RESULTS IN LONDON.
“How awfully ghastly!” said Amy Rivers.
“Yes,” said Fairfax; “those anarchist people ought to be shot down like
dangerous wild beasts whenever they open their mouths! Think of it! not
only a fine ship, but half a million in specie, blotted out of existence
by this murderous bomb! It will come fearfully heavy on some of the
underwriters. There will be a black pay-day at Lloyd’s when they settle
up over this. You never saw such excitement as there is in the City.
Papers were selling at half a crown apiece!”
“And is it certain that poor Mr. Onslow is drowned?”
“I’m afraid, practically so. The two lifeboats were picked up next
morning, and their crews taken into Mobile. When they came to count heads
it was found that the captain and Onslow and one of the engine-room
hands were missing. In the hurry of the escape they seem to have got
into neither lifeboat. The telegram says that no other boat would have
lived a minute in the sea that was running at the time, even if one had
been lowered. And the mate, who writes, does not think that this was
even attempted, because the _Port Edes_ sank before the two lifeboats
had driven out of sight. We had a private cablegram at the office before
I left, and that told how other steamers crossing that part of the Gulf
had been on the look-out, but up to then not even so much as a scrap of
wreckage had been sighted. So I fear it is past a doubt that she sank
like a stone in deep water, and took those poor fellows down with her.”
“It is horribly sad, especially when one remembers what I heard this
morning, Hamilton. The girl Mr. Onslow went wild about six years ago is
out in Florida this minute, and free. Duvernay, the man she married,
died six months ago of malarial fever. You know Mr. Onslow was engaged
to her just after he left Cambridge and went as an _attaché_, and was
desperately fond of her, as I imagined he could be; and when her people
forced her into marrying the other fellow, he threw up his post and
wandered into all the most out-of-the-way corners of the earth to try
and forget things. What makes me so interested is this: I’ve just found
out that she was a Miss Mabel Kildare before she was married, and when I
was a child I used to know her sister Elsie very well indeed. In fact,
I believe we were some sort of cousins, and for half a year we had the
same governess together, and were as intimate as two children could be.
Then her sister married Mr. Duvernay, who had a colonial appointment, and
Elsie went with them abroad, and we dropped completely out of touch with
one another. Strange, isn’t it, that I should hear of her again the same
day that brings news of poor Mr. Onslow’s death?”
“It’s a small world this,” said Fairfax, sententiously, “and coincidences
are the commonest things in it. I suppose in a novel the pair of them
ought to have come together, and forgiven the past, and married, and
settled down in a villa residence with ivy and clematis attachment, and
lived happily ever afterwards. Unfortunately, real life is balder and far
less romantic.”
“You seem out of spirits,” said his _fiancée_, linking her fingers over
his arm.
“I suppose I am. To begin with, this _Port Edes_ business isn’t
calculated to enliven one; and then, on the top of that, I’ve had
another taste of your blessed guardian’s business methods, which has
nearly sickened me out of the office altogether. You know about this
‘Brothers Steamship Company’ which he is trying to float? Well, we
had a preliminary meeting to-day—quite a thousand people, and all,
comparatively speaking, poor. They were, for the most part, the gang he
preaches to on Sunday, with a sprinkling of skippers out of work, and
other sea-faring folk who had saved a trifle of money.
“Shelf commenced the business with prayer, which is right enough at its
proper time, but struck me as being particularly out of place there.
The audience, however, groaned approval, and their confidence in the
man seemed to be strengthened. He followed this up with a clever speech
about the profits to be made out of the modern sea-carrying trade, and
enlarged upon the notorious fact that the losses of the business largely
arose from the lack of interest on the part of the ship-masters and other
officers. This last, he said, would be entirely removed in the Brothers
S. S. Co., because, by the articles of association, no man would hold a
responsible position on any one of their vessels who was not an actual
shareholder of the company. And then he pointed out that there was an
eight per cent. dividend guaranteed on preference stock, and a certain
fifteen or eighteen per cent. on the ordinary, and wound up with another
dose of cant. The company, he said, would not be alone content with
earning income for its bond-holders; it would have as its equal object
the spreading of the Gospel and the civilization of England to the
uttermost parts of the globe.
