A FLOURISHING COMPANY.
The Great Wheal Bang Mining Company had its offices in a commodious
and irreproachable quarter of the city. If I give the familiar name
Wheal Bang, instead of the difficult one Chwddyn, which can only be
spelt from copy, letter by letter, and perhaps wrongly then, it is to
save myself and my readers trouble. Not being Welsh, they might find a
difficulty in arriving at the accurate pronunciation, just as I do at
the spelling. The promoter of the Great Wheal Bang Mining Company, Mr.
Barker, occupied sumptuous apartments in Piccadilly; and his copartner
in the scheme, as Mark Cray was to all intents and purposes now,
flourished in his mansion in Grosvenor Place.
The offices were undeniable in their appointments. Situation, width of
staircase, size of rooms, decorations, furniture, attendants; all were
of the first water. People who play with the money of others do not in
general go to work sparingly; and speculative public schemes
necessarily entail a large outlay. These schemes, springing up now and
again in London, to the beguilement of the unwary--one in about every
ten of which may succeed in the end--have been so well described by
abler pens than mine, that I might hesitate even to touch upon them,
were it not that the story cannot conveniently get on without my doing
so, and that I have a true tale to tell. How many hearts have been
made to ache from the misery entailed by these uncertain ventures,
ushered in with so much pomp and flourish, so full a promise of
prosperity; and how many heads unable to bear the weight of the final
ruin, have been laid low in the grave, God alone will ever know. They
have ruined thousands in body; they have ruined some in soul; and the
public is not yet tired of them, and perhaps will not be to the end of
time.
If you never had the chance of going to bed at night a poor man, and
waking up in the morning with a larger fortune than could be counted,
you might have it now. You had only to enter largely into the Great
Wheal Bang Company, become the successful possessor of a number of its
shares, and the thing was accomplished. For the world was running
after it, and some of the applicants were successful in their request
for allotments, and some were unsuccessful; and these last went away
with a face as long as the Wheal Bang's own prospectus, growling out a
prophecy of all manner of ill-fortune for it. Their grapes were sour.
The shares were up in the market to a fabulous premium, and a man
might take half a dozen into Capel Court, and come out of it with his
pockets stuffed full of gold.
Mark Cray's money had effected wonders, or rather his wife's; for hers
it was. A great many of these magnificent projects are nipped ignobly
in the bud through want of a little ready money to set them fairly
going. But for Mrs. Cray's thousands, Mr. Barker's mine of gold might
never have been heard of by the world, and Mr. Barker's name had not
attained to its enviable preeminence. These thousands did it all. They
got up the company, they set the mine a-working, they paid for the
costly offices, they dazzled the eyes of the public, they gave earnest
of present wealth, they seemed to assure future success. Certainly, if
any mine had ever a fair prospect of realising a golden fruition, it
appeared to be the Great Wheal Bang. The working of it had begun most
promisingly, and every success was fairly looked for. In calling it a
gold mine just now, you of course understood that I was speaking
metaphorically; for gold mines are not yet common among us, even in
Wales. This very valuable mine (as it could but turn out to be) was not
rich in gold, but in lead; and, as we all know, the one is speedily
converted into the other. The previous autumn, in consequence of some
trifling difficulty in London, Mr. Barker found it convenient to enter
on a temporary sojourn at a distance; and he penetrated to a remote
district of South Wales. While there, with the good luck which that
gentleman believed he was born to and should some time realise, a vein
of lead was discovered of a most promising nature. He contrived to
secure a large interest in it, and undertook to get up a company for
the working of it.
How he would lave accomplished this, or whether he ever would have
accomplished it, is doubtful, had he not found a coadjutor in Mark
Cray, and an aid in Mark's money. Mark resigned the control of the
money to him, and Mr. Barker did not spare it. No earthly adjunct was
wanting to ensure the success of the scheme, provided the mine only
realised its present promises.
Has anybody who may happen to read this ever assisted in getting a
newly-discovered mine into working order? If so, he may remember the
money it cost. How it ran out of the hands like water that is poured
through a broad-necked funnel, disappearing nobody knew where, and
leaving little trace behind! How the pounds went, and the hundreds
went, and the thousands went--if he was fortunate enough to possess
thousands to go--he may not recollect without wincing, to this hour.
Mark Cray's thousands went. But ere they had come quite to an end, the
Great Wheal Bang Company was in full operation in London, the
shareholders had answered to their calls, and the money was flowing
in.
No lack of money to be feared then. And the operations at the mine
were conducted on a much grander scale than heretofore, and the
returns were certain to be without parallel, and Mr. Barker was in a
glow of triumph, and Mark Cray in a state of ecstatic delight, and the
lucky shareholders leaped up sixteen scales in the ladder of society.
