Ronald Morelle had once been the victim of a demoralizing experience.
He had awakened in time to hear the church clock strike nine, and for
the space of a few seconds, he had suffered the tortures of hell.
Why, he never discovered. He had heard the clock strike nine since
then, in truth he had been specially wakened by François the very
next morning, in the expectation that the tolling of the bell would
recall to his mind the cause of his abject fear. But not again did
the chimes affect him. He had made a very thorough examination of
his mind in the Freudian method, but could trace no connection
between his moments of terror and the sound of a bell. "A nightmare,
as an unpleasant dream is called, may be intensively vivid, yet from
the second of waking leaves no definite memory behind it," said a
lesser authority.
He had to rest content with that. He had other matters to think
about. Steppe, an unusual visitor, came to his flat one morning.
Ronnie was in his dressing-gown, reading the morning newspapers, and
he leaped up with a curious sense of guilt when the big man was
announced.
"You dabble in press work, Morelle, don't you?" Ronnie acknowledged
his hobby.
"Do you know anybody in Fleet Street--editors and such like?"
"I know a few--why, Mr. Steppe?"
Steppe lit a cigar and strolling across the room looked out of the
window. He carried the air of a patron to such an extent that Ronnie
felt an interloper, an uncomfortable feeling to a man still in
pajamas.
"Because we've got to beat up a few friendly press criticisms," said
Steppe at last. "The financial papers are raising merry hell about
the Klein River diamond flotation and we have to get our story in
somehow or other. You don't want to be called a swindling company
promoter, huh? Wouldn't look good, huh?"
"I don't see how I come into it," said Ronnie.
"You don't, huh? Of course you don't! Have you ever seen anything
but a shop girl's ankles? You--don't see! You're a director, so is
Merville. You've drawn directors' fees. I'm not a director--it
doesn't matter a damn to me what they say."
The name of Jan Steppe seldom appeared amongst the officers or
directors of a company. He had his nominees who voted according to
the orders they received.
"What makes it so almighty bad is that I was floating the Midwell
Traction Corporation next week. We'll have to put that back now, but
it will keep. What are you going to do?"
"I don't know exactly what to do," said Ronnie. It was the first
time he had ever been called upon to justify his directors' fees. "I
know a few men--but I doubt if I can do anything. Fleet Street is a
little rigid in these things."
"Get an article in somewhere," ordered Steppe peremptorily. "Take
this line: That we bought the Klein River Mine on the report of the
best engineer in South Africa. We did. There's no lie about that.
Mackenzie--he's in a lunatic asylum now. And the report was in his
own handwriting, so there won't be a copy. And you needn't mention
that he is in a lunatic asylum, most people think he is dead."
"Didn't he write to us complaining that we only put an extract from
his report into the prospectus?"
"Never mind about that!" snarled Steppe. "I didn't come here for a
conversation. He did write; said that we'd published a sentence away
from the context. He didn't think I was going to put the worst into
the prospectus, did he? What he said was, that the Klein River Mine
would be one of the richest in South Africa if we could get over
difficulties of working, which he said were insuperable. He was
right. They are. The only way to work that mine is with deep sea
divers! Now, have this right, Morelle, and try to forget Flossie's
blue eyes and Winnie's golden hair. This is business. Your
business. You've got to take that report (Moropulos will give it to
you, but you mustn't take it from the office) and extract all that is
good in it. At the general meeting you have to produce your copy and
read it. If anybody wants to see the original, refer 'em to
Mackenzie. You've got to make Klein River look alive and you haven't
to defend it, d'ye hear me? You've got to handle that mine as though
you wished it was yours, huh? No defence! The hundred-pound shares
are at twelve; you've got to make 'em look worth two hundred. And it
is dead easy if you go the right way about it. Ask any pickpocket.
The easiest way to steal a pocketbook is to go after the man that's
just lost his watch. Make 'em think that the best thing they can do
is to buy more Klein Rivers and hold them, huh? You've got to think
it, or you won't say it. Get this meeting through without a fuss,
and there's a thousand for you."
"I'll try," said Ronnie.
Yet, it was in no confident mood that he faced a hall-full of enraged
stockholders a week later. The meeting was described as "noisy"; it
ended in the passing of a vote of confidence in the directors.
