CHAPTER XXIX
Wherein Mr. Pompey Malahide loses his Breath in the Midst of a Boast
Mr. Pompey Malahide,man of considerable wealth as he had been for years, was now grown so rich that he scarcely knew whether each fresh venture in which he launched might not be doubling his income by the end of the year.
City people said, awe-struck, that all he touched turned to gold. But they failed to add that he touched nothing that did not hold hidden treasure. As a fact, he ventured only in the exploitation and invention of things of which he had himself felt the lack, which he felt were wanted at large. His shrewd business insight led him simply to traffic in such things as must turn to gold on their very discovery. Whilst the unimaginative followed a garish eyesight to seek fortune at the goldfields, he stayed at home and won wealth from richer lodes. He did not break hard rock for gold; he made the things that the world had need to buy.
His appetite was but whetted by success.
He was now destined to make such wealth as is only dreamed of in the dingy city offices of imaginative Jews.
Pompey Malahide was on the eve of becoming a millionaire.
Yet was he plagued with discontent.
He was suffering discomfort. Riches alone contained nothing in themselves. He realized that riches were only a power. He, in communion with himself, striding his room, stood himself by the figure of young Bartholomew Doome, his paid servant; and his vulgarly frank eyes could not rid him of the transparent fact that this other was the master without an effort of his own. This other was the designer—the creator. His own the rude hand that beat out the design. Behind the dry humour and grim smile of the young man was the master wit, a wit always strangely kindly to him, but—tolerant. Whilst in the very act, even whilst he puffed and blew and swaggered and strutted and boasted to the young man of his successes and of his wealth, the warmth ran out of his conceit—he felt that what would have impressed his city friends was but rousing criticism behind those calm eyes that cared no jot for elaborate wealth—eyes that looked upon riches only as a secondary thing.
Pompey Malahide looked at the slender sinewy hands of the young man, and forthwith hid his own short thick hands with their stunted pointed money-getting fingers behind his back. He noticed that where they two entered a place together, all deferred to the youth, whilst they were as rough to himself as he to them. He noticed that Doome spoke with deference to those below him whom he, Pompey, treated to the rougher side of his tongue—noticed, too, that behind the youth’s courteous manner was a note of calm authority that his own roughshod ways never caught. He grasped the fact that money had not won him the habit of the great; and he was determined that his girls should have what he himself lacked—this easy and gracious bearing of the master class. His boy was catching some hint of it at Harrow. The girls must acquire it also.
But how?
He consulted Doome.
Doome, frowning upon the difficulties of the problem, decided that these young women must have a young gentlewoman for companion; he said that he would try and find a girl of breeding of their own age; it was full time; the boy Horace was springing up, and would be leaving Harrow at the end of the term; he ought not to be brought up in a different social atmosphere to the girls or he must of necessity drift into another set and grow into contempt of his sisters.
Pompey Malahide nodded many nods.
He approved.
He sighed a portly sigh.
Riches were bringing perplexing burdens. The very spending was a burden. He would have laughed at it all so short a while ago. It was much easier to make wealth than to use it—for a man had only to make money like a tradesman; he had to spend it—like a gentleman.
Heigho!
Pompey Malahide, approached by the leaders of the Opposition, threw in his lot with the party, was put up for one of the city constituencies, and, in the flood of political reaction that swept the country, was elected to the House of Commons by a large majority.