How many set up carriages on the strength of their future riches it is
beyond my power to tell. The money flowed down to the mine, and the
works went on beautifully, and the specimens of ore that came up to
town were said to be more valuable than any ore ever was before. As to
Mr. Barker and Mark, their expenses were not deemed worthy of a
thought: with all that money going out weekly for the mine, personal
expenditure was but as a drop of water in the ocean, and of course it
was unnecessary to think of limiting it. Mrs. Cray, with her vanity
and her love of display, was in the seventh heaven; while Mark looked
back to his prosy life at Hallingham and wondered how he had endured
it. He wondered how any of the doctors left there endured it, and
pitied them from his heart. The thousand a-year or so he once thought
to enter upon as successor to Dr. Davenal was recollected with
contempt now.
This much must be said for the Great Wheal Bang Company--that its
projectors were at least honest in their belief of its genuineness. In
that they differed from some other companies we have heard of, which
have turned out to be nothing but a swindle--if you will excuse the
word--from the earliest commencement, the very first dawning dream of
their projectors. Mr. Barker was of that strangely sanguine nature
which sees a fortune in the wildest scheme, and plunges head and heart
and creed into the most improbable speculation: Mark, an utter tyro in
mines and all that concerns them, including companies, saw only with
Barker's eyes. When Mr. Barker assured the entranced shareholders that
one hundred pounds put into the Great Wheal Bang would multiply
tenfold and tenfold, he spoke only the sanguine belief of his heart.
When Mark Cray declared to his brother Oswald that a thousand pounds
embarked in it by him would make him a rich man for life, he asserted
the honest truth according to his conviction. No wonder the two
gentlemen-promoters were eloquent.
Mark had made several visits to the scene of the mines, and he came
back each time with (if possible) renewed assurance of the brilliant
future; with increased ardour. Had the Chancellor of the Exchequer
obligingly made Mark an impromptu present of a hundred thousand
pounds, Mark would have flung it broadcast into the mine, did the mine
thirst for it. He did not understand these things in the least; and
the perpetual bustle going on, the number of the miners, even the very
money paid in wages and suchlike expenses, were to Mark only an
earnest of the rich returns that were to come hereafter. Mark would go
back to London in a glowing state, and send his friends the
shareholders into a fever, longing to realise the prosperity that
seemed so close at hand. The weekly reports overshadowed other weekly
reports with envy, and created a _furore_ in the speculating world.
Some of the shareholders who understood mines, or thought they did,
better than Mark, went down to the Principality, and examined into the
state of things for themselves; they found them quite satisfactory,
and came away as charmed as Mark. In point of fact, prospects did look
well; the lead was of an unusually good quality, and there seemed no
reason whatever to anticipate anything but success. Caroline had
accompanied her husband once to the mines; but the stay there (putting
prospects aside) did not please her: it was "rough," she told Mark,
and it was very dull at the little inn; and she was glad to come away
from it all ere the second day was over.
Perhaps the only person within the circle of Mark Cray's acquaintance
not bitten by the Wheal Bang fever was Miss Davenal. Even Oswald Cray
was to succumb at last. He would not become a shareholder; he was too
cautious a man to enter upon possible future liabilities, the extent
of which no human being could foretell: but he did feel inclined to
put a thousand pounds into Mark's hands, and tell him to do the best
with it. It may almost be said that Oswald was worried into doing
this. Mark would not let him rest. At the onset of the affair, when
the glorious prospects of the Wheal Bang were first astonishing the
world, Mark had urged Oswald to become one of them; a director or at
least a shareholder; but Oswald had turned a deaf ear. He felt greatly
vexed at Mark's imprudence at abandoning Hallingham and his
profession, leaving a certainty for an uncertainty: he felt more than
vexed at the manner in which Mrs. Cray's money was disposed of, so
entirely opposed to the dying injunction of Dr. Davenal, so opposed
(Oswald deemed) to all wisdom and prudence; and he set his face
resolutely against the Wheal Bang. But Oswald was but mortal. As the
weeks and months went on, and the mines became to all appearance
valuable, the company flourishing, and Mark, in conjunction with
others, dinned for ever into his ear the fortune he might make at it,
Oswald began to waver. He had a thousand pounds laid by, and he felt
half inclined to risk it; Mark over-persuaded him; and his visit to
the Messrs. Knollys's office the day he encountered Sara Davenal was
for the purpose of making certain inquiries of those gentlemen
relating to the Wheal Bang.
Not so with Miss Bettina Davenal She set her face resolutely against
the Great Wheal Bang from the first, and nothing turned her. She had
never forgiven Mark and his wife for quitting Hallingham, and her
reproaches to them could not cease. The apparent prosperity of the
Great Wheal Bang changed not her opinion in the least. Mark asked her
once whether she would take shares in it, and produced a Wheal Bang
prospectus to point to its merits. She angrily replied that she would
as soon throw her money into the Thames, that it would not be a surer
way of getting rid of it, and rang the bell for Mark and his
prospectus to be shown out of her house.
