THE POWERS THAT BE
WHEN Alistair woke up on the morning after his promise to Don Juan, he
did not feel happy.
Apart from the headache left by his overnight excess, he suffered from
the recollection of the pledge extorted from him. He owed nothing
whatever to Mendes, and yet it put a strain upon his sense of honour to
ask a favour of the Brazilian.
Mendes and he had been friendly for a long time, without being friends.
Their acquaintance had begun and continued, so to speak, along two
parallel lines. Molly Finucane had brought them together. And Molly
Finucane kept them apart.
Molly had known the financier longer than she had known Alistair
Stuart. When she gave way to that touch of real sentiment which united
her to Stuart, Mendes had shown no resentment and made no unpleasant
scenes. Perhaps it was partly for that reason, out of a kind of mild
remorse, that Molly had continued to receive him as a friend, and even
to encourage his visits; although with the new sense of honour which
had been developed in her by her passion for Stuart, the little woman
steadily refused to accept the smallest gift from the millionaire.
Perhaps, also, she saw that the presence of Mendes, seated at their
dinner-table day after day, bland, reserved, and calmly expectant, like
a player whose turn to play has not yet come, acted as a talisman on
Alistair, who was made to see that another was waiting to snatch the
prize from him if he once loosened his grasp.
It was noon by the time Alistair got down to the breakfast-table, and
he sat picking at some tough, half-cold kidneys, and grumbling to
Molly, who was in a dressing-gown pouring out his coffee.
“These things are not fit to eat,” he complained crossly, pushing away
his plate.
Molly reminded him that the cook was under notice to leave.
“Our servants generally are,” he retorted. “But we don’t seem to get
any better ones in their place.”
“I know I am a bad housekeeper,” was the meek response. Complaints
of this kind on Alistair’s part were a new symptom, and Molly was
frightened by it. “Good servants expect such high wages nowadays,” she
added.
“They expect their wages to be paid regularly, you mean. No wonder they
won’t do their work properly when they don’t get paid for it.”
“We have no money.”
Alistair coloured up as he was again recalled to his position.
“Well, we can’t get any now, at all events,” he said. “I don’t suppose
Trent will be such a cad as to stop my allowance, but the next cheque
won’t be due till Christmas, and we can’t very well borrow any more.
What about Carter’s?”
Carter’s was the establishment from which they were accustomed to get
their household supplies, one of those huge bazaars which deal in
everything from a landed estate to a packet of pins.
“I paid them a hundred pounds the other day,” Molly answered. “I expect
they’ll give us credit for a time.”
Alistair said nothing, but sat tapping the table with his fork, and
thinking.
“I must sell some of my jewels, I suppose,” said Molly bravely, after a
short silence.
Alistair looked up and studied her face.
“Why not sell the furniture and everything, and let’s clear out of this
place? We can’t go on like this much longer, any way. What should you
say to disappearing for a time?”
“Where to?” asked Molly, startled.
“Somewhere over on the south side. I thought of Lambeth. If we’re going
to be poor, it’s best to live where everybody else is poor around us.”
Molly stared at him in consternation. In her ears the proposal, if
it were serious, sounded like the end of everything. Molly had been
born and bred in Lambeth. She knew what life there was. The idea of
returning to it, after her experience of luxury, struck her as a
dismal form of suicide. And not being able to divine the curious,
half-romantic attraction which the scheme had come to possess for
Alistair, she credited him with her own feeling of repulsion. The
suspicion quickly followed that this suggestion covered a design to
give her up. Stuart meant to demonstrate that it was impossible for
them to live together any longer, and on that pretext to accept the
offers of his family to rescue him.
The spectre of parting, never really laid, always peeping out at odd
moments to grin at her, now showed its haunting features plainly, and
she cried out with passion:
“No, no! Don’t talk like that! Don’t talk like that, Alistair!”
Alistair shrugged his shoulders as he rose from the table. He had not
expected his proposition to be very eagerly welcomed at first, and he
was content to let the idea rest in her mind.
“Well, I’ve got to go into the City this morning,” he said.
Molly glanced at him inquiringly, but thought it wiser not to ask whom
he was going to see.
He took a third-class ticket on the Underground Railway, in accordance
with his resolution to experiment with poverty. But he had donned a
frock-coat from Savile Row in order to give his mission a serious
character, and he noticed that this incongruous dress seemed to be a
cause of offence to his fellow-passengers. Two workmen with a roll of
leaden piping, whom he found in his compartment, stared at him with
resentful scorn, and made remarks to one another in an undertone which
he could see were disparaging.
