He awoke to a flood of bright sunshine streaming in through the
skylight. The wind had driven fog and rain before it, leaving a virginal
and new-washed world under a sky of pale, remote blue.
Broughton heaved himself off the settee, catching a glimpse of
himself--haggard, rumpled, and unkempt--in the mirror over the
sideboard, as he did so.
“By George!” he said to himself, viewing his reflection, “Marianne would
have looked down her nose at me if I’d turned up at Sibella Road like
this. She’d have thought I’d been having a thick night, and small blame
to her!”
There was no doubt that he presented a sorry spectacle. His trousers
were still damp and splashed with mud-stains; his collar was creased and
black with fog. He was stiff and tired in body; but his mind, naturally
resilient, was infinitely refreshed by the long hours of sleep.
His spirits rose every minute. He whistled to himself as he rummaged out
a blue suit from his cabin, washed, and shaved. He even indulged in a
smile as he recalled the little lawyer and his two singlets.
After all, looked at in the light of day, things might have been a whole
lot worse. There was always a chance that one of the three or four
British firms who still owned sailing ships might buy the old girl. She
had a great name; and people were beginning to be a bit sentimental
about sailing ships now they were mostly gone. Or one of the big
steamship lines might take her on for training purposes. If either of
those things happened, it wasn’t likely they would want to put anyone
else in command. It was common knowledge, though he said it himself,
that no one could get what he could out of her. They would very likely
put her into the nitrate trade. Of course it would be a bit of a
come-down, still--any port in a storm! He remembered how sick he had
been about it the first time she loaded coal at Newcastle. He had felt
like going down on his knees and apologizing to her for the outrage! Or,
again, there was lumber--plenty of charters were to be had up the West
Coast. True, her size was against her; with her reputation and twice her
tonnage she wouldn’t have had to wait long for a purchaser. But she
would be a good investment, for all that. Why, damn it all, if he had
the money loose he’d buy her himself without thinking twice about it!
But twenty pounds a month doesn’t leave much margin for such luxuries as
buying ships.
He paused half in and half out of his coat, struck by a sudden idea.
His half-brother Edward! Why, he was the very man--just the very man!
Rolling in money that he made at that warehouse where he sold staylaces
or something up in the City! The blighter was as sharp as a
needle--always had been from the time when he used to drive bargains
over blood alleys with the other kids at school. He’d see the advantage
of a proposition like this fast enough! He could either lend the money
on reasonable interest on the security of the ship, or if he liked he
could buy her himself and let Broughton manage her for him.
He hurried over the rest of his toilet, swallowed a cup of tea and a
rasher old Mike had got ready for him, and started off for the City, all
on fire with his new project.
How did that piece of poetry go that Old Featherstone got the ship’s
name from? He had read it once, but he wasn’t much at poetry: he
couldn’t make much of it.
“Maid of Athens, ere we part----”
That was it! He repeated the line once or twice under his breath,
finding in it a new and surprising significance. He ran his hand
caressingly along the smoothness of her teak rail, sleek and glossy and
warm in the sun as a living thing.
“Maid of Athens, ere we part----”
“There’s a deuce of a lot of water to go under the bridge before it
comes to that, old lady!” he said aloud.
By the time he reached the dock gates the proposition had grown so rosy
that his only fear was lest someone else should discover its
attractiveness and get in ahead of him. By the time he got off the bus
in Saint Paul’s Churchyard it seemed to him that he was doing his
half-brother a really good turn in allowing him the first chance of so
advantageous a business opportunity.
The spruce-looking master mariner who gave in his name at a little hole
marked “Inquiries” on the ground-floor of a warehouse just behind the
Church of Saint Sempronius Without was a very different person from the
haggard being who had glared back at him from the glass an hour ago.
Edward Broughton’s place of business was a large, modern edifice each of
whose many ground-floor windows displayed a device representing a nude
youth running like hell over the surface of a miniature globe, holding
in his extended hand a suit of Elasto Underwear--“Fits where it Hits.”
This famous slogan it was which had made Elasto Underwear and Edward
Broughton’s fortune; for he was by way of doing very well indeed, was
Edward, and had even been spoken of as a possible Lord Mayor. David
remembered him in the old days, when he was at home from sea, as a pert
little snipe of a youngster with red cheeks and sticking-out eyes.
A stylish youth, looking like a clothed edition of the young gentleman
on the placards, ushered him into a small, glass-sided compartment and
left him alone there with two little plaster images wearing miniature
suits of Elasto Underwear. One was after--a long way after--Michael
Angelo’s David, the other (also a long way) after the Venus of Milo.
Broughton looked round him with all the sailorman’s lordly contempt of
the ways of traders. He looked out through the glass sides of his cage
on long vistas of desks where girls sat at typewriters and between which
there scurried young exquisites with sleek hair and champagne-coloured
socks--dozens of them, presumably engaged on the one all-important task
of distributing Elasto Underwear to the civilized and uncivilized world.
So this was where brother Edward made all his money! Rum sort of
show--“Fits where it Hits,” indeed--what a darned silly idea! And how
much longer were they going to keep him waiting?
His eyes wandered for the twentieth time to the clock. Half-past
eleven--he had been here half an hour. The two underclothed statuettes
were beginning to get on his nerves. He should smash ’em if he stopped
there much longer.
Issuing forth fuming from his plate-glass seclusion, he stopped one of
the hurrying exquisites.
“Does Mr. Broughton know I am here?” he asked.
