"Greater humanity."
The world, largely as it had unfolded itself to Phillis, consisted as yet to her wholly of the easy classes. That there were poor people in the country was a matter of hearsay. That is, she had caught a glimpse during a certain walk with Cæsar of a class whose ways were clearly not her ways, nor their manner of thought hers. She had now to learn—as a step to that wider sympathy first awakened by the butter-woman's baby—that there is a kind of folk who are more dangerous than picturesque, to be pitied rather than to be painted, to be schooled and disciplined rather than to be looked at.
She learned this lesson through Mrs. L'Estrange, whose laudable custom it was to pay periodical visits to a certain row of cottages. They were not nice cottages, but nasty. They faced an unrelenting ditch, noisome, green, and putrid. They were slatternly and out at elbows. The people who lived in them were unpleasant to look at or to think of; the men belonged to the riverside—they were boat-cads and touts; and if there is any one pursuit more demoralising than another, it is that of launching boats into the river, handing the oars, and helping out the crew.
In the daytime the cottages were in the hands of the wives. Towards nightfall the men returned: those who had money enough were drunk; those who were sober envied those who were drunk. Both drunk and sober found scolding wives, squalid homes, and crying children. Both drunk and sober lay down with curses, and slept till the morning, when they awoke, and went forth again with the jocund curse of dawn.
Nothing so beautiful as the civilisation of the period. Half a mile from Agatha L'Estrange and Phillis Fleming were these cottages. Almost within earshot of a house where vice was unknown, or only dimly seen like a ghost at twilight, stood the hovels where virtue was impossible, and goodness a dream of an unknown land. What notion do they have of the gentle life, these dwellers in misery and squalor? What fond ideas of wealth's power to procure unlimited gratification for the throat do they conceive, these men and women whose only pleasure is to drink beer till they drop?
One day Phillis went there with Agatha.
It was such a bright warm morning, the river was so sparkling, the skies were so blue, the gardens were so sunny, the song of the birds so loud, the laburnums so golden, and the lilacs so glorious to behold, that the girl's heart was full of all the sweet thoughts which she had learned of others or framed for herself—thoughts of poets, which echoed in her brain and flowed down the current of her thoughts like the swans upon the river; happy thoughts of youth and innocence.
She walked beside her companion with light and elastic tread; she looked about her with the fresh unconscious grace that belongs to childhood; it was her greatest charm. But the contentment of her soul was rudely shaken—the beauty went out of the day—when Mrs. L'Estrange only led her away from the leafy road and took her into her "Row." There the long arms of the green trees were changed into protruding sticks, on which linen was hanging out to dry; the songs of the birds became the cry of children and the scolding of women; for flowers there was the iridescence on the puddles of soap-suds; for greenhouse were dirty windows and open doors which looked into squalid interiors.
"I am going to see old Mr. Medlicott," said Mrs. L'Estrange cheerfully, picking her accustomed way among the cabbage-stalks, wash-tubs, and other evidences of human habitation.
The women looked out of their houses and retired hastily. Presently they came out again, and stood every one at her door with a clean apron on, each prepared to lie like an ambassador for the good of the family.
In a great chair by a fire there sat an old woman—a malignant old woman. She looked up and scowled at the ladies; then she looked at the fire and scowled; then she pointed to the corner and scowled again.
"Look at him," she growled in a hoarse crescendo. "Look at him, lying like a pig—like a pig. Do you hear?"
"I hear."
The voice came from what Phillis took at first to be a heap of rags. She was right, because she could not see beneath the rags the supine form of a man.
Mrs. L'Estrange took no notice of the old woman's introduction to the human pig. That phenomenon repeated his answer:
"I hear. I'm her beloved grandson, ladies. I'm Jack-in-the-Water."
"Get up and work. Go down to your river. Comes home and lies down, he does—yah! ye lazy pig; says he's goin' to have the horrors, he does—yah! ye drunken pig; prigs my money for drink—yah! ye thievin' pig. Get up and go out of the place. Leave me and the ladies to talk. Go, I say!"
Jack-in-the-Water arose slowly. He was a long-legged creature with shaky limbs, and when he stood upright his head nearly touched the rafters of the low unceiled room. And he had a face at sight of which Phillis shuddered—an animal face with no forehead; a cruel, bad, selfish face, all jowl and no front. His eyes were bloodshot and his lips were thick. He twitched and trembled all over—his legs trembled; his hands trembled; his cheeks twitched.
"'Orrors!" he said in a husky voice. "And should ha' had the 'orrors if I hadn't a took the money. Two-and-tuppence."
He pushed past Phillis, who shrank in alarm, and disappeared.
"Well, Mrs. Medlicott, and how are we?" asked Mrs. L'Estrange in a cheerful voice—she took no manner of notice of the man.
"Worse. What have you got for me? Money? I want money. Flannel? I want flannel. Physic? I want physic. Brandy? I want brandy very bad; I never wanted it so bad. What have you got? Gimme brandy and you shall read me a tract."
"You forget," said Agatha, "that I never read to you."
"Let the young lady read, then. Come here, missy. Lord, Lord! Don'tee be afraid of an old woman as has got no teeth. Come now. Gimme your hand. Ay, ay, ay! Eh, eh, eh! Here's a pretty little hand."
"Now, Mrs. Medlicott, you said you would not do that any more. You know it is all foolish wickedness.
"Foolish wickedness," echoed the Witch of Endor. "Never after to-day, my lady. Come, my pretty lass, take off the glove and gimme the hand."
Without knowing what she did, Phillis drew off the glove from her left hand. The old woman leaned forward in her chair and looked at the lines. She was a fierce and eager old woman. Life was strong in her yet, despite her fourscore years; her eyes were bright and fiery; her toothless gums chattered without speaking; her long lean fingers shook as they seized on the girl's dainty palm.
"Ay, ah! Eh, eh! The line of life is long. A silent childhood! a love-knot hindered; go, on, girl—go on, wife and mother; happy life and happy age, but far away—not here—far away; a lucky lot with him you love; to sleep by his side for fifty years and more; to see your children and your grandchildren; to watch the sun rise and set from your door—a happy life, but far away."
