Read Ebook: Far above rubies (Vol. 3 of 3) by Riddell J H Mrs

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FAR ABOVE RUBIES.

Whether the moneys, with a memorandum of which the promoter so obligingly furnished him, had ever come into his hands or not, Arthur Dudley still felt a certain sense of having been cheated--of having been made the cat's-paw wherewith Mr. Black's chestnuts were drawn out of the fire. He knew, although to the letter Mr. Black's statements might be correct, still that in the spirit he had deceived him grossly.

He was perfectly well aware the meaning conveyed to him by the Company "paying all," was that he, Arthur Dudley, should never have to meet a single bill, nor be a penny the worse for the money he had advanced to float the Protector.

Bitterly now he remembered Nellie and his stock--the latter sold at a considerable sacrifice. The young bullocks and the fat beeves, the flocks of sheep, and the lambs which ought to have been kept over the winter, appeared again, and formed a sad procession before his mind's eye. Hay parted with before the price rose at the turn of the year; wheat threshed off and sent to market, when the markets were falling instead of rising; straw disposed of at rates which scarcely left a margin of profit, after deducting cartage and expenses--these things recurred to the Squire's memory, and roused fresh anger in his heart against the man who had led him so grievously astray.

Now he recollected Mr. Stewart's prophetic words, and cursed that gentleman's clear-sightedness as he did so. Now he recalled those sentences--"I am prepared to lose, and you are not;" "I can afford to wait; you, perhaps, are differently situated;" and they seemed to make his difficulty clear in a moment. "He was not prepared to lose--he was not able to wait." He had stretched his arm out farther than he could draw it back; to lose, with him meant ruin; to wait, meant anxiety and distress unutterable.

What should he do? Looking back over the events of the previous twelve months, Squire Dudley lamented his own credulity and anathematized Mr. Black. He did not regret joining the Protector, or accepting the secretaryship, or leaving Berrie Down, but he bit his nails and drummed upon the table, and then, rising, kicked his chair over, and walked up and down the room, while he called himself all the names imaginable for having accepted bills and spent money, and bought the house in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

He had been eager to buy that house the moment Mr. Black said it was in the market. He would scarcely take time to look over the premises before closing with the owner, so fearful was he of another purchaser forestalling him; but he forgot all this now, and worked himself up into the belief that the promoter had given him no rest till the deposit was paid and the deeds were signed.

He had to be at the office for a certain number of hours every day, and to see and discourse with hundreds of "perfect idiots"--shareholders--who, it is only fair to add, went away with the impression that Mr. Dudley was far too fine a gentleman to understand anything of the affairs of the Company to which he was secretary.

Further, the directors expected him to know every circumstance connected directly or indirectly with the Protector, whether that circumstance were in his department or not. Especially, there sat on the board a General Sinclair, C.B., who was the very plague and torment of Arthur Dudley's life; who was always asking for information; eternally wanting the secretary to "refer back," continually reverting to something which had occurred at the very creation of the Company, and of which the present secretary had no cognizance whatever.

A change this from Berrie Down Hollow; from doing what he liked, as he liked, without question asked by any one; a change this from coming and going as he pleased; from refraining from work; from wandering idly and purposelessly round the farm.

He detested the work, but he liked the thousand a year; he could not bear what he called the drudgery of London life, but he delighted in London gaiety, and in that gaiety he had expected to participate without ever having to labour before he enjoyed.

This life which he was leading; this life--and one a hundred times more agreeable, Mr. Black had told him, should be his--for the mere price of Nellie advanced into the Protector, Limited; and now it was no thanks to Mr. Black he was even in London at all; Mr. Stewart had procured him this trashy appointment, which he would have spurned excepting as a stepping-stone to something much better. Everybody had made, and was making, a fortune out of the Company excepting himself, and it was his money which had floated it; his money which had enabled Mr. Black to buy that place at Ealing, and furnish it without a second thought as to the cost!

