I
“Oh, Heaven help us! What is that dreadful noise! Run, run! Has somebody
been killed?”
“Do not distress yourself, kind-hearted sir. It is only the merchants of
Alexandria, buying cotton.”
“But they are murdering one another surely.”
“Not so. They merely gesticulate.”
“Does any place exist whence one could view their gestures in safety?”
“There is such a place.”
“I shall come to no bodily harm there?”
“None, none.”
“Then conduct me, pray.”
And mounting to an upper chamber we looked down into a stupendous Hall.
It is usual to compare such visions to Dante’s Inferno, but this really
did resemble it, because it was marked out into the concentric circles
of which the Florentine speaks. Divided from each other by ornamental
balustrades, they increased in torment as they decreased in size, so
that the inmost ring was congested beyond redemption with perspiring
souls. They shouted and waved and spat at each other across the central
basin which was empty but for a permanent official who sat there, fixed
in ice. Now and then he rang a little bell, and now and then another
official, who dwelt upon a ladder far away, climbed and wrote upon a
board with chalk. The merchants hit their heads and howled. A terrible
calm ensued. Something worse was coming. While it gathered we spoke.
“Oh, name this place!”
“It is none other than the Bourse. Cotton is sold at this end, Stocks
and Shares at that.”
And I perceived a duplicate fabric at the farther end of the Hall, a
subsidiary or rather a superseded Hell, for its circles were deserted,
it was lashed by no everlasting wind, and such souls as loitered against
its balustrades seemed pensive in their mien. This was the Stock
Exchange—such a great name in England, but negligible here where only
cotton counts. Cotton shirts and cotton wool and reels of cotton would
not come to us if merchants did not suffer in Alexandria. Nay,
Alexandria herself could not have re-arisen from the waves, there would
be no French gardens, no English church at Bulkeley, possibly not even
any drains....
Help! Oh, help! help! Oh, horrible, too horrible! For the storm had
broken. With the scream of a devil in pain a stout Greek fell sideways
over the balustrade, then righted himself, then fell again, and as he
fell and rose he chanted “Teekoty Peapot, Teekoty Peapot.” He was
offering to sell cotton. Towards him, bull-shouldered, moved a lout in a
tarboosh. Everyone else screamed too, using odd little rhythms to
advertise their individuality. Some shouted unnoticed, others would
evoke a kindred soul, and right across the central pool business would
be transacted. They seemed to have evolved a new sense. They
communicated by means unknown to normal men. A wave of the note-book,
and the thing was done. And the imitation marble pillars shook, and the
ceiling that was painted to look like sculpture trembled, and Time
himself stood still in the person of a sham-renaissance clock. And a
British officer who was watching the scene said—never mind what he said.
Hence, hence!