She dropped the girl's hand as quickly as she had seized it, and fell back in her chair mumbling and moaning.
"Gimme brandy, Mrs. L'Estrange—you are a charitable woman—gimme brandy. And port-wine!—ah! lemme have some port-wine. Tea? Don't forget the tea. And Jack-in-the-Water drinks awful, he does. Worse than his father; worse than his grandfather—and they all went off at five-and-thirty."
"I will send you up a basket, Mrs. Medlicott. Come, Phillis, I have got to go to the next cottage."
But Phillis stayed behind a moment.
She touched the old woman on the forehead with her fingers and said softly—
"Tell me, are you happy? Do you suffer?"
"Happy? only the rich are happy. Suffer? of course I suffer. All the pore suffers."
"Poor thing! May I come and see you and bring you things?"
"Of course you may."
"And you will tell me about yourself?"
"Child, child!" cried the old woman impatiently. "Tell you about myself? There, there, you're one of them the Lord loves—wife and mother; happy life and happy death; childer and grandchilder; but far away, far away."
Mrs. Medlicott gave Phillis her first insight into that life so near and yet so distant from us. She should have been introduced to the ideal cottage, where the stalwart husband supports the smiling wife, and both do honour to the intellectual curate with the long coat and the lofty brow. Where are they—lofty brow of priest and stalwart form of virtuous peasant? Remark that Phillis was a child; the first effect of the years upon a child is to sadden it. Philemon and Baucis in their cot would have rejoiced her; that of old Mrs. Medlicott set her thinking.
And while she drew from memory the old fortune-teller in her cottage, certain words of Abraham Dyson's came back to her:
"Life is a joy to one and a burden to ninety-nine. Remember in your joy as many as you can of the ninety-nine.
"Learn that you cannot be entirely happy, because of the ninety-nine who are entirely wretched.
"When you reach this knowledge, Phillis, be sure that the Coping-stone is not far-off."
"Non possidentem multa vocaverisRecte beatum."
"Non possidentem multa vocaverisRecte beatum."
"Non possidentem multa vocaverisRecte beatum."
"Non possidentem multa vocaveris
Recte beatum."
The manner in which Mr. Cassilis conveyed his advice, or rather instructions, to Gilead Beck inspired the American with a blind confidence. He spoke slowly, grimly, and with deliberation. He spoke as one who knew. Most men speak as those who only half know, like the Frenchman who said, "Ce que je sais, je le sais mal; ce que j'ignore, je l'ignore parfaitement."
Mr. Cassilis weighed each word. While he spoke his eyes sought those of his friend, and looked straight in them, not defiantly, but meditatively. He brought Mr. Beck bills, which he made him accept; and he brought prospectuses, in which the American, finding they were English schemes, invested money at his adviser's suggestion.
"You have now," said Mr. Cassilis, "a very large sum invested in different companies; you must consider now how long to hold the shares—when to sell out in fact."
"Can't I sell my shares at once, if I please?"
"You certainly can, and so ruin the companies. Consider my undertaking to my friends on the allotment committees."
"Yes, sir."
"You forget, Mr. Beck, that you are a wealthy man. We do not manage matters in a hole and corner. The bears have sold on expectation of an allotment. Now as they have not got an allotment, and we have, they must buy. When such men as you buy largely, the effect is to run shares up; when you sell largely, you run them down."
Mr. Cassilis did not explain that he had himself greatly profited by this tidal influence, and proposed to profit still more.
"Many companies, perfectly sound in principle, may be ruined by a sudden decrease in the price of shares; a panic sets in, and in a few hours the shareholders may lose all. And if you bring this about by selling without concert with the other favoured allottees, you'll be called a black sheep."
Mr. Beck hesitated. "It's a hard thing——" he began.
His adviser went on:
"You have thus two things to think of—not to lose your own profit, and not to spread disaster over a number of other people by the very magnitude of your transactions."
This was a new light to Gilead.
"Then why sell at all? Why not keep the shares and secure the dividend? It's a hard hank, all this money."
And this was a new light for the financier.
Hold the shares? When they were, scores of them, at 16 premium? "You can certainly do that, if you please," he said slowly. "That, however, puts you in the simple position of investor."
"I thought I was that, Mr. Cassilis?"
"Not at all, Mr. Beck. The wise man distrusts all companies, but puts his hope in a rise or fall. You are not conversant with the way business is done. A company is formed—the A B C let us say. Before any allotment of shares is made, influential brokers, acting in the interest of the promoters, go on to the Stock Exchange, and make a market."
"How is that, sir?"
"They purchase as many shares as they can get. Persons technically called 'bears' in London or in New York sell these shares on the chance of allotment."
"Well?"
"To their astonishment they don't get any shares allotted. Millions of money in a year are allotted to clerks, Mr. Beck—to anybody, in fact—a market is established, and our shares figure at a pretty premium. Then begins the game of backing and filling—to and fro, backward and forward—and all this time we are gradually unloading the shares on the public, the real holders of every thing."
"I begin to see," said Mr. Beck slowly.
"By this time you will perceive," Mr. Cassilis continued, "the bears are at the mercy of the favoured allottees. Then up go the shares; the public have come in. I recollect an old friend of mine who made a fortune on 'Change—small compared with yours, Mr. Beck, but a great fortune—used to say, talking of shares in his rather homely style, 'When they rise, the people buys; when they fa's, they lets 'em goes.' Ha, ha! it's so true. I have but a very poor opinion of the Isle of Holyhead Inland Navigation Company; but I thought their shares would go up, and I bought for you. You hold twenty out of fifty thousand. Wait till 'the people buys,' and then unload cautiously."
"And leave the rest in the lurch? No, sir, I can't do that."
"Then, Mr. Beck, I can advise you no more."
"I hold twenty thousand shares; and if I sell out, that company will bust up."
"I do not say so much. I say that if you sell out gradually you take advantage of the premium, and the company is left exactly where it was before you joined, to stand or fall upon its merits. But if you will sell your shares without concert with our colleagues in these companies you are in, we shall be very properly called black sheep."
"Then, Mr. Cassilis," said Gilead, "in God's name, let us have done with companies."