“Then the meeting cheered and amenned, and wrote out an application for
10,000 £5 shares then and there in the room on forms which were handed
round; and down your blessed guardian went on his knees again, and prayed
for grace to bless his efforts; and when the poor fools dispersed, Mr.
Theodore Shelf and I drove back to the offices.
“‘Look here,’ I said to him; ‘you’ve put me down on the directorate of
this thing with a salary of £1000 a year. I want to resign.’
“‘What on earth for?’
“‘Oh! Shall we say I haven’t sufficient loose money to take up enough
shares?’
“‘But,’ he said quickly, ‘you needn’t take up many. You can draw your
first quarter’s salary and pay that back to the company’s bankers on your
first call. That will qualify you.’
“‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to do that. I’m going to be mixed up with
this new company in no degree whatever. Flatly, I don’t believe in the
thing one bit. It’s a notorious fact that freights are so low just now
that thousands of tons of shipping is laid up because it can’t be run at
a profit; and if you put more in commission, freights will tumble down
still lower.’
“‘You speak from your ignorance,’ he said. ‘I should remind you that I
am by far an older man, and have a much deeper experience. The business
of Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf is a lasting monument of what my humble
talents can accomplish, and you will some day see for yourself the
newer company on an equal footing. Did you not notice what enthusiastic
confidence in its prosperity those humble friends of mine showed this
afternoon?’
“‘A fat lot they know about the shipping business,’ said I. ‘In the
mood you worked them up to, they’d have believed in an advertising
stock-broker’s circular if only there were a text at the head of the
page.’
“Shelf pulled the check-string, and his brougham stopped against the
kerb. ‘Mr. Fairfax,’ said he, ‘your attitude pains me. Let us part here
for the time, and let us both pray that when next we meet you may be in
a more Christian mind.’ Whereupon out I stepped, and came along here
to Park Lane. Amy dear, I don’t like the look of things at all. The
other business, the ‘Oceanic Steam Transport Company,’ as it is called
officially, is by no means in a healthy condition, and, remembering that,
it seems to me that starting this new company is something very nearly
approaching a swindle. I believe that Theodore Shelf is finding out that
he is in low water, and is getting desperate.”
“I don’t know about the last,” replied the girl, thoughtfully; “but as
for being in low water, there I think you are wrong. Every week here
they seem to spend more money than they did the week before. Mrs. Shelf
was at a picture sale yesterday, and bought two old masters at four
thousand guineas apiece, and it isn’t likely she’d throw away that sum
on what is absolutely and entirely a luxury unless money were pretty
plentiful with her.”
“It can’t go on at this pace,” said Fairfax. “I know what the limits of
the business are, and I’m certain it can’t stand the drain on them which
all this gorgeousness must entail. Last year the profits were almost
nil, and yet did Mrs. Shelf retrench at all? Not a bit. She goes in for
more and more display every week she lives. This pace must bring about a
wreck, and if the ‘Oceanic Steam Transport Company’ goes down, it is an
absolute certainty that this new ‘Brothers Company’ will be swamped with
it.”
“And then?”
“More than a thousand poor people, for the most of them old, will find
that the savings of a lifetime have vanished into nothingness before
their eyes. It is an awful thing even to think such a suspicion against
a man; but the idea is growing upon me, and Theodore Shelf saw what I
thought when he showed me out of his brougham this afternoon.”
“Then what,” asked the girl in a horrified whisper, “will you do?”
“Nothing. What can I do? To breathe a word of it aloud would be a libel;
and if I did not get sent to jail, they would pack me off to Hanwell as
a malicious madman. Shelf’s name is as good as a banknote in the City
this day, and, for everybody’s sake, I trust that I have wronged him
foully, and that it may always continue so. But, Amy dear, I have a heavy
foreboding on me that in less than half a year’s time there will be a mob
of wretched people shooting themselves or going to the workhouse because
he has ruined them, and they haven’t the pluck or the thews left to
commence life afresh.”