At the upper end of the room a low platform served as a safe retreatfor sleepy chaperons on such occasions as the annual Ferriby ball.To-night there were no chaperons. Is not charity the safest as well asthe most lenient of these? And does her wing not cover a multitude ofindiscretions?
Upon this platform there now appeared, amid palms and chrysanthemums, a long, rotund man like a bolster. He held a paper in his hand and wore a platform smile. His attitude was that of one who hesitated to demand silence from so well-bred a throng. His high, narrow forehead shone in the light of the candelabra. This was Lord Ferriby—a man whose best friend did his best for him in describing him as well-meaning. He gave a cough which had sufficient significance in it to command a momentary quiet. During the silence, a well-dressed parson stood on tiptoe and whispered something in Lord Ferriby's ear. The suggestion, whatever it may have been, was negated by the speaker on receipt of a warning shake of the head from Joan.
“Er—ladies and gentlemen,” said Lord Ferriby, and gained the necessary silence. “Er—you all know the purpose of our meeting here to-night. You all know that Lady Ferriby and myself are much honoured by your presence here. And—er—I am sure——” He did not, however, appear to be quite sure, for he consulted his paper, and the colonial bishop near the yellow chrysanthemums said, “Hear, hear!”
“And I am sure that we are, one and all, actuated by a burning desire to relieve the terrible distress which has been going on unknown to us in our very midst.”
“He has missed out half a page,” said Joan to Major White, who somehow found himself at her side again.
“This is no place, and we have at the moment no time, to go into the details of the manufacture of malgamite. Suffice it to say, that such a—er—composition exists, and that it is a necessity in the manufacture of paper. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the painful fact has been brought to light by my friend Mr. Roden——” His lordship paused, and looked round with a half-fledged bow, but failed to find Roden.
“By—er—Mr. Roden that the manufacture of malgamite is one of the deadliest of industries. In fact, the makers of malgamite, and fortunately they are comparatively few in number, stricken as they are by a corroding disease, occupy in our midst the—er—place of the lepers of the Bible.”
Here Lord Ferriby bowed affably to the bishop, as if to say, “And that is whereyoucome in.”
“We—er—live in an age,” went on Lord Ferriby—and the practical Joan nodded her head to indicate that he was on the right track now—“when charity is no longer a matter of sentiment, but rather a very practical and forcible power in the world. We do not ask your assistance in a vague and visionary crusade against suffering. We ask you to help us in the development of a definite scheme for the amelioration of the condition of our fellow-beings.”
Lord Ferriby spoke not with the ease of long practice, but with the assurance of one accustomed to being heard with patience. He now waited for the applause to die away.
“Who put him up to it?” Major White asked Joan.
“Mr. Roden wrote the speech, and I taught it to papa,” was the answer.
At this moment Cornish hurried up in his busy way. Indeed, these people seemed to have little time on their hands. They belonged to a generation which is much addicted to unnecessary haste.
“Seen Roden?” he asked, addressing his question to Joan and her companion jointly.
“Never in my life,” answered Major White. “Is he worth seeing?”
But Cornish hurried away again. Lord Ferriby was still speaking, but he seemed to have lost the ear of his audience, and had lapsed into generalities. A few who were near the platform listened attentively enough. Some who hoped that they were to be asked to speak applauded hurriedly and finally whenever the speaker paused to take breath.
The world is full of people who will not give their money, but offer readily enough what they call their “time” to a good cause. Lord Ferriby was lavish with his “time,” and liked to pass it in hearing the sound of his own voice. Every social circle has its talkers, who hang upon each other's periods in expectance of the moment when they can successfully push in their own word. Lord Ferriby, looking round upon faces well known to him, saw half a dozen men who spoke upon all occasions with a sublime indifference to the fact that they knew nothing of the subject in hand. With the least encouragement any one of them would have stepped on to the platform bubbling over with eloquence. Lord Ferriby was quite clever enough to perceive the danger. He must go on talking until Roden was found. Had not the pushing parson already intimated in a whisper that he had a few earnest thoughts in his mind which he would be glad to get off?
Lord Ferriby knew those earnest thoughts, and their inevitable tendency to send the audience to the refreshment-room, where, as Lady Ferriby's husband, he suspected poverty in the land.
