It is a hard thing to be the younger son of an ancient but
impoverished family. The fact that your brother Thomas is taking
most of the dibs restricts your inheritance to a paltry two thousand
a year, while pride of blood forbids you to supplement this by
following any of the common professions. Impossible for a St Verax
to be a doctor, a policeman or an architect. He must find some
nobler means of existence.
For three years Roger St Verax had lived precariously by betting. To
be a St Verax was always to be a sportsman. Roger's father had
created a record in the sporting world by winning the Derby and the
Waterloo Cup with the same animal--though, in each case, it narrowly
escaped disqualification. Roger himself almost created another
record by making betting pay. His book, showing how to do it, was
actually in the press when disaster overtook him.
He began by dropping (in sporting parlance) a cool thousand on the
Jack Joel Selling Plate at Newmarket. On the next race he dropped a
cool five hundred, and later on in the afternoon a cool seventy-
five pounds ten. The following day found him at Lingfield, where he
dropped a cool monkey (to persevere with the language of the racing
stable) on the Solly Joel Cup, picked it up on the next race,
dropped a cool pony, dropped another cool monkey, dropped a cool
wallaby, picked up a cool hippopotamus, and finally, in the last
race of the day, dropped a couple of lukewarm ferrets. In short, he
was (as they say at Tattersall's Corner) entirely cleaned out.
When a younger son is cleaned out there is only one thing for him to
do. Roger St Verax knew instinctively what it was. He bought a new
silk hat and a short black coat, and went into the City.
What a wonderful place, dear reader, is the City! You, madam, who
read this in your daintily upholstered boudoir, can know but little
of the great heart of the City, even though you have driven through
its arteries on your way to Liverpool Street Station, and have noted
the bare and smoothly brushed polls of the younger natives. You,
sir, in your country vicarage, are no less innocent, even though on
sultry afternoons you have covered your head with the Financial
Supplement of The Times in mistake for the Literary Supplement, and
have thus had thrust upon you the stirring news that Bango-Bangos
were going up. And I, dear friends, am equally ignorant of the
secrets of the Stock Exchange. I know that its members frequently
walk to Brighton, and still more frequently stay there; that while
finding a home for all the good stories which have been going the
rounds for years, they sometimes invent entirely new ones for
themselves about the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and that they sing
the National Anthem very sternly in unison when occasion demands it.
But there must be something more in it than this, or why are
Bango-Bangos still going up?
I don't know. And I am sorry to say that even Roger St Verax, a
Director of the Bango-Bango Development Company, is not very clear
about it all.
It was as a Director of the Bango-Bango Exploration Company that he
took up his life in the City. As its name implies, the Company was
originally formed to explore Bango-Bango, an impenetrable district
in North Australia; but when it came to the point it was found much
more profitable to explore Hampstead, Clapham Common, Blackheath,
Ealing and other rich and fashionable suburbs. A number of hopeful
ladies and gentlemen having been located in these parts, the Company
went ahead rapidly, and in 1907 a new prospector was sent out to
replace the one who was assumed to have been eaten.
In 1908, Roger first heard the magic word "reconstruction," and to
his surprise found himself in possession of twenty thousand pounds
and a Directorship of the new Bango-Bango Mining Company.
In 1909 a piece of real gold was identified, and the shares went up
like a rocket.
In 1910 the Stock Exchange suddenly woke to the fact that rubber
tyres were made of rubber, and in a moment the Great Boom was sprung
upon an amazed City. The Bango-Bango Development Company was
immediately formed to take over the Bango-Bango Mining Company
(together with its prospector, if alive, its plant, shafts and other
property, not forgetting the piece of gold) and more particularly to
develop the vegetable resources of the district with the view of
planting rubber trees in the immediate future. A neatly compiled
prospectus put matters very clearly before the stay-at-home
Englishman. It explained quite concisely that, supposing the trees
were planted so many feet apart throughout the whole property of
five thousand square miles, and allowing a certain period for the
growth of a tree to maturity, and putting the average yield of
rubber per tree at, in round figures, so much, and assuming for the
sake of convenience that rubber would remain at its present price,
and estimating the cost of working the plantation at say, roughly,
100,000 pounds, why, then it was obvious that the profits would be
anything you liked up to two billion a year--while (this was
important) more land could doubtless be acquired if the share-
holders thought fit. And even if you were certain that a rubber-tree
couldn't possibly grow in the Bango-Bango district (as in confidence
it couldn't), still it was worth taking shares purely as an
investment, seeing how rapidly rubber was going up; not to mention
the fact that Roger St Verax, the well-known financier, was a
Director ... and so on.
In short the Bango-Bango Development Company was, in the language of
the City, a safe thing.
Let me hasten to the end of this story. At the end of 1910 Roger was
a millionaire; and for quite a week afterwards he used to wonder
where all the money had come from. In the old days, when he won a
cool thousand by betting, he knew that somebody else had lost a cool
thousand by betting, but it did not seem to be so in this case. He
had met hundreds of men who had made fortunes through rubber; he had
met hundreds who bitterly regretted that they had missed making a
fortune; but he had never met any one who had lost a fortune. This
made him think the City an even more wonderful place than before.
But before he could be happy there remained one thing for him to do;
he must find somebody to share his happiness. He called on his old
friend, Mary Brown, one Sunday.
"Mary," he said, with the brisk confidence of the City man, "I find
I'm disengaged next Tuesday. Will you meet me at St George's Church
at two? I should like to show you the curate and the vestry, and one
or two things like that."
"Why, what's happened?"
"I am a millionaire," said Roger calmly. "So long as I only had my
beggarly pittance, I could not ask you to marry me. There was
nothing for it but to wait in patience. It has been a long weary
wait, dear, but the sun has broken through the clouds at last. I am
now in a position to support a wife. Tuesday at two," he went on,
consulting his pocket diary; "or I could give you half an hour on
Monday morning."
"But why this extraordinary hurry? Why mayn't I be married properly,
with presents and things?"
"My dear," said Roger reproachfully, "you forget. I am a City man
now, and it is imperative that I should be married at once. Only a
married man, with everything in his wife's name, can face with
confidence the give and take of the bustling City."