Alistair had to discover that to be the outcast of the aristocracy does
not of itself constitute one a member of the democracy. To acquire a
low position in life something more is necessary than to have lost a
high one.
He got out at the Mansion House Station, and made his way towards the
great whirlpool of traffic formed by the eight streets which debouch in
front of the Royal Exchange.
Here he could not resist the inclination to stand still for a minute on
one of the small islets of pavement which divide the stream. He told
himself that this was the centre of the world’s business, the heart
of that vast invisible machine which steadily converts the labour of
fifteen hundred millions of men into the wealth of a prosperous few.
The low brown building, blackened with London grime, which faced him
with such solid immovability, needed no letters on its front to tell
that it was the Bank of England. It was here, surely, and not in that
pretentious palace further west beside the river, that the true centre
of gravity resided; this really was the core of that political and
social system with whose genius his genius was at war; it was for the
men whom that brown square of building sheltered, and not for anyone
else, that the legislators travailed, and the police went their daily
rounds, as the soldiers fought on far-off continents and the sailors
adventured in uncharted seas. In the interest of wealth it was, in the
last analysis, that the Raj had been built up, that the firm framework
of society had been compacted, and that such outlaws as himself were
held in check. Not Yahveh, and not Christ, neither Ormuzd nor Ahriman,
but Mammon was the God of the Anglo-Roman Raj--Mammon, whom that Syrian
Redeemer had so much hated; Mammon, who had built all the churches ever
since unto this day.
Alistair’s head drooped on his breast as he moved slowly on. He found
himself presently in a narrow turning off Lombard Street, a sunless
retreat giving no outward indication that the great spiders of finance
set their webs within.
It was the quarter of bankers’ bankers. A clerk from the head office of
some limited company with branches in half the towns of England would
walk in quickly through a swing-door, pass through an outer office
without stopping, and approach a long table at which two or three men
were seated side by side. A name would be mentioned, a bundle of bills
exhibited, and some figure pronounced. The two or three heads would
turn and exchange glances; one would give a nod across the table, and
the clerk would walk out again. The nod had meant the loan of a million
for twenty-four hours.
It was the first time that Alistair had visited Mendes in his business
quarters, and it took him a minute or two to discover the brass-plate
which bore the name of the South American Bank. Even then he had to
grope his way through what seemed to him a maze of stairs and passages
before he reached a small wired counter, protecting a pale clerk who
asked him his business.
“I have called to see Mr. Mendes.”
He handed in his card with a patronage of which he was quite
unconscious. The clerk received it respectfully enough, and passed out
of sight round a partition. A minute then elapsed before a man in sober
livery came out from a side-door and asked his lordship to be good
enough to follow him.
He showed Lord Alistair into a small, comfortably-furnished room,
in which a man of forty or thereabouts, well dressed and fully
self-possessed, was seated at a writing-table.
He rose politely as Alistair entered, and offered him a chair.
“Mr. Mendes has someone with him at the moment,” he said, speaking
courteously, but without any particular deference. “Perhaps it may save
time if you can tell me what you wish to see him about.”
“I am a personal friend of Mr. Mendes,” returned Stuart haughtily.
The other did not seem to feel rebuked.
“If you have not called on business it might be better for you to go to
his private house,” he said quietly. “Mr. Mendes is a very busy man,
and it is against his rule to receive his private friends here, except
by appointment.”
The last words seemed to be underlined with meaning. Was it possible
that this courteous intermediary was already aware that Lord Alistair
had no appointment, and was taking it on himself to refuse him an
interview with the principal?
“I have business of an important character with Mr. Mendes,” Stuart
declared in a tone of resentment.
“In that case I think you had better let me send in a message of some
kind,” persisted his questioner.
Alistair flushed up.
“Does Mr. Mendes know I am here?” he demanded.
The other shook his head slightly.
“Mr. Mendes’ orders are very strict, and I am obliged to respect them.
I am not authorized to send in a visitor’s card without some intimation
of the business on which he has come.”
Alistair sat dismayed. A sense of impotence stole over him, at the same
time that the figure of the man with whom he had been familiar for so
long began to grow larger and more formidable of outline before his
awakened eyes. All these precautions interposed between him and the
millionaire taught him a new estimate of their respective positions
in the world. He, Alistair Stuart, might be called a lord, but which
of the two really was lord? His courtesy title, his historic lineage,
his royal friendships--all these things might give him a sentimental
prestige in the eyes of women struggling on the fringe of society,
and still cherishing the delusions of the snob. But in this grim
City office, where only realities counted, what was he but a needy
insolvent, regarded with suspicion as a probable would-be borrower?
