in the noon hour of the following day was enacted the brief final scene in the drama of the “rubber consols corner.”
for long weeks, mr. stormont thorpe had given much thought to this approaching climax of his great adventure—looking forward to it both as the crowning event of his life, and as the dawn of a new existence in some novel, enchanted world. it was to bring his triumph, and even more, his release. it was at once to crown him as a hero and chieftain among city men, and transfigure him into a being for whom all city things were an abomination. in his waking hours, the conflict between these aims did not specially force itself upon his attention: he mused upon, and spun fancies about, either one indifferently, and they seemed not at all irreconcilable. but his dreams were full of warfare,—wearily saturated with strife, and endless endeavour to do things which could not be done, and panic-stricken terrors before the shadow of shapeless calamities,—until he dreaded to go to sleep. then he discovered that an extra two glasses of whiskey-and-water would solve that particular difficulty, and send him into prompt, leaden slumber—but the early mornings remained as torturing as ever. in the twilight he awoke oppressed and sick at heart with gloom—and then dozed at intervals through fantastic new ordeals of anguish and shame and fear, till it was decently possible to get up.
then, indeed, the big cold sponge on his head and spine scattered these foolish troubles like chaff, and restored to him his citizenship among the realities. he dressed with returning equanimity, and was almost cheerful by the time he thrust his razor into the hot water. yet increasingly he was conscious of the wear and strain of it all, and increasingly the date, september twelfth, loomed before him with a portentous individuality of its own.
this day grew to mean so much more to him than had all the other days of the dead years together that he woke in the darkness of its opening hours, and did not get satisfactorily to sleep again. his vigil, however, was for the once free from grief. he drowsily awaited the morning in vague mental comfort; he had recurring haphazard indolent glimpses of a protecting fact standing guard just outside the portals of consciousness—the fact that the great day was here. he rose early, breakfasted well, and walked by the embankment to the city, where at ten he had a few words with semple, and afterward caused himself to be denied to ordinary callers. he paced up and down the board room for the better part of the ensuing two hours, luxuriating in the general sense of satisfaction in the proximity of the climax, rather than pretending to himself that he was thinking out its details. he had provided in his plans of the day for a visit from messrs. rostocker and aronson, which should constitute the dramatic finale of the “corner,” and he looked forward to this meeting with a certain eagerness of expectation. yet even here he thought broadly of the scene as a whole, and asked himself no questions about words and phrases. it seemed to be taken for granted in his mind that the scene itself would be theatrically impressive, even spectacular.
in the event, this long-awaited culmination proved to be disappointingly flat and commonplace. it was over before thorpe had said any considerable proportion of the things he saw afterward that he had intended to say. the two men came as he had expected they would—and they bought their way out of the tragic “corner” at precisely the price he had nominated in his mind. but hardly anything else went as he had dimly prefigured it.
mr. rostocker was a yellow-haired man, and mr. aronson was as dark as a moor, and no physical resemblance of features or form suggested itself to the comparing eye, yet thorpe even now, when they stood brusquely silent before him, with their carefully-brushed hats pulled down over their eyes, stuck to it in his own mind that it was hard to tell them apart. to the end, there was something impersonal in his feeling toward them. they, for their part, coldly abstained from exhibiting a sign of feeling about him, good, bad, or indifferent.
it was the man with the fair hair and little curly flaxen beard who spoke: “how do you do! i understand that we can buy eight thousand five hundred rubber consols from you at 'twenty-three.'”
“no—twenty-five,” replied thorpe.
the dark man spoke: “the jobbers' price is twenty-three.”
“to carry over—yes,” thorpe answered. “but to buy it is twenty-five.”
the two sons of the race which invented mental arithmetic exchanged an alert glance, and looked at the floor for an engrossed instant.
“i don't mind telling you,” thorpe interposed upon their silence, “i put on that extra two pounds because you got up that story about applying to the stock exchange committee on a charge of fraud.”
“we didn't get up any story,” said rostocker, curtly.
“you tried to plant it on us,” aronson declared.
“one of your own directors put it about. i thought it was a fake at the time.”
this view of the episode took thorpe by surprise. as it seemed, in passing, to involve a compliment to his own strategic powers, he accepted it without comment. “well—it is twenty-five, anyway,” he told them, with firmness.
“twenty-four,” suggested aronson, after another momentary pause.
“not a shilling less than twenty-five,” thorpe insisted, with quiet doggedness.
