WHEN Sir Charles Repton woke upon the Tuesday morning he felt better than he had felt at any moment since the loss of his youth. There seemed something easy in the air about him, and within his mind a lack of business and friction which he did not account for at the time, but which perhaps in a vague manner he may have ascribed to the purity of the air and the beauty of the day. The sun was streaming into his windows from over the Park. It was already warm, and as he dressed and shaved himself he allowed his thoughts to wander with an unaccustomed freedom over the simple things of life. He noted the colour of the trees; he was glad to see the happiness of the passers-by in the streets below; he felt an unaccountable sympathy with the human race, and he was even touched with contempt as he gazed at the long procession of wealthy houses which marked the line of Park Lane.
At breakfast he ate heartily, though he was alone; he looked at the small batch of letters which awaited[116] him, and when he opened his newspaper he positively laughed at the opinions expressed in the leading article. He nearly broke into another laugh as he read the news from America, and then—with a gesture which horrified the two solemn servants who had watched the unaccountable change in their master’s manner, he tore the paper rapidly into four pieces and threw it on the floor. Having done this he jumped up gaily, nodded to the menials, said “You didn’t expect that,” walked briskly out, took his hat and coat and with no conscious purpose but as habit moved him jumped into a motor-bus going East.
The conductor, who had a respect for Sir Charles Repton’s clothes, and especially for his spats, and who seemed to recognise his face, asked him gently how much he desired to spend upon a ticket: to which he answered in a breezy manner, “Penny of course. Never pay more than a penny; then if the beastly thing breaks down you’re not out of pocket ... ’sides which,” he went on as though talking to himself, “if they forget about you you can have tuppence-worth or thruppence-worth for the same money!” And he chuckled.
The conductor looked at him first in terror, then smiled responsively and went forward to deal with less fortunate people, while Sir Charles hummed gently to himself,—a little out of tune but none the less cheerfully on that account—an air of ribald associations.
[117]The top of the bus was pretty full, and a workman who had occasion to travel in the same direction as his betters saw fit to sit down in the one empty place beside the Baronet. It would have been difficult to decide upon what occupation this honest man had most recently been engaged: but there had certainly entered into it oil, wet clay, probably soot, and considerable masses of oxidised copper. It was not remarkable, therefore, that, beside such a companion, especially as that companion was a large man, Sir Charles should have found himself considerably incommoded. What was remarkable was the manner in which the Baronet expressed his annoyance. He turned round upon the workman with an irritated frown and said:
“I can’t make out why they allow people like you on omnibuses!”
“Yer carn’t wort?” said the breadwinner in a threatening voice.
“I say I · can’t · make · out,” answered Sir Charles, carefully picking out each word—“I · can’t · make · out · why · they · allow · people · like · you on omnibuses,—dirty brutes like you, I should say. Why the devil....”
At this moment the workman seized Sir Charles by the collar. Sir Charles, though an older man, was by no means weak; his tall body was well-knit and active, and he felt unaccountably brawny that morning; he got the thumb and forefinger of his left hand like a pitchfork under his opponent’s chin,[118] and there began what promised to be a very pretty scuffle. Everybody on the top of the bus got up, a woman tittered, and a large consequential fellow who attempted to interfere received a violent backhander from the huge left hand of the Operative, the wrist of which was firmly grasped by the right of the Politician and was struggling in the air.
The bus stopped, a crowd gathered, the workman, as is customary with hard-working people, was easily appeased; Sir Charles, a good deal ruffled, got off the bus, and pressing two shillings into the hand of a policeman who was preparing to take notes, said loudly:
“That’s all right! You can’t do anything against me, and of course I can prevent the thing getting into the papers; but it’s always better to give a policeman money,—safe rule!”
With that he wormed his way through the increasing mob and disappeared into a taxi, the driver of which, with singular sagacity, drove off rapidly without asking for any direction. When he was well out of it, Repton put his head out of the window and addressed the driver in the following remarkable words:
“I don’t really know where you’d better go: of course if you go to my Club I could change there” (his collar was torn off him and his hat was badly battered) “but on the whole you’d better take me to Guy’s—No you hadn’t, go to the Club. Stop at a Boy Messenger’s on your way.”
[119]“What Club, sir?” asked the driver with the deference due to a man at once wealthy and mad.
“You won’t know it,” said Sir Charles kindly and still craning in a constrained manner out of the window. “By the way, why don’t they have a speaking-tube or something from inside to you people? It’s awkward turning one’s head outside like a snake. You won’t know it, but I’ll shout to you when we get to the bottom of St. James’s Street.”
