Mammon and Co.

He was dining out that evening with Lord Haslemere, and was disposed in anticipation to enjoy himself. Lady Haslemere, it is true, was apt to be tedious when she talked about her own transactions in the City, and asked him whether the rise in some mine of which nobody had even heard was likely to continue, and was it not clever of her to have bought the shares at one and a half, for within a week they had risen to two and a sixteenth. She got the tip out of Truth. Mr. Alington, however, had all the indifference of the professional in money matters to the scrannel operations of the amateur, and when in answer to a question of his it appeared that Lady Haslemere had only twenty shares in this marvellous mine, and had worked herself up into a perfect fever of indecision as to whether they should take her certain eleven pounds profit, or be very brave and fly at fourteen, he felt himself really powerless to understand her agitations.

This evening directly after dinner she collared and cornered him, and finance was in her eye.

"I want to have a serious financial talk with you," she said, "so we'll go into the other drawing-room, where we shall be alone. Come, Mr. Alington."

Good manners insisted on obedience, but it was an ill-content financier who followed her. For Lady Devereux, who played Bach quite divinely, was among Lady Haslemere's guests, and even as he left the room to talk over his hostess's microscopic operations on the Stock Exchange, he saw her go across to the piano. It is true that he preferred a very large round sum of money of his own to half an hour of fugues and preludes, but he infinitely preferred half an hour of fugues and preludes to about seven and sixpence of Lady Haslemere's.

She lit a cigarette with a tremulous hand.

"I want to ask your advice very seriously," she said. "I put three hundred pounds into Carmel a week ago, and since then the shares have gone up a half. Now, what do you advise me to do, Mr. Alington? Shall I sell out, or not? I don't want to make such a mess as poor dear Kit did. She really was too stupid! She took no one's advice, and lost most frightfully. Poor thing! she has no head. All her little nest-egg, she told me. But I mean to put myself completely into your hands. Do you expect Carmel will go higher?"

Mr. Alington stroked the back of his head, and tried hard to look genial yet serious. But it was difficult. Lady Haslemere had closed the door between them and the next room, and he could hear faintly and regretfully those divine melodies on the Steinway grand. And here was this esteemed lady, who was quite as rich as anyone need be – certainly so rich as to be normally unconscious of the presence or absence of a fifty-pound note – consulting him gravely (she had let her cigarette go out in her anxiety) about these infinitesimal affairs. If she had had a fortune at stake, he would willingly have given her his very best attention, regretting only that Lady Devereux had chosen this moment for playing Bach; but to be shut off from that exquisite treat for a small sum affecting a woman who was not affected by small sums was trying.

"I can't undertake to advise you, Lady Haslemere," he said; "but I can tell you what I have done myself: I have bought twenty-five thousand shares in Carmel to-day, and have not the faintest intention of selling out to-morrow."

Lady Haslemere clasped her hands. This was a flash of lightning against her night-light.

"Good gracious! aren't you nervous?" she cried. "I shouldn't be able to eat or sleep. Twenty-five thousand – and they've gone up three-eighths to-day. Why, you've scored over nine thousand pounds since this morning!"

"About that – if I sold, that is to say, which I don't mean to do."

"And so you are going to chance the mine going still higher?"

"Certainly. I believe in it. I also believe the price will rise very considerably yet."

Lady Haslemere bit her lip; she was clearly summoning up all her powers of resolution, and Mr. Alington for the moment felt interested. He was, as he might have told you, a bit of an observer. Whether or no Lady Haslemere won eleven pounds or fourteen he did not care at all, but that she should care so much was instructive. Then she struck her knee lightly with her fan.

"I shall not touch my three hundred," she said, and she turned on Mr. Alington a face portentous with purpose.

Mr. Alington sat equally grave for a moment, but the corners of his mouth lost their sedateness, and at last they both broke out laughing.

"Oh, I know how ridiculous it must seem to you," said Lady Haslemere; "but if you have never earned a penny all your life, you have no idea how extraordinarily interesting it is to do so. You may think that it can't matter to me whether I gain ten pounds or lose twenty. But to gain it oneself – oh, that is the thing!"

