishing amount of truth in it, but, like many other creeds, it does not contain the whole truth. It does not allow for the possible instance of two personalities being so antagonistic that every effort, even to be pleasant, on the part of the one merely renders it more obnoxious to the other. This is a very disconcerting sort of exception, and the fact that it may prove the rule is a very slight compensation, practically considered.
"You have some wonderful Burne-Jones drawings, someone told me," went on Ted, innocently driving the exception up to the hilt, so to speak, in his own blood. "Your father must have had such taste! It is so clever of people to see twenty years before what is going to be valuable. I wish I had known him. Here's my den."
Toby looked round the den in scarcely veiled horror. Daniel's den with all its lions, he thought, would be preferable to this. There was a French writing-table, and on it signed photographs of two or three women in silver frames, an empty inkstand,a gold-topped scent-bottle (not empty), and a small daintily-bound volume of French verse. Against the wall stood a sofa, smothered in cushions, and on it a mandolin with a blue ribbon. A very big low armchair stood near the sofa, on the arm of which was cast a piece of silk embroidery, the needle still sticking in it, a damning proof of the worker thereof. There was a large looking-glass over the fireplace, and on the chimney-piece stood two or three Saxe figures. A copy of the Gentlewoman and the Queen lay on the floor.
"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 rememberedvaguely 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 wasthat 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'tcontradict 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, angularmind 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 in 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 ofcachetto 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 entertainingweek. 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 andcrop 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."
"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!"
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 honestaccount of the property called the Carmel group, for no one knew better than Alington how excellent a policy honesty is, in moderation, and in the 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 onthe 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.
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 plansnearly 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. Dearme! 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 tomanage 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 writeit 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 like 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 hundredpounds 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."