Charles Repton, manifold as were his financial interests, knew nothing
of Popocatapetls, and cared less.
The manner in which his life was to be influenced by that very distant
cataclysm was hidden from him; as (for that matter) it would be hidden
from the reader also had not this book been most boldly published.
Yet another thing the full import of which may escape the reader, is
the fact that Sir Charles Repton was extremely tender just behind the
ears; but for this the reader herself alone and not the author is to
blame, for if the reader had any knowledge of Caryll’s Ganglia she
would have guessed at twenty things. But no matter: Caryll’s Ganglia
and their effect upon self-control very much interrupt the chain of
those absorbing adventures which, if she will continue, the reader will
presently peruse.
Anyhow, those regions of the head which lie behind either ear were for
some reason or other very tender, large, sensitive to pressure, and in
a way abnormal in Sir Charles Repton.
When, therefore, somewhere about the corner of Tottenham Court Road
(on that March day on which we left him walking to his Board meeting),
his hat blew off: when he had run after it: when in doing so he had
ruffled his fine crop of white hair; and when, to have it all set
right, he had gone into a second-rate barber’s, it may well be imagined
that he gave the man who served him minute instructions that the head
rest upon the back of the chair should be made comfortable--and so it
was. And on to it Sir Charles Repton leant gingerly the head upon whose
clear action depended the future fortunes of Van Diemens.
The man in brushing his hair with an apparatus of singular power,
turned the monologue on to the commonplaces of the moment, which
included the bestiality of the Government and the abhorrent nature
of the Italian people, of whom at that particular moment in 1915 the
people of London stood in abject terror.
Whether it was the pressure of the violent rotating brush or some
looseness in the screw that held the support behind him, with a shock
and a clang that support slipped, and Sir Charles Repton’s head came
smartly down, first through nothingness and then on to two iron nuts
which exactly corresponded to those processes of the skull just
behind either ear, in which, as I have taken pains to remark, he was
peculiarly sensitive: for they were largely developed in him and
nourished it would seem by an unusual supply of blood.
Sharp as was the pain, Charles Repton controlled himself, listened to
the explanations and apologies of the barber, and submitted himself
again to the grooming for which he had entered.
When he went out again into the street he had almost forgotten the
accident. The two places where his head had been struck swelled
slightly and he touched them now and again, but they soon passed from
his mind; within ten minutes they were no longer painful; yet was there
set up in them from that moment, an irritation which was to have no
inconsiderable consequence.
He went on into the City, ordered one or two things which he had set
down in his memorandum before starting, looked in at a City Club
where he knew one or two items of news were awaiting him, and slowly
betook himself to the offices of the Van Diemens Company. He had
thoroughly planned out the scheme of that morning’s work; it needed no
recapitulation in his mind, yet as his habit was, just before opening
the door of the Board Room, in the few seconds of going up the stairs,
he briefly presented his scheme of tactics to his own mind.
The Directors must ask the shareholders for fresh capital; a nominal
million, an increase of 25 per cent. upon the value of the shares at
par. That was the first point.
The second point was the object for which this levy should nominally
be demanded. On that also he had made up his mind. Paton had quite
unconsciously suggested to him the master idea; a little belt of
untravelled and unknown country (locally known as the “Out and Out”)
wherein the degraded Kawangas--so Paton had told him, and after all
Paton had been there--held their orgies in Mutchi-time, alone separated
Perks’ Bay from the Straits, and the long detour which all traffic must
now make between the coaling station and the high road to the East,
could be cut off by a line crossing that region. Paton had assured him
with immense enthusiasm that such a line would give its possessor the
strategic key to the gate of everything East of the Bay of Bengal,
and, what was more important in Sir Charles’ eyes than Paton’s own
opinion, a vast mass of gentlemen in the suburbs of London and perhaps
five-sixths of the journalists in Fleet Street, were ready to rally to
the idea. It had been well preached and well dinned in.
These two points were clear: they must ask for a million and they must
ask it for the purpose of building a railway that would at last ensure
the Empire against the nightmare of foreign rivals.
There was a third point. The shareholders would not or could not
subscribe a million but that was easily turned. They should be asked
for no more than 200,000,--a shilling a share--in cash down, “the
remainder to be paid,” etc. etc.