“Is not Mr. Cornish going to speak?” a young lady eagerly inquired of Joan. She was a young lady who wore spectacles and scorned a fringe—a dangerous course of conduct for any young woman to follow. But she made up for natural and physical deficiencies by an excess of that zeal which Talleyrand deplored.
“I think not,” answered Joan. “He never speaks in public, you know.”
“I wonder why?” said the young lady, sharply and rather angrily.
Joan shrugged her shoulders and laughed. She sometimes wondered why herself, but Tony had never satisfied her curiosity. The young lady moved away and talked to others of the same matter. There were quite a number of people in the room who wanted to know why Tony Cornish did not speak, and wished he would. The way to rule the world is to make it want something, and keep it wanting.
“I make so bold as to hope,” Lord Ferriby was saying, “that when sufficient publicity has been given to our scheme we shall be able to raise the necessary funds. In the fulness of this hope, I have ventured to jot down the names of certain gentlemen who have been kind enough to assume the trusteeship. I propose, therefore, that the trustees of the Malgamite Fund shall be—er—myself——”
Like a practiced speaker, Lord Ferriby paused for the applause which duly followed. And certain elderly gentlemen, who had been young when Marmaduke Ferriby was young, looked with much interest at the pictures on the wall. That Lord Ferriby should assume the directorship of a great charity was to send that charity on its way rejoicing. He stood smiling benevolently and condescendingly down upon the faces turned towards him, and rejoiced inwardly over these glorious obsequies of a wild and deplorable past.
“Mr. Anthony Cornish,” he read out, and applause made itself heard again.
“Major White.”
And the listeners turned round and stared at that hero, whom they discovered calmly and stolidly entrenched behind the eye-glass, his broad, tanned face surmounting a shirt front of abnormal width.
“Herr von Holzen.”
No one seemed to know Herr von Holzen, or to care much whether he existed or not.
“And—my—er—friend—the originator of this great scheme—the man whom we all look up to as the benefactor of a most miserable class of men—Mr. Percy Roden.”
Lord Ferriby meant the listeners to applaud, and they did so, although they had never heard the name before. He folded the paper held in his hand, and indicated by his manner that he had for the moment nothing more to say. From his point of advantage he scanned the whole length of the large room, evidently seeking some one. Anthony Cornish had been the second name mentioned, and the majority hoped that it was he who was to speak next. They anticipated that he, at all events, would be lively, and in addition to this recommendation there hovered round his name that mysterious charm which is in itself a subtle form of notoriety. People said of Tony Cornish that he would get on in the world; and upon this slender ladder he had attained social success.
But Cornish was not in the room, and after waiting a few moments, Lord Ferriby came down from the platform, and joined some of the groups of persons in the large room. For already the audience was breaking up into small parties, and the majority, it is to be feared, were by now talking of other matters. In these days we cannot afford to give sufficient time to any one object to do that object or ourselves any lasting good.
Presently there was a stir at the door, and Cornish entered the large room, followed leisurely by a tired-looking man, for whom the idlers near the doorway seemed instinctively to make way. This man was tall, square-shouldered, and loose of limb. He had smooth dark hair, and carried his head thrown rather back from the neck. His eyes were dark, and the fact that a considerable line of white was visible beneath the pupil imparted to his whole being an air of physical delicacy suggestive of a constant feeling of fatigue.
“Who is this?” asked Major White, aroused to a sense of stolid curiosity which few of his fellow-men had the power of awakening.
“Oh, that,” said Joan, looking towards the door—“that is Mr. Percy Roden.”
“Pour être heureux, il ne faut avoir rien à oublier.”