"Very well; as you please. You have only to give me a power of attorney, and I will dispose of all your shares in the best way possible for your interests. Will you give me that power of attorney?"
"Sir, I am deeply obliged to you for all the trouble you are taking."
"A power of attorney conveys large powers. It will put into my hands the management of your great revenues. This is not a thing to be done in a moment. Think well, Mr. Beck, before you sign such a document."
"I have thought, sir," said Gilead, "and I will sign it with gratitude."
"In that case, I will have the document—it is only a printed form, filled up and sent on to you for signature immediately."
"Thank you, Mr. Cassilis."
"And as for the shares in the various companies which you have acquired by my advice, I will, if you please, take them all over one with another at the price you gave for them, without considering which have gone up and which down."
They had all gone up, a fact which Mr. Cassilis might have remembered had he given the thing a moment's thought. The companies on paper were doing extremely well.
"Sir," said Mr. Beck, starting to his feet "you heap coals of fire on my head. When a gentleman like you advises me, I ought to be thankful, and not go worrying around like a hen in a farmyard. The English nation are the only people who can raise a man like you, sir. Honour is your birthright. Duty is your instinct. Truth is your nature. We, Americans, sir, come next to you English in that respect. The rest of the world are nowhere." He was walking backwards and forwards, with his hands in his pockets, while Mr. Cassilis looked at him through his gold eyeglasses as if he was a little amused at the outburst. "Nowhere, sir. Truth lives only among us. The French lie to please you. The Germans lie to get something for themselves. The Russians lie because they imitate the French and have caught the bad tricks of the Germans. Sir, no one but an Englishman would have made me the generous offer you have just made, and I respect you for it, Mr. Cassilis, I respect you, sir."
Gabriel Cassilis looked a little, a very little, confused at all these compliments. Then he held out his hand.
"My dear friend, the respect is mutual," he said, with a forced smile. "Do not, however, act always upon your belief in the honesty of Englishmen. It may lead you into mischief."
"As for the shares," said Beck, "they will stay as they are, if you please, or they will be sold, as you will. And no more companies, Mr. Cassilis, for me."
"You shall have no more," said his adviser.
In his pocket was a beautiful prospectus, brand new, of a company about to be formed for the purpose of lighting the town of La Concepcion Immaculata on the Amazon River in Brazil with gas. A concession of land had been obtained, engineers had been out to survey the place, and their prospects were most bright.
Now, he felt, that project must be released. He turned the paper in his fingers nervously round and round, and the muscles of his cheek twitched. Then he looked up and smiled, but in a joyless way. Mr. Beck did not smile. He was growing more serious.
"You shall have no more shares," said the adviser. "Those that you have already shall be disposed of as soon as possible. Remains the question, what am I to do with the money?"
"You have placed yourself," he went on, "in my hands by means of that promised power of attorney. I advised, first of all, certain shares my influence enabled me to get allotted to you. You have scruples about selling shares at a profit. Let us respect your scruples, Mr. Beck. Instead of shares, you will invest your money in Government stocks."
"That, sir," said Mr. Beck, "would meet my wishes."
"I am glad of it. There are two or three ways of investing money in stocks. The first, your way, is to buy in and take the interest. The next, my way, is to buy in when they are low and sell out when they go up."
"You may buy in low and sell out lower," said the astute Beck.
"Not if you can afford to wait. This game, Mr. Beck, as played by the few who understand it, is one which calls into play all the really valuable qualities of the human intellect."
Mr. Cassilis rose as he spoke and drew himself up to his full height. Then he began to walk backwards and forwards, turning occasionally to jerk a word straight in the face of his client, who was now leaning against the window with an unlighted cigar between his lips, listening gravely.
"Foolish people think it a game of gambling. So it is—for them. What is it to us? It is the forecasting of events. It is the pitting of our experience, our sagacity, against what some outsiders call chance and some Providence. We anticipate events; we read the future by the light of the present."
"Then it isn't true about Malachi," said Mr. Beck. "And he wasn't the last prophet."
Mr. Cassilis went on without regarding this observation:
"There is no game in the world so well worth playing. Politics? You stake your reputation on the breath of the mob. War? You throw away your life at the stockade of savages before you can learn it. Trade? It is the lower branch of the game of speculation. In this game those who have cool heads and iron nerve win. To lose your head for a moment is to lose the results of a lifetime—unless," he murmured, as if to himself—"unless you can wait."
"Well, sir," said Gilead, "I am a scholar, and I learn something new every day. Do you wish me to learn this game? It seems to me——"
"You?" Contempt that could not be repressed flashed for a moment across the thin features of the speculator. "You? No. Perhaps, Mr. Beck, I do not interest you." He resumed his habitually cold manner, and went on: "I propose, however, to give you my assistance in investing your money, to such advantage as I can, in English and foreign stocks, including railway companies, but not in the shares of newly-formed trading companies."
"Sir, that is very kind."
"You trust me, then, Mr. Beck?"
Again the joyless smile, which gleamed for a moment on his lips and disappeared.
"That is satisfactory to both of us," he said. "And I will send up the power of attorney to-day."
Mr. Cassilis departed. By the morning's work he had acquired absolute control over a quarter of a million of money. Before this he had influence, but he required persuasion for each separate transaction. Now he had this great fortune entirely in his own control. It was to be the same as his own. And by its means he had the power which every financier wants—that of waiting. He could wait. And Gilead Beck, this man of unparalleled sharpness and unequalled experience, was a Fool. We have been Christians for nearly two thousand years, and yet he who trusts another man is a Fool. It seems odd.
Mr. Cassilis felt young again. He held his head erect as he walked down the steps of the Langham Hotel. He lost his likeness to old Father Time, or at least resembled that potentate in his younger days, when he used to accommodate himself to people, moving slowly for the happy, sometimes sitting down for a few weeks in the case of young lovers, and galloping for the miserable. He strode across the hall with the gait of a Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, and drove off to the City with the courage of five-and-twenty and the wisdom of sixty.
Before him stretched an endless row of successes, bigger than anything he had ever yet tried. For him the glory of thecoupand the profit; for Gilead Beck the interest on his money.
