CHAPTER FIFTEENThe Sound of a Trumpet
WHEN the campaign started the Puto-Congo Consolidation Company was paying its shareholders from 20 to 30 per cent, independent of bonuses which dropped to them like manna every alternate year; and its shares stood in the market at 200 per cent above par. It had held its own against a six months’ exposure of its methods, not only without a drop in the quotations, but with a slight rise when official cold water had been thrown on the report of the egregious Mr. Morment, whose unfair and superficial investigation had caused all the trouble.
But when Mr. Trimblerigg took the matter in hand, hiring halls in all the big towns for monster meetings, and thumping the Free Evangelical war-drum, within a month the shares came tumbling, and the Government had begun to hedge by promising a commission of inquiry—not, as had almost been previously suggested, into the character of Mr. Morment, but into the conduct of the Company.
Even though the world is said to be wicked, it often pays and pays well to be on the side of the angels. For trade and commerce, and politics are largely run on a sort of agreed pretence that man, though now a little lower than the angels, is not much lower, or only in his bad moments, or only because he doesn’t always have time to look into things. The side on which the angels are, may for a time be violently disputed by guilty interests: but give it a clear view-halloo and a sight of its quarry on the run, and you have the great-hearted public up and after it, quite oblivious to its own record in matters closely similar.
So now: the strewings of the feathers of angels’ wings across the landscape made Mr. Trimblerigg’s lightning campaign look like a paper-chase from the heavenly or bird’s-eye view; and tens and hundreds of thousands of virtuous shareholders, in companies of whose ways and doings they did not in the least know or very much care, attended his meetings to denounce the shareholders of a Chartered Company which was paying 20 and 30 per cent upon methods that were now being exposed.
I have said before, and I say again, that Mr. Trimblerigg was a man of absolute sincerity to the convictions of the moment; so also were his audiences, all people of sincerity; but it was a sincerity which, rising to the surface like cream, when it has been skimmed off leaves a poor thin material behind it. But it was national material after all; and how, as somebody once asked, can one indict a great nation? Its greatness is the refuting answer.
And so it was, when those cheering crowds hung upon Mr. Trimblerigg’s eloquence, and when, being so much carried away by it, he hung upon it himself—there was not one, speaker or listener, who, while sincerely denouncing the cruelties which had wrung 20 and 30 per cent profits from the blood and bones of indentured black labour, ever thought of denouncing the system which enabled any who had capital to invest, to make money out of ventures and industries as to the workings of which they knew nothing. It was not the system which was being denounced, but individuals who had been oiling the wheels of the system by methods of civilization pushed to logical extremes. And so, when you strike an average, Mr. Trimblerigg was just as innocent and just as sincere as the bulk of his fellow-countrymen.
The only difference was that nobody else enjoyed his innocence and sincerity as much as he did, or thought so highly of it. For now, being so gloriously upon the side of the angels, it was with the voice of an angel—and a powerful one—that Mr. Trimblerigg spoke. And the angels and the herd-instinct having got hold of him together, he did wonders: not only did he surprise me, he surprised himself.
One day he had before him and behind him, around him and above him, an audience of ten thousand breathless listeners—breathless not for any difficulty, his fine voice being easily heard, but for the mere joy of him. He was making visible to all, the forests and swamps and malarious rivers to which he had never penetrated save with the eye of vision and pity and compassion; and also the things that were being done there for shareholders in a country calling itself Christian. He gave chapter and verse: before him had come a speaker, fresh from the district itself, with terrible lantern-slides, some showing life, many more showing death. As a prelude to his peroration he demanded the last of the slides, one that had been specially reserved for the occasion. It appeared and a great gasp went through the audience; they sat so silent for his concluding words, so motionless that actually not a pin dropped. And after he had ended, for some seconds the silence lasted, so deep was the emotion of his hearers. When he sat down he felt that he had made the speech of his life.
His auditors apparently thought so too, having recovered they stood up for five minutes to applaud, while Mr. Trimblerigg, feeling a little faint but very happy, sat and drank water.
When silence was restored for the announcement of the next speaker—a rather reluctant Archbishop had been captured for the occasion—a cold staccato voice came from the back of the hall:
‘Is not the gentleman who has just spoken himself a shareholder in the Puto-Congo Consolidation Company?’
A buzz of horrified consternation went sibilating from stalls to gallery: the whole movement tottered to its base. Mr. Trimblerigg was on his feet.
‘It’s a lie,’ he said; and to show that was the end of it, sat down again.
The audience took a free breath and applauded.
Once more came the voice:
‘Does the speaker deny that he draws any profit from investment in the forced labour of these unhappy natives?’ And again Mr. Trimblerigg was on his feet.
‘Not one pound, not one penny, not one farthing. I would die rather.’
The applause at this was terrific. All heads turned towards the interruption: lost in the dense crowd gathered at the back of the hall it remained merely a voice.
There was a pause, the voice said: ‘I am quite satisfied. I was misinformed.’