Mr. Alington smiled with peculiar indulgence. "Well, frankly, it is inexplicable to me," he said. "Now, if you were playing for a large stake I could understand it, though I seldom get excited myself. Well, that is what I am going to do; I am going to play for a very big stake indeed, and I confidently expect to turn up a natural. Have you anything more to ask me? – for if not, and you will allow me, I shall go and listen to Lady Devereux. I have been so much looking forward to hearing her play again."

Lady Haslemere rose. She had wanted to have a general financial talk as well about Chaffers and Brownhills and Modder B, but the oracle had spoken about her grand coup, which was the main point.

"Yes, she plays divinely, does she not?" she said. "I knew Lady Devereux would be a magnet to draw you here. How busy you must have been lately, Mr. Alington! One has not seen you anywhere."

"Very busy indeed. But I intend to take a holiday after the Carmel deal is over."

"A deal? Do you call it a deal?" she asked. "I always thought a deal meant something rather questionable?"

Mr. Alington paused quite as long as usual before replying.

"Oh no; one uses 'deal' as quite a general term for an operation," he said.

They went back into the other drawing-room, and Mr. Alington, with an elaborate softness, drew a chair up near the piano. Lady Devereux played with exquisite delicacy and sobriety, in the true spirit in which to interpret that sweet, formal music. She did not thunder and thump, she did not cover swift, catchy runs with the loud pedal, but let each note fill its own minute, inevitable place. She did not extemporize a rallentando where passages were difficult, and make up for this by hurrying over minims, or give you a general idea of a bar. She played the music exactly as it was written with extreme simplicity. There were some twenty people in the room, some whispering together (for Lady Devereux played so well that nobody talked very loud when she was at the piano), some smoking, some playing cards, some passing under their breath the most screaming scandals; and the music was like a breath of fresh air let into a stuffy room. And by the piano, with his sleek face reposeful, beatific, and wearing an expression of sensual piety about it, sat the only listener – a man whose soul was steeped in money, whose God was Mammon, who could roll on like some Juggernaut-car over the bodies of those he had ruined without one thought of pity or remorse. Yet the melody enchained him; while it lasted he was a child – a child, it is true, with respectable gray whiskers and an expansive baldness on the head, but happy, heedless of anything else in the world except the one exquisite tune, the one delicious moment.

Before long a baccarat table was made up, but he did not move from his place by the piano. Lady Devereux, a pretty, good-natured woman, who got on capitally with everybody except her husband, who, in turn, got on admirably with or without her, was delighted to go on playing to him, for she saw how real and how cultivated his enjoyment of her music was, and though she lost charmingly at baccarat, she really preferred playing even to one appreciative listener. She had an excellent memory, her taste was his, and the two wandered long in the enchanted land of early melody.

At last she rose, and with her Mr. Alington.

"I need not even thank you," he said; "for you know, I believe, what it has been to me. You are going to play? Baccarat for Bach! Dear lady, how shocking! I think I shall go home. I do not want to disturb the exquisite memories. I shall remember this evening."

He stood for a moment with her hand in his. His face looked like the representation of some realistic saint in bad stained glass.

"Good-night," he said. "And I, too, go and daub myself in actualities. But at soul I am no realist."

It was a fine summer evening, fresh and caressing to the diner-out, and he walked back from Berkeley Street slowly, with the musician ascendant over the financier.

Of late he had been very much absorbed in business, and had heard hardly any music, and thus this evening had been really an immense treat. After all, there was nothing so essentially delightful to the bones and blood of the man as this: he was still conscious that the passion for money-making which was his, was, as he expressed it, with more fervour than it was his wont to throw into his daily conversation, a daubing in actualities; and to-night it was with a sense of distaste, rising almost to repugnance, that he contemplated an hour at his desk. The work, he knew, would bring its own consolations and rewards, but as he started back he wished neither to be consoled nor rewarded. Of late, also, his delight in the polished artifices of money-making had been on the wane; for months now he had entertained, even in his hours of triumphant finance, the idea of retiring altogether from business when once he had brought to its inevitable climax this affair of the Carmel mines.