“Y-yes, sir!” The youth could not have said what made him tack that
“sir” on. “You see, he’s very busy in a morning, if you haven’t an
appointment. And this week the auditors are here. Could you leave your
name and call again?”
“I see. No, I’m afraid I can’t. Will you have the goodness to tell him
again, please? Say that Captain Broughton would like to see him--on
business--important business.”
The lad hesitated for a moment between dread of his employer and a sense
of something masterful, something which demanded obedience, about this
brown-faced, quiet stranger. The stranger won, and with a “Very good,
sir,” the messenger disappeared among the desks.
Presently he returned. Mr. Broughton would see his visitor now.
David’s half-brother sat in a vast lighted room behind a vast
leather-covered table. He still had the round red cheeks and prominent
eyes of his youth, but he was almost bald and showed an incipient
corporation.
A youth laden with two huge ledgers backed out of the presence as David
entered. Like the King, by Jove! Brother Edward was getting into no end
of a big pot.
“Oh, good morning, David!” He waved his caller graciously to a seat.
“This is quite an unaccustomed honour. I’m afraid you’ve come at rather
a busy time--the auditors, and so forth. I hardly ever see anybody
except by appointment. But I can give you ten minutes. And now--what can
I do for you?”
The words were pleasant enough in a way; but that “What can I do for
you?” signified as plainly as if he had said it, “What does this fellow
want with me, I wonder?”
There is no enmity so undying as that which dates from the nursery.
There is no dislike so unconquerable as that which exists between people
who are kin but not kind. Had David Broughton been more of a man of the
world he would have known as much; and that while it is true that blood
is thicker than water, it is also true that upon occasion it can be more
bitter than gall.
The undercurrent of suspicion which was unmistakable beneath the smooth
surface of Edward Broughton’s words flicked David on the raw. Perhaps it
was that, perhaps the long chilling wait in the plate-glass ante-room
had something to do with it. For whatever reason, when he opened his
mouth to explain his errand, he found that all his eloquence had
deserted him.
He was going to make a mess of it: he knew it as soon as he began to
speak. Where were all the telling facts, the effective data he had
marshalled so brilliantly as he rode up to the City on the bus?
Gone--all gone; he found himself stammering out his case haltingly,
baldly, unconvincingly. He could feel it in his bones.
Edward Broughton pursed up his lips, as his half-brother’s last phrase
petered out in futility, and blew out his cheeks. He lay back in the
large chair and spread his neat little legs out under the large table,
placing together his finger-tips--the flattened finger-tips of the
money-grubber.
“I--see! I--see! You want me to buy this--er--ship?”
“Well, yes,” David admitted. “I suppose that’s about the length of it,
or--or--as I said just now--lend me the money on the security of the
ship----”
Edward Broughton studied his nails for a few seconds in silence. He used
to bite ’em as a kid, David suddenly remembered, and have bitter aloes
put on to stop him.
Then slowly, solemnly, he shook his head.
“No, no! I’m afraid it’s nothing in my line, David.”
“But, dash it all, man!”--Broughton’s temper was beginning to get the
better of him. He was annoyed with himself because he felt he had
bungled his chances: more because he felt that he had made a mistake in
coming to this fellow at all. Ancient family aversions reared their
forgotten heads. And the intolerant impatience of the autocrat rose in
resentment of opposition. “Dash it all, man, it’s a good investment! I
shouldn’t have thought about mentioning it to you if it hadn’t been.” He
couldn’t help that sly dig.
“What precisely is your idea of a good investment?”
“Well, I should say it would pay a good five per cent--at a low
estimate....”
Edward raised his eyebrows with a superior little smile of indulgent
amusement.
“Five per cent. Why, my dear man, I won’t look at anything that doesn’t
bring in twenty at least. No, I’m very sorry for you. If I could really
see my way to help you I would, for the sake of old times and so on. But
one must keep sentiment out of business. It doesn’t do. And, honestly, I
can see nothing in it. It isn’t even as if this ship were a fairly new
ship. One must move with the times, you know. The late Mr. Featherstone
was a very keen man of business, and as you yourself said just now,
he’d been selling his ships for years. He knew his business, no doubt,
as well as I know mine. And my motto is, ‘Let the cobbler stick to his
last!’ His Elasto, eh? Ha ha--not bad that!... No, I’m awfully sorry! I
quite see your position. I’ve often thought you were making a big
mistake--you ought to have gone in with one of the steamer companies.
But I’ll do what I can for you. I’ll put in a word for you, with
pleasure. I know one or two directors----”
“Sorry! Help you! Put in a word for you!” What did the little blighter
mean? A little snipe whose ear-hole he’d wrung many a time!
Broughton rose, breathing heavily. He restrained with difficulty a
fraternal impulse to reach across the leather-covered table and pull the
little beggar’s nose.
“Damn it all,” he rapped out, “who asked you for your pity or your
advice, I’d like to know? When I want ’em, I won’t forget to ask for
’em, and that’ll be never. I come to you, as I might go to any other
business man, with a business proposition. It doesn’t interest you; very
well, there’s no more to be said. But as for your advice--_and_ your
money--you can keep ’em and be damned to you!”
He passed out between the lines of sniggering, nudging, whispering
clerks, his head held high, though his heart was sick with anger and
humiliation. So that was what the little beast had thought he was after.
Keeping a berth warm for himself. He went hot all over at the thought.
He did not even know that he had--for his voice, which he had raised
considerably in the heat of the moment, had carried to the farthest
corners of the outer office--provided the employees of Elasto, Limited,
with one of the most enjoyable moments of their somewhat dull business
career.