But in this conclusion, Arthur Dudley--like all people who, reasoning in a passion, reason illogically--chanced to be wrong. His few thousands would have made but a very poor figure when placed to the credit of Mr. Black's recent purchases; they would have been a drop in the ocean, a blade of grass on the prairie, a single crow amongst the occupants of a rookery. Those poor thousands were many for a poor man to lose; but even had he pocketed every sixpence of the money for which Arthur was responsible, the whole amount would not have tided Mr. Black over three months' expenditure.

For in those days he was "going in for the whole thing." He meant either to rise or to fall--so he informed the Crossenhams. His companies were now all floated; some of them, indeed, in course of winding up, and out of each, and all, the promoter either had reaped, or was hoping to reap, largely. He had a dozen irons in the fire. On the strength of his connection with the Protector, he had suddenly become a man "looked after" by those who had a "good thing" in view.

As he had looked after Allan Stewart, so minor promoters now began to look after and solicit him. He dressed as Peter Black, Esquire, had never dressed before. His light summer overcoat was a work of art to be admired by clerks and porters as a "West End cut;" his boots were articles of attire to be envied; while his hats looked as though they had been that moment taken out of silk paper, and placed jauntily on his head. He had abundant leisure now for attending to the adornment of his outward man, and he did attend to it thoroughly.

The Hoxton days, when he shaved before a piece of broken looking-glass, and performed the very slight ablutions to which he treated his person in a blue Delft washing-basin about six inches in diameter, were left at a convenient distance; and Peter Black, Esquire--quite another individual from the Mister Black who inhabited those wretched lodgings in a street leading out of Pitfield Street, Hoxton--had his house fitted up with hot and cold baths , while his dressing-table was furnished with as many oils, and scents, and pomades, as might have sufficed to dress up an old beauty for her three thousandth ball.

All of which things Arthur remembered, and was wroth accordingly. Had his money not helped to start the Protector? and had Mr. Black not promised to go shares with him? Certainly he had told him as plainly as he could speak that he should have the half of that twenty or thirty thousand pounds he expected to make out of the Company, providing only he lent him in the first instance a hundred pounds!

Arthur Dudley had neither sense enough nor wit enough to perceive the absurdity of this climax. He was awfully stupid, and he had implicitly believed, and here was the result.

He had really thought he should, from one seed, reap immediately a whole field of wheat; he had really credited what a very clever and a very plausible man implied to be the fact, and many a reader will, I know, laugh at him for his credulity, or else scoff at me for drawing the portrait of an impossibly confiding man.

We may presume, and we do presume, of course, that ladies and gentlemen who subscribe to Mudie's would be much cleverer than all this comes to, but still there are other ladies and gentlemen who, taking in the daily papers and reading therein: "Ten pounds wanted for one week; fifteen pounds will be given for the above at the end of seven days; ample security deposited," see and believe just as Arthur Dudley heard and believed likewise. Even amongst the ladies and gentlemen who do subscribe to Mudie's, it is most probable there may have been a few who, in times gone by, deluded by plausible circulars, took shares in some of Mr. Black's companies, and, as a natural consequence, lost their money; and--since there is no one who speaks so loudly against the errors of his former religion as an apostate--doubtless the individuals to whom I refer will declare Arthur Dudley's credulity to be wicked, if not impossible.

Deferentially I stand aside, while the book is laid down, and the suitable oration delivered, then with all due respect I take up the thread of my story once again, and speak of things which are taking place every day in the City, where fresh dupes come hourly to be fleeced, and fresh shearers, no more tender or scrupulous than Mr. Black, attend to relieve the unsuspecting sheep of their superfluous wool.

Arthur Dudley was to have had half!

Remembering this, which in the hurry and confusion of his interview with Mr. Black he had forgotten, the secretary took his hat, and walked off to the City.

Sooner than his friend had expected he accepted that gentleman's invitation, and entering the offices in Dowgate Hill, where another company--the "Universal Law Stationery"--was in course of formation, found the promoter up to his ears in business, with half a dozen people waiting to see him.

"Tell Mr. Black I will not detain him five minutes," said Arthur, quite loud enough for the whole congregation to hear, after, it may be remarked, the pleasing fashion of country people in London. "You know me, don't you?" he added, seeing the clerk hesitate, "I am the secretary of the Protector Bread Company."

