_Wherein Mr. Pompey Malahide loses his Breath in the Midst of a Boast_
Mr. Pompey Malahide, man of considerable wealth as he had been for
years, was now grown so rich that he scarcely knew whether each fresh
venture in which he launched might not be doubling his income by the
end of the year.
City people said, awe-struck, that all he touched turned to gold. But
they failed to add that he touched nothing that did not hold hidden
treasure. As a fact, he ventured only in the exploitation and invention
of things of which he had himself felt the lack, which he felt were
wanted at large. His shrewd business insight led him simply to traffic
in such things as must turn to gold on their very discovery. Whilst
the unimaginative followed a garish eyesight to seek fortune at the
goldfields, he stayed at home and won wealth from richer lodes. He did
not break hard rock for gold; he made the things that the world had
need to buy.
His appetite was but whetted by success.
He was now destined to make such wealth as is only dreamed of in the
dingy city offices of imaginative Jews.
Pompey Malahide was on the eve of becoming a millionaire.
Yet was he plagued with discontent.
He was suffering discomfort. Riches alone contained nothing in
themselves. He realized that riches were only a power. He, in communion
with himself, striding his room, stood himself by the figure of young
Bartholomew Doome, his paid servant; and his vulgarly frank eyes could
not rid him of the transparent fact that this other was the master
without an effort of his own. This other was the designer--the creator.
His own the rude hand that beat out the design. Behind the dry humour
and grim smile of the young man was the master wit, a wit always
strangely kindly to him, but--tolerant. Whilst in the very act, even
whilst he puffed and blew and swaggered and strutted and boasted to the
young man of his successes and of his wealth, the warmth ran out of
his conceit--he felt that what would have impressed his city friends
was but rousing criticism behind those calm eyes that cared no jot for
elaborate wealth--eyes that looked upon riches only as a secondary
thing.
Pompey Malahide looked at the slender sinewy hands of the young man,
and forthwith hid his own short thick hands with their stunted pointed
money-getting fingers behind his back. He noticed that where they two
entered a place together, all deferred to the youth, whilst they were
as rough to himself as he to them. He noticed that Doome spoke with
deference to those below him whom he, Pompey, treated to the rougher
side of his tongue--noticed, too, that behind the youth’s courteous
manner was a note of calm authority that his own roughshod ways never
caught. He grasped the fact that money had not won him the habit of the
great; and he was determined that his girls should have what he himself
lacked--this easy and gracious bearing of the master class. His boy was
catching some hint of it at Harrow. The girls must acquire it also.
But how?
He consulted Doome.
Doome, frowning upon the difficulties of the problem, decided that
these young women must have a young gentlewoman for companion; he said
that he would try and find a girl of breeding of their own age; it was
full time; the boy Horace was springing up, and would be leaving Harrow
at the end of the term; he ought not to be brought up in a different
social atmosphere to the girls or he must of necessity drift into
another set and grow into contempt of his sisters.
Pompey Malahide nodded many nods.
He approved.
He sighed a portly sigh.
Riches were bringing perplexing burdens. The very spending was a
burden. He would have laughed at it all so short a while ago. It was
much easier to make wealth than to use it--for a man had only to make
money like a tradesman; he had to spend it--like a gentleman.
Heigho!
Pompey Malahide, approached by the leaders of the Opposition, threw in
his lot with the party, was put up for one of the city constituencies,
and, in the flood of political reaction that swept the country, was
elected to the House of Commons by a large majority.