There is in the atmosphere of the Hotel of the Vieux Doelen at The Hague something as old-world, as quiet and peaceful, as there is in the very name of this historic house. The stairs are softly carpeted; the great rooms are hung with tapestry, and otherwise decorated in a massive and somewhat gloomy style, little affected in the newercaravanserais. The house itself, more than three hundred years old, is of dark red brick with facings of stone, long since worn by wind and weather. The windows are enormous, and would appear abnormal in any other city but this. The Hotel of the Old Shooting gallery stands on the Toornoifeld and the unobservant may pass by without distinguishing it from the private houses on either side. This, indeed, is not so much a house of hasty rest for the passing traveler as it is a halting-place for that great army which is ever moving quietly on and on through the cities of the Old World—the corps diplomatique—the army whose greatest victory is peace. The traveller passing a night or two at the hotel may well be faintly surprised at the atmosphere in which he finds himself. If he be what is called a practical man, he will probably shake his head forebodingly over the prospects of the proprietor. There seems, indeed, to be a singular dearth of visitors. The winding stairs are nearly always deserted. Thesalonis empty. There are no sounds of life, no trunks in the hall, and no idlers at the door. And yet at the hour of thetable d'hôtequiet doors are opened, and quiet men emerge from rooms that seemed before to be uninhabited. They are mostly smooth-haired men with a pensive reserve of manner, a certain polished cosmopolitan air, and the inevitable frock-coat. They bow gravely to each other, and seat themselves at separate tables. As often as not they produce books or newspapers, and read during the solemn meal. It is as well to watch these men and take note of them. Many of them are grey-headed. No one of them is young. But they are beginners, mere apprentices, at a very difficult trade, and in the days to come they will have the making of the history of Europe. For these men are attachés and secretaries of embassies. They will talk to you in almost any European tongue you may select, but they are not communicative persons.
During the winter—the gay season at The Hague—there are usually a certain number of residents in the hotel. At the time with which we are dealing, Mrs. Vansittart was staying there, alone with her maid. Mrs. Vansittart was in the habit of dining at the small table near the stove—a gorgeous erection of steel and brass, which stands nearly in the centre of the smaller dining-room used in winter. Mrs. Vansittart seemed, moreover, to be quite at home in the hotel, and exchanged bows with a few of the gentlemen of the corps diplomatique. She was a graceful, dark-haired woman, with deep brown eyes that looked upon the world without much interest. This was not, one felt, a woman to lavish her attention or her thoughts upon a toy spaniel, as do so many ladies travelling alone with their maids in Continental hotels. Perhaps this woman of thirty-five years or so preferred to be frankly bored, rather than set up for herself a shivering four-legged object in life. Perhaps she was not bored at all. One never knows. The gentlemen from the embassies glanced at her over their books or their newspapers, and wondered who and what she might be. They knew, at all events, that she took no interest in those affairs of the great world which rumble on night and day without rest, with spasmodic bursts of clumsy haste, and with a never-failing possibility of surprise in their movements. This was no political woman, whatever else she might be. She would talk in quite a number of languages of such matters as the opera, a new book, or an old picture, and would then relapse again into a sort of waiting silence. At thirty-five it is perhaps not well to wait too patiently for those things that make a woman's life worth living. Mrs. Vansittart had not the air, however, of one who would wait indefinitely.
When Mr. Percy Roden arrived at the hotel, he was assigned, at the hour oftable d'hôte, a small table between those occupied respectively by Mrs. Vansittart and the secretary of the Belgian Embassy. Some subtle sense conveyed to Percy Roden that he had aroused Mrs. Vansittart's interest—the sense called vanity, perhaps, which conveys so much to young men, and so much that is erroneous. On the second evening, therefore, when he had returned from a busy day in the neighbourhood of Scheveningen, Roden half looked for the bow which was half accorded to him. That evening Mrs. Vansittart spoke to the waiter in English, which was obviously her native language, and Roden overheard. After dinner Mrs. Vansittart lingered in thesalonand a woman, had such been present, would have perceived that she made it easy for Roden to pause in passing and offer her his English newspaper, which had arrived by the evening post. The subtle is so often the obvious that to be unobservant is a social duty.
“Thank you,” she replied. “I like newspapers. Although I have not been in England for years, I still take an interest in the affairs of my country.”
Her manner was easy and natural, without that taint of a too sudden familiarity which is characteristic of the present generation. We are apt to allow ourselves to feel too much at home.
“I, on the contrary,” replied Roden, with his tired air, “have never till now been out of England or English-speaking colonies.”