A sharp burst of laughter rang through the hall; and everybody was happy again. Mr. Trimblerigg received another ovation; and when he rose to reply to the vote of thanks the noise was deafening.
But though he replied beautifully and in moving terms, he was not at ease. During the speech of the Archbishop he had sat thinking:
‘What shares remotely resembling the Puto-Congo Consolidateddo I possess? Whatever can the man have got hold of?’
Suddenly the words, ‘Native Industries Ltd.’ flashed into his mind. Those shares paid him about fifty pounds a year, on an investment of two hundred; and every year the directors sent him a reassuring report of the well-being and prosperity of the natives in whose interests it was run. But what had these to do with the Puto-Congo Consolidation Company? He was not good at geography; beyond the fact that they both hailed from the same continent he was aware of no possible connection.
All the same, as soon as the meeting was over he sped home in trepidation, and after a short search through a fat bundle of small but varied investments he found the share certificate he was in search of. The sight of it froze him, as it had been the eye of Davidina fixed in judgment: terror and desolation opened under him as a gulf into which he descended alive. For though in the original certificate the name of the Puto-Congo Consolidation Company was nowhere mentioned, the certificate bore endorsement of a later date (he remembered faintly sending it, at request, for that purpose) from which it appeared that Native Industries had become affiliated—consolidated was perhaps the awful and correct word—with certain other companies operating in the same district, the Ray River Rubber Company being one of them: and ‘Ray River Rubber’ with its beautiful rolling sound had now acquired a horrible familiarity to his ears; only that very night he had himself rolled it upon his oratorical tongue, enjoying the rich flavour of it. And though the name of the Puto-Congo Consolidated did not even now appear, his certificate bore nevertheless that notorious officialstamp which he and the Free Churches had so fiercely held up to scorn—a large adhesive label of embossed paper, blood red, bearing as its emblem a white man and a black holding hands, and over them the punning motto ‘Nihil alienum puto’—I hold nothing foreign.
How devoutly he wished that for him the motto could have been true. But that he did hold this damnable and damning share in that commercial atrocity which he had been denouncing, there was no longer room for doubt. And how, in Heaven’s name, or the name of anything equally incredible, how was he to explain it away?
That was the question which, for the next hour or two, he continued putting to me with great fervour and insistency. I listened, but I said nothing; for though I was much interested, I did not intend to intervene. That is not my method. And so, while I paid due attention to what he actually said, I let the nimbler speed of his brain for one moment escape me; and was taken suddenly by surprise when I saw him jump up from his knees and start into definite action.
During the next forty-eight hours the meteoric speed of his career, his swift adjustment of means to ends, his varied and almost instantaneous decisions, and above all the driving force of the moral arguments which he addressed to those larger shareholders of Native Industries Limited whom in so brief a time he succeeded in running to earth, all this gave me a conception of his abilities to which, I confess, that till then I had hardly done justice. Nor do I think the average reader could follow through all its ramifications that inspiredsauve qui peut, which, in such short space of time, carried moral devastation toso many Free Evangelical back-parlours—fortresses for all the virtues.
Suffice it that Mr. Trimblerigg, having obtained a complete list of the shareholders in Native Industries Limited, discovered for truth what his sanguine mind had envisaged as a blessed possibility—that nearly half of the Company’s shares were actually in the hands of Free Church ministers and of other prominent and privileged members of their congregations, and that all unknown to itself the Free Evangelical Body—that great instrument for the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth—had got one of its feet well planted in that very stronghold of the Devil against which it was directing its assault—an awkward, or an advantageous position according to the use made of it.
Mr. Trimblerigg, whose apprehension and anguish had been so great that in the first ten hours after his discovery he could eat no breakfast, had during the next ten, with travel, telegram, and telephone, done such an enormous amount of work and to such good purpose, that before the day was out he had begun almost to enjoy himself.
In that brief space of time he had captured not only the council of the Free Church Congress, and three of its ex-Presidents, but the President-elect and five of its most shining lights in the financial world as well—men who had always maintained publicly that they held their wealth as a sacred trust from the Powers above for the service of humanity.
Now he showed them their chance. While the shares of the affiliated companies in Puto-Congo Consolidated lay battered on the market, opportunity for good Samaritanspresented itself on a large scale. For the preaching missionary, who also travelled for Native Industries Limited, had done his agency thoroughly and well, and Mr. Trimblerigg’s saving hopes were abundantly realized. Here they all were, almost without knowing it—some not knowing it at all; others knowing it but lying low, trusting that affiliation carried with it no responsibility for the administrative acts of Puto-Congo Consolidated, and finding much virtue in the difference of a name—here they all were in the same box, and the lid of it suddenly opened like graves for the day of judgment.
