A TELEGRAM TO FRANKFORT.
The success of Lady Valentine's Saturday to Monday party at Maidenhead
was spoilt by the unscrupulous, or (if the charitable view be possible)
the muddle-headed conduct of certain eminent African chiefs--so small is
the world, so strong the chain of gold (or shares) that binds it
together. The party was marred by Willie Ruston's absence; and he was
away because he had to go to Frankfort, and he had to go to Frankfort
because of that little hitch in the affairs of the Omofaga. The hitch
was, in truth, a somewhat grave one, and it occurred, most annoyingly,
immediately after a gathering, marked by uncommon enthusiasm and
composed of highly influential persons, had set the impress of approval
on the scheme. On the following morning, it was asserted that the said
African chiefs, from whom Ruston and his friends derived their title to
Omofaga, had acted in a manner that belied the character for honesty and
simplicity in commercial matters (existing side by side with intense
savagery and cruelty in social and political life) that Mr. Foster
Belford had attributed to them at the great meeting. They had, it was
said, sold Omofaga several times over in small parcels, and twice, at
least, _en bloc_--once to the Syndicate (from whom the Company was
acquiring it) and once to an association of German capitalists. The
writer of the article, who said that he knew the chiefs well, went so
far as to maintain that any person provided with a few guns and a dozen
or so bottles of ardent spirits could return from Omofaga with a
portmanteau full of treaties, and this facility in obtaining the article
could not, in accordance with the law of supply and demand, do other
than gravely affect the value of it. Willie Ruston was inclined to make
light of this disclosure; indeed, he attributed it to a desire--natural
but unprincipled--on the part of certain persons to obtain Omofaga
shares at less than their high intrinsic value; he called it a "bear
dodge" and sundry other opprobrious names, and snapped his fingers at
all possible treaties in the world except his own. Once let him set his
foot in Omofaga, and short would be the shrift of rival claims,
supposing them to exist at all! But the great house of Dennison, Sons &
Company, could not go on in this happy-go-lucky fashion--so the senior
partner emphatically told Harry Dennison--they were already, in his
opinion, deep enough in this affair; if they were to go any deeper, this
matter of the association of German capitalists must be inquired into.
The house had not only its money, but its credit and reputation to look
after; it could not touch any doubtful business, nor could it be left
with a block of Omofagas on its hands. In effect they were trusting too
much to this Mr. Ruston, for he, and he alone, was their security in the
matter. Not another step would the house move till the German
capitalists were dissolved into thin air. So Willie Ruston packed his
portmanteau--likely enough the very one that had carried the treaties
away from Omofaga--and went to Frankfort to track the German capitalists
to their lair. Meanwhile, the issue of the Omofaga was postponed, and
Mr. Carlin was set a-telegraphing to Africa.
Thus it also happened that, contrary to her fixed intention, Lady
Valentine was left with a bedroom to spare, and with no just or
producible reason whatever for refusing her son's request that Evan
Haselden might occupy it. This, perhaps, should, in the view of all true
lovers, be regarded as an item on the credit side of the African chiefs'
account, though in the hostess' eyes it aggravated their offence. Adela
Ferrars, Mr. Foster Belford and Tom Loring, who positively blessed the
African chiefs, were the remaining guests.
All parties cannot be successful, and, if truth be told, this of Lady
Valentine's was no conspicuous triumph. Belford and Loring quarrelled
about Omofaga, for Loring feared (he used that word) that there might be
a good deal in the German treaties, and Belford was loud-mouthed in
declaring there could be nothing. Marjory and her brother had a "row"
because Marjory, on the Saturday afternoon, would not go out in the
Canadian canoe with Evan, but insisted on taking a walk with Mr. Belford
and hearing all about Omofaga. Finally, Adela and Tom Loring had a
rather serious dissension because--well, just because Tom was so
intolerably stupid and narrow-minded and rude. That was Adela's own
account of it, given in her own words, which seems pretty good
authority.
The unfortunate discussion began with an expression of opinion from Tom.
They were lounging very comfortably down stream in a broad-bottomed
boat. It was a fine still evening and a lovely sunset. It was then most
wanton of Tom--even although he couched his remark in a speciously
general form--to say,
"I wonder at fellows who spend their life worming money out of other
people for wild-cat schemes instead of taking to some honest trade."
There was a pause. Then Adela fitted her glasses on her nose, and
observed, with a careful imitation of Tom's forms of expression,
"I wonder at fellows who drift through life in subordinate positions
without the--the _spunk_--to try and do anything for themselves."
"Women have no idea of honesty."
"Men are such jealous creatures."
"I'm not jealous of him," Tom blurted out.
"Of who?" asked Adela.
She was keeping the cooler of the pair.
"Confound those beastly flies," said Tom, peevishly. There was a fly or
two about, but Adela smiled in a superior way. "I suppose I've some
right to express an opinion," continued Tom. "You know what I feel about
the Dennisons, and--well, it's not only the Dennisons."
"Oh! the Valentines?"
"Blow the Valentines!" said Tom, very ungratefully, inasmuch as he sat
in their boat and had eaten their bread.