“we can always pay our creditors and let you whistle,” rostocker reminded him, laconically.
“you can do anything you like,” was the reply, “except buy rubber consols under twenty-five. it doesn't matter a fig to me whether you go bankrupt or not. it would suit me as well to have you two 'hammered' as to take your money.” upon the spur of a sudden thought he drew out his watch. “in just two minutes' time to a tick, the price will be thirty.”
“let's be 'hammered' then!” said aronson to his companion, with simulated impulsiveness.
rostocker was the older and stronger man, and when at last he spoke it was with the decision of one in authority. “it is your game,” he said, with grave imperturbability. “eight thousand five hundred at twenty-five. will you deliver at the credit lyonnais in half an hour?”
thorpe nodded, impassively. then a roving idea of genial impertinence brought a gleam to his eye. “if you should happen to want more rubber consols at any time,” he said, with a tentative chuckle, “i could probably let you have them at a reduced price.”
the two received the pleasantry without a smile, but to thorpe's astonishment one of them seemed to discern something in it beside banter. it was rostocker who said: “perhaps we may make a deal with you,” and apparently meant it.
they went out at this, ignoring ceremony upon their exit as stolidly as they had done upon their entrance, and a moment later thorpe called in the secretary, and despatched a messenger to bring semple from capel court. the formalities of this final transfer of shares had been dictated to the former, and he had gone off on the business, before the broker arrived.
thorpe stood waiting near the door, and held out his hand with a dramatically significant gesture when the little scotchman entered. “put her there!” he exclaimed heartily, with an exuberant reversion to the slang of remote transatlantic bonhomie.
“yeh've done it, then!” said semple, his sharp face softening with pleasure at the news. “yeh've pulled it off at twenty-three!”
the other's big countenance yielded itself to a boyish grin. “twenty-five!” he said, and laughed aloud. “after you left this morning, it kind o' occurred to me that i'd raise it a couple of pounds. i found i was madder about those pieces in the newspapers than i thought i was, and so i took an extra seventeen thousand pounds on that account.”
“god above!” semple ejaculated, with a satisfaction through which signs of an earlier fright were visible. “it was touch-and-go if you didn't lose it all by doing that! you risked everything, man!”
thorpe ponderously shrugged his shoulders. “well—i did it, anyhow, and it came off,” was his comment. then, straightening himself, he drew a long, long breath, and beamed down at the little man. “think of it! god! it's actually all over! and now perhaps we won't have a drink! hell! let's send out for some champagne!” his finger was hovering over the bell, when the broker's dissuading voice arrested it. “no, no!” semple urged. “i wouldn't touch it. it's no fit drink for the daytime—and it's a scandal in an office. your clerks will aye blab it about hither and yon, and nothing harms a man's reputation more in the city.”
“oh, to hell with the city!” cried thorpe, joyously. “i'm never going to set foot in it again. think of that! i mean it!”
none the less, he abandoned the idea of sending out for wine, and contented himself with the resources of the cabinet instead. after some friendly pressure, semple consented to join him in a brandy-and-soda, though he continued to protest between sips that at such an hour it was an indecent practice.
“it's the ruin of many a strong man,” he moralized, looking rather pointedly at thorpe over his glass. “it's the principal danger that besets the verra successful man. he's too busily occupied to take exercise, and he's too anxious and worried to get his proper sleep—but he can always drink! in one sense, i'm not sorry to think that you're leaving the city.”
“oh, it never hurts me,” thorpe said, indifferently accepting the direction of the homily. “i'm as strong as an ox. but all the same, i shall be better in every way for getting out of this hole. thank god, i can get off to scotland tomorrow. but i say, semple, what's the matter with your visiting me at my place there? i'll give you the greatest shooting and fishing you ever heard of.”
the broker was thinking of something else. “what is to be the precise position of the company, in the immediate future?” he asked.
“company? what company?”
semple smiled grimly. “have you already forgotten that there is such a thing?” he queried, with irony. “why, man, this company that paid for this verra fine board-table,” he explained, with his knuckles on its red baize centre.
thorpe laughed amusedly. “i paid for that out of my own pocket,” he said. “for that matter everything about the company has come out of my pocket——”
“or gone into it,” suggested the other, and they chuckled together.
“but no—you're right,” thorpe declared. “some thing ought to be settled about the company, i suppose. of course i wash my hands of it—but would anybody else want to go on with it? you see its annual working expenses, merely for the office and the board, foot up nearly 3,000 pounds. i've paid these for this year, but naturally i won't do it again. and would it be worth anybody else's while to do it? yours, for example?”