Mark Cray sat in the board room at the city offices of the Great Wheal
Bang. A noble room, the cloth on its long table of the freshest green
and the finest texture. Mark leaned his elbow upon this cloth as he
talked and laughed with some of the friends of the Great Wheal Bang,
who were getting rich so easily. It was not a board day; but visitors
were numerous at all times.
"I had a line from him this morning," said Mark, continuing
the conversation. "Spirits? I should think he does write in
spirits!--what are you talking of? They are getting up quantities of
ore now. It will soon be ready for the market."
"And its quality does not deteriorate?" asked Mark's immediate
listener, a middle-aged gentleman with wise-looking spectacles on his
nose.
"Deteriorate!" repeated Mark. "But you shall see the letter." He began
to turn over the pipers on the table, and the diamond ring on his
little finger, a hundred-guinea investment of his, began to show out
the colours of a prism in its glittering brilliancy.
"It is of no consequence," returned the gentleman, when Mark could not
readily find it. "I can take your word. When does Barker come up
again?"
"Today or tomorrow; I am not sure which. I should like you to have
seen his letter, though it is but a line or two. The only motive for
our fresh call upon the shareholders is to hasten the operations, and
so speed the returns. With more capital afloat we can increase the
workers at the mine, and bring the ore out more quickly."
"It was to have been in the market by this."
"One cannot calculate to a day. It won't be long now; and its
richness, when it does come, will astonish the world. Do just as you
like: take the shares or leave them. This gentleman would not have had
them to dispose of but that he has urgent need of the money. He is
over in Austria now, and has written to me: he is an old friend of
mine."
"I'd not hesitate a moment to take them were it my own money; I wish I
had more to embark in it. But this is money belonging to my wards; and
their relatives are so anxious that I should choose a safe investment,
one in which there can be no risk."
Mark Cray rose from his seat. The word "risk" offended his pride, and
he could only wonder that any one could be idiot enough to use it in
connection with the Great Wheal Bang Mine. But Mark had no need to
solicit now the taking of shares: half London was ready to snap them
up: and he was too great a man to permit his time to be wasted
unnecessarily.
"Consider over it, if you please, until tomorrow morning, Mr. Gilham,"
he said, as he moved away. "You can see the secretary if you come in
before ten. After that the shares will not be disposable."
There's no safer way to make a buyer eager, than for a seller to be
indifferent; and Mr. Gilham and his spectacles went hastening after
Mark, ready to close the bargain. But Mark was already the centre of
an eager group, not to be got at again lightly. The next time Mr.
Gilham caught sight of him, he was descending the wide staircase,
surrounded as before by a crowd of attendant worshippers, who were
unwilling to part with the great man and his widely-extending
influence.
But great men must dine as well as small, and Mr. Cray was hastening
home to that necessary meal. He extricated himself from his friends,
and stepped into his cab that waited at the door: a favourite vehicle
of Mark's, built under his own superintendence, in which he generally
went to and fro morning and evening, driving his blood horse himself.
Glancing at his watch as he dashed along Cheapside, he found it was
considerably later than he had thought, and urged the horse to a
quicker pace.
For Mr. and Mrs. Cray were expecting friends to dinner that evening.
Dr. Ford of Hallingham and his two daughters were making a short stay
in town, and had been invited by Mark and his wife--neither of them
loth to show off their new grandeur, and to send it to be talked about
in Hallingham.
Suddenly Mark threw the horse nearly on his haunches by the violence
with which he pulled him up. Oswald Cray was on the pavement. He
advanced to Mark at the latter's sign.
"Hare you decided about the thousand pounds, Oswald?"
"Partially. I went down to Knollys's this morning, and they recommend
the thing strongly. But I have worked hard for my money, Mark, and
don't care to lose it."
"Lose it!" scornfully returned Mark. "The Great Wheal Bang won't be a
losing concern. Look here, Oswald! I have but one motive in pressing
the matter upon you: this mine of wealth has come flowing into my
hands, and I do consider it a great pity that you, my only brother,
should not reap some benefit from it. Others, strangers, are making
their thousands and thousands--or will make them; and it's nothing but
wilful blindness for you to let it slip through your fingers. It's
obstinate folly, Oswald. Give me the thousand pounds, and I'll soon
make you ten thousand."
"The fact is, Mark, I cannot feel so positively sure of its turning
out well as you do."
"Oswald, I tell you _that it will_. I and Barker have means of knowing
facts connected with the mine that I don't speak of, even to you. As I
assured you the other day, so I repeat it; your money cannot be lost.
It is a perfectly sure and safe investment; I will answer for it with
my life. Will you come home and dine with us?"
"I have dined."
"Dined!" echoed Mark, rather scornfully, for he was learning to
despise any but the most fashionable hours--as many another newly-made
great man has learnt before him. "Come round in the evening, then, and
see old Ford of Hallingham. Barker will be there, I expect, and we can
talk this over further."
Mark Cray touched his horse, and the cab and its freight bounded off.
Mark did not draw rein again until Grosvenor Place was reached.