The feudal age was past, and the trappings of feudalism stood revealed
for the worthless, threadbare frippery they were, as if a strong beam
of daylight had suddenly fallen on the painted canvas of a theatrical
scene. The feudal age was past, the old Viking race, whose stone keeps
dot the English shires, had gone down, never to rise again, and to-day
the barons of steel were being broken in pieces by the barons of gold.
While these reflections were passing in one compartment of his brain in
another the decision formed itself to accept the conditions.
“My business is confidential,” he ventured first.
The intermediary bowed.
“I am in Mr. Mendes’ confidence.”
“Well, I have come on behalf of Don Juan.” And seeing that the
Pretender’s name made but a faint impression on the confidential
secretary, or whatever he should be styled, Lord Alistair entered
earnestly into the history of the Prince, his claims, his hopes, and
his prospects of success, winding up with the explanation that Don Juan
had authorized him to negotiate a loan.
“Do you offer security?” was the confidential man’s sole comment on
this appeal.
The question dragged Alistair promptly down from the height of his
enthusiasm.
“The Prince would guarantee repayment out of the taxes, I suppose,”
he said a little doubtfully. “Or couldn’t he give concessions for
railways, or mines, or something? He would leave that to Mr. Mendes, I
should think.”
A very faint smile creased the mouth of the City man. He took a slip of
cardboard from a stand in front of him, and wrote a few words on it:
“Lord A. Stuart. Loan for Pretender. No security.”
With this in his hand he rose and passed into an adjoining room.
In less than a minute he returned, accompanied by a younger man, who
bowed respectfully to Lord Alistair as he said:
“Will you come to Mr. Mendes, my lord?”
Alistair rose eagerly and followed him, feeling pretty sure that the
banker had been disengaged the whole time. But the barriers he had
had to surmount had considerably weakened his self-confidence, and he
experienced a sensible relief when Mendes, rising at his entrance,
shook hands with his accustomed friendliness, and offered him an
easy-chair.
“I hope my people haven’t bothered you too much,” the millionaire
said. “But you find me here with my armour on, keeping guard over my
money-bags. Who is your royal friend?”
Alistair repeated the story he had just told in the other room, but in
a distinctly lower key of enthusiasm.
“You met him with Des Louvres?” remarked the Brazilian. “Why didn’t Des
Louvres come here, or, better still, the Prince himself?”
“He will come, I have no doubt, if you are willing to entertain his
proposals.”
“I can hardly say that till I have seen him.” Mendes touched a bell,
and the young man who had introduced Alistair promptly appeared in the
doorway.
“Ascertain what is known in Rome about Prince Don Juan de Bourbon, and
let me know when I come back from lunch.”
The young man hesitated an instant.
“The telephone does not go beyond Paris, sir,” he said, speaking with
just perceptible hesitation.
“Our agent there can telegraph on. Cipher.”
Mendes spoke quietly. As soon as the door had closed on the young
secretary, his employer made a mark upon a sheet of paper.
“You won’t see that youth next time you come here,” he observed to
Stuart. “That is the second time this week he has asked me to think for
him.”
Alistair shivered as he heard the ruthless sentence. A picture rose
before him of a young man proud in his employer’s favour, and filled
with ambitious dreams for the future, going home to an old mother, or
perhaps a newly-married bride, in some pleasant little suburban home,
and breaking the news that he was ruined. It was in this way that
money-bags were guarded.
Mendes sat considering for a moment.
“You don’t know why Rothschilds refused them, I suppose?” he threw out.
“I didn’t know they had applied to Rothschilds!” exclaimed Alistair in
astonishment.
“All these people do, as a rule. Rothschilds have the name, you know.
Every financial scheme that gets floated in London goes there first. We
smaller men have to subsist on their leavings.”
He sat up to his desk, and wrote a short note, which he sealed up and
addressed himself. Then he touched the bell again, and handed it to the
doomed young man, whom Alistair gazed on with a fascinated interest.
“Take it yourself. They may see you. Now,” he said, turning to Stuart,
“come and have lunch.”