Yes, they were all in it; but, so Mr. Trimblerigg assured them, with this important difference. They were there of set purpose and intent like himself: had gone into it, for strategical reasons, with the sword of the spirit, to prepare the way of the Lord and bring deliverance to the oppressed. They heard from Mr. Trimblerigg how he had invested his little all for that purpose alone, watching and waiting, with never a penny of profit, biding his time for the great day of deliverance. (He had, in fact, that very day, sold out all his other investments in order to secure a yet larger holding for the confirmation of his case.)
They also, he had not a doubt, had invested for a like purpose—or if not, were eager and willing to do so now that the time had come for that purpose to be declared.
For here was the case; the Free Evangelical Church could now at a push in a falling market obtain a shareholders’ majority in one of the most important and prosperous companies which had come together under the ægis of the Puto-Congo Consolidated: had, therefore,power to call and control a special meeting of the shareholders for the reform—root, branch, lock, stock and barrel—of the whole abominable system to which it had become linked.
Free Church Presidents, Evangelical financiers, shining lights in the Temperance movement, and others with reputations above suspicion, listened, sat up, and were amazed; only too thankful in that dark hour to have good motives so generously imputed to them and their way of salvation made plain. Very few attempted to remain irresponsible, incredulous, or indifferent; when they did, Mr. Trimblerigg launched his attack, and their opposition wilted and crumbled. Nor did he mince the inspired word which came to him: his brisk little figure sparkled with flashes of divine fire, even as the wireless apparatus sparkles with the message which descends to it from the outer air; and there to hand was the circular appeal which within twenty-four hours would have received the signatures of over a hundred Free Church ministers and elders calling for an emergency meeting of the shareholders. At that meeting the Puto-Congo atrocities would be denounced, and the present Directors of the Company called on to resign and make room for others. Native Industries Limited, by reason of its secured monopolies, held the key to the position. Though small, it could impose its terms; close its depots and landing-stages to proved abuse of contract by the affiliated companies, and if it became a question of law, dare the rest to come on; for now it would have the entire country behind it, even, if need be, the power of Parliament. Let them blow their blast loud and long enough, and the whole huge financial fabric of Puto-Congo Consolidated which had sought to absorb them intoidentity with its own guilty prosperity, would have to cleanse itself or go.
And as these reverend elders listened, and bent their heads for the whitewash provided by Mr. Trimblerigg, there was the offered vision before them of the great Free Church body, too long couchant in moneyed ease, rising upon its hind legs at last, and uttering no meek lowing of kine, but the combined roar and scream of the Lion and the Eagle—and over them in feathers of silver and gold, the covering wings of the Dove; and there was the Visionary himself wanting to know, here and now, whether their voice would swell the chorus or only be raised in futile opposition. That question received but one answer.
So, like fire through stubble, did Mr. Trimblerigg burn his way into the consciences and fears of the Native Industries shareholders; and by the time the sun had set upon the second day of his labours he knew that he had won.
The next day a letter from the ‘Voice’—or from its informant—appeared in the press challenging once more Mr. Trimblerigg’s publicly uttered denial of having lot or share in the nefarious activities of Puto-Congo Consolidated. The letter made no assertion, but presented a series of neat interrogations—yes or no; and ended with the smooth reposeful sneer of one certain of his facts.
Mr. Trimblerigg’s reply gave that dirty platter the clean lick it required inside and out. In the Puto-Congo Consolidated he held no shares at all: in the affiliated ‘Native Industries Limited’ he did hold some, and since the meeting in question had succeeded in getting hold of a few more.
His purpose, which together with others, he had beenobliged hitherto to conceal, lest the Puto-Congo Executive should get wind of it and take steps to prevent, he could now declare. He did so resoundingly.
The same paper which contained his letter, contained notice of the special meeting convened by its Free Church shareholders to purge the Native Industries Limited of complicity in the Puto-Congo atrocities, and to terminate all contracts forthwith. For himself Mr. Trimblerigg had only to add that never, in the years of waiting for the power which had now come to him, had he applied to his own use one penny of the dividends he had received from Native Industries; all had been saved up for a further investment when the moment should appear opportune. And with that—facts speaking louder than words—his defence was complete.
A month later he held the special meeting of the Native Industries shareholders in the hollow of his hand, and in a speech which the press reported verbatim lashed the administration of the Chartered Company of Puto-Congo Consolidated with a tongue like the whip of an inspired slave-driver. Powerless in the face of numbers the opposition fell away in panic; the conscience of the Free Churches asserted itself, all the Directors resigned, and Mr. Trimblerigg and nine others, with clean records like his own, were elected to their place. Two members of the new Board proposed Mr. Trimblerigg to be chairman; and he was elected without a dissentient voice.
Native Industries Limited was to be run henceforth on Christian lines, and set an example to the world by earning for itself on those lines larger profits than ever before. Mr. Trimblerigg was a consistently sanguine soul; believing the shareholding system to be a device well-pleasingto God, he believed it could be done. And so that night he went home to his house justified, in beams of glory all of his own making, very tired, but more satisfied with himself than he could ever remember to have been before.