He bent over his sculls, and Adela looked at him with a doubtful little
smile. She thought Tom Loring, on the whole, the best man she knew, the
truest and loyalest; but, these qualities are not everything, and it
seemed as if he meant to be secretary to Harry Dennison all his life. Of
course he had no money, there was that excuse; but to some men want of
money is a reason, not for doing nothing, but for attempting everything;
it had struck Willie Ruston in that light. Therefore she was at times
angry with Tom--and all the more angry the more she admired him.
"You do me the honour to be anxious on my account?" she asked very
stiffly.
"He asked me how much money you had the other day."
"Oh, you're insufferable; you really are. Do you always tell women that
men care only for their money?"
"It's not a bad thing to tell them when it's true."
"I call this the very vulgarest dispute I was ever entrapped into."
"It's not my fault. It's----Hullo!"
His attention was arrested by Lady Valentine's footman, who stood on the
bank, calling "Mr. Loring, sir," and holding up a telegram.
"Thank goodness, we're interrupted," said Adela. "Row ashore, Mr.
Loring."
Loring obeyed, and took his despatch. It was from Harry Dennison, and he
read it aloud.
"Can you come up? News from Frankfort."
"I must go," said Tom.
"Oh, yes. If you're not there, Mr. Ruston will do something dreadful,
won't he? I should like to come too. News from Frankfort would be more
interesting than views from Mr. Belford."
They parted without any approach towards a reconciliation. Tom was
hopelessly sulky, Adela persistently flippant. The shadow of Omofaga lay
heavy on Lady Valentine's party, and still shrouded Tom Loring on his
way to town.
The important despatch from Frankfort had come in cipher, and when Tom
arrived in Curzon Street, he found Mr. Carlin, who had been sent for to
read it, just leaving the house. The men nodded to one another, and
Carlin hastily exclaimed,
"You must reassure Dennison! You can do it!" and leapt into a hansom.
Tom smiled. If the progress of Omofaga depended on encouragement from
him, Omofaga would remain in primitive barbarism, though missionaries
fell thick as the leaves in autumn.
Harry Dennison was walking up and down the library; his hair was
roughened and his appearance indicative of much unrest; his wife sat in
an armchair, looking at him and listening to Lord Semingham, who,
poising a cigarette between his fingers, was putting, or trying to put,
a meaning to Ruston's message.
"Position critical. Must act at once. Will you give me a free
hand? If not, wire how far I may go."
That was how it ran when faithfully interpreted by Mr. Carlin.
"You see," observed Lord Semingham, "it's clearly a matter of money."
Tom nodded.
"Of course it is," said he; "it's not likely to be a question of
anything else."
"Therefore the Germans have something worth paying for," continued
Semingham.
"Well," amended Tom, "something Ruston thinks it worth his while to pay
for, anyhow."
"That is to say they have treaties touching, or purporting to touch,
Omofaga."
"And," added Harry Dennison, who did not lack a certain business
shrewdness, "probably their Government behind them to some extent."
Tom flung himself into a chair.
"The thing's monstrous," he pronounced. "Semingham and you, Dennison,
are, besides himself--and he's got nothing--the only people responsible
up to now. And he asks you to give him an unlimited credit without
giving you a word of information! It's the coolest thing I ever heard of
in all my life."
"Of course he means the Company to pay in the end," Semingham reminded
the hostile critic.
"Time enough to talk of the Company when we see it," retorted Tom, with
an aggressive scepticism.
"Position critical! Hum. I suppose their treaties must be worth
something," pursued Semingham. "Dennison, I can't be drained dry over
this job."
Harry Dennison shook his head in a puzzled fashion.
"Carlin says it's all right," he remarked.
"Of course he does!" exclaimed Tom impatiently. "Two and two make five
for him if Ruston says they do."
"Well, Tom, what's your advice?" asked Semingham.
"You must tell him to do nothing till he's seen you, or at least sent
you full details of the position."
The two men nodded. Mrs. Dennison rose from her chair, walked to the
window, and stood looking out.
"Loring just confirms what I thought," said Semingham.
"He says he must act at once," Harry reminded them; he was still
wavering, and, as he spoke, he glanced uneasily at his wife; but there
was nothing to show that she even heard the conversation.
"Oh, he hates referring to anybody," said Tom. "He's to have a free
hand, and you're to pay the bill. That's his programme, and a very
pretty one it is--for him."
Tom's _animus_ was apparent, and Lord Semingham laughed gently.
"Still, you're right in substance," he conceded when the laugh was
ended, and as he spoke he drew a sheet of notepaper towards him and took
up a pen.
"We'd better settle just what to say," he observed. "Carlin will be back
in half an hour, and we promised to have it ready for him. What you
suggest seems all right, Loring."
Tom nodded. Harry Dennison stood stock still for an instant and then
said, with a sigh,
"I suppose so. He'll be furious--and I hope to God we shan't lose the
whole thing."
Lord Semingham's pen-point was in actual touch with the paper before
him, when Mrs. Dennison suddenly turned round and faced them. She rested
one hand on the window-sash, and held the other up in a gesture which
demanded attention.
