They were to form a Syndicate to take over his property, and place it upon the market; in consideration of their finding the ready money for this exploitation, they were to have for themselves two-fifths of the shares in the Company ultimately to be floated. They listened to these details, and to his enthusiastic remarks about the project itself, with rather perfunctory patience, but committed themselves that evening to nothing definite. It took him nearly a week thereafter to get an answer from any of them.
Then he learned that, if they took the matter up at all, it would be upon the basis of the Syndicate receiving nine-tenths of the shares.
He conceived the idea, after he had mastered his original amazement, that they named these preposterous terms merely because they expected to be beaten down, and he summoned all his good nature and tact for the task of haggling with them. He misunderstood their first show of impatience at this, and persevered in the face of their tacit rebuffs. Then, one day, a couple of them treated him with overt rudeness, and he, astonished out of his caution, replied to them in kind. Suddenly, he could hardly tell why or how, they were all enemies of his.
They closed their office doors to him; even their clerks treated him with contemptuous incivility.
This blow to his pride enraged and humiliated him, curiously enough, as no other misadventure of his life had done.
Louisa remembered vividly the description he had given to her, at the time, of this affair. She had hardly understood why it should disturb him so profoundly: to her mind, these men had done nothing so monstrous after all. But to him, their offense swallowed up all the other indignities suffered during the years of his Ishmaelitish wanderings.
A sombre lust for vengeance upon them took root in his very soul. He hated nobody else as he hated them.
How often she had heard him swear, in solemn vibrating tones, that to the day of his death his most sacred ambition should be their punishment, their abasement in the dust and mire!
And now, all at once, as she looked up at him, where he leant against the mantel, these vagabond memories of hers took point and shape. It was about these very men that he was talking.
"And think of it!" he was saying, impressively. "It's magnificent enough for me to make this great hit--but I don't count it as anything at all by comparison with the fact that I make it at their expense. You remember the fellows I told you about?"he asked abruptly, deferring to the confused look on her face.
"Yes--you make it out of them," she repeated, in an uncertain voice. It occurred to her that she must have been almost asleep. "But did I miss anything?
Have you been telling what it is that you have made?""No--that you shall have in good time. You don't seem to realize it, Louisa. I can hardly realize it myself.
I am actually a very rich man. I can't tell how much I've got--in fact, it can be almost as much as I like--half a million pounds, I suppose, at the start, if I want to make it that much. Yes--it takes the breath away, doesn't it? But best of all--a thousand times best of all--practically every dollar of it comes out of those Kaffir swine--the very men that tried to rob me, and that have been trying to ruin me ever since. I tell you what I wish, Louise--I wish to God there could only be time enough, and I'd take it all in half-sovereigns--two millions of them, or three millions--and just untwist every coin, one by one, out from among their heart-strings. Oh--but it'll be all right as it is. It's enough to make a man feel religious--to think how those thieves are going to suffer.""Well " she said, slowly after reflection, "it all rather frightens me."As if the chill in the air of the cheerless room had suddenly accentuated itself, she arose, took a match-box from the mantel, and, stooping, lit the fire.
He looked down at the tall, black-clad figure, bent in stiff awkwardness over the smoking grate, and his eyes softened.
Then he took fresh note of the room--the faded, threadbare carpet, the sparse old furniture that had seemed ugly to even his uninformed boyish taste, the dingy walls and begrimed low ceiling--all pathetic symbols of the bleak life to which she had been condemned.
"Frightens you?" he queried, with a kind of jovial tenderness, as she got to her feet; "frightens you, eh? Why, within a month's time, old lady, you'll be riding in the Park in your own carriage, with niggers folding their arms up behind, and you'll be taking it all as easy and as natural as if you'd been born in a barouche."He added, in response to the enquiry of her lifted brows:
"Barouche? That's what we'd call in England a landau."She stood with a foot upon the fender, her tired, passive face inclined meditatively, her rusty old black gown drawn back by one hand from the snapping sparks.
"No," she said, slowly, joyless resignation mingling with pride in her voice. "I was born here over the shop.""Well, good God! so was I," he commented, lustily.
"But that's no reason why I shouldn't wind up in Park Lane--or you either."She had nothing to say to this, apparently. After a little, she seated herself again, drawing her chair closer to the hearth. "It's years since I've lit this fire before the first of November," she remarked, with the air of defending the action to herself.
"Oh, we're celebrating," he said, rubbing his hands over the reluctant blaze. "Everything goes, tonight!"Her face, as she looked up at him, betrayed the bewilderment of her mind. "You set out to tell me what it was all about,"she reminded him. "You see I'm completely in the dark.
I only hear you say that you've made a great fortune.
That's all I know. Or perhaps you've told me as much as you care to.""Why, not at all," he reassured her, pulling his own chair toward him with his foot, and sprawling into it with a grunt of relief. "If you'll draw me a glass of that beer of yours, I'll tell you all about it.
It's not a thing for everybody to know, not to be breathed to a human being, for that matter--but you'll enjoy it, and it'll be safe enough with you."As she rose, and moved toward a door, he called merrily after her: "No more beer when that keg runs dry, you know.
Nothing but champagne!"