His voice had a hollow sound. Although he was tall and broad-shouldered, his presence had no suggestion of strength. Mrs. Vansittart looked at him quickly as she took the newspaper from his hand. She had clever, speculative eyes, and was obviously wondering why he had gone to the colonies and why he had returned thence. So many sail to those distant havens of the unsuccessful under one cloud and return under another, that it seems wiser to remain stationary and snatch what passing sunshine there may be. Roden had not a colonial manner. He was well dressed. He was, in fact, the sort of man who would pass in any society. And it is probable that Mrs. Vansittart summed him up in her quick mind with perfect success. Despite our clothes, despite our airs and graces, we mostly appear to be exactly what we are. Mrs. Vansittart, who knew the world and men, did not need to be informed by Percy Roden that he was unacquainted with the Continent. Comparing him with the other men passing through thesalonto their rooms or their club, it became apparent that he had one sort of stiffness which they had not, and lacked another sort of stiffness which grows upon those who live and take their meals in public places. Mrs. Vansittart could probably have made a fair guess at the sort of education Percy Roden had received. For a man carries his school mark through life with him.
“Ah,” she said, taking the newspaper and glancing at it with just sufficient interest to prolong the conversation, “then you do not know The Hague. It is a place that grows upon one. It is one of the social capitals of the world. Vienna, St. Petersburg, Paris, are the others. Madrid, Berlin, New York, are—nowhere.”
She laughed, bowed with a little half—foreign gesture of thanks, and left him—left him, moreover, with the desire to see more of her. It seemed that she knew the secret of that other worldling, Tony Cornish, that the way to rule men is to make them want something and keep them wanting. As Roden passed through the hall he paused, and entered into conversation with the hall porter. During the course of this talk he made some small inquiries respecting Mrs. Vansittart. That lady had no need to make inquiries respecting Roden. Has it not been stated that she was travelling with her maid?
“I see,” she said, when she saw him again the next day after dinner in thesalon, “that your great philanthropic scheme is now an established fact. I have taken a great interest in its progress, and of course know the names of some who are associated with you in it.”
Roden laughed indifferently, well pleased to be recognized. His notoriety was new enough and narrow enough to please him still. There is no man so much at the mercy of his own vanity as he who enjoys a limited notoriety.
“Yes,” he answered, “we have got it into shape. Do you know Lord Ferriby?”
“No,” answered Mrs. Vansittart, slowly, “I have not that pleasure.
“Oh, Ferriby is a good enough fellow,” said Roden, kindly; and Mrs. Vansittart gave a little nod as she looked at him. Roden had drawn forward a chair, and she sat down, after a moment's hesitation, in front of the open fire.
“So I have always heard,” she answered, “and a great philanthropist.”
“Oh—yes.” Roden paused and took a chair. “Oh yes; but Tony Cornish is our right-hand man. The people seem to place greater faith in him than they do in Lord Ferriby. When it is Cornish who asks, they give readily enough. He is business-like and quick, and that always tells in the long run.”
Percy Roden seemed disposed to be communicative, and Mrs. Vansittart's attitude was distinctly encouraging. She leant sideways on the arm of her chair, and looked at her companion with speculation in her intelligent eyes. She was perhaps reflecting that this was not the sort of man one usually finds engaged in philanthropic enterprise. It is likely that her thoughts were of this nature, and were, as thoughts so often are, transmitted silently to her companion's mind, for he proceeded, unasked, to explain.
“It is not, properly speaking, a charity, you know,” he said. “It is more in the nature of a trade union. This is a practical age, Mrs. Vansittart, and it is necessary that charity should keep pace with the march of progress and be self-supporting.”
There was a faint suggestion of glibness in his manner. It was probable that he had made use of the same arguments before.
“And who else is associated with you in this great enterprise?” asked the lady, keeping him with the cleverness of her sex upon the subject in which he was obviously deeply interested. The shrewdest women usually treat men thus, and they generally know what subject interests a man most—namely, himself.
“Herr von Holzen is the most important person,” replied Roden.
“Ah!” said Mrs. Vansittart, looking into the fire; “and who is Herr von Holzen?”
Roden paused for a moment, and the lady, looking half indifferently into the fire, noticed the hesitation.