In his inner room, after glancing at the pile of letters and telegrams, noting instructions, and reserving a few for private reply, he rang his bell.
The private secretary of Mr. Gabriel Cassilis did not disdain personally to answer that bell. He was a middle-aged man, with a sleek appearance, and a face which, being fat, shiny, and graced only with a slight fringe of whisker lying well behind, somehow conveyed the impression of a Particular Baptist who was also in the oil-trade. That was not the case, because Mr. Mowll was a member of the Church of England and a sidesman. He lived at Tulse Hill, and was a highly-respectable man. Mr. Cassilis gave him a fair salary, and a small amount—a very small amount—of his confidence. He also, when anything good in a humble way offered, tossed the information to his secretary, who was thus enabled to add materially to his salary.
In the outer world Mr. Mowll was the right-hand man of Gabriel Cassilis, his factotum, and the man, according to some, by whose advice he walked. Gabriel Cassilis walked by no man's advice save his own.
"For you, Mowll," said his employer briefly. "These I will attend to. Telegraph to—wherever his address is—to the man Wylie—the writing man"—newspaper people and writers of articles were "writing men" to Gabriel Cassilis—"I want him at once."
Then he absorbed himself again in his papers.
When he was left alone he pulled some printed documents out of a drawer, and compared them with letters which had the New York post-mark upon them. He read carefully, and made notes at various points with a stump of a blue crayon pencil. And he was still engaged on them when, half an hour later, his secretary asked him through a tube whether he would see Mr. Wylie.
Mr. Wylie was an elderly man—a man of sixty—and he was a man on whose face many years of rum-and-water were beginning to tell. He was a man of letters, as he said himself; he had some kind of name, in virtue of certain good things he had written, in his early manhood, before the rum-and-water period set in. Now he went up and down, doing odd jobs of literary work, such as are always wanting some one to do them in this great city. He was a kind of literary cab.
"You are free to-day, Mr. Wylie?"
"I am, Mr. Cassilis."
"Good. Do you remember last year writing a short political pamphlet—I think at my suggestion—on the prospects of Patagonian bond-holders?"
"You gave me all the information, you know."
"That is, you found the papers in my outer office, to which all the world has access, and on them you based your opinion."
"Quite so," said the pamphleteer. "I also found five-and-twenty pounds in gold on your secretary's table the day after the pamphlet appeared."
"Ah! Possibly—perhaps my secretary had private reasons of his own for——"
"Let us talk business, Mr. Cassilis," said the author a little roughly. "You want me to do something. What is it?"
"Do you know the affairs of Eldorado?"
"I have heard of Eldorado bonds. Of course, I have no bonds either of Eldorado or any other stock."
"I have here certain papers—published papers—on the resources of the country," said Mr. Cassilis. "I think it might pay a clever man to read them. He would probably arrive at the conclusion that the Republic, with its present income, cannot hope to pay its dividends——"
"Must smash up, in short."
"Do not interrupt. But with any assurance of activity and honesty in the application of its borrowed money, there seems, if this paper is correct—it is published in New York—no doubt that the internal resources would be more than sufficient to carry the State triumphantly through any difficulty."
"Is it a quick job, or a job that may wait?"
"I dislike calling things jobs, Mr. Wylie. I give you a suggestion which may or may not be useful. If it is useful—it is now half-past twelve o'clock—the pamphlet should be advertised in to-morrow's papers, in the printer's hand by four, and ready on every counter by ten o'clock in the morning. Make your own arrangements with printers, and call on me to-morrow with the pamphlet. On me, mind, not Mr. Mowll."
"Yes—and—and——"
"And, perhaps, if the pamphlet is clever, and expresses a just view of Eldorado and its obligations, there may be double the sum that you once found on my secretary's table."
Mr. Wylie grasped the papers and departed.
The country of Eldorado is one of the many free, happy, virtuous, and enlightened republics of Central America. It was constituted in the year 1839, after the Confederation broke up. During the thirty years which form its history, it has enjoyed the rule of fifteen Presidents. Don Rufiano Grechyto, its present able administrator, a half-blood Indian by birth, has sat upon the chair of state for nearly a year and a half, and approaches the period of two years, beyond which no previous President has reigned. He is accordingly ill at ease. Those who survive of his fourteen predecessors await his deposition, and expect him shortly in their own happy circle, where they sit like Richard II., and talk of royal misfortunes. Eldorado is a richly-endowed country to look at. It has mountains where a few inches of soil separate the feet of the rare wayfarer from rich lodes of silver; forests of mahogany cover its plains; indigo and tobacco flourish in its valleys; everywhere roam cattle waiting to be caught and sent to the London market. Palms and giant tree-ferns rise in its woods; creepers of surpassing beauty hang from tree to tree; in its silent recesses stand, covered with inscriptions which no man can read, the ruins of a perished civilization. Among these ruins roam the half-savage Indians who form nine-tenths of the population. And in the hot seaboard towns loll and lie the languid whites and half-castes who form the governing class. They never do govern at all; they never improve; they never work; they are a worthless hopeless race; they hoard their energies for the excitement of a pronunciamiento; their favourite occupation is a game of monte; they consider thought a wicked waste of energy, save for purposes of cheating. They ought all, and without exception, to be rubbed out. And it is most unfortunate, in the interests of humanity, that their only strong feeling is an objection to be rubbed out. Otherwise we could plant in Eldorado a colony of Germans; kill the pythons, alligators, jaguars, and other impediments to free civilisation; open up the mines, and make it a country green with sugar-canes and as sweet as Rimmel's shop by reason of its spicy breezes. There are about five thousand of the dominant class; they possess altogether a revenue of about £60,000 a year, a good deal less than a first-class fortune in England. As every man of the five thousand likes to have his share of the £60,000 there is not much saved in the year. Consequently, when one reads that the Republic of Eldorado owes the people of Great Britain and France, the only two European States which have money to lend, the sum of six millions, one feels sorry for the people of Eldorado. It must be a dreadful thing for a high-minded republican to have so little and to owe so much. Fancy a man with £600 a year in debt to the tune of £60,000.