"Are you really going to back out now?" she asked in a very quiet voice,
but with an intonation of contempt that made all the three men raise
their heads with the jerk of startled surprise. Lord Semingham checked
the movement of his pen, and leant back in his chair, looking at her.
Her face was a little flushed and she was breathing quickly.
"My dear," said Harry Dennison very apologetically, "do you think you
quite understand----?"
But Tom Loring's patience was exhausted. His interview with Adela left
him little reserve of toleration; and the discovery of another and even
worse case of Rustomania utterly overpowered his discretion.
"Mrs. Dennison," he said, "wants us to deliver ourselves, bound hand and
foot, to this fellow."
"Well, and if I do?" she demanded, turning on him. "Can't you even
follow, when you've found a man who can lead?"
And then, conscious perhaps of having been goaded to an excess of warmth
by Tom's open scorn, she turned her face away.
"Lead, yes! Lead us to ruin!" exclaimed Tom.
"You won't be ruined, anyhow," she retorted quickly, facing round on him
again, reckless in her anger how she might wound him.
"Tom's anxious for us, Maggie," her husband reminded her, and he laid
his hand on Tom Loring's shoulder.
Tom's excitement was not to be soothed.
"Why are we all to be his instruments?" he demanded angrily.
"I should be proud to be," she said haughtily.
Her husband smiled in an uneasy effort after nonchalance, and Lord
Semingham shot a quick glance at her out of his observant eyes.
"I should be proud of a friend like you if I were Ruston," he said
gently, hoping to smooth matters a little.
Mrs. Dennison ignored his attempt.
"Can't you see?" she asked. "Can't you see that he's a man to--to do
things? It's enough for us if we can help him."
She had forgotten her embarrassment; she spoke half in contempt, half in
entreaty, wholly in an earnest urgency, that made her unconscious of any
strangeness in her zeal. Harry looked uncomfortable. Semingham with a
sigh blew a cloud of smoke from his cigarette.
Tom Loring sat silent. He stretched out his legs to their full length,
rested the nape of his neck on the chair-back, and stared up at the
ceiling. His attitude eloquently and most rudely asserted folly--almost
lunacy--in Mrs. Dennison. She noticed it and her eyes flashed, but she
did not speak to him. She looked at Semingham and surprised an
expression in his eyes that made her drop her own for an instant; she
knew very well what he was thinking--what a man like him would think.
But she recovered herself and met his glance boldly.
Harry Dennison sat down and slowly rubbed his brow with his
handkerchief. Lord Semingham took up the pen and balanced it between his
fingers. There was silence in the room for full three minutes. Then came
a loud knock at the hall door.
"It's Carlin," said Harry Dennison.
No one else spoke, and for another moment there was silence. The steps
of the butler and the visitor were already audible in the hall when Lord
Semingham, with his own shrug and his own smile, as though nothing in
the world were worth so much dispute or so much bitterness, said to
Dennison,
"Hang it! Shall we chance it, Harry?"
Mrs. Dennison made one swift step forward towards him, her face all
alight; but she stopped before she reached the table and turned to her
husband. At the moment Carlin was announced. He entered with a rush of
eagerness. Tom Loring did not move. Semingham wrote on his paper,--
"Use your discretion, but make every effort to keep down
expenses. Wire progress."
"Will that do?" he asked, handing the paper to Harry Dennison and
leaning back with a smile on his face; and, though he handed the paper
to Harry, he looked at Mrs. Dennison.
Mrs. Dennison was standing by her husband now, her arm through his. As
he read she read also. Then she took the paper from his yielding hand
and came and bent over the table, shoulder to shoulder with Lord
Semingham. Taking the pen from his fingers, she dipped it in the ink,
and with a firm dash she erased all save the first three words of the
message. This done, she looked round into Semingham's face with a smile
of triumph.
"Well, it'll be cheap to send, anyhow," said he.
He got up and motioned Carlin to take his place.
Mrs. Dennison walked back to the window, and he followed her there. They
heard Carlin's cry of delight, and Harry Dennison beginning to make
excuses and trying to find business reasons for what had been done.
Suddenly Tom Loring leapt to his feet and strode swiftly out of the
room, slamming the door behind him. Mrs. Dennison heard the sound with a
smile of content. She seemed to have no misgivings and no regrets.
"Really," said Lord Semingham, sticking his eye-glass in his eye and
regarding her closely, "you ought to be the Queen of Omofaga."
With her slim fingers she began to drum gently on the window-pane.
"I think there's a king already," she said, looking out into the street.
"Oh, yes, a king," he answered with a laugh.
Mrs. Dennison looked round. He did not stop laughing, and presently she
laughed just a little herself.
"Oh, of course, it's always that in a woman, isn't it?" she asked
sarcastically.
"Generally," he answered, unashamed.
She grew grave, and looked in his face almost--so it seemed to him--as
though she sought there an answer to something that puzzled her. He gave
her none. She sighed and drummed on the window again; then she turned to
him with a sudden bright smile.
"I don't care; I'm glad I did it," she said defiantly.