CHAPTERVI
Anyone who has engaged in the sale and purchase of land knows what a long business it is; but no one was in any hurry in the matter of the Paddenham Site. On the selling side there was a happy conviction that delay increases appetite and a fine faith in the staying powers of John K. Petre. As to the buyer, if indeed His Majesty (through and with the advice of that Secretary of his who happened for the moment to preside over the Board of Education) should have the good fortune to acquire the Paddenham Site, there was no need to betray violent hurry whatever eagerness the Department might be repressing in its gizzard. After all, it was other people’s money, and not a salary in the Department would be increased by a farthing, however advantageous the deal.
What did push things forward a little was the appearance in the market of an Anonymous Benefactor.
This excellent man proposed in a letter to the Public Press to purchase the Paddenham Site as an Open Space for the People, a new Lung for London. And he would stand the racket.
It was astonishing—considering he was anonymous—what a lot the papers had to say about him, and how loudly they praised his truly British generosity. From my own insufficient experience in these matters I should say that, counting one thing with another, the noise need not have cost more than £500; but it had the effect of thousands. There was opposition too. There were angry letters of protest against the object of the proposed benefaction, a sheer waste of land; but there were warm letters of approval from the public also, and there was even one very solemn communication, in which the Anonymous Benefactor gave it to be understood that the sum asked by the Paddenham Estate (for under that guise did Mr. Petre move, or rather Mr. Petre’s kindly friends) was satisfactory; and though it came to far more than another site which had been suggested, the central position was essential to it.
The Great Unknown remained a complete mystery. Those fantastic fools—happily few in our sane English world—who are for ever imagining vast conspiracies and deep-hidden plots, whispered that Messrs. Blake and Blake knew too much about it. They suspected even such absurdly innocent and obvious encounters as Charlie Terrard’s dining twice with one Editor and three times with another—as though in that world people did not constantly meet. They remarked that when Charlbury went off to France for a short holiday the excitement waned. In a word, they indulged in the maddest surmises and even affirmations. It was well for them that they did not print their libels. For our Courts of Justice are never more severe than in the due punishment of such monstrous defamations of well-established people.
The Department was not slow in discovering the sum which the Anonymous Benefactor was prepared to pay, and indeed were told all about it by many mutual friends of the Minister and the Anonymous Benefactor. It is the pride of our civil servants that they will do a job as thoroughly, without the incentive of private advantage, as any man of affairs would do for profit. And though they were not so basely impertinent as to seek who the Anonymous Benefactor might be (and after all, that was immaterial), they did find that he would be prepared to go to the neighborhood of three millions.
Now another adviser of His Majesty—no less a person than the Secretary of State who looks after expenditure, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (or to be strictly accurate, the young man who did all the hard work for the third of the Permanent Officials in the Treasury)—had marked one and a half millions as the very limit. There was a difference of one hundred per cent., and it did look for a moment as though the Anonymous Benefactor would have a walk-over. For he was evidently a man determined on his object, and apparently one of those sudden modern apparitions with visions in their heads and quite incredible sums in their pockets.
That £750 poet in the Education Department, who was keenest on the whole affair, the man who years before had started the idea of the C.P.C.T.G.D.P., the man who had already erected in his imagination all that mass of acoustic theaters, baths, miniature ranges, and above all, Dromes, through which the children of London should be passed in myriad relays (there also on great screens the ravages of alcohol upon the human body should be depicted in novel and more striking form), the man whom Providence had raised up to save our little ones and do Mr. Petre that exceedingly good turn, was distracted at the sudden peril of losing the Paddenham Site. It would be a cruel thing if his great dream were never to be realized!
Now this same humble individual had come, through Lady Gwryth, to know everybody—an excellent form of knowledge even in an educationalist. In the serious drawing-rooms a counter-offensive developed against the Anonymous Benefactor.
It was as well; for had the Anonymous Benefactor had it all his own way, it is terrible to think what would have happened to Mr. Charlbury, to Charlie Terrard, to the hard-faced man, and to all the host of little people who were ready for their pickings. As for what would have happened to Mr. Petre I dare not think of it. But at any rate, the Anonymous Benefactor, that mysterious, gigantic figure, lost the throw. After a good many questions in Parliament, two speeches and the threat of a Commission; after a joke or two in the Revues and on the Bench, a passionate protest from theMorning Post, a bleat from the Anti-Communist League and a fierce howl from the absurd Taxpayers’ Union, all the general routine of such affairs—the Paddenham Site issued an august communication in its turn and announced that it preferred the good of Education to its miserable pocket.