Thereupon the visitors each drew his own conclusion. Some, very green indeed, thought what a great man Mr. Dudley must be, thus to force himself into the presence of the magnificent director; others, less easily impressionable, decided that a screw had got loose in the Protector, which Mr. Black was expected to set right. At all events, they each and all began working out the problem of what the secretary could want with his principal, while Arthur marched into the presence of the great man, and found him not engaged with any individual, but simply writing his letters for post.

"What's up with you?" were his first words; "has any one come for a million of shares? or is there a fire at Stangate--or--or what the devil brings you into the City at such a time of day as this?"

"Our conversation this afternoon," Arthur answered, boldly. "I could not rest; it is not fair, Mr. Black; you have not treated me as I should have treated you. Do you remember what you said to me that day when this matter was first mooted between us?"

"Pray sit down," said Mr. Black, magnificently, waving his visitor to a seat, "and explain your meaning to me quietly, if you can. Do I remember what? we said so many things that day it would be impossible for me to recollect all, or indeed any, of them, unless recalled to my memory."

"Do you remember what you said about going half profits with me?" Arthur asked.

"I can't say that I do. Were there any profits then to share?"

"Prospective profits," the other answered. "You said you expected twenty or thirty thousand pounds out of the 'Protector,' and that whatever you got, you would go shares with me."

"Did I?" asked Mr. Black, innocently. "I wish, Dudley, you had chosen any other time in the day than this for coming to pester about by-gones," he added, "for I have no end of letters to write; but, however, as you are here, say all you have got to say."

"I have nothing to say excepting what I have already said," answered Arthur, "namely, that you promised to go shares with me in the Bread Company."

"Now, that is exactly the objection I have to doing business with a gentleman," remarked Mr. Black; "it is impossible to make him understand, excepting literally, a sentence which would be plain as a pikestaff to a boy in the London streets. Tell me the construction you took out of that speech, which, I confess, I never remember to have uttered."

"You said you would have twenty or thirty thousand out of this bakery affair, and were willing to give me half."

"Precisely! not willing to give you half of my earnings, but willing to give you a chance of winning fifteen thousand, which you would have done but for that meddling idiot, Stewart. He has dished me, too, you know. Deuce a thing I have had out of the Company except trouble, my shares, and position. It certainly has given me position. I meant we should have made--you and I together--thousands and thousands out of it, instead of which, when I had served my gentleman's turn, he bows me off with, 'The Company won't bear this, and the Company can't afford that. Whatever houses and offices we buy, must be bought on the mart. Our grain shall not be supplied through any friend of yours. I shall put in my own people to see you do not make sixpence out of that which owes its very existence to you.' Damn him," added Mr. Black, heartily; "the next time I go praying and begging for a great man's name, I'll get what I have got this time--insolence instead of thanks--the door instead of money."

There was no sham about Mr. Black's manner while he delivered himself of this sentence.

Clearly, Allan Stewart had rubbed his hair up the wrong way, and hurt the promoter grievously in the process. Arthur sat silent for a moment, surprised--wondering what he had best say next, and, while he meditated, Mr. Black opened his mouth again:

"And, on the top of all this, you come," he proceeded; "you come dissatisfied with what I have done for you--indignant that I have failed to do more. You are angry because I could not force the Company to buy that cursed place of yours in Lincoln's Inn, which, I wish to Heaven, had never been for sale, just as though Stewart did not serve me the same trick about that shop in the Poultry. I bought it on spec, pulled the old buildings down, ran up a splendid new shop as far as the first floor, and then offered it to the board. Do you think they would have it? 'Pooh, pooh!' says Mr. Stewart; 'what do we want with establishments in the Poultry? Less expensive situations will do for us;' and the confounded thing was thrown upon my hands. Had it not been for the 'London and Home Counties Bank,' which had on its board a man I knew, I should have been swamped--I tell you fairly that I should, Dudley. As it was, I sold my interest to the Company at a switching profit, which enabled me to give my friend ten per cent. on the purchase-money, and that pulled me through; and there the bank is now as prosperous a concern as any in London. Shares up to eight premium."

It might all be true. With a terrible shock it occurred to Squire Dudley that there were other people besides himself in the world--other people looking for their halves, and percentages, and paid up shares also.