Had not Sir Charles possessed an iron control of his face, the strong
set smile which he wore as he entered the Board Room would have
broadened at the recollection of that last detail. On the other hand
had he not possessed such self-control some movement of annoyance
might have escaped him to discover present at the table, among his
other colleagues, the late-rising and impervious Bingham. The sight
was sufficient to exasperate a man of less balance. The hour had been
carefully chosen to avoid such an accident, and that accident meant
perhaps another half-hour or more of close argument and of subtle
effort.
For his colleague Bingham added to a native idiocy of solid texture and
formidable dimensions, the experience of extensive travel; and he was
in particular well acquainted with the district with regard to which
the Board must that day make its decision. It was certain, therefore,
that his fellow-Directors would listen to him with peculiar respect,
not only on account of his stupidity which necessarily commanded a
certain attention, but also on account of his intimacy with plain
matters of fact: he had been upon the spot: he was the man who knew.
It was just as Repton had feared. Business that might have been done in
a quarter of an hour and a decision which contained no more than the
issue of pieces of paper was turned into a long practical discussion by
the intolerable ponderance of Bingham, who would wait until every one
had had his say, and then would bring in some dreadful little technical
point about a marsh, a rainy season or a fly; he was careful to pepper
his conversation with local terms a hundred times more remote than the
Kawanga and Mutchi-time; in every conceivable manner he put his spoke
into the wheels of business.
So considerable was the effect produced by the redoubtable Bingham at
that table that, were Cæsarism a common political theory in elderly
men, the whole conduct of Van Diemens would for the future have been
put into his hands. Luckily for the Company its forms were not so
democratic.
Charles Repton waited patiently. When he spoke his point was as simple
as falling off a log: what was wanted was not a railway in itself, it
was a new issue of capital. He was profoundly indifferent what label
should be tied onto that issue, so long as it was a label good enough
to get the original shareholders to come in. The public would never
come in as things were: its pusillanimity was increased by the fact
that the Company had been in existence for now eleven years and had
hitherto failed to pay a dividend of any kind. After some thought he
had decided, in company with one or two others upon the Board, that a
railway through a certain district of the concession, locally known
as “The Out and Out,” and remarkable for the fact that no white man
had yet visited it, would be the best attraction he could offer. He
was prepared to show by the aid of maps upon which should be marked
all favourable things, that a line driven through this district would
unite with the world two provinces teeming with inexhaustible wealth,
of a heavenly climate, and hitherto by the mere accident of the Out
and Out belt, cut off from the longing embraces of commerce. More;
he could show that this single line of railway would bestow upon his
beloved country so vast a strategic superiority over all other nations
as would ensure her immediate success in any campaign, no matter what
the quality of the troops she might employ. To this he added the
attractions of touring in the tropics and the allurements of big game
for those wealthy gentlemen whom he designed in the new prospectus to
term Shikaris.
With the new capital subscribed and long before the line was surveyed,
there was little doubt that the shares which had fallen from over £9 to
the comparatively low quotation--but oh! not price--of 16/3 (at which
quotation he had first consented to tender his services to the Company)
would rise to certainly over £1, perhaps to nearer £2, and what was
more to the point they would be readily saleable. He was prepared in
that event to transfer his property in them to others, a course which
he sincerely hoped his fellow-shareholders would also follow, though of
course he would not take it upon himself to advise any one of them.
Bingham, like the practical man he was, pinned himself to the railway.
He _knew_ the Out and Out; not that he’d ever been there,--no white
man had,--but he had talked to several of the Kawanga in Mutchi-time,
and he shook his head despondently. There was one continuous line of
precipice 3000 feet deep; there was a river which was now a stream
five miles broad, now a marsh and now again dry--, sometimes for years
on end. There was a dense mass of forest; there was that much more
difficult thing, a belt of shifting sand dunes; there were nearly 300
miles without water through these. He was prepared to speak all day
upon the difficulties of building a railway which none but the least
intelligent had ever designed to build.
Sir Charles Repton could ride himself on the curb, and more than
anything else this mastery had given him his present great position;
but that day he had to exercise his will to the full, and in that
exercise he felt slight twinges behind the ear where the barber’s rest
had struck him. It was all he could do to prevent himself from drumming
on the table or from making those interruptions which only serve as
fuel to the slow criticisms of the dull.