The driver, now convinced that he had to do with something quite out of the ordinary, touched his cap in a manner almost military, and fled through the streets of London. At a Boy Messenger’s office Sir Charles sent home for clothes and for a change, got to his Club, informed the astonished porter that it was a very fine day, that he had just had a fight on the top of a bus, that by God the Johnnie didn’t know who he was tackling! He, Sir Charles, was no longer a young man, but he would have shown him what an upper cut was if he could have got a free swing! He proceeded to illustrate the nature of this fence—then suddenly asked for his letters, and for a dressing-room.
After this, which had all been acted in the most rapid and violent manner, he ran up the steps, stood for a few moments with his hands in his pockets gazing at the telegrams, and forgetful that he had no collar on, that his coat was torn, that there was blood upon his hands, and that half of his waistcoat was wide open with two buttons missing. He found[120] the telegrams of some interest; he did not notice the glances directed towards him by those who passed in and out of the building, nor the act of a page who in passing the porter’s box tapped his forehead twice with his forefinger.
He stood for a moment in thought, then it suddenly occurred to him that it would have been a wiser thing to have gone straight home. He got another taxi and drove to his house. There, after a brief scene with the footman in which he rehearsed all that he had already given them at the Club, he ordered his clothes to be put out for him, and took a very comfortable bath.
Luckily for him he found lying upon his table when he came down, a note which he had left there the night before with regard to the Van Diemens meeting.
“Forgot that,” he said, a little seriously. “Good thing I found it.”
He picked it up, folded it once or twice, unfolded it, re-read it perhaps three times, and while he was so employed heard the grave voice of his secretary begging him to go into town in the motor.
Repton did not for the moment see any connection between his recent adventures and this request, but he was all compliance, and nodding cheerfully he waited for the machine to come round. When it had come he looked at it closely for a moment, confided to the chauffeur that he intensely disliked its colour, but that it was a bargain and he wasn’t[121] going to spend any money on changing it, because he meant to sell it to some fool at the end of the season—got in, and was driven to the Cannon Street Hotel.
He was a little late. The platform was already occupied and his empty chair was waiting for him.
At his entry there was some applause, such as would naturally greet the man who was known to be the Directing Brain of all that interest. None noticed a change in him. His clothes were perhaps a little less spick and span: it was unusual to see him stretch his arms two or three times before he sat down, and those who knew him best, in his immediate neighbourhood upon the platform, were astonished to see him smile and nod familiarly to several of the less important Directors; but on the whole he behaved himself in a fairly consecutive manner, and if he did whisper to a colleague upon his right that he looked as though he had been drinking a little too much overnight, the unaccustomed jest was allowed to pass without comment.
When the moment came for him to speak, he jumped up, perhaps a little too briskly, faced his audience with less than his usual solemnity, nay, with something very like a grin, and struck the first note of his great speech in a manner which they had hitherto never heard from his lips.
It was certainly calculated to compel their attention if not their conviction, for the very first words[122] which he shouted into the body of the hall, were these:
“WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR?”
After that rhetorical question, delivered in a roar that would have filled the largest railway station in London, he repeated it in a somewhat lower tone, clenched his fists, struck them squarely on the table, and answered as though he were delivering a final judgment:
“MONEY!....
Ladies and gentlemen,” he went on, raising his right hand and wagging his forefinger at them—“we are here for money! And don’t you forget it!”
He blew a great breath, watched them quizzically a moment and then continued:
“What most of you most lack is the power of thinking clearly. I can see it in your faces. I can see it in the way you sit. And people who can’t think clearly don’t make money. No one can think clearly who hasn’t got a good grip of his first principles and doesn’t know first of all what he wants before he tries to get it. Well, I repeat it, and I challenge any one to deny it: what we want is money! Let us make that quite clear. Let us anchor ourselves to that ... and when we once have that thoroughly fixed in our minds we can go on to the matter of how we are to get it.”
“Now ladies and gentlemen,” he proceeded in a more conversational manner, rubbing his hands together, and smiling at them with excessive[123] freedom, “let us first of all take stock. Sitting here before me and round me here upon this platform (he waved his right arm in a large gesture) are four million pounds of Van Diemens stock. Four million pounds, ladies and gentlemen! But wait a moment. At what price was that stock bought? I am not asking at what price I bought,”—here he looked to the left and the right, sweeping the hundreds of faces before him—“I am not asking at what price I bought: my position differs from yours, my hearties; I’m in the middle of things and my official position obtains me even more knowledge than I should gather with my own very excellent powers of observation: I’ve spent a whole lifetime in watching markets, and I have never cared a dump—I repeat, ladies and gentlemen, a DUMP, for anything except the profit. I have never listened to any talk about the ‘development of a country’ or ‘possibilities’ or ‘the future,’ or any kid of that sort. I’ve bought paper and sold paper ... and I’ve done uncommonly well out of it.”