“Oh, he is a scientist—a professor at one of the universities over here, I believe. At all events, he is a very clever fellow—analytical chemist and all that, you know. It is he who has made the discovery upon which we are working. He has always been interested in malgamite, and he has now found out how it may be manufactured without injury to the workers. Malgamite, you understand, is an essential in the manufacture of paper, and the world will never require less paper than it does now, but more. Look at the tons that pass through the post-offices daily. Paper-making is one of the great industries of the world, and without malgamite, paper cannot be made at a profit to-day.”
Roden seemed to have his subject at his fingers' ends, and if he spoke without enthusiasm, the reason was probably that he had so often said the same thing before.
“I am much interested,” said Mrs. Vansittart, in her half-foreign way, which was rather pleasing. “Tell me more about it.”
“The malgamite makers,” went on Roden, willingly enough, “are fortunately but few in numbers and they are experts. They are to be found in twos and threes in manufacturing cities—Amsterdam, Gothenburg, Leith, New York, and even Barcelona. Of course there are a number in England. Our scheme, briefly, is to collect these men together, to build a manufactory and houses for them—to form them, in fact, into a close corporation, and then supply the world with malgamite.”
“It is a great scheme, Mr. Roden.”
“Yes, it is a great scheme; and it is, I think, laid upon the right lines. These people require to be saved from themselves. As they now exist, they are well paid. They are engaged in a deadly industry, and know it. There is nothing more demoralizing to human nature than this knowledge. They have a short and what they take to be a merry life.” The tired—looking man paused and spread out his hands in a gesture of careless scorn. He had almost allowed himself to lapse into enthusiasm. “There is no reason,” he went on, “why they should not become a happy and respectable community. The first thing we shall have to teach them is that their industry is comparatively harmless, as it will undoubtedly be with Von Holzen's new process. The rest will, I think, come naturally. Altered circumstances will alter the people themselves.”
“And where do you intend to build this manufactory?” inquired Mrs. Vansittart, to whom was vouch-safed that rare knowledge of the fine line that is to be drawn between a kindly interest and a vulgar curiosity. The two are nearer than is usually suspected.
“Here in Holland,” was the reply. “I have almost decided on the spot—on the dunes to the north of Scheveningen. That is why I am staying at The Hague. There are many reasons why this coast is suitable. We shall be in touch with the canal system, and we shall have a direct outfall to the sea for our refuse, which is necessary. I shall have to live in The Hague—my sister and I.”
“Ah! You have a sister?” said Mrs. Vansittart, turning in her chair and looking at him. A woman's interest in a man's undertaking is invariably centred upon that point where another woman comes into it.
“Yes.”
“Unmarried?”
“Yes; Dorothy is unmarried.”
Mrs. Vansittart gave several quick little nods of the head.
“I am wondering two things,” she said—“whether she is like you, and whether she is interested in this scheme. But I am wondering more than that. Is she pretty, Mr. Roden?”
“Yes, I think she is pretty.”
“I am glad of that. I like girls to be pretty. It makes their lives so much more interesting—to the onlooker,bien entendu, but not to themselves. The happiest women I have known have been the plain ones. But perhaps your sister will be pretty and happy too. That would be so nice, and so very rare, Mr. Roden. I shall look forward to making her acquaintance. I live in The Hague, you know. I have a house in Park Straat, and I am only at this hotel while the painters are in possession. You will allow me to call on your sister when she joins you?”
“We shall be most gratified,” said Roden.
Mrs. Vansittart had risen with a little glance at the clock, and her companion rose also. “I am greatly interested in your scheme,” she said. “Much more than I can tell you. It is so refreshing to find charity in such close connection with practical common sense. I think you are doing a great work, Mr. Roden.”
“I do what I can,” he replied, with a bow.
“And Mr. Von Holzen,” inquired Mrs. Vansittart, stopping for a moment as she moved towards the doorway, which is large and hung with curtains—“does Mr. Von Holzen work from purely philanthropic motives also?”
“Well—yes, I think so. Though, of course, he, like myself, will be paid a salary. Perhaps, however, he is more interested in malgamite from a scientific point of view.”
“Ah, yes, from a scientific point of view, of course. Good night, Mr. Roden.”
And she left him.