It all grew by degrees. Formerly the Eldoradians owed nothing. In those days champagne was unknown, claret never seen, and the native drink was rum. Nothing can be better for the natives than their rum, because it kills them quickly, and so rids the earth of a pestilent race. In an evil moment it came into the head of an enterprising Eldoradian President to get up a loan. He asked for a million, which is, of course, a trifle to a nation which has nothing, does nothing, and saves nothing. They got so much of their million as enabled them to raise everybody's salary and the pay of the standing army, also to make the dividend certain for a few years. After this satisfactory transaction, somebody boldly ordered the importation of a few cases of brandy. The descent of Avernus is easy and pleasant. Next year they asked for two millions and a half. They got this small trifle conceded to them on advantageous terms—10 per cent., which is nothing to a Republic with £60,000 a year, and the stock at 60. The pay of every official was doubled, the army had new shirts issued, and there were fireworks at San Mercurio, the principal town. They promised to build railways leading from nowhere into continental space, to carry passengers who did not exist, and goods not yet invented. The same innovator who had introduced the brandy now went farther, and sent for claret and champagne. Then they asked for more loans, and went ahead quite like a First-class Power.
When there was no more money to pay the dividends with, and no more loans to be raised, Eldorado busted up.
The gallant officers who commanded the standing army are now shirtless and bootless; the men of the standing army have disappeared; grass grows around the house of the importer of European luxuries; but content has not returned to San Mercurio. The empty bottles remain to remind the populace of lost luxuries; the national taste in drink is hopelessly perverted; San Mercurio is ill at ease; and Don Rufiano trembles in his marble palace.
But a year ago the country was not quite played out. There seemed a chance yet to those who had not the materials at hand for a simple sum in Arithmetic.
The next morning saw the appearance of the pamphlet—a short but telling pamphlet of thirty-two pages—called "Eldorado and her Resources. Addressed to the Holders of Eldorado Stock, by Oliver St. George Wylie."
The author took a gloomy but not a despairing view. He mentioned that where there was no revenue there could be no dividends. Therefore, he said, it behooved Eldorado stock-holders to be sure that something was being done with their money. Then he gave pages of facts and figures which proved the utter insolvency of the State unless something could be done. And he then proceeded to point out the amazing resources of the country, could only a little energy be introduced into the Council. He drew a lively picture of millions of acres, the finest ground in the world, planted with sugar-cane; forests of mahogany; silver mines worked by contented and laborious Indians; ports crowded with merchant fleets, each returning home with rich argosies; and a luxurious capital of marble made beautiful by countless palaces.
At eleven Mr. Wylie called on Gabriel Cassilis again. He brought with him his pamphlet.
"I have read it already," said Mr. Cassilis. "It is on the whole well done, and expresses my own view, in part. But I think you have piled it up too much towards the end."
"Why did you not give me clearer instructions, then?"
"I dare say it will have a success. Meantime," said the financier, pushing over a little bag, "you can count that. There ought to be fifty sovereigns. Good-morning, Mr. Wylie."
"Good-morning, Mr. Cassilis. I don't know"—he turned the bag of gold over in his hands—"I don't know; thirty years ago I should have looked with suspicion on such a job as this; thirty years ago——"
"Good-morning, Mr. Wylie."
"Thirty years ago I should have thought that a man who could afford fifty pounds for a pamphlet——"
"Well?"
"Well—that he had his little game. And I should have left that man to play it by himself. Good-morning again, Mr. Cassilis. You know my address, I believe, in case of any other little job turning up."
That afternoon Eldorado stock went down. It was lucky for Mr. Gabriel Cassilis, because he wished to buy—and did—largely.
"It is my lady! Oh, it is my love—Would that she knew she were!"
"It is my lady! Oh, it is my love—Would that she knew she were!"
"It is my lady! Oh, it is my love—Would that she knew she were!"
"It is my lady! Oh, it is my love—
Would that she knew she were!"
"Jack is late," said Phillis.
She was making the prettiest picture that painter ever drew, standing in the sunlight, with the laburnums and lilacs behind her in their fresh spring glory. Her slender and shapely figure, clad in its black riding habit, stood out in relief against the light and shade of the newly-born foliage; she wore one of the pretty hats of last year's fashion, and in her hand she carried the flowers she had just been gathering. Her face was in repose, and in its clear straight lines might have served for a model Diana, chaste and fair. It was habitually rather a grave face; that came of much solitude and long companionship with an old man. And the contrast was all the greater when she lit up with a smile that was like a touch of tender sunshine upon her face and gave the statue a soul. But now she stood waiting, and her eyes were grave.
Agatha L'Estrange watched her from her shady garden seat. The girl's mind was full of the hidden possibilities of things—for herself; the elder lady—to whom life had given, as she thought, all it had to give—was thinking of these possibilities too—for her charge. Only they approached the subject from different points of view. To the girl, an eager looking forward to new joys which were yet not the ordinary joys of London maidenhood. Each successive day was to reveal to her more secrets of life; she was born for happiness and sunshine; the future was brighter in some dim and misty fashion, far brighter than the present; it was like a picture by Claude, where the untrained eye sees nothing but mist and vapour, rich with gorgeous colour, blurring the outlines which lie behind. But the elder lady saw the present and feared the future. Every man thinks he will succeed till he finds out his own weakness; every woman thinks she is born for the best of this world's gifts—to happiness, to be lapped in warmth and comfort, to be clothed with the love of husband and children as with a garment. Some women get it. Agatha had not received this great happiness. A short two years of colourless wedded life with a man old enough to be her father, and twenty years of widowhood. It was not the lot she might have chosen; not the lot she wished for Phillis. And then she thought of Jack Dunquerque. Oddly enough, the future, in whatever shape it was present to the brain of Phillis, was never without the figure of Jack Dunquerque.
"Jack is late," said Phillis.
"Come here, dear, out of the sun; we must take a little care of our complexion. Sit down and let us talk."
Agatha took Phillis's hand in hers, as the girl sat upon the grass at her feet.
"Let us talk. Tell me, dear Phillis, don't you think a little too much about Mr. Dunquerque?"
"About Jack? How can I, Agatha? Is he not my first friend?"
She did not blush; she did not hesitate; she looked frankly in Agatha's face. The light of love which the elder lady expected was not there yet.