He paused a moment, more for breath than for anything else, for he had been speaking very rapidly; and in the terrified silence round him Bingham was heard muttering as though in reply to some whispered question: “You leave him alone! It may be unconventional, but....”
“The question is, ladies and gentlemen, at what price have you bought ... on the average? Many of you are country parsons, many of you ladies with[124] far more money than you have knowledge what to do with it. Not a few of you stock-brokers—an exceptionally inexperienced class of men—you are a fair average lot of British investors, and I ask at what price did you buy?” He looked at them fixedly for a few moments, then pulling out a scrap of paper he read it briefly:
“‘From figures that have been laid before me I find that the average price at which the present shareholders bought was eight pounds sixteen shillings and a few pence,’” and then added “We’ll call it eight pounds. Always be on the Conservative side.”
At this remark, which was supposed to contain a political jest, two old ladies in the second row tittered, but finding themselves alone, stopped tittering.
“I say take it at eight pounds. Well, that four million of stock stands for thirty-two million pounds. Thirty-two million pounds!” he said with a rising voice—“THIRTY-TWO MILLION POUNDS!” he roared,—banging the table with his fist and leaning forward with a determined jowl.... “And what’s left of it? Nothing!”
There was another dead silence at the end of this striking phrase, and Bingham was again heard to mutter: “You leave him alone; he knows what he’s at!” A certain uneasy shuffling of feet behind him caused Repton to turn his head snappishly, then he looked round again and resumed his great oration.
[125]“I say nothing.... Oh! I know there are some of you stupid enough to think that you have still got sixteen and thruppence a share. That was the quotation in the paper this morning. Eugh!” he sniffed sardonically, “You try and sell at that and you’ll soon find what you’ve got! No! you haven’t even got that sixteen and thruppence. You haven’t got two shillings in the pound for what you put in. You’ve got nothing! nothing! nothing!! Put that in your pipes and smoke it....”
“And so, gentlemen,” he added, leaning his body backwards and putting his thumbs into his waistcoat, “the business before us is how to get out of this hole. There are perhaps some of you,” he went on, frowning intellectually, “there are perhaps some of you who imagine that the Government is going to buy. Well, I’m a member of the Government and I can tell you they are not.”
At this appalling remark the elements of revolution upon the platform all but exploded, but the solid weight of Bingham was still there, and if I may hint at a phrase with which the reader is already familiar, he suggested that Sir Charles knew what he was about and should be let alone.
“Even if they did buy,” Repton went on seriously and argumentatively, “they could hardly buy at more than par. I’m the last man,” he continued rapidly “to jaw about public opinion or things of that sort. The real reason why they won’t buy is the Irish. But even if they did buy they could hardly give more than par.[126] And what’s par?” he said with great disdain. “No, that cock won’t fight!... Mind you, I’m not saying you couldn’t have got the Government to buy a little time ago. I think you could. But you can’t now.”
“I don’t think there’s a single man on either front bench—” this was said meditatively and tapping off the fingers of one hand with the forefinger of the other—“who’s personally interested, and I don’t think there’s any direct connection since Cooke died between the Cabinet and any one who is—except me. No, that’s not the way out. What you’ve got to do, ladies and gentlemen, is to throw a sprat to catch a whale.”
“A sprat,” he meditatively repeated, “to catch a whale: a great Whale full o’ blubber! ... an’ how are you going to do that?”
“Now listen”—his tone had become very earnest and he was leaning forward, bent and fixed and holding them with his fine strong eyes, “listen, there are three steps. You’ve got first of all to show the public that you believe in the future of the Company; next you’ve got to decide upon a dodge to show that: something that’ll make every one think that you the shareholders do really believe in that future. What’s the third step? Why up goes the price—real price—money offered—then you can sell. That’s my opinion,” he concluded, clapping his hands together and laying them upon the table before him: and he let it sink in.
“Now you’ll notice,” he went on, “in the prospectus[127] you have received, some talk of a railway. We’re asking money from you to build a railway. Now why are we doing that? Please follow me carefully.”
The hundreds of heads bent forward and the intelligences they contained were prepared to follow him carefully. He was a great man.
“We have asked you to build a railway,” he pronounced, leaving a little space of time between each word, “because a railway still catches on. I don’t know why, but it does. Mines don’t. You might discover ore all over the place and they wouldn’t go: I’ve got two men of my own, engineers, experts, who’ll discover ore anywhere; they’d discover tons before three o’clock this afternoon and you might swear your dying oath to them, but the public wouldn’t believe you. As for agriculture,—Piff! And as for climate, Boo! But railways still work.”
“Very well. You raise your capital for your railway. What that railway may be imagined to do is set out in full before you and I won’t go into it. But I will ask you especially to note the passage in which it is described as giving a strategical supremacy to the Empire. You know what the Empire is. You may know, some o’ you, what strategy is. Loo............