Mendes conducted his guest to a big club-house behind the church at the
corner of Lombard Street. In the hall he stopped and wrote down Lord
Alistair’s name in the visitors’ book with satisfaction. Regard for
race is a sentiment deeply rooted in the Semitic mind, and Mendes took
a genuine pleasure in the thought that his companion was a descendant
of Scottish Kings.
They took their seats at a small table in the midst of a vast room
filled with similar ones, nearly all of them inconveniently crowded.
The lunchers were mostly middle-aged men of prosperous appearance, and
their talk seemed to run chiefly on gambling as it is carried on at the
legalized Monte Carlo in Chapel Court. They all spoke to each other
without formality, and a man who came and sat down at the same table
as Mendes and Stuart at once plunged into a story of some speculator
who had been gambling in copper, and owing to an unexpected desertion
of the market by other speculators found himself suddenly left with
some hundreds of tons of ore on his hands, which were actually brought
in waggons to his office in Billiter Buildings, where he had one small
room and a boy. The idea that a buyer and seller of anything should be
called upon actually to handle it evidently appealed to the narrator as
a superb joke.
Generally speaking the lunches were of a very substantial description,
and champagne seemed to be the only wine in much demand. Mendes catered
liberally for his guest, and over their coffee offered him a cigar
which the Duke of Trent and Colonsay could not have afforded to smoke.
But most of the men round them were smoking similar cigars. It was
impossible to think that everyone in that crowd was as rich as Mendes.
Alistair could only suppose that they represented the winners of the
moment, who were spending their gains with a gambler’s recklessness in
the belief that their luck would never turn.
In this judgment he was not wholly right. The world of the Stock
Exchange is as small as other worlds, and those who inhabit it have to
consult the opinions of their neighbours. If anything, the keeping up
of appearances was more important to these gold-hunters than it is to
the village tradesman or the retired officer in his seaside villa. To
have ordered a modest lunch or a cheap cigar would have been to hoist
a signal of distress, perhaps to bring an unstable fortune tumbling to
the ground.
Among these earthen pots the solid vessels of wealth floated calmly,
sure sooner or later to crush the greater part of their venturesome
rivals. As they rose from the table, Mendes moved his head slightly in
the direction of the story-teller.
“That man will not last six months,” he whispered. “He has gone in for
American rails.”
“Are they going down, then?” asked the ignorant Stuart, attempting to
adopt the jargon he had heard around him.
Mendes smiled good-naturedly.
“It doesn’t matter whether they go up or down. Dealing in American
rails is playing roulette against a croupier who can make the ball roll
where he likes.”
The spectacle of all these men feverishly engaged in the hunt for gold
had excited Alistair in sympathy. For a moment he felt a pale reflex
of their passion, and wished that he too could be among the winners
instead of the losers.
“How do men make money?” he asked wistfully of the millionaire.
“No one can make money,” the rich man replied grimly, “in this world.
He can only take it. And the only way to take it is to be a little
more greedy and cunning than the man you take it from.”
It was the gospel of Mammon. And Alistair Stuart knew that here at
least he could never find salvation.
On their return to George Yard, Mendes was stopped in the outer office
by the gentleman who had interviewed Alistair. He excused himself to
Stuart for a few minutes, and nearly a quarter of an hour elapsed
before Alistair again found himself in the financier’s room.
“Well, I have heard something about your friend,” Mendes said grimly,
as he sat down.
Alistair’s heart sank at the Brazilian’s tone. He waited for him to
speak.
Mendes went on deliberately.
“Perhaps I ought to say I have heard something about his father. I
don’t suppose this young fellow is anything more than a tool.”
“What have you heard?”
“I have heard this: that the last time he got a quarter of a million
out of a confiding Greek in order to make a descent on his kingdom,
as he calls it, he spent the whole of the money on his own pleasures,
without ever going within five hundred miles of the frontier.”
“I don’t think Don Juan would do that,” Alistair protested.
“He will not get the chance,” the other said brutally. “We are going
to lend no more money to these kings of the hooligans.”
“You think he has no chance of success?”
“I don’t think those who are behind him want him to succeed, if you are
speaking of Don Juan.”
“But whom do you mean? Who are behind him?” asked the bewildered Stuart.
The South American gave him a doubtful glance.
“You’re a Catholic, aren’t you?”
“No,” said Alistair.
“Half a one, I suspect. All you people cling together, I notice.
Decadents, Legitimists, or whatever you call yourselves, it comes to
much the same thing. I haven’t watched you all this time for nothing.”
