Mammon and Co Part 3

Mr. Alington lit another cigarette from the stump of his old one before replying, and rose to deposit the other out of sight in a garden-bed.

"Cigarette-ends are so terribly dissonant with this charming garden," he said. "Now, I am speaking to you from a purely business point of view. I supposed--it was natural, was it not?--that you were so kind as to ask me to your delightful house in order to discuss these mines. You see how frank I am."

Conybeare let his eye travel slowly down a reach of the Thames.

"Yes, that was the reason why I asked you," he said.

"And I came for exactly the same reason. The pleasure of visiting you at your 'cottage,' as Lady Conybeare so playfully calls it, is great--very great; but plain business-men like me have little time for such pleasures. Frankly, then, I should not have come unless I guessed your reason. I, too, wished to talk about these mines, Lord Conybeare, and I ask you again to be a director on my board."

He took off his straw hat--for they were sitting in the shade--and propped it carefully up against his chair by the side of the large tune hymn-book. Its removal showed a high white forehead and a circular baldness in the centre of flossy, light-brown hair, like a tonsure.

"I am a plain business man," he went on, "and when I am engaged in business I do not offer an advantageous thing to others unless I get an advantage myself; for to introduce sentiment into business is to make a pleasure of it and a failure. You must remember, my dear Lord Conybeare, that England is essentially aristocratic in her ideas. At least, so far as your n.o.bility is Conservative, she is aristocratic.

Think if Lord Salisbury joined a board how the public would clamour for allotments! Dear me, yes, the master of Hatfield might be a very rich man--a very rich man indeed."

Jack Conybeare was completely himself; he was not dazzled or unduly delighted at the offer. He merely wished to know what he got by it, taking for granted, and justly, that the man was sincere.

"Marquises still count, then," he said. "I give you my word I had no idea of it. I am glad I am a marquis. But what," he added, "do I get by it?"

"A salary," said Mr. Alington, and his usual pause gave the remark considerable weight. "But we will pa.s.s over that," he went on.

"Directors, however, have the privilege of taking a great many shares before the concern is made public. In fact, in order to qualify for being a director, you must hold a considerable number."

"I am very poor," said Jack.

"That, fortunately, can be remedied," said Mr. Alington.

Jack was immensely practical, and very quick, and it was obvious at once that this was capable of two interpretations. He took the right one.

"You mean it is a certainty for me?" he said.

Again Mr. Alington let a perceptible pause intervene before he answered.

"I mean this," he said, "if you want plain speaking, and I think you do; it also suits me better. You shall be allotted a certain number of shares, say ten thousand, in my new group of mines. You will probably only have to pay the first call. You will be a director of these mines--and, by the way, there is another name I have in my mind, the owner of which I should also like to have on my board. I had the pleasure of seeing him at your house in London. Very well, I issue my prospectus, and my name, as you so kindly observed, counts for something. I, of course, as vendor, shall join the board after allotment. Yours and another I hope will be there too. Now, I feel certain in my own mind that such a board (with certain other names, which shall be my affair) will be advantageous to me. It will pay. I am certain also--I say this soberly--that between my prospectus and my board the shares will at once go up, so that if you choose you can sell out before the second call. Thus you will not be without your advantage also. We do no favour to each other; we enter into partnership each for his own advantage."

"And my duties?" asked Jack.

"Attendance, regular attendance at the meetings of the company. On those occasions I shall want you to take the chair, read the report of the manager, if there is one to hand, make the statement of the affairs of the company, and congratulate the shareholders."

"Or condole?" asked Jack.

"I hope not. I should also ask you to immediately approach Lord Abbotsworthy, and ask him to be on the board. His is the other name I mentioned."

"Whatever do you want Tom Abbotsworthy for?" asked Conybeare surprisedly.

"For much the same reason as I want you. He is already an earl--he will be a duke. Dear me, if I was not a man of business I should choose to be a duke."

Jack pondered a moment.

"It is your own concern," he said. "I will ask him with pleasure, and I think very probably he will consent. Oddly enough, he and I were talking about this sudden interest in West Australia only yesterday morning."

"I think that many other people will be talking of it before long," said Alington.

"I consent," said Jack.

Mr. Alington showed neither elation, relief, nor surprise. But he paused.