“Un esclave est moins celui qu'on vend que celui qui se donne”
A sea fog was blowing across the smooth surface of the Maas where that river is broad and shallow, and a steamer anchored in the channel, grim and motionless, gave forth a grunt of warning from time to time, while a boy with mittened hands rang the bell hung high on the forecastle with a dull monotony. The wind blowing from the south-east drove before it the endless fog which hummed through the rigging, and hung there in little icicles that pointed to leeward. On the bridge of the steamer, looking like a huge woollen barrel surmounted by a comforter and a cap with ear-flaps, the Dutch pilot stood philosophically at his post. Near him the captain, mindful of the company's time-tables, walked with a quick, impatient step. The fog was blowing past at the rate of four or five miles an hour, but the supply of it, emanating from the low lands bordering the Scheldt, seemed to be inexhaustible. This fog, indeed, blows across Holland nearly the whole winter.
The steamer's deck was covered with ice, over which sand had been strewn. The passengers were below in the warm saloon. Only the blue-faced boy at the bell on the forecastle was on the main-deck. At times one of the watch hurried from the galley to the forecastle with a pannikin of steaming coffee. The vessel had been anchored since daybreak and the sound of other bells and other whistles far and near told that she was not alone in these waters. The distant boom of a steamer creeping cautiously down from Rotterdam seemed to promise that farther inland the fog was thinner. A silence, broken only by the whisper of the wind through the rigging, reigned over all, so that men listened with anticipations of relief for the sound of answering bells. The sky at length grew a little lighter, and presently gaps made their appearance in the fog, allowing peeps over the green and still water.
The captain and the pilot exchanged a few words—the very shortest of consultations. They had been on the bridge together all night, and had said all that there was to be said about wind and weather. The captain gave a sharp order in his gruff voice, and, as if by magic, the watch on deck appeared from all sides. The chief officer emerged from his cabin beneath the wheel-house, and went forward into the fog, turning up his collar. Presently the jerk and clink of the steam-winch told that the anchor was being got home. The fog had been humoured for six hours, and the time had now come to move on through thick or thin. What should Berlin, Petersburg, Vienna, know of a fog on the Maas? And there were mails and passengers on board this steamer. The clink of the winch brought one of these on deck. Within the high collar of his fur coat, beneath the brim of a felt hat pulled well down, the keen; fair face of Mr. Anthony Cornish came peering up the gangway to the upper bridge. He exchanged a nod with the captain and the pilot; for with these he had already been in conversation at the breakfast-table. He took his station on the bridge behind them, with his hands deep in the pockets of his loose coat, a cigarette between his lips. A shout from the forecastle soon intimated that the anchor was up, and the captain gave the order to the boy at the engine-room telegraph. Through the fog the forms of the three men on the look-out on the forecastle were dimly discernible. The great steamer crept cautiously forward into the fog. The second mate, with his hand on the whistle-line, blared out his warning note every half-minute. A dim shadow loomed up on the port-side, which presently took the form of a great steamer at anchor, and was left behind with a ringing bell and a booming whistle. Another shadow turned out to be a pilot-cutter, and the Dutch pilot exchanged a shouted consultation with an invisible person whom he called “Thou,” and who replied to the imperfectly heard questions with the words, “South East.” This shadow also was left behind, faintly calling, “South East,” “South East.”
“It is a white buoy that I seek,” said the pilot, turning to those on the bridge behind him, his jolly red face puckered with anxiety. And quite suddenly the second officer, a bright-red Scotchman with little blue eyes like tempered gimlets, threw out a red hand and pointing finger.
“There she rides,” he said. “There she rides; staar boarrrd your hellum!”
And a full thirty seconds elapsed before any other eyes could pierce that gloom and perceive a great white buoy bowing solemnly towards the steamer like a courtier bidding a sovereign welcome. One voice had seemed to be gradually dominating the din of the many warning whistles that sounded ahead, astern, and all around the steamer. This voice, like that of a strong man knowing his own mind in an assembly of excited and unstable counsellors, had long been raised with a persistence which at last seemed to command all others, and the steamer moved steadily towards it; for it was the siren fog-horn at the pier-head. At one moment it seemed to be quite near, and at the next far away; for the ears, unaided by the eyes, can but imperfectly focus sound or measure its distance.