"Changed as you are, my dear, in some things, you are only a child still," said Agatha.
"Am I only a child?" asked Phillis. "Tell me why you say so now, dear Agatha. Is it because I am fond of Jack?"
"No, dear," Mrs. L'Estrange laughed. What was to be said to thisjeune ingénue? "Not quite that."
"I have learned a great deal—oh, a great deal—since I came here. How ignorant I was! How foolish!"
"What have you learned, Phillis?"
"Well, about people. They are not all so interesting as they seemed at first. Agatha, it seems like a loss not to think so much of people as I did. Some are foolish, like the poor curate—are all curates foolish, I wonder?—some seem to say one thing and mean another, like Mr. Cassilis; some do not seem to care for anything in the world except dancing; some talk as if china was the only thing worth living for; but some are altogether lovely and charming, like yourself, my dear."
"Go on, Phillis, and tell me more."
"Shall I? I am foolish, perhaps, but most of our visitors have disappointed me. Howcanpeople talk about china as if the thing could befelt, like a picture? What is it they like so much in dancing and skating-rinks, and they prefer them to music and painting, and—and—the beautiful river?"
"Wait till you come out, dear Phillis," said Agatha.
For all the things in which young ladies do most delight were to her a vanity and foolishness. She heard them talk and she could not understand. She was to wait till she came out. And was her coming out to be the putting on of the Coping-stone?
"Jack is late," said Phillis.
It was a little expedition. Mrs. L'Estrange and Gilead Beck were to drive to Hampton Court, while Jack and Phillis rode. It was the first of such expeditions. In late May and early June the Greater London, as the Registrar calls it, is a marvel and a miracle of loveliness; in all the world there are no such meadows of buttercups, with fragrant hedges of thorn; there are no such generous and luxuriant growths of wisteria, with purple clusters; there are no such woods of horse-chestnuts, with massive pyramids of white blossom; there are no such apple-orchards and snow-clad forests of white blossomed plum-trees as are to be seen around this great city of ours. Colonials returned from exile shed tears when they see them, and think of arid Aden and thirsty Indian plains; the American owns that though Lake George with its hundred islets is lovely, and the Hudson River a thing to dream of, there is nothing in the States to place beside the incomparable result of wealth and loving care which the outlying suburbs of south and western London show.
If it was new to Phillis—if every new journey made her pulses bound, and every new place seen was another revelation—it was also new to the American, who looked so grave and smiled so kindly, and sometimes made such funny observations.
Gilead Beck was more silent with the ladies than with Jack, which was natural, because his only experience of the sex was that uncomfortable episode in his life when he taught school and fought poor Pete Conkling. And to this adventurer, this man who had been at all trades—who had roamed about the world for thirty years; who had habitually consorted with miners and adventurers, whom the comic American books have taught us to regard as a compound of drunkard, gambler, buccaneer, blasphemer, and weeping sentimentalist—his manner of life had not been able to destroy the chivalrous respect for women with which an American begins life. Only he had never known a lady at all until now; never any lady in America.
In spite of his life, this man was neither coarse nor vulgar. He was modest, knowing his defects, and he was humble. Nevertheless, he had the self-respect which none of his countrymen are without. He was an undeniable "ranker," a fact of which he was proud, because, if he had a weakness, it was to regard himself as another Cromwell, singled out and chosen. He had two languages, of one of which he made sparing use, save when he narrated his American experiences. This, as we have seen, was a highly ornamental tongue, a gallery of imagery, a painted chamber of decorated metaphor—the language of wild California, anargotwhich, on occasions, he handled with astounding vigour. The other was the tongue of the cultivated American. In England we bark; in the States they speak. We fling out our conversation in jerks; the man of the States shapes his carefully in his brain before he speaks. Gilead Beck spoke like a gentleman of Boston, save that his defective education did not allow him to speak so well.
His great terror was the word Shoddy. He looked at Shoddy full in the face; he made up his mind what Shoddy was—the thing which pretends to be what it is not, a branch of the great family which has the Prig at one end and the Snob at the other—and he was resolute in avoiding the slightest suspicion of Shoddy.
If he was of obscure birth, with antecedents which left him nothing to boast of but honesty, he was also soft-hearted as a girl, quick in sympathy, which Adam Smith teaches us is the groundwork of all morals, and refined in thought. After many years, a man's habitual thoughts are stamped upon his face. The face of Gilead Beck was a record of purity and integrity. Such a man in England would, by the power of circumstances, have been forced into taprooms, and slowly dragged downwards into that beery morass in which, as in another Malebolge, the British workman lies stupefied and helpless. Some wicked cynic—was it Thackeray?—said that below a certain class no English woman knows the meaning of virtue. He might have said, with greater truth, that below a certain class no Englishman knows the meaning of self-respect.
To go into that orderly house at Twickenham, where the higher uses of wealth were practically illustrated by a refinement new to the good ex-miner, was to this American in itself an education, and none the less useful because it came late in life. To be with the ladies, to see the tender graces of the elder and the sweetness of the younger, filled his heart with emotion.
"The Luck of the Golden Butterfly, Mrs. L'Estrange," he said, "is more than what the old squaw thought. It began in dollars, but it has brought me—this."
They were sitting in the garden, Agatha and Gilead Beck, while Jack Dunquerque and Phillis were watering flowers, or gathering them, or always doing something which would keep Jack close to the girl.
"If by 'this' you mean friendship, Mr. Beck," said Agatha, "I am very glad of it. Dollars, as you call money, may take to themselves wings and fly away, but friends do not."
It will be observed that Agatha L'Estrange had never seen reason to abandon the old-fashioned rules invented by those philosophers who lived before Rochefoucauld.
"I sometimes think I should like to try," said Gilead Beck. "Poor men have no friends; they have mates on our side of the water, and pals on yours."
"Mates and pals?" cried Phillis, laughing. "Jack, do you know mates and pals?"
"I ought to," said Jack, "because I'm poor enough."
"Friends come to rich folk naturally, like the fruit to the tree, or—or—the flower to the rose," Gilead added poetically.
"Or the mud to the wheel," said Jack.