"I think you will find it worth your while," he said. "And now, Lord Conybeare, there is another point. In the working of a big scheme like this--for, I a.s.sure you, this is no cottage-garden affair--there is, as you may imagine, an enormous deal of business. Somebody has to be responsible for, or, at any rate, to sanction, all that is done. Whether we put up fresh stamps, or whether we decide to use the cyanide process for tailings, or sink a deep level, or abandon a vein, or use the sulphide reduction, to take only a few obvious instances, somebody has to be able to answer all questions, difficult ones sometimes, possibly even awkward ones. Now, are you willing to go into all this, or not? If you wish to have a voice in such matters you must go into it. On that I insist. I hear you are a first-rate authority on chemical manures--a most absorbing subject, I am sure. Are you willing to learn as much about mines? On the other hand, it is open to you and Lord Abbotsworthy to leave the whole working of such affairs to me and certain business men whom I may appoint. But, having left it, you leave it altogether.

You will have no right of being consulted at all about technical points unless you will make them your study. If you decide to leave these things to those whose life has been pa.s.sed in them, good. You put implicit confidence in them, and if required, you will say so, honestly, at the meetings. If, on the other hand, you wish to have a voice in technical affairs, your voice must be justified. You must make mines, technically, your study. You must go out and see mines. You must acquire, not a superficial, but a thorough knowledge of them. You must be able to form some estimate of what relation one ounce of gold to the ton bears to the cost of working, and the capital on which such a yield will pay. Now which? Choose!"

And Mr. Alington faced round squarely, a little exhausted on so hot a morning by a volubility which was rare with him, and looked Jack in the face.

"Which do you advise?" asked the other.

"I cannot undertake to advise you. I have merely given you the data of your choice, and I can do no more."

"Then spare me details," said Jack.

Mr. Alington nodded his head gravely.

"I think you are wise," he said, "though I could not take the responsibility of influencing your own opinion. I pay you for your name.

Your name, to tell you the truth, is what I want. You delegate business to business men. I hope you will put the matter in the same light to Lord Abbotsworthy. With regard to your salary as chairman, I cannot make you a precise offer yet; tentatively, I should suggest five thousand a year."

Lord Conybeare had to perfection that very useful point of good breeding, namely, the ability to preserve a perfectly wooden face when hearing the most surprising news. Mr. Alington, for all the effect this information apparently had on it, might have been speaking to the leg of a table.

"That seems to me very handsome," he replied negligently.

"It seems to me about fair," said Mr. Alington.

Lord Conybeare was puzzled, and he wondered whether Kit would understand it all. How his name on a "front page," as Mr. Alington called it, with attendance at a few meetings, at which he would read a report, could be worth five thousand a year, he did not see, though he felt quite certain that Mr. Alington thought it was. Whether it would turn out to be so or not, he hardly cared at all; clearly that matter did not concern him. If anyone was willing to pay five thousand a year for his name they were perfectly welcome to have it; indeed, he would have taken a much smaller figure. He had no idea that marquises were at such a premium. His distinguished ancestry had suddenly become an industrial company, paying heavily. "The new Esau," he thought to himself, "and a great improvement on the old. I only lend my birthright, and the pottage I receive is really considerable."

Some time before they had reached this point in their conversation the punt had been taken across the river again to fetch Kit and Alice Haslemere back from church, and as Mr. Alington said his last words it had returned again with the jaded church-goers. He put on his straw hat, picked up the big tune hymn-book, and with Conybeare strolled down to the bottom of the lawn to meet them.

"Devotion is so very fatiguing," said Kit, in a hara.s.sed voice, as she stepped on to the gra.s.s. "Alice and I feel as if we had been having the influenza--don't we, dear? And I've lost my cigarette-case. It is too tiresome, because I meant to p.a.w.n it. I am sure I left it in the punt."

Jack took it out of his pocket and returned it to her.

"Thank your dear husband you didn't step on it," he remarked.

Kit took it petulantly, and lit a cigarette.

"Oh, Jack, I wish you wouldn't be so thoughtful," she said. "Thoughtful people are such a nuisance. They always remind one of what one is doing one's best to forget, and put one's cherished things in safe places. Oh, I'm so glad I'm not a clergyman. I should have to go to church again this evening. What's that book, Mr. Alington? Oh, I see. Have you and Jack been singing hymns on the lawn? How dear of you! I didn't know you thought of going to church, or I would have waited for you. I understood you were going to talk business with Jack. There is business in the air.

Just a trifle stuffy."

Mr. Alington paused.

"We have been having a long and interesting talk," he replied. "One can say more on Sunday morning than in the whole of the rest of the week put together."

"Yes, that's so true," said Kit, walking on ahead with him, and smoking violently. "The man who preached knew it too. It was like a night journey, I slept so badly. And was your talk satisfactory?"

"To me, very," said Mr. Alington. "I am convinced it will also prove satisfactory to Lord Conybeare. He has kindly consented to become my chairman and a director of my new group of mines, the Carmel mines, as they will be called."