“At last!” said the captain, suddenly, the anxiety wiped away from his face as if by magic. “At last, I hear the cranes aworking on the quay.”
The purser had come to the bridge, and now approached Cornish.
“Are you going to land them at the Hook or take them on to Rotterdam, sir?” he asked.
“Oh, land 'em at the Hook,” replied Cornish, readily. “Have you fed them?”
“Yes, sir. They have had their breakfast—such as it is. Poor eaters I call them, sir.”
“Yes.” said Cornish, turning and looking at his burly interlocutor. “Yes, I do not suppose they eat much.”
The purser shrugged his shoulders, and turned his attention to other affairs, thoughtfully. The little, beacon at the head of the pier had suddenly loomed out of the fog not fifty yards away—a very needle in a pottle of hay, which the cunning of the pilot had found.
“Who are they, at any rate—these hundred and twenty ghosts of men?” asked the sailor, abruptly.
“They are malgamite workers,” answered Cornish, cheerily. “And I am going to make men of them—not ghosts.”
The purser looked at him, laughed in rather a puzzled way, and quitted the bridge. Cornish remained there, taking a quick, intelligent interest in the manoeuvres by which the great steamer was being brought alongside the quay. He seemed to have already forgotten the hundred and twenty men in the second-class cabin. His touch was indeed hopelessly light. He understood how it was that the steamer was made to obey, but he could not himself have brought her alongside. Cornish was a true son of a generation which understands much of many things, but not quite sufficient of any one.
He stood at the upper end of the gangway as the malgamite workers filed off—a sorry crew, narrow-chested, hollow-eyed, with that half-hopeless, half-reckless air that tells of a close familiarity with disease and death. He nodded to them airily as they passed him. Some of them took the trouble to answer his salutation, others seemed indifferent. A few glanced at him with a sort of dull wonder. And indeed this man was not of the material of which great philanthropists are made. He was cheerful and heedless, shallow and superficial.
“Get 'em into the train,” he said to an official at his side; and then, seeing that he had not been understood, gave the order glibly enough in another language.
The ill-clad travellers shuffled up the gangway and through the custom-house. Few seemed to take an interest in their surroundings. They exchanged no comments, but walked side by side in silence—dumb and driven animals. Some of them bore signs of disease. A few stumbled as they went. One or two were half blind, with groping hands. That they were of different nationalities was plain enough. Here a Jew from Vienna, with the fear of the Judenhetze in his eyes, followed on the heels of a tow-headed giant from Stockholm. A cunning cockney touched his hat as he passed, and rather ostentatiously turned to help a white-haired little Italian over the inequalities of the gangway. One thing only they had in common—their deadly industry. One shadow lay over them all—the shadow of death. A momentary gravity passed across Cornish's face. These men were as far removed from him as the crawling beetle is from the butterfly. Who shall say, however, that the butterfly sees nothing but the flowers?
As they passed him, some of them edged away with a dull humility for fear their poor garments should touch his fur coat. One, carrying a bird-cage, half paused, with a sort of pride, that Cornish might obtain a fuller view of a depressed canary. The malgamite workers of this winter's morning on the pier of Hoek were not the interesting industrials of Lady Ferriby's drawing-room. There their lives had been spoken of as short and merry. Here the merriment was scarcely perceptible. The mystery of the dangerous industries is one of those mysteries of human nature which cannot be explained by even the youngest of novelists. That dangerous industries exist we all know and deplore. That the supply of men and women ready to take employment in such industries is practically inexhaustible is a fact worth at least a moment's attention.
Cornish made the necessary arrangements with the railway officials, and carefully counted his charges, who were already seated in the carriages reserved for them. He must at all events be allowed the virtues of a generation which is eminently practical and capable of overcoming the small difficulties of everyday life. He was quick to decide and prompt to act.
Then he seated himself in a carriage alone, with a sigh of relief at the thought that in a few days he would be back in London. His responsibility ended at The Hague, where he was to hand over the malgamite workers to the care of Roden and Von Holzen. They were rather a depressing set of men, and Holland, as seen from the carriage window—a snow-clad plain intersected by frozen ditches and canals—was no more enlivening. The temperature was deadly cold; the dull houses were rime-covered and forbidding. The malgamite makers had been gathered together from all parts of the world in a home specially organized for them in London. A second detachment was awaiting their orders at Hamburg. But the principal workers were these now placed under Cornish's care.