"Suppose all my dollars were suddenly to vamose—I mean, to vanish away," Gilead Beck went on solemnly; "would the friends vanish away too?"
"Jack would not," said Phillis promptly, "and Agatha would not. Nor should I."
She held out her hand in the free frank manner which was her greatest charm. Gilead Beck took the little fingers in his big rough hand the bones of which seemed to stick out all over it, so rugged and hard it was, and looked in her face with the solemn smile which made Phillis trust in him, and raised her fingers to his lips.
Then she blushed with a pretty confusion which drove poor Jack to the verge of madness. Indeed, the ardour of his passion and the necessity for keeping silence were together making the young man thin and pale.
They were gradually exploring, this party of four, the outside gardens, parks, castles, and views of London. Of course, they were as new to Jack and Mrs. L'Estrange as they were to Phillis and the American. Jack knew Greenwich, where he had dined; and Richmond, where he had dined; and the Crystal Palace, where he had also dined, revealed to him one summer evening an unknown stretch of fair country; more than that he knew not.
Perhaps more exciting pleasures might have been found, but this simple party found their own unsophisticated delight in driving and riding through green lanes.
"Phillis will have to come out next year," said Agatha, half apologising to herself for enjoying such things. "We must amuse her while we can."
They went to Virginia Water, where Mr. Beck made some excellent observations on the ruins and on the flight of time, insomuch that it was really sad to discover that they were only, so to speak, new ruins.
They went to Hampton Court, where they strolled through the picture galleries and looked at the Lely beauties; walked up the long avenues, and saw that quaint old mediæval garden which lies hidden away at the side of the Palace, marked by few. Gilead Beck said that if he was the Queen and had such a place he should sometimes live in it, if only for the sake of giving a dinner in the great Hall. But Phillis liked best the gardens, with their old-fashioned flowers, and the peace which reigns perpetually in the quaint old courts. And Gilead Beck asked Jack privately if he thought the Palace might be bought, and if so, for how much.
They visited Windsor. Mr. Beck said that if he had such a location he should always live there; he speculated on the probable cost of erecting such a fortress on the banks of the Hudson River; and then he cast his imagination backwards up the stream of time and plunged into history.
Phillis allowed him to go on, while he jumbled kings, mixed up cardinals, and tried, by the recovery of old associations, to connect the venerable pile with the past.
"From one of those windows, I guess," he said, pointing his long arm vaguely round the narrow lattices, "Charles came out to be beheaded, while Oliver Cromwell spurted ink in his face. It was rough on the poor king. Seems to me, kings very often do have a rough time. And perhaps, too, that Cardinal Thomas à Beckett, when he told Henry IV. that he wished he'd served his country as well as he'd loved his God, it was on this very terrace. Perhaps——"
"O Mr. Beck! whendidyou learn English history," cried Phillis.
Then, like a little pedant as she was, she began to unfold all that she knew about the old fortress and its history. Its history is not so grim as that of the Tower of London, which she had once narrated to Jack Dunquerque; but it has a picturesque story of its own, which the girl somehow made out from the bare facts of English history—all she knew. But these her imagination converted into living and indisputable truths, pictures whose only fault was that the lights were too bright and the shadows too intense.
Alas, this is the way with posterity! The dead are to be judged as they seem from such acts as have remained on record. The force of circumstances, the mixture of motives, the general muddle of good and bad together, are lost in the summing-up; and history, which after all only does what Phillis did, but takes longer to do it, paints Nero black and Titus white, with the clear and hard outline of an etching.
Gilead Beck, after the lecture, looked round the place with renewed interest.
"I am more ignorant than I thought," he said humbly. "But I am trying to read, Miss Fleming."
"Are you!" she cried, with a real delight in finding, as she thought, one other person in the world as ignorant of that art as herself. "And how far have you got?"
"I've got so far," he said, "that I've lost my way, and shall have to go back again. It was all through Robert Browning. My dear young lady,—" he said this in his most impressive tones,—"if you should chance upon one of his books with a pretty title, such asRed Cotton Nightcap Country, orFifine at the Fair, don't read it, don't try it. It isn't a fairy story, nor a love story. It's a story without an end, it's a story told upsy-down; it's like wandering in a forest without a path. It gets into your brain and makes it go round; it gets into your eyes and makes you see ghosts. Don't you look at that book.
"Reading in a general way, and if you don't take too much of it, is a fine thing," he continued. "The difficulty is to keep the volumes separate in your head. Anybody can write a book. I've written columns enough in theClearville Roarerfor a dozen books; but it takes a man to read one."
"Ah, but it is different with you," said Phillis. "I am only in words of two syllables. I've just got through the first reading-book. 'The cat has drunk up all the milk.' I suppose I must go on with it, but I think it is better to have some one to read for you. I am sure Jack would read for me whenever I asked him."
"I never thought of that," said Gilead Beck. "Why not keep a clerk to read for you, and pay out the information in small chunks? I should like to tackle Mr. Carlyle that way."
"Agatha is reading a novel to me now," Phillis went on. "There is a girl in it; but somehow I think my own life is more interesting than hers. She belongs to a part of the country where the common people say clever things!—Oh, very clever things!—and she herself says all sorts of clever things."
"Mr. Dunquerque," interrupted Gilead Beck, who was not listening, "would read to you all the days of his life, I think, if you would let him."
Phillis made no reply. As she neither blushed, nor smiled, nor gave any of the ordinary signs of apprehension with which most young ladies would have received this speech, it is to be presumed that she did not take in the full meaning of it.
"There is one thing about Mr. Dunquerque," Gilead Beck went on, "that belongs, I reckon, to you English people only. He is not a young man——"
"Jack not a young man? Why, Mr. Beck——"
"Not what we call a young man. Our young men are sixteen and seventeen. Mr. Dunquerque is five-and-twenty. Our men of five-and-twenty are grave and full of care. Mr. Dunquerque is light-hearted and laughs. That is what I like him for."
"Yes; Jack laughs. I should not like to see Jack grave."
She spoke of him as if he were her own property. To be sure, he was her first and principal friend. She could talk to him as she could talk to no one else. And she loved him with the deep and passionless love, as yet, of a sister.