At last--and heaven knows with what subtlety and patience--he
conquered. There was a vote (a thing he had wished to avoid), but he
carried it by two; and it was agreed that the issue of new capital
should be made, that a General Meeting of the shareholders should
be called for Tuesday the 2nd of June, and that he, Repton, should
have the task of laying the scheme before them. The new prospectus,
which he had already drafted, was passed round and with a very few
emendations accepted. Then, after as heavy a bit of work as had ever
been undertaken in the way of persuasion, the principal brain in that
company was at last free for other things.
It was half-past one. He had just time to meet and to convince yet
another fool upon another matter: the foreigner acting as agent for his
Government, on the matter of the bridge: a bridge which the Foreign
Government might or might not build, and, if they built, might or might
not order from a firm which Repton had reason to befriend. Repton must
lunch with that foreigner: he must persuade him to build: he must
get the order--then he must be in his place in the House in time for
questions.
The foreigner was as wax in his hands: not as good warm wax,
adulterated wax, candle wax, but rather as beeswax, very ancient
and hard. It was a full hour before that wax was pliable, but once
again the unceasing, managed, strict watchfulness, the set face which
had always in it something stern but never anything aggressive, the
balance of judgment, conquered. Down to the smallest detail of that
conversation Repton was the artist, his host at the lunch was the
public, accepting and gradually convinced, and the bridge was ordered
for the Foreign Government, though it was a useless bridge leading
from nowhere to nowhere, and though it could have been built much more
solidly and much better by the people of the place than by the English
firm.
Then Repton went on to the House of Commons, and there, as in every
duty of the day, the weight of his character told.
The questions were slight, there were not half a dozen that concerned
his Department, but he answered them all with that curious restraint of
tone which somehow made it difficult to cross-examine his Department.
And he faced the House with such a poise and expression that one almost
wondered, as one looked at him, upon which side he was sitting, or
whether indeed the mere game of In’s and Out’s entered into his brain
at all.
He seemed to be quite above the divisions of party. He seemed a sort
of Ambassador from the permanent officials and to carry into the House
of Commons an atmosphere at once judicial and experienced which no one
could resist. When he had first accepted the Wardenship of the Court
of Dowry it had been wondered that he should take so secondary a post.
Now, after these four years, it was rather wondered why no one had seen
till then the possibilities that lay in the position.
After that typical and decisive day, Repton, for more than a month,
refrained from debate.
He was ever in his seat on those two days in each week when it was his
business to answer questions: he never let his understrapper appear for
him; for one full fortnight he was permanently in attendance, watching
the fortunes before a select committee of a certain Bill, for which the
public cared nothing but which he knew might change in a very important
particular the public fortune--but in general he seemed to be in
retirement. He was planning hard.
A mixture of Imperial sentiment and personal pride urged him to put
Van Diemens on their legs, and all April, all through the Easter
Recess, he remained in London working. He worked right on into May; for
the first week after Parliament met again he was seen but little; one
thing only troubled him, that at long intervals--sometimes as long as
ten days, an uneasy twinge behind the ears, the result of that little
half-forgotten accident, incommoded him. These twinges came a trifle
more frequently as May advanced. After the last of them he had felt a
little dazed--no more. And still he worked and worked, holding twenty
reins in his hands.
Before the end of May the fruit of all this labour began to appear.
Camptons were reconstructed, arbitration had been forced upon the
Docks combination in the North just in time to prevent a wholesale
transference of shipping abroad, and more important than all, perhaps,
there had begun to crop up in the papers, here, there, and everywhere,
the mention--and the flattering mention--of Van Diemens, and the
wealthy were already familiar with the conception of a certain railway
in the land which was under the Van Diemens charter.
The wealthy, but as yet only the wealthy; it is as fatal to be too
early as to be too late, and that brain which knew how to drive and
compel, had also known so well how to restrain, that the shares still
remained unsaleable with the meaningless quotation of sixteen shillings
and a few fluctuating pence still attached to them in the market lists.
So Repton stood in the middle of May, 1915, when he became aware that
an obscure member (obscure at least in the House of Commons--and Repton
noticed little of, and cared nothing for, the merely luxurious world of
London), an aristocrat of sorts, one of the _Demaine_,--George Demaine
it seemed, was being talked about. He was being pushed somehow. Repton
hardly heeded so commonplace a phenomenon, save perhaps to wonder what
job was on:--he continued to push Van Diemens.