There was a very fine leader indeed in theMessenger, which I have myself cut out and keep framed before me upon the wall of my study, to cheer me when I come near to despairing of my fellow-men. His Grace (for it was His Grace who inspired that leader, though he did not actually write it, because he could not write consecutively), pointed out that such things only happened here and in America, and that they were characteristic of the Nordic Race and of the modern man of affairs; that the sacrifice was Idealist ... a peak.... But, indeed, I have no space for it all; at any rate, that leader in theMessengerwas calculated to lead to some later friendly relation between the Duke and Mr. John K. Petre; and would inevitably have done so, as the Duke intended it to do, had it not been for the fact that Mr. Petre suffered from so uneasy, so insane a panic, which grew upon him with every passing day.
He would meet no one. He refused to go out into the great world of Dukes and Gwryths and their sisters. He hid.
While these negotiations were toward he had, as may be believed, fled from the Splendide; for once more, less than a week after his return, he had seen Mephistopheles—only the back of him—striding towards the bar. He had taken refuge in the omniscience of Charles Terrard, and Charlie Terrard had found him rooms in the Temple under the convenient name of Patten. Henry Patten was painted on the door and Mr. Petre was at great pains to remember it. There for the moment he could feel a little more secure. Charlie Terrard had suggested, indeed, how pleasant it would be if they could share a flat, but Mr. Petre already appreciated the world in which Charlie Terrard moved, and he was about as inclined for that arrangement as a devout spinster in a country village is inclined for appearance upon the stage with song and dance.
He lay low. He visited his Hampshire lair continually. He prayed for peace—but how could peace come to a man who had lied so freely in pursuit of it?
The weeks went by without incident. He had signed what papers were put before him; he dreaded abominably the day when he would have to sign something else: when he would have to sign for money which was not there and to pay sums more than tenfold the capital at his command. But that day never came.
Incredible as it may seem to you, my chance reader, and to all those million sisters of yours who with so much difficulty earn real money which they pay in real form, across real counters, for food and permission to live, incredible as it may seem to professors of political economy, there is such an operation as selling without buying, and that blessed paradox was put in operation by Mr. Petre’s Guardian Dæmon with the greatest ease.
It was, to be accurate, upon the 17th of May that at last a letter was signed which bound the Education Department in bonds of iron—nothing as yet negotiable, but a sure and certain pledge of completion; and that bunch of honest fellows, Terrard and Charlbury and the hard-faced man, and I know not how many of their merry hangers-on entered into the fullness of their joy. Some even borrowed on the strength of it, for they were pressed; therefore did the Banks come to hear of it, and among others the Branch Bank where Mr. Petre’s huge current account, still well over £73,000, lay idle or rather earning money at usury for others.
The only man who had not heard the final news was the obstinately secluded Petre. He was in Hampshire again, lost; and none dared seek him. Anxiously did Terrard await his return; but when he did come up to the Temple, a few days later, it was too late in the evening for business.
Next day Mr. Petre sought the Bank early in the morning to draw a casual check for his trifling personal expenses (he was still a little nervous, but he was getting accustomed to the place), the young man in horn-rimmed spectacles with a face like the moon asked whether he could possibly see the Manager. Again a hairy terror passed through Mr. Petre’s being. But he nerved himself, and once more did he tread the carpet of that corridor, once more conducted by the leader of souls who had conducted him those weeks before; once more did he pass the three engravings; once more did he find the presiding godlet of the place, and there was still a fire, for May’s a bitter month and the Managers of Banks are sedentary men.
For a few moments he did not speak. He looked on that extraordinary man to whom seventy odd thousands were as small change, and who left such a sum on current account as your common lord leaves a rickety overdraft of seventy.
What doom was to fall upon him Mr. Petre knew not; but the face of his host reassured him, for though it was full of grandeur, as befitted his station, it was not malignant. It was even kindly, though its owner took care that it should not betray the too great respect which he felt for such a client’s presence.