“have you had any explanations with the other directors?” the broker asked, thoughtfully.
“explanations—no,” thorpe told him. “but that's all right. the marquis has been taken care of, and so has plowden. they're game to agree to anything. and let's see—kervick is entirely my man. that leaves watkin and davidson—and they don't matter. they're mere guinea-pigs. a few hundreds apiece would shut them up, if you thought it was worth while to give them anything at all.”
“and about the property,—the rubber plantation,—that the company was formed to acquire and develop. i suppose there really is such a plantation?”
“oh, yes, it's all there right enough,” thorpe said, briefly.
“it's no good, though, is it?” the broker asked, with affable directness.
“between ourselves, it isn't worth a damn,” the other blithely assured him.
the scotchman mused with bent brows. “there ought still to be money in it,” he said, with an air of conviction.
“by the way,” it occurred to thorpe to mention, “here's something i didn't understand. i told rostocker here, just as a cheeky kind of joke, that after he and aronson had got their eight thousand five hundred, if they thought they'd like still more shares, i'd let 'em have 'em at a bargain—and he seemed to take it seriously. he did for a fact. said perhaps he could make a deal with me.”
“hm-m!” said semple, reflectively. “i'll see if he says anything to me. very likely he's spotted some way of taking the thing over, and reorganizing it, and giving it another run over the course. i'll think it out. and now i must be off. aren't you lunching?”
“no—i'll have the boy bring in some sandwiches,” thorpe decided. “i want my next meal west of temple bar when i get round to it. i've soured on the city for keeps.”
“i wouldn't say that it had been so bad to you, either,” semple smilingly suggested, as he turned to the door.
thorpe grinned in satisfied comment. “hurry back as soon as you've finally settled with rostocker and the other fellow,” he called after him, and began pacing the floor again.
it was nearly four o'clock when these two men, again together in the board room, and having finished the inspection of some papers on the desk, sat upright and looked at each other in tacit recognition that final words were to be spoken.
“well, semple,” thorpe began, after that significant little pause, “i want to say that i'm damned glad you've done so well for yourself in this affair. you've been as straight as a die to me,—i owe it as much to you as i do to myself,—and if you don't think you've got enough even now, i want you to say so.”
he had spoken in tones of sincere liking, and the other answered him in kind. “i have more than i ever dreamed of making in a lifetime when i came to london,” he declared. “if my father were alive, and heard me tell him that in one year, out of a single transaction, i had cleared over sixty-five thousand pounds, he'd be fit to doubt the existence of a supreme being. i'm obliged to you for your good words, thorpe. it's not only been profitable to work with you, but it has been a great education and a great pleasure as well.”
thorpe nodded his appreciation. “i'm going to ask a favour of you,” he said. “i want to leave the general run of my investments and interests here in your hands, to keep track of i don't want to speculate at all, in the ordinary meaning of the word. even after i bury a pot of money in non-productive real estate, i shall have an income of 50,000 pounds at the very least, and perhaps twice as much. there's no fun in gambling when you've got such a bank as that behind you. but if there are good, wise changes to be made in investments, or if things turn up in the way of chances that i ought to know about, i want to feel that you're on the spot watching things and doing things in my interest. and as it won't be regular broker's work, i shall want to pay you a stated sum—whatever you think is right.”
“that will arrange itself easily enough,” said semple. “i shall have the greatest pleasure in caring for whatever you put in my hands. and i think i can promise that it will be none the worse for the keeping.”
“i don't need any assurance on that score,” thorpe declared, cordially. “you're the one sterling, honest man i've known in the city.”
it was the broker's turn to make a little acknowledging bow. his eyes gleamed frank satisfaction at being so well understood. “i think i see the way that more money can be made out of the company,” he said, abruptly changing the subject. “i've had but a few words with rostocker about it—but it's clear to me that he has a plan. he will be coming to you with a proposition.”
“well, he won't find me, then,” interposed thorpe, with a comfortable smile. “i leave all that to you.”
“i suspect that his plan,” continued semple, “is to make a sub-rosa offer of a few shillings for the majority of the shares, and reconstitute the board, and then form another company to buy the property and good-will of the old one at a handsome price. now if that would be a good thing for him to do, it would be a good thing for me to do. i shall go over it all carefully, in detail, this evening. and i suppose, if i see my way clear before me, than i may rely upon your good feeling in the matter. i would do all the work and assume all the risk, and, let us say, divide any profits equally—you in turn giving me a free hand with all your shares, and your influence with the directors.”
