Masterman and Son Part 26

One story which he loved to discuss was the desire of Israel to have a king. "What did they want a king for?" he would cry. "They'd got on well enough without one, and they never had no luck after they'd got one. They should have stuck to Samuel." And then he would go on to recount all he knew about the wickedness of kings. "They'd never been no good. They just sucked the people's blood, that's what they did.

Why, they wer'n't even soldiers, not nowadays--just dressed-up dolls.

Some day the world would get rid of them, and the sooner the better, so said he. A pretty thing indeed that decent folk should pay taxes to support such a rotten lot as they were."

The one poet whom he knew was Burns. He carried with him in the pocket of his ragged coat an old leather-bound copy of Burns, with a bra.s.s clasp, closely printed in blinding type upon a page nearly dest.i.tute of margins. It was a tiny book, in size about three inches by two, published within a few years of the poet's death. It bore signs of hard usage: the cover was stained and polished by the touch of hands that long since were dust; doubtless it had been carried in the pockets of a race of humble men, read in swift glimpses behind the plough, as like as not, within sight of the very hills the poet loved, or pored over by eager eyes round peat fires in solitary clachans. It was safe to say that a book so humble had never known the touch of hands polite; its pages had been turned by clumsy fingers hardened with excessive toil, and the faces that had stooped above it were plain and homely faces, roughened with wind and weather. To this forgotten race of men it had doubtless brought gaiety and hope, the brief vision of things lovely and eternal, and above all the message of that inward liberty which man never loses save by his own cowardice or folly. From the soiled pages Jim Flanagan drew the same inspiration. They breathed into him the pride of freedom, fed his fierce joy of independence, helped him, as they had helped ten thousand others, to walk upright in a world where an innumerable host of men bend their backs to the unjust yoke and learn to cringe and crouch. As Jim recited the well-remembered verses in this lonely hut at night, his voice trembled, his eyes glowed, and all aspects of meanness and commonness fell from him, leaving something that was intrinsically fine and great. That a man so crudely ignorant as Flanagan should have anything to teach a youth like Arthur appears absurd; yet so it was. What that teaching was it would be difficult to state in words, but its effect was clear.

By its quiet a.s.sertion of undeniable qualities where they might be least expected, a general sense of the worth of mankind was produced, an essential worth, which was wholly independent of outward circ.u.mstance.

As time went on, Arthur discovered also that his life was not nearly so isolated as he had supposed. Scattered along the sh.o.r.es of the lake were other men, like himself, engaged on a daring experiment of life.

One or two were sullen, unapproachable, apparently afraid lest their dignity should be compromised by chance acquaintanceships, the kind of men who carry into a new world all that is socially most narrow and petty in the old. But these were the exceptions; among the rest there was a real and kindly sense of community. Many of them were persons interesting in themselves and in their histories. There were ex-army officers, public-school and university men, even a musician--all, for some cause or other, fugitives from the vain strifes of civilised life.

They never complained, they never thought of going back, they were all full of hope about the future. They talked with buoyant faith of the day when Kootenay Lake would be as well known as Geneva or Lucerne, and when its sh.o.r.es, now clothed with darkling forests, would become one of the gardens of the world. They pointed out how each year marked the growing invasion of the orchard on the forest. And, whatever the hard tasks of their life, they were clearly in love with it, desired no better, and would not have exchanged it for anything that cities could have offered them.

He found among these settlers a disposition toward mutual service, notable in itself, and unique in his experience. A man thought nothing of giving a day's service to a neighbour, of loaning him a team, or helping him to build his house. Being all engaged on the same tasks, each relied upon the other, expecting and a.s.suming that the help given to-day would be loyally returned when his own occasion came.

And, besides this, there was much mutual visiting, concerts, suppers, dances--a free and simple hospitality, without elaboration or pretence.