“We have all heard the news, Mr. Petre,” he said, when they were alone.
Mr. Petre gulped.Hehadn’t heard any news!
“I congratulate you, Mr. Petre. It was a bold move.”
Mr. Petre inwardly agreed that it was—not to say temerarious—and the word “congratulate” relieved him, but he said nothing. He only smiled profoundly.
“I need not say that we are entirely at your disposal for any operation in connection with all that will follow?”
“Certainly,” said Mr. Petre in tones the firmness of which surprised him. “Certainly.” Though what it was that might follow left him bewildered.
“I should imagine everything will be settled before the end of the Session, eh?” continued the Master of Credit, or rather the high servant of those who are the ultimate masters of Credit.
“No doubt,” said Mr. Petre. “Yes, probably. In fact, obviously.” Then there was a silence.
“Well, Mr. Petre, I only asked you to be good enough to give me a few moments in order to put that before you. Ah! It is for you to judge.”
It was indeed! The Manager knew, as did all his world, the exceeding eccentricity of the millionaire, and dreaded to the last extremes of dread lest one chance word should lead to the sudden withdrawal of his favors.
“It is not for me to suggest it, Mr. Petre,” the voice went on, “but there is a large sum standing idle, Mr. Petre, a very large sum. And of course when this purchase goes through it will really be a very large sum indeed.... A much larger sum,” he added with a futility worthy of a better cause.
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre, catching a vague impression that there would undoubtedly be a very large sum indeed doing nothing, and in his name. His manner confirmed the impression that however large the sum it would pass through the same hands: and the Branch Bank was very pleased. It spoke and said:
“Government departments aren’t given to hurrying themselves, are they? Ha! Ha! But you must be glad they’ve made up their minds at last!”
Then Mr. Petre began to understand, though none too clearly. It seemed he had been saved again.
He saw the white beard wagging, he heard the voice continuing, in a new, persuasive tone:
“Ah, I don’t know, Mr. Petre, whether you have considered ...” and here the Manager pulled towards him a large publication with an elaborate cover, “whether you have considered the Magna Development Scheme? We think highly of it here, Mr. Petre. To tell you the full truth, the issue was made through us, and to be perfectly frank, we are ourselves engaged in the matter. I am not free to give you other names, but some of them are public property, Mr. Petre, public property. You will know them as well as I do. They are names to conjure with, Mr. Petre.”
He put on his spectacles, opened the elaborate cover, and looked over sundry pictures and curves, printed on that fine hand-made paper. He held the document so that Mr. Petre had a glimpse of photographs showing a beastly foreign land parched under a hellish sun, with blackamoors about. There was a map with rivers in blue, mostly dotted, and interrogation marks upon the everlasting hills. There was a portrait of a bounder in a pith helmet. It was revolting. The Manager was about to urge further arguments when there happened in Mr. Petre’s soul a surge of emotion for which he could not himself have accounted; perhaps it was his weariness and disgust with this successive business of blind actions. He might on a closer analysis have discovered that it had something to do with a new confidence born of the turn that this last blind action had taken. But I think it was more the effect of those photographs and of the pith helmet man. At any rate, that Ironic Spirit at work, to whom for a brief span the life of this distracted man had been given as a plaything, moved Mr. Petre’s mind to a pronouncement. He said with the same decision he had used a month before at Mrs. Cyril’s luncheon party, when first he had engaged upon that path which had led him so far:
“I won’t have anything to do with it.” He was surprised at his own abruptness.
The Manager looked up sharply. Mr. Petre was gazing into the fire, his face averted, and for half a second that face was inspected as closely as a face can be. The Manager decided that Mr. Petre was beyond him—and there the Manager was right.
“I must wait,” Mr. Petre had almost added, when he checked himself. Why should he tell any of these people anything? He hated these Magnas. He hated the sunburned wastes and the blackamoors. He wanted to get away. One thing he was determined on: he wouldn’t give reasons. That way catechism lay and in catechism exposure, and the end of all. He repeated doggedly: “I have made up my mind not to touch them! I won’t touch them! I won’t have anything to do with them!”