“i'll do better still,” thorpe told him, upon brief reflection. “reconstitute the board and make lord plowden chairman,—i don't imagine the marquis would have the nerve to go on with it,—and i'll make a free gift of my shares to you two—half and half. you'll find him all right to work with,—if you can only get him up in the morning,—and i've kind o' promised him something of the sort. does that suit you?” semple's countenance was thoughtful rather than enthusiastic. “i'm more skeptical about lords than you are,” he observed, “but if he's amenable, and understands that his part is to do what i tell him to do, i've no doubt we shall hit it off together.”
“oh, absolutely!” said thorpe, with confidence. “i'll see to it that he behaves like a lamb. you're to have an absolutely free hand. you're to do what you like,—wind the company up, or sell it out, or rig it up under a new name and catch a new set of gudgeons with it,—whatever you damned please. when i trust a man, i trust him.”
the two friends, their faces brightened and their voices mellowed by this serene consciousness of their mutual trust in each other's loyalty and integrity, dwelt no further upon these halcyon beginnings of a fresh plan for plundering the public. they spoke instead on personal topics—of the possibility of semple's coming to scotland during the autumn, and of the chance of thorpe's wintering abroad. all at once thorpe found himself disclosing the fact of his forthcoming marriage, though he did not mention the name of the lady's father, and under the gracious stress of this announcement they drank again, and clinked glasses fervently. when semple at last took his leave, they shook hands with the deep-eyed earnestness of comrades who have been through battle and faced death together.
it was not until thorpe stood alone that the full realizing sense of what the day meant seemed to come to him. fruition was finally complete: the last winnowing of the great harvest had been added to the pile. positively nothing remained for him but to enter and enjoy!
he found it curiously difficult to grasp the thought in its entirety. he stood the master of unlimited leisure for the rest of his life, and of power to enrich that life with everything that money could buy,—but there was an odd inability to feel about it as he knew he ought to feel.
somehow, for some unaccountable reason, an absurd depression hovered about over his mind, darkening it with formless shadows. it was as if he were sorry that the work was all finished—that there was nothing more for him to do. but that was too foolish, and he tried to thrust it from him. he said with angry decision to himself that he had never liked the work; that it had all been unpleasant and grinding drudgery, tolerable only as a means to an end; that now this end had been reached, he wanted never to lay eyes on the city again.
let him dwell instead upon the things he did want to lay eyes upon. some travel no doubt he would like, but not too much; certainly no more than his wife would cheerfully accept as a minimum. he desired rather to rest among his own possessions. to be lord of the manor at pellesley court, with his own retinue of servants and dependents and tenants, his own thousands of rich acres, his own splendid old timber, his own fat stock and fleet horses and abundant covers and prize kennels—that was what most truly appealed to him. it was not at all certain that he would hunt; break-neck adventure in the saddle scarcely attracted him. but there was no reason in the world why he should not breed racing horses, and create for himself a distinguished and even lofty position on the turf. he had never cared much about races or racing folk himself, but when the prince and lord rosebery and people like that went in for winning the derby, there clearly must be something fascinating in it.
then parliament, of course; he did not waver at all from his old if vague conception of a seat in parliament as a natural part of the outfit of a powerful country magnate. and in a hundred other ways men should think of him as powerful, and look up to him. he would go to church every sunday, and sit in the big squire's pew. he would be a magistrate as a matter of course, and he would make himself felt on the county council. he would astonish the county by his charities, and in bad years by the munificence of his reductions in rents. perhaps if there were a particularly bad harvest, he would decline all over his estate to exact any rent whatever. fancy what a noble sensation that would make! a duke could do no more.
it was very clear to him now that he desired to have children of his own,—say two at least, a son and a daughter, or perhaps a son and two daughters: two little girls would be company for each other. as he prefigured these new beings, the son was to exist chiefly for purposes of distinction and the dignity of heirship, and the paternal relations with him would be always somewhat formal, and, though affectionate, unexpansive. but the little girls—they would put their arms round their father's neck, and walk out with him to see the pigs and the dogs, and be the darlings of his heart. he would be an old man by the time they grew up.
a beatific vision of himself took form in his mind—of himself growing grey and pleasurably tired, surrounded by opulence and the demonstrative respect of everybody, smiling with virtuous content as he strolled along between his two daughters, miracles of beauty and tenderness, holding each by a hand.