The concerts might not have satisfied a Queen's Hall audience, and the dances were but feebly illumined with the grace of woman; but all was homely, honest, and sincere. And then the walk back along the narrow trail, with the moon riding overhead, or beneath a roof of stars, each keenly bright, and the fresh lake-breeze moving through the forest in low-breathed symphonies--ah! this was life indeed! Often and often, as he walked that trail at night, he opened his lungs to drink in the crystal air that seemed a draught of life itself, and he thought with commiseration of the herded life on city pavements, and thanked G.o.d for his deliverance.

The spring came with melting snow and soft winds, and he began to realise some progress in his work. When the new growth was cleared away, he discovered a few hundred apple-trees of five years' growth.

"You're luckier than I thought," said Jim. "They're Spitzenbergs.

You'll get something from them this year, I guess."

Then June came with a rush of heat and light. A long procession of days followed, the sky exquisitely bright, the hills clad in living green, the lake sparkling like a floor of amethyst. And then the winter once more, with its wonder of snow, and skies full of unearthly splendour.

So two years pa.s.sed, and at their close he saw the triumph of his labour. The forest was pushed back by many acres; where the dense undergrowth had thrived, there spread the level fields, with long rows of budding trees; and the bog was a fertile garden. He had built himself another house, more commodious than the first rude cabin. Upon its walls hung the ranchman's usual pictures, coloured prints from magazines; there was also a goodly shelf of books, and the photographs of those he loved. Here he sat and meditated in the long summer evenings. From Vickars he had received many letters, keen, witty, sad; it seemed he was famous, after a London fashion, but his constant complaint was that no one really listened to his message. Elizabeth had written him even more frequently, and each letter had strengthened the implicit bond between them. Love-letters they could not be called, for love was rarely mentioned in them; but they were letters that only love could write--they exhaled the very perfume of her heart. From his father and his sister he had heard not a word. Latterly even his mother's letters had become irregular, and he sometimes thought he could discern in them an effort at concealment, as if she purposely avoided something which her whole nature urged her to say.

He sat thus, thinking over all the past, upon a summer's evening, when he heard Jim's tread upon the wood-path. Jim had been into Nelson upon some errand in the afternoon, and had hurried back, contrary to his custom, for there was some heavy work to be done upon the morrow.

"Well, Jim, any news?"

"Not as I know of. But I've got you a paper. It's the English _Daily Mail_. You're always glad to see that."

"All right, Jim. Thank you. I'll look at it to-morrow."

Jim moved off to his own shack, and Arthur went into the house. It was quite late, it seemed hardly worth while to light the lamp, and he was about to get into bed in the dark, when the white outline of the paper lying on the table attracted his eye.

"I may as well look at that," he thought; "I'm not sleepy."

He lit the lamp, and unfolded the paper. His eye wandered casually over the crowded columns, finding little that was interesting. Then, with a sudden chill of apprehension, his eye caught the name of Masterman.

"The Affairs of the Amalgamated Brick Co.," the paragraph was headed.

"It has been long suspected that the affairs of this company were not as prosperous as could be wished, but no serious complications were expected until the close of last week. There were various unpleasant rumours on the Stock Exchange late on Friday afternoon, and the stock dropped rapidly. On Monday morning it became known that serious frauds were charged against the company. The nature of these charges is not yet ascertained, but we understand that warrants have been issued for the arrest of Archibold Masterman, the chairman of the company, and Elisha Scales, its secretary. If the allegations made against the company are at all such as rumour represents them, very sensational developments may be antic.i.p.ated."

The blood rushed back into his heart as he read. His very being was suspended.

"My G.o.d!" he cried. "I must go home at once!"

And in that cry all the old loyalties awoke, and, chief of all, the son's loyalty to his father.

PART THREE

FATHER AND SON

XVIII

THE AMALGAMATED BRICK CO.

The offices of the Amalgamated Brick Co. were situated within a stone's-throw of the Mansion House. London throbbed and roared around them; on every side spread an intricate confusion of narrow and ancient streets, inhabited by a host of nomadic men, who camped in them for a few hours each day, filled them with clamour, and fled at nightfall.