“Certainly, Mr. Petre, certainly,” said the Manager. “I quite understand. But you will let us know if anything....”
“Of course, of course,” said Mr. Petre, whatever the devil “anything” might be.
“Well then, my dear sir, it is quite understood, is it not? I need hardly say that you may draw upon us with perfect freedom,” and he laughed, a conventional laugh, as though the thing were too absurdly obvious to need saying.
“Yes, oh yes,” said Mr. Petre. His host made the slightest movement to rise; Mr. Petre took advantage of it, and rose himself to go. Indeed, he was in such haste to go that he left his hat behind him, and the Manager with a human gesture followed him almost quickly, and handed it to him before he got to the door. Mr. Petre thanked him, shook hands quite warmly and was gone. He went so fast that the conductor who acted as usher or dog for so great a man only just caught him up at the end of the corridor and bowed him out. And as he went out at top speed through the main building to the great swing doors of the Bank he was followed by fifty pairs of eyes from behind the grille which divides the Priests and Acolytes of Finance from the profane, and one man and another by pairs exchanged short sentences upon the judgment and the power and the glory of so many millions.
Mr. Petre could not escape, what no man can escape, the influence of his activities, even though these activities had been thrust upon him. He had fallen, alas! to looking at the financial columns of his paper. It had become a daily habit, though he was doing nothing with those regiments of names and figures; therefore on the day after his visit to the bank parlor his eyes caught the words “Magna Development,” and he read what they had to say. It seemed that Magnas were moving. It did not read like a puff, it read like sober chronicle.
There was the new report, and as he read it a faint breath—oh, a mere zephyr—of the Holy Spirit of Business, which he so gravely lacked, ruffled the surface of Mr. Petre’s soul. But the scent of that fetid air nauseated him. He read the prices as a decent man reads, from a kind of itch and against his better instincts, the exploitation of the gallows by our great modern Lords in their newspapers. He reads: but hates it the more as he reads. Till at last he burns the rag.
So felt Mr. Petre as he watched Magnas moving.
When a big thing moves it does not move like Touaregs, that flighty Gallic-African stock; it moves as moves the mighty Pachyderm, in a solemn ascentional surge like a herd of elephants breasting a hill; it moves as a great volume of water might move, as a tide flooding into harbor. So moved Magnas all that day, and I cannot conceal it from you that Mr. Petre went so far as to buy an evening paper at what I might call the close of play; he had not looked at a tape as yet—and, indeed, he never came to that. The interest was momentary; the disgust permanent. He soon relapsed into his fixed mood of anxious inward searching, and when buying and selling obtruded themselves they were soon swallowed up in that repeated torturing riddle the Sphinx had set him. Who am I? Who are mine?
That same evening he was to meet Terrard in order to hear the last details of the Paddenham Site scheme, and they were to dine together.
It was all very well to defend himself with isolation, but he had been too lonely, and so long as they dined where no one could see them he was glad of companionship. The dinner was in his own rooms; small, simple and bad. After the meal Terrard said to him casually, “What do you think of Magnas?”
“Don’t mention them!” Mr. Petre answered angrily. Terrard looked up astonished. He had never heard that emotion in Mr. Petre’s voice before. But, indeed, that excellent man was overtaxed. He had a feeling of being driven, a feeling that if he was to do anything more he would do it on his own. He had had enough.
Charlie Terrard obeyed the implication and was silent; then talked of other things. He gave him the date when the whole of the Paddenham Site affair would be wound up, and the Government money paid over. He asked him whether he would care to look at the figures. Mr. Petre sighed, said he would, meaning that it had to be done; but how willingly he would have foregone the task! He said it vacantly enough, for indeed he was weary of the thing, now that it had come to fruition, and not even yet had he grasped the full meaning of that enormous affair. Rather did his mind continue to dwell on Magnas, like an ache; and while Charlie Terrard was putting scattered sheets out upon the table with sundry jottings upon them in pencil the older man was wondering whether he could not be rid of all, now that his future was more than assured. With the end of the session—when the end of the Paddenham Site purchase had gone through—he would bolt and be at peace. Till then the less doing the more his chafed soul was eased. This and nothing but this occupied that poor afflicted mind, even while Terrard was trying to call his attention to the vast sums before him.