"Yes," said Gilead Beck, looking round him, "England is a great country. Its young men are not all mad for dollars; they can laugh and be happy; and the land is one great garden. Miss Fleming, that is the happiest country, I guess, whose people the longest keep their youth."
She only half understood him, but she looked in his face with her sweet smile.
"It is like a dream. That I should be walking here with you, such as you, in this grand place—I, Gilead P. Beck. To be with you and Mr. Dunquerque is like getting back the youth I never had: youth that isn't always thinkin' about the next day; youth that isn't always plannin' for the future; youth that has time to enjoy the sunshine, to look into a sweet gell's eyes and fall in love—like you, my pretty, and Mr. Dunquerque—who saved my life."
He added these last words as an after-thought, and as if he was reminded of some duty forgotten.
Phillis was silent, because his words fell upon her heart and made her think. It was not her youth that was prolonged; it was her childhood. And that was dropping from her now like the shell of the chrysalis. She thought how, somewhere in the world, there were people born to be unhappy, and she felt humiliated when she was selfishly enjoying what they could not. Somewhere in the world—and where? Close to her, in the cottages where Mrs. L'Estrange had taken her.
For until then the poor, who are always with us, were not unhappy, to Phillis, nor hungry, nor deserving of pity and sympathy; they were only picturesque.
They went to St. George's Chapel, after over-ruling Gilead Beck's objections to attending divine service—for he said he hadn't been to meetin' for more than thirty years; also, that he had not yet "got religion"—and when he stood in the stall under the banner of its rightful owner he looked on from an outsider's point of view.
The ceremonial of the ancient Church of England was to him a pageant and a scenic display. The picture, however, was very fine; the grand chapel with its splendor of ornamentation; the banners and heraldry; the surpliced sweet-voiced boys; the dignified white-robed clergy-men; the roll of the organ; the sunlight through the painted glass; even the young subaltern who came clanking into the chapel as the service began,—there was nothing, he said, in America which could be reckoned a patch upon it. Church in avenue 39, New York, was painted and gilded in imitation of the Alhambra; that was considered fine, but could not be compared with St. George's, Windsor. And the performance of the service, he said, was so good as to have merited a larger audience.
Jack Dunquerque, I grieve to say, did not attend to the service. He was standing beside Phillis, and he watched her with hungry eyes. For she was looking before her in a sort of trance. The beauty of the place intoxicated her. She listened with soft eyes and parted lips. All was artistic and beautiful. The chapel was peopled again with mailed knights; the voices of the anthem sang the greatness and the glory of England; the sunshine through the painted glass gave colour to the picture in her brain; and when the service was over she came out with dazed look, as one who is snatched too suddenly from a dream of heaven.
This too, like everything else, was part of her education. She had learned the beauty of the world and its splendours. She was to see the things she had only dreamed of, but by dreaming had wrapped in a cloud of coloured mist.
When was it to be completed, her education? Phillis waited for that Coping-stone for which Joseph Jagenal was vainly searching. She laughed when she thought of it, the mysterious completion of Abraham Dyson's great fabric. What was it?
She had not long to wait.
"I love her, Mrs. L'Estrange," said Jack Dunquerque passionately, on the evening of the last of their expeditions: "I love her!"
"I have seen it for some time," Agatha replied. "And I wanted to speak to you before, but I did not like to. I am afraid I have been very wrong in encouraging you to come here so often."
"Who could help loving her?" he cried "Tell me, Mrs. L'Estrange, you who have known so many, was there ever a girl like Phillis—so sweet, so fresh, so pretty, and so good?"
"Indeed, she is all that you say," Agatha acknowledged.
"And will you be my friend with Colquhoun? I am going to see him to-morrow about it, because I cannot stand it any longer."
"He knows that you visit me; he will be prepared in a way. And—Oh, Mr. Dunquerque, why are you in such a hurry? Phillis is so nice and you are so young."
"I am five-and-twenty, and Phillis is nineteen."
"Then Phillis is so inexperienced."
"Yes; she is inexperienced," Jack repeated. "And if experience comes, she may learn to love another man."
"That is what all the men say. Why, you silly boy, if Phillis were to love you first, do you think a thousand men could make her give you up?"
"You are right: but she does not love me; she only likes me; she does not know what love means. That is bad enough to think of. But even that isn't the worst."
"What more is there?"
"I am so horribly, so abominably poor. My brother Isleworth is the poorest peer in the kingdom, and I am about the poorest younger son. And Colquhoun will think I am coming after Phillis's money."
"As you are poor, it will be a great comfort for everybody concerned," said Agatha, with good sense, "to think that, should you marry Phillis, she has some money to help you with. Go and see Lawrence Colquhoun, Mr. Dunquerque, and—and if I can help your cause, I will. There! Now let us have no more."
"They will make a pretty pair," said Mr. Gilead Beck presently to Mrs. L'Estrange.
"O Mr. Beck, you are all in a plot! And perhaps after all—and Mr. Dunquerque is so poor."
"Is that so?" Mr. Beck asked eagerly. "Will the young lady's guardian refuse the best man in the world because he is poor? No, Mrs. L'Estrange, there's only one way out of this muss, and perhaps you will take that way for me."
"What is it, Mr. Beck?"
"I can't say myself to Mr. Dunquerque, 'What is mine is yours.' And I can't say to Mr. Colquhoun—not with the delicacy that you would put into it—that Mr. Dunquerque shall have all I've got to make him happy. I want you to say that for me. Tell him there is no two ways about it—that Jack Dunquerquemustmarry Miss Fleming. Lord, Lord! why, they are made for each other! Look at him now, Mrs. L'Estrange, leanin' towards her, with a look half respectful and half hungry. And look at her, with her sweet innocent eyes; she doesn't understand it, she doesn't know what he's beatin' down with all his might: the strong honest love of a man—the best thing he's got to give. Wait till you give the word, and she feels his arms about her waist, and his lips close to hers. It's a beautiful thing, love. I've never been in love myself, but I've watched those that were; and I venture to tell you, Mrs. L'Estrange, that from the Queen down to the kitchen-maid, there isn't a woman among them all that isn't the better for being loved. And they know it, too, all of them, except that pretty creature."