To-night this desire to concern himself no more in the jostle of the Tokenhouse land was more than usually potent, taking almost the form of resolve. Had an angel or devil, it mattered not which, offered him success such as he anticipated in these mines upon the signing of a bond that he would mine and motor no more, he would have signed. What allurements had that peaceful picture! He would sell out (so he figured to himself) his interest in all other businesses, invest his whole fortune in something safe and reliable, perhaps even consols; he would drop the Financial Times and take in the Musical Observer, and lead the life that in sober earnest he at the moment utterly believed himself to prefer. He had long been building a charming and palatially-simple house in Sussex, where in his declining years he proposed to spend the greater part of his time. There, with his prints, his music, and his gardening, he would pass slow, charming, uneventful days. The "long dark autumn evenings" would wean him from his garden-beds to his priceless portfolios, the turning year entice him to his garden-beds again. He would watch the jostle and the race for money with fatherly, Lucretian unconcern. He was tired, he felt sure he was tired, of the eternal struggle for what he held in sufficiency. How gross a parody of existence was the present for a man of truly artistic tastes and sensibilities! In ten days, if things went even passably well, he would have made enough to enable him to gratify these tastes to the full, and, soberly, he wanted no more than that. His beautiful home would be habitable within the year. He would have enough to marry on, for he fully intended to marry, since matrimony was a distinct factor in the social world, and he could say, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years." He was not given to excess of eating, drinking, or merriment – all that was foreign to him – but he would certainly have a string quartette belonging to his very complete establishment.

Mr. Alington had all the coolness in action which ensures success in most human pursuits, from the art of war to the art of making money, and the absence of which postulates a corresponding inefficiency in all practical undertakings. He never lost his head, nor got either frightened or exalté when he was at his work; but the intervals, after he had committed himself to some course of action, and before that action had produced its fruits, were sometimes tense periods to him. He went, no doubt, at forced draught when the great coups were being made, and after he had taken his headlong excursions Nature demanded a readjustment, and his fibres were relaxed. These periods of relaxation he usually tided over by the indulgence of his artistic tastes, which he used as a man of less fine sensibilities might use morphia or alcohol. But to-night the fugues and preludes so deftly exhibited by Lady Devereux seemed only temporarily efficacious. For a while they moved him, but he had not been home an hour when the effect wore off and left him, financially speaking, staring wide-awake.

Again and again he reviewed the natural effect of what he had done, the normal behaviour of the market towards the events which should be developed next day. Already the prices of Carmel were rising; to-morrow would come the announcement of strong support from Australia, and later in the day the more specific news that Mr. Richard Chavasse – that hard-headed operator – had bought to the extent of fifty thousand pounds. Logically, for the money-market is as subject to logical conclusions as any set of syllogisms, its prices must leap. News of the most satisfactory description would continue to arrive from the mine; in a day or two, in a week at the outside, the shares should stand at not less than four to five – no feverish price, but well warranted, so thought Mr. Alington, by its inherent excellence. There was no doubt there would be some slight fall owing to realizations, but that, so he imagined, would be only a temporary reaction. By settling-day, ten days from now, his twenty-five thousand shares bought in England should be worth more than four times their present value; his fifty thousand pounds invested by Mr. Richard Chavasse something over two hundred thousand. After that a firm good-bye to clamorous gold-getting.

He strolled backwards and forwards in his room, now stopping to look for a moment at one of his beloved prints, now lighting a cigarette or sipping a little mild whisky-and-soda. How admirably, he reflected, had his Carmel group hitherto turned out! How alluring had been his board of directors, how convincing to the public mind of the security of a scheme to which hereditary legislators lent their honoured names! Already more than one new board had copied his example, but it had been a great thing to be first in the field; the novelty of the idea was half its success.

But now his noble colleagues might go hang, for all he cared; they had served their turn and been his bell-wethers to the public. Jack Conybeare, he knew, had followed him in this last Carmel speculation, investing largely; he was a shrewd fellow, so thought Alington, and would have made a good business man had not the onus of hereditary obligations borne him elsewhere; and if he himself had been intending to start new companies, he would not have been sorry to have him again on his board – no mere name this time, but a man likely to be of practical use.

Yes; indeed he had struck a vein! Though he believed that ninety per cent. of success is due to effort and wisdom, he had got, like most speculators, a secret faith in that "tide in the affairs of men." It was impossible not to believe in strokes of luck; if things showed a general tendency to prosper, it was well to put many things in hand at once. The stars or some occult influence happened to be favourable just then; in the remote, conjectured heavens there was a conjunction of planets of notable benignity to you; it was your chance; the line was clear; hurry, hurry, while it lasted! In the same way one had at other times to work with sobbing steps through a mire of ill-luck. Perversity for the moment characterized the universe; inanimate objects were malign; sheathed, hooded presences waited to clutch you. Nothing went right; the images of the gods were set awry; ominous mutterings were heard (not fancied) from the shrine. Then was the time to venture little, not to ride unmanageable horses, not to use new silk umbrellas, to go gently, neither praising nor complaining, for fear of further provoking the blind forces that strike; above all, not to think to repair ill-luck by wild strokes. In the nature of this world things would come round; a calm, dewy dawn would break on the low-roofed night. Wait!