Mr. Petre made an effort, looked wearily at the penciled marks, and grasped the figures they conveyed, but not their social meaning.
“There is the net,” said Charlie Terrard, and he pointed to the scribbled, but legible seven figures. “That of course is after deducting your purchase price, plus the commissions and stamps and all the rest of it; only from the balance, apart from the frills you have got to take, of course, what Bannister’s bill will come to, and then there are the 1932 duties, as we call them.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre blankly.
“So with what the completion will have come to, and what this Government purchase comes to, and the stamps and the rest, the total is here. That is where you stand on it,” and Mr. Petre read with weary eyes the penciled marks which meant £1,032,405 8s. 10d. He did not add to it mentally the lump that remained out of the original £73,000 odd. He did not contrast that original lump with the very much larger lump that would be through by August when Parliament had risen and the deal had gone through to its last detail; he simply saw the figures, and he was tired of them.
“It’s just possible,” said Terrard, “that you may be questioning some of these items,” and he pointed to another litany of figures and frowned intelligently. “Now this little separate batch of deductions....”
Mr. Petre waved him off; he was not questioning those deductions, or anything else. They were the pickings that the crowd had made—out of his money; and they were welcome. He nodded solemnly as one item after another was ticked off for him—commission this, commission that; expense this, expense that; and traveling and printing and advertising. He heard Terrard’s voice concluding after the litany:
“It might have been simpler to put the whole thing down in a lump and then give you the details for inspection; but I thought you would like to see all the items.” And poor Mr. Petre said, “Yes,” though he would willingly have given ten shillings or even a pound to be free of the bother and know simply that it was—what was it? He looked again, £1,032,405 8s. 10d. He continued to nod mechanically as the pencil went on ticking off. Terrard had expected no opposition; he knew by this time the strange mentality with which he had to deal; yet even he was surprised. I am sorry to say that in his heart of hearts he wondered whether that litany might not have been swelled and the pickings increased. Indeed, they might have been for all Mr. Petre would have cared.
Terrard, dealing with the mere record of such wealth was not fully in control of himself. The pencil trembled; but as for Mr. Petre, I readily believe that if the conversation had concluded by Terrard’s telling him that some hitch had prevented realization after all, and that this vast sum had vanished, his mind would have remained unchanged.
“Would you like to keep the notes,” said Terrard, “or shall I have a copy made of them?”
“Oh, have a copy made of them,” answered Mr. Petre carelessly, as he said good-night, “and send it along when you like.”
Terrard, as he went slowly down the stone stairs, his hand upon the ancient iron railing of that ancient Row, was absorbed in this further question: What was Petre up to in the matter of Magnas? Why such a prompt rejection? Why so violent? He stopped twice on his way down to try and think it out. He decided that probably the old fox was buying under some other name. He came to a determination that, high as the stock had gone that day, he would be the first on the market to-morrow.
In the rather somber Bloomsbury house which the Manager of the Branch Bank honored with his habitation that same question was proposing itself for submission, and the brain that dealt with it had come to a conclusion not very different. So emphatic a declaration could only mean that Mr. Petre had not yet bought Magnas, or why crab them? But certainly he was about to buy—or why crab them? He smiled as he thought of the different tale Mr. Petre would be telling people about Magnas on the morrow. Therefore, said the Manager to himself, he had been wise to buy more Magnas himself, as he had done, the very moment Mr. Petre had left his parlor. He was justified; we know that Magnas moved all that morrow. Their rise confirmed two men—and more—in their admiration of a genius who could marry the commonest tricks to unheard-of rapidity and daring.
The following morning Charlie Terrard bought. Magnas were still moving; not blazing, not soaring, but comfortably going up and up with dignity and precision. And so they ought; for the report was true and the position sound; and for five days the thing went on, and after that, though the pace slackened, the rise slowly continued. Then a halt. Distant in space, each knowing nothing of the other, two men had one thought: Terrard and the Manager each grasped with subtle perception that the old goat Petre was cautiously beginning to sell. They also sold. That moment was followed by a slight fall, and then another halt. But Terrard had not touched them again. He had made a nice little packet. Charlbury, I fear, had neither bought nor sold, for Terrard had had no occasion to speak to him. As for the Bank Manager, he also wisely abstained. Each man as he took his profits wished ardently, but with a useless curiosity, that some one could tell him how, and in what amount, and through whom, the eccentric millionaire had acted, and whathisprofit had been. But the eccentric millionaire, the old goat, the fox, was otherwise engaged. He had fled for silence to the chalk uplands, worshiping the spring and drinking in the morning.