“I am not a Christian at all,” said Alistair.
“What has that got to do with it? That man Des Louvres is about as
much of a Christian as this table, but he is a very good son of the
Church--one of the best agents they have got, I fancy.”
“I can assure you that you are mistaken if you think I have any
Catholic sympathies,” Alistair protested emphatically. “I am a Pagan,
pure and simple.”
“So is the Roman Church, according to the Protestants,” sneered Mendes.
“But I am quite ready to take your word for it. I don’t suppose Des
Louvres has told you any more than he was obliged to.”
Alistair remained silent, too much offended to reply.
Mendes went on in a tone of quiet deliberation:
“The day of these Pretenders is over. A King who has been driven from
the throne by a rival or by a foreigner may have some chance of getting
back again. But these Latin princelets were turned out because their
own subjects were sick of their misgovernment, and no one wants to try
them again. After all, people are not such fools as to prefer tyranny
to freedom. The sort of abject superstition on which they rely is very
strong, no doubt, till it is shaken, but after it has once been upset
you can no more restore it than you can set up Humpty-Dumpty again.
Legitimism, as you call it, is not a popular sentiment; it is only the
fad of a clique of aristocrats who are played out themselves. Such men
do not make revolutions.”
Stuart made no attempt to resist this reasoning.
“Then you consider that Don Juan would have no chance?”
“I never thought he had a chance of making himself King, if that is
what you mean. The only question I have to consider is whether it
would pay me to give him a run.” And seeing Stuart’s bewilderment,
the financier added: “I haven’t been thinking of the mines and the
railways. An attempt of this kind, if it looked at all serious, would
send down the price of every investment in the country, and if I knew
of it beforehand, I should be able to make enough out of my knowledge
to repay whatever I gave your friend. I should never expect to get it
back from him.”
“Then why won’t you give him the run?”
“I will tell you why. Because those who are behind him, those from whom
Des Louvres is pretty sure to have his instructions, are simply putting
this poor young fellow forward to gain something for themselves, and
they will push him on or call him back to suit their own purpose.”
“Whom do you mean?”
“I mean what Disraeli meant--and he was not altogether a fool--when
he said there were only two powers at the bottom of everything that
happened in Europe--the Church and the secret societies. In this case
it is not the Freemasons.”
“Then what do you suggest the Church has to gain?”
“I don’t think it matters. Perhaps there is some quarrel on between
the Pope and the reigning dynasty; perhaps there has been a movement
to suppress the monasteries or to expel the Jesuits--I don’t know. I
haven’t been following their recent history. But you may take it from
me that the Vatican has some motive for putting pressure on somebody or
some party in the country, and that Don Juan is to be used as the red
light.”
Alistair could not resist the conviction that Mendes was probably
right. He did not feel any personal interest in the matter one way
or the other, except as it affected the chance of his being able to
take part in an interesting adventure. He had, perhaps, a slight
friendliness left for the Church of Rome; at all events, he would have
felt no reluctance to fight its battles as long as in so doing he was
fighting against the social system for which Mendes stood.
“Even if you are right,” he urged as a last appeal, “I don’t see what
difference it need make to you, as long as the expedition takes place.”
“I cannot be sure that it will take place.” The Brazilian paused a
moment, and then added gravely: “You know that I am a Jew.”
Alistair looked at him inquiringly.
“I am not disposed to let myself be used as a puppet by the friends of
Monsieur des Louvres. We have seen rather too much lately of the true
feeling of the Roman Church towards our race. The Dreyfus case has been
a revelation of more things than the innocence of Captain Dreyfus. We
now know what treatment we have to expect from Rome if she ever does
regain power, and no penny of my money shall ever be given to help her.”
“Rome is not so bad as Russia,” said Stuart.
“Russia’s turn is coming,” was the reply. “There is a curse on those
who persecute our race.”
And Alistair shivered again.
Alistair went home feeling as though he had been in possession for a
brief moment of the magic bell of northern folklore, which enables its
wearer to descend into the bowels of the earth and see the gnomes at
their work. He had a vision in which he seemed to have been walking
below the surface of the great city among the foundations of palaces.
On either hand the tremendous walls rose up, immovable, forbidding,
and dank with the underground slime. These were the mighty bases of the
powers of wealth, against which he had set his feeble shoulder in the
foolish expectation that he could make them rock. And the puny effort
had left him beating out his life down there in the subterranean mire
at the foot of those sunless piles among the forgotten pauper rubbish
of the world.