Ronnie was elated; no other man but Steppe could have induced him to
present a forged document to a meeting of critical stockholders, and
when Klein Rivers rose the next day to seventeen, he was not as
enthusiastic as Dr. Merville, who 'phoned his congratulations on what
was undoubtedly a remarkable achievement.
He spoke of nothing else that day, and Beryl basked in reflected
approval. Her father knew nothing. He wondered why Ronnie, whom he
did not like overmuch, called with greater frequency. He had too
large an experience of life to harbor any misconception as to his
second cousin's private character, although he would, in other
circumstances, have passively accepted him as a son-in-law. Men take
a very tolerant view of other men's weaknesses. The theory that the
world holds a patch of arable land reserved for young men to put
under wild oats, and that without exciting the honest farmers whose
lands adjoin, is a theory that dies hard as the cultivated fields
increase in number.
He did not regard Ronnie as a marrying man, and with the exception of
a few moments of uneasiness he had had when he noted Beryl's
preference for his associate's society, he found nothing
objectionable in the new interest which Ronnie had found. But he
wished he wouldn't call so often.
Dr. Merville might, and did, dismiss Ronnie's errant adventures with
a philosophical _sua cuique voluptas_--he found himself taking a more
and more lenient view of Ronald Morelle's character. A man is never
himself until he is idle. Successions of nurses, schoolmasters and
professors shepherd him into the service of his fellows, and the
conventions of his profession, no less than a natural desire to stand
well with the friends and clients he has acquired in his progress,
assist him in maintaining something of the appearance and mental
attitude which his tutors have formed in him. Many a man has gone
through life being some other man who has impressed him, or some
great teacher who has imparted his personality into his plastic pupil.
The first instinct of a man lost in the desert is to discard his
clothes. The doctor, wandering in this financial waste, began to
discard his principles. He was unconscious of the sacrifice. If, in
the course of his professional life he had made a mistaken diagnosis,
or blundered in an operation, he would have known. If at school he
had committed some error, he would have been corrected. Now, though
this he did not realize, he was, for the first time in his life, free
from any other authority than his own will and conscience. He fell
into a common error when he believed, as he did, that standards of
honor and behavior are peculiar to the trades in which they are
exercised and that right and wrong are adaptable to circumstances.
"Ronnie is coming to dinner tonight, isn't he? You know I shall not
be here, my dear? I promised Steppe I would spend the evening with
him. I wish you would tell Ronnie how pleased we all are at his very
fine speech. I never dreamed that he had it in him--Steppe talks of
making him chairman of the company."
"I thought he was that."
"No--er--no. The chairman is a man named Howitt--a very troublesome
fellow. Steppe bought him out before the meeting. Ronnie was only
acting chairman."
"I thought you were a director, daddy?" She was curious on this
point and had waited an opportunity of asking him why he had not been
present at the meeting.
"I am--in a sense--but my nerves are in such a state just now, that I
simply couldn't bear the strain of listening to a crowd of noisy
louts jabbering stupid criticism. The company is in a perfectly
sound position. You can see that from the way the stock has jumped
up in the past few days. These city people aren't fools, you know."
She wondered if it was the "city people" who were buying the stock or
were responsible for the encouraging rise in Klein River Diamonds.
More likely, she thought, the buyers were the people who knew very
little about stock exchange transactions.
Ronnie arrived as the doctor was going out, and they met in the
street before the door. "It was nothing," said Ronnie modestly,
"they were rather rowdy at first, but after I had had a little talk
with them--you know how sheep-like these fellows are. I discovered
from Steppe who was likely to be the leader of the opposition, and I
saw him before the meeting. Of course, he was difficult and full of
threats about appointing a committee of investigation. However--"
"Yes, yes, you did splendidly--you'll find Beryl waiting for you.
Er--Ronnie."
"Yes?"
"Don't unsettle her--she is in an enquiring mood just now, especially
about the companies and things. I shouldn't talk too much about
Klein Rivers. She is a very shrewd girl. Not that there is anything
about Klein Rivers that is discreditable."
"I never talk business to Beryl," said Ronnie. Which was nearly true.
He found her in the drawing-room and took her into his arms. She was
so dear and fragrant. So malleable in his skilled hands now that the
barrier of her suspicion had been broken down.