When a little later one of his innumerable hostesses had taken Charlie Terrard aside, and had implored him to tell her what Petre was doing (“You are the only man who knows,” she had said, archly, damn her!) Terrard with a look of too much wisdom had protested that he didn’t know. When the private deal in Magnas was over and the general appreciation of the stock and the benefit it had produced to the house he served was discussed in the Bank parlor, the Master of that place smiled meaningly at his subordinate and said that Petre was a curious man. And the subordinate had smiled back, and both of them in their hearts very firmly believed that they had laid bare the secrets of that mighty heart.
The summer and its London season rose to their climax through June and into July. The end of the session approached. Mr. Petre was less and less to be seen. Three splendid attacks by Mrs. Cyril failed; the third with heavy loss. A forlorn hope led by a First Secretary’s wife, issuing from the American Embassy, was cut off and wiped out to the last woman.
Mr. Petre grew a shell. He was the despair of Terrard.
That young gentleman was happy enough all the same, and so he ought to be! The dogs also get the crumbs that fall from the table, and considering the scale of his intelligence, he was a lucky dog. He rode in the magnificent car which the Hooter people had forced on Mr. Petre with two chauffeurs and garage complete—to the huge discomfiture of the Paramount people, who spread the perfectly true rumor that it was a gift for advertisement. He moved into a very sumptuous flat. He got engaged to Dada Beeston, who had refused him fifteen times. She had thought better of it; he even promised to introduce her to the Midas and to turn her own dross into gold, which was beyond his power. He floated on a sea of Petre. But Petre himself had grown invisible. Terrard saw him frequently enough, putting all his business through and winding up the Paddenham Site affair. But that was not enough. Terrard wanted to display the animal; he boasted of him. All the smart women regarded Charlie as the keeper. They pestered him with their invitations. They put down the silence and absence of the millionaire to some scheme of poor Charlie’s own, whereas poor Charlie was dying to trot him out. But whether it was that so incredible an access of fortune had in some way strengthened him, or whether it was that long strain had turned him inward upon himself, Mr. Petre was adamant; he would not move. He took the air solemnly when he was in town in the Temple Gardens an hour a day; and even so, passed back and forth in short stretches to keep his eyes on the dangerous human species and be ready for immediate flight. And Charlie Terrard knew that it was as much as his place was worth to disturb him then. Long intervals he spent in his country retreat, where his old false name still held and where he was secure. Yet even here his accursed fate pursued him. He had now taken the rooms at the inn by the year, and the landlady, treating him as a god, could not but gossip and wonder; for why should a man to whom money seemed to be nothing bring his splendor beneath her roof? When he found that she had gossiped he did an odd thing; he paid her an astonishing percentage and told her it would cease on the day when he heard that the gossip had been renewed.
Dada BeestonDada Beeston (Dorothea Madua, second and younger daughter of Henry, 10th Baron Beeston, of Beeston Abbey, Beeston, Rutlandshire; and of Desirée Waldschwein, his wife).
Dada Beeston (Dorothea Madua, second and younger daughter of Henry, 10th Baron Beeston, of Beeston Abbey, Beeston, Rutlandshire; and of Desirée Waldschwein, his wife).
So even in that tiny Hampshire village all tittle-tattle about the man was stopped dead.
Terrard did not dare reveal Mr. Petre’s Temple address and name to the hunters. Mr. Petre had succeeded in making himself of his own volition in his new life what apparently he had made of himself in his old life: a man entirely remote from mankind, inaccessible, unknown.
For all his researches—and he had tried desperately and well—told him no more of John K. Petre than all the world knew. And at times he caught himself wondering whether indeed he were he.
Go back and inquire in the States themselves he dared not. If here in England questions were to be fled—what would it be there? Come, he would wait. Some day in a flash his soul would return to him.