For a year his good luck had held. People whom he wished to know had been glad to know him; he was already much at home in London. Carmel East and West had behaved with filial piety to their founder, and the greater Carmel seemed likely to turn out a son as dutiful, but more magnificent. His name would almost certainly be included in the list of Birthday honours, for he had made himself most useful to the Conservative party, and was contesting an impossible seat, for which it had been really difficult to find a candidate, and he had given in a princely manner to the party's funds. Recognition, he had reason to believe, was almost certain, and he would be delighted to be a baronet.

Again that discreet rogue Mr. Richard Chavasse had played his part admirably in the pleasant rôle allotted to him. Like a person of sense, he had accepted the soft inevitable, and had preferred to live very comfortably at Melbourne rather than attempt to get away with the large balance which stood to his name. He had not probably realized that it would have been almost impossible for Mr. Alington to bring him to justice, for the exposure of the "strong support in Australia" would have been inevitable. Or perhaps some feeling of gratitude to his benefactor had touched the accomplice of thieves; the criminal class had been diminished by one – a pleasant thought. The arrangement, however, had been a scheme of mutual advantage, and the man, at any rate, had been sensible enough to see that. It would almost immediately be necessary to think what must be done with that great operator, for to-morrow's purchase would be his last. Mr. Alington, in a gentle glow of charity, was determined to act most kindly to him; his confession should be destroyed, and perhaps he should have a couple of hundred pounds as well, and certainly some pious exhortations. Indeed, the only eclipse of the lucky star had been the motor business. There were ugly losses in his ledger over that – uglier than he had quite realized; but Carmel should gently heal the sore places with a golden lotion.

Next morning came a very favourable report from the mine, and about mid-day the news of the strong support in Australia. The price had been opened at a little over thirty shillings, the mine was eagerly inquired for, and for a couple of hours it rose steadily, and as it rose seemed to get more and more in demand. Then one of those strange periodical madnesses which sometimes affect that shrewd body the Stock Exchange took possession. Everything else was neglected; it seemed that the whole world contained only one thing worth buying, and that shares in Carmel. Men bought and sold, and bought and sold again; now for half an hour would come a run of realizations, and the price would sink like a back-drawing wave in a swiftly advancing tide; but in another hour that was forgotten; the tide had risen again, covering the lost ground, and those who had realized were cursing their premature prudence, and bought again. Steady-going, unemotional operators lost their heads and joined in the wild skying of Carmel without a shred of justification, only hoping that they would find everyone else a shade madder than they, and that they would clear out on the top. Men sold at three and a half, bought again at four, sold at four and a half, and were not yet content. Nobody quite knew what was happening, except that they feverishly desired shares in Carmel, and that those shares were getting every moment more expensive. Bears who had sold ten minutes before came tumbling over each other to secure their shares before they had gone up out of sight, and having got them, as likely as not turned bulls and bought again, on the chance of Carmel going higher, though half an hour ago they had sold in the hope of its going lower. All day this went on, and about an hour before the closing of the market Alington, reading the tape record at his club, saw that the shares stood at five and a half – higher than he had ever hoped they would go in a week.

For a moment he hesitated. If he chose, there was now within his grasp all that he had been playing for. A hansom to the City; two careful words to his broker, for the unloading must be done very swiftly; then to his music and his baronetcy. In an hour the market would close till Monday, for Saturday was a holiday; but before Monday, on the other hand, would come fresh news from the mine. He debated with himself intently for a moment, and as he waited the tape ticked under his hand.

"Carmel," it spelled out, "five and five-eighths, five and three-quarters."

That was enough. For to-day nothing could stop the rise. There would be time to sell on Monday morning.

He called for a hansom; he was going to spend from Friday till Monday in the country, and not having more than enough time to catch the train, drove straight to Waterloo, where his valet would meet him with his luggage.