During the days of their arrival, when they had to be met and housed and cared for, the visionary part of this great scheme had slowly faded before a somewhat grim reality. Joan Ferriby had found the malgamite workers less picturesque than she had anticipated.
“If they only washed,” she had confided to Major White, “I am sure they would be easier to deal with.” And after talking French very vivaciously and boldly with a man from Lyons, she hurried back to the West End, and to the numerous engagements which naturally take up much of one's time when Lent is approaching, and dilatory hospitality is stirred up by the startling collapse of the Epiphany Sundays.
Here, however, were the malgamite workers and they had to be dealt with. It was not quite what many had anticipated, perhaps, and Cornish was looking forward with undisguised pleasure to the moment when he could rid himself of these persons whom Joan had gaily designated as “rather gruesome,” and whom he frankly recognized as sordid and uninteresting. He did not even look, as Joan had looked, to the wives and children who were to follow as likely to prove more picturesque and engaging.
The train made its way cautiously over the fog-ridden plain, and Cornish shivered as he looked out of the window. “Schiedam,” the porters called. This, Schiedam? A mere village, and yet the name was so familiar. The world seemed suddenly to have grown small and sordid. A few other stations with historic names, and then The Hague.
Cornish quitted his carriage, and found himself shaking hands with Roden, who was awaiting him on the platform, clad in a heavy fur coat. Roden looked clever and capable—cleverer and more capable than Cornish had even suspected—and the organization seemed perfect. The reserved carriages had been in readiness at the Hook. The officials were prepared.
“I have omnibuses and carts for them and their luggage,” were the first words that Roden spoke.
Cornish instinctively placed himself under Roden's orders. The man had risen immensely in his estimation since the arrival in London of the first malgamite maker. The grim reality of the one had enhanced the importance of the other. Cornish had been engaged in so many charitiespour rirethat the seriousness of this undertaking was apt to exaggerate itself in his mind—if, indeed, the seriousness of anything dwelt there at all.
“I counted them all over at the Hook,” he said. “One hundred and twenty—pretty average scoundrels.”
“Yes; they are not much to look at,” answered Roden.
And the two men stood side by side watching the malgamite workers, who now quitted the train and stood huddled together in a dull apathy on the roomy platform.
“But you will soon get them into shape, no doubt,” said Cornish, with characteristic optimism. He was essentially of a class that has always some one at hand to whom to relegate tasks which it could do more effectually and more quickly for itself. The secret of human happiness is to be dependent upon as few human beings as possible.
“Oh yes! We shall soon get them into shape—the sea air and all that, you know.”
Roden looked at hisprotégéswith large, sad eyes, in which there was alike no enthusiasm and no spark of human kindness. Cornish wondered vaguely what he was thinking about. The thoughts were certainly tinged with pessimism, and lacked entirely the blindness of an enthusiasm by which men are urged to endeavour great things for the good of the masses, and to make, as far as a practical human perception may discern, huge and hideous mistakes.
“Von Holzen is down below,” said Roden, at length. “As soon as he comes up we will draft them off in batches of ten, and pack them into the omnibuses. The luggage can follow. Ah! Here comes Von Holzen. You don't know him, do you?”
“No; I don't know him.”
They both went forward to meet a man of medium height, with square shoulders, and a still, clean-shaven face. Otto von Holzen raised his hat, and remained bare-headed while he shook hands.
“The introduction is unnecessary,” he said. “We have worked together for many months—you on the other side of the North Sea, and I on this. And now we have, at all events, something to show for our work.”
He had a quick, foreign manner, with a kind smile, and certain vivacity.
This was a different sort of man to Roden—quicker to feel for others, to understand others; capable of greater good, and possibly of greater evil. He glanced at Cornish, nodded sympathetically, and then turned to look at the malgamite makers. These, standing in a group on the platform, holding in their hands their poor belongings, returned the gaze with interest. The train which had brought them steamed out of the station, leaving the malgamite makers gazing in a dull wonder at the three men into whose hands they had committed their lives.