the entrance of a clerk broke abruptly upon this daydream. he had a telegram in his hand, and thorpe, rousing himself with an effort, took the liver-coloured envelope, and looked blankly at it. some weird apprehension seized upon him, as if he belonged to the peasant class which instinctively yokes telegrams and calamities together. he deferred to this feeling enough to nod dismissal to the clerk, and then, when he was again alone, slowly opened the message, and read it:
“newcastle-on-tyne, september 12. our friend died at edinboro this morning. see you at hotel this evening.—kervick.”
what thorpe felt at first was that his two daughters had shrunk from him with swift, terrible aversion: they vanished, along with every phase of the bright vision, under a pall of unearthly blackness. he stood in the centre of a chill solitude, staring stupidly at the coarse, soft paper.
the premonition, then, had justified itself! something had told him that the telegram was an evil thing. a vaguely superstitious consciousness of being in the presence of fate laid hold upon him. his great day of triumph had its blood-stain. a victim had been needful—and to that end poor simple, silly old tavender was a dead man. thorpe could see him,—an embarrassing cadaver eyed by strangers who did not know what to do with it,—fatuous even in death.
a sudden rage at kervick flamed up. he clearly had played the fool—clumsily over-plying the simpleton with drink till he had killed him. the shadow of murder indubitably hung over the thing. and then—the crass witlessness of telegraphing! already, doubtless, the police of edinborough were talking over the wires with scotland yard. a reference to a death in edinborough, in a telegram from newcastle—it was incredible that this should escape the eye of the authorities. any minute might bring a detective through that door there—following into the board room with his implacable scent the clue of blood. thorpe's fancy pictured this detective as a momentarily actual presence—tall, lean, cold-eyed, mysteriously calm and fatally wise, the omniscient terror of the magazine short-stories.
he turned faint and sick under a spasm of fright. the menace of enquiry became something more than a threat: he felt it, like the grip of a constable upon his arm. everything would be mercilessly unravelled. the telegram of the idiot kervick would bring the police down upon him like a pack of beagles. the beliefs and surmises of the idiot gafferson would furnish them with the key to everything. he would have his letter from tavender to show to the detectives—and the government's smart lawyers would ferret out the rest. the death of tavender—they could hardly make him responsible for that; but it was the dramatic feature of this death which would inspire them all to dig up everything about the fraud. it was this same sensational added element of the death, too, which would count with a jury. they were always gross, sentimental fools, these juries. they would mix up the death and the deal in rubber consols, and in their fat-headed confusion would say “penal servitude—fourteen years.” or no, it was the judge who fixed that. but the judges were fools, too; they were too conceited, too puffed up with vanity, to take the trouble to understand. he groaned aloud in a nightmare of helplessness.
the sound of his own voice, moaning in his ears, had a magical effect upon him. he lifted his head, gazed about him, and then flushed deeply. his nerveless cowardice had all at once become unbelievable to himself. with a shamed frown he straightened himself, and stood thus for a long minute, engrossed in the definite task of chasing these phantoms from his mind. once a manly front was displayed to them, they slunk away with miraculous facility. he poured out some brandy, and sipped it neat, and laughed scornfully, defiantly, aloud.
he had over half a million—with power and force and courage enough to do with it what he liked. he had fought luck undauntedly, unwearyingly, during all those years when his hands were empty. was he to tremble and turn tail now, when his hands were full, when he was armoured and weaponed at every point? he was amazed and hurt, and still more enraged, at that fit of girlish weakness which had possessed him. he could have beaten himself with stripes for it. but it could never happen again—never, never!
he told himself that with proud, resolute reiteration, as he got his hat and stick, and put in his pockets one or two papers from the desk, and then glanced about the board room for what was, most likely, the last time. here he had won his great victory over fate, here he had put his enemies under his feet, and if innocent simpletons had wandered into the company of these foes, it mattered not a whit to him that they also had been crushed. figuratively, he turned his back upon them now; he left them, slain and trampled, in the board room behind him. they no longer concerned him.
figuratively, too, as he walked with firmness to the door, he stepped over the body of old tavender, upon the threshold, and bestowed upon it a downward mental glance, and passed on. by the time he reached the street, the memory of tavender had become the merest shred of a myth. as he strode on, it seemed to him that his daughters came again, and took his hands, and moved lovingly beside him—lovingly and still more admiringly than before.