In a moment he seemed to understand that he had taken a hand at a game of chances, in which no one, not even those best experienced in the cards, could ensure success. It was a lottery in which he had embarked; and, although he might blame those who had led him up to the wheel, still he felt he could not complain when the man who had been most sanguine of success drew a blank also. He was a gentleman. Even in his blackest hour of need, Arthur, with all his faults, weaknesses, and sins, never was untrue to his training and his ancestry. He had been born--weak fool though he was--a gentleman, bred one, remained one, and he could not bandy words with this clever, plausible swindler, who, seeing his companion's hesitation, continued:

"I have not much time to spare this afternoon, for I have letters to write, and lots of people to see; but as I perceive you are dissatisfied, Dudley, I'll tell you what I'll do: transfer to you a couple of hundred of my shares in the 'Protector,' paid up. That's two thousand pounds, at the worst; and if I see I can do anything more for you, I will. Don't be in too great a hurry, old fellow. That is the worst of all you country people--you think a fortune is to be made just in a minute. I'll stand by you, if you stand by me. I swear it to you, Dudley; there's my hand upon it. Now, do not--do not, I entreat of you, go and make yourself and that dear wife of yours uncomfortable. If you have to raise a few thousands on Berrie Down, what matter? Did Berrie Down ever do anything for you that you should do anything for it? Stick to the Protector and Allan Stewart--that's my advice; and when you are in any difficulty come to me--that is my advice also. Now, good-bye--ta-ta--God bless you, Dudley!"

And thus exit Squire Dudley without speaking a word he had intended, but with a very strong impression on his mind that Mr. Black, having been making free with the contents of a certain bottle, labelled "Martell," ordinarily concealed in the recesses of one of Tann's "Reliance" safes, must, therefore, have spoken the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

While the events I have related were influencing, more or less, the Dudley family history, the "Protector Flour and Bread Company" was succeeding to an extent which it is given to few companies in our time to equal.

If a person be sufficiently interested in the prices of miscellaneous companies' shares, to run his eye down a list of, say, a hundred and fifty of the new Limited Liabilities, he will be surprised to find how few out of the number are quoted as being at par, to say nothing of at a premium. Dis., dis., dis., is the encouraging legend attached to one after another; but it was not thus with the Protector--steadily its shares went up. It grew to be considered a good investment. The ten pound shares were eagerly sought after; and, had an intending investor gone, about that period, to any broker, and expressed his desire of purchasing into the Protector Bread Company, he would have been advised he was acting wisely--that the shares were very good property indeed.

And so every one believed. In all directions the Company's vans were to be encountered conveying bread to the far-away dep?ts, or else returning empty from the extremest ends of London. The bread was good; the directors--greatly to the disgust of their housekeepers and cooks, who were thus cheated out of a legitimate perquisite in the shape of commission--ate of the staff of life kneaded at their own bakeries, and were satisfied.

If an inferior batch were produced, woe to the master baker, on whom, straight away, General Sinclair poured his vials of wrath. If the flour were sour, as servants frequently declared it to be, Mr. Bailey Crossenham's ears tingled for a week.

Never was a company better managed; never a staff more rigidly superintended.

Did Linnor, at the most easterly point of London, running short of bread, borrow a few loaves from his neighbour, Mr. Bickley, and supply them as the genuine product of the Protector, Limited, down came a note from the Secretary's office, informing Mr. Linnor, by "order of the board," that if such dereliction from the paths of duty occurred again, he, Mr. Linnor, would forthwith be dismissed from the responsible position which he held.

Neither for those brilliant creatures, dressed in orange and green, who conveyed the bread from Stangate to all parts of the metropolis, was there such a thing as liberty. Their carts were numbered, and if, on the hottest day in summer, they stopped at the "Spotted Stag," in Mile End Road, or the "White Hart," in Newington, or the "Greyhound," in Fulham, or any other favourite house of call, for a pot of beer, 16, or 48, or 33, or 27, was had up the same evening before the yard superintendent, and "cautioned" for all the world--so the men themselves said--as if the "governor was a beak."

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