The invasion began with the earliest light; then might be seen the scouts of the advancing army, mere boys, whose fresh faces had not yet acquired the London pallor or lost the mischievous vivacity of boyhood; youths immaculately dressed in well-brushed common clothes; narrow-shouldered men in shabby overcoats; oldish men, who walked with eyes fixed upon the pavement, as if bowed with some unforgetable humiliation, and, here and there, women, some mere girls, treading briskly, others shawled and shapeless figures with battered bonnets, charwomen, office scrubbers, and the like, all pa.s.sing in an endless stream, and swallowed up at last in these dim byways of the city.

Later on came another cla.s.s of men, wearing better clothes, but whose eyes were anxious; then well-fleshed and confident persons, who walked upright with an air of authority; last of all, the magnates, fur-coated and wearing diamond pins and studs, smoking cigars or cigarettes, arriving in cabs or carriages, who were received in these crowded offices with the silence which awaits the pa.s.sage of kings. With their advent began the real business of the day. At their glance every pulse beat faster, every brain grew more alert, and the great wheel of business revolved with electric speed, humming, throbbing, tumultuous, till the very walls shook with its reverberations, and the whole city became clamorous as a cave into which a fierce sea thunders. By noon the tide was at its height; at four o'clock the ebb began; with the earliest stars the invading host began the process of dispersal till, by the time midnight had arrived, Tadmor in the wilderness was not more silent or more solitary than this deserted city.

For centuries this daily invasion had gone on, and who shall say what uncounted mult.i.tudes had fallen on the field of battle! For centuries more it would go on, and always with the same history. Here was achieved a perpetual immolation of mankind, a hopeless and unatoning sacrifice. To this battlefield youth brought its energy, manhood its virtue and its strength, womanhood its humble patience. To what delusive trumpet-music had they marched, beneath what visionary banners, with what far-off thrilling glimpses of golden heights which they would never scale! To these thronged recruits in the regiments of Mammon, experience brought no caution, age no wisdom. For the story was always the same, the issue unvarying: first the baseless hope of youth, then the long unfruitful patience of laborious manhood, lastly the miserable despair of age. Happy those who fell early in the struggle; they had the consolation of a might-have-been whose absurdity was not detected, and they were spared the worst. Most miserable those who lived on, until hope failed, each year became a new disability, and at last they found themselves superseded, thrust out by a new generation, discarded, and left alone with the spectres of want, sickness, and the workhouse. A few survived, of course, and their histories, pa.s.sed from lip to lip, became the stimulus for fresh hosts of foredoomed toilers. By luck, by fraud, by adroit use of opportunity, by unscrupulous ability, by cruel and ruthless stratagem, these few rose, climbed upon a holocaust of victims into power, and became the battle lords of this inglorious field. None saw in them a warning, mult.i.tudes offered them adulation; and they thus became new lures for ignorant ambition. And so the endless martyrdom went on; ever fresh hosts clamouring to sacrifice flesh and brain upon these ign.o.ble altars, with a fervour of fanaticism never equalled in the most sacred causes of freedom or religion. Ah! not upon the snows of Russia, the plain of Waterloo, or the heights of Gettysburg are found the most dreadful battlefields of earth! The bloodiest of all battlefields are in the heart of cities.

Archibold Masterman was one of those who had risen, especially since the successful launching of the Amalgamated Brick Co. He had become a personage sought for at civic dinners, known at clubs, and surrounded by a clamour of more or less sincere flattery. From the windows of his office he could see the gray roof of the Mansion House, and he never looked that way without elation. Why should he not reign there? What was there to prevent him moving at the height of civic glory? The kingdoms of the world--his world--were spread before him, and the glory of them, and he was eager to inherit them. Lord Mayor of London, Member of Parliament for the city, knighthood, baronetcy--so ran his dream, and he knew that it was not a foolish dream. Men less able than himself had won these prizes. And he meant to have them in good time.

The truly great period of his life was just beginning. He had got the world beneath his feet at last, and he meant to keep it there.

Extreme prosperity had had a softening influence upon the man; a harsh critic might have called it a disintegrating influence. The mental force was not abated, the alertness of his eye was not dimmed; but he went with a looser rein. He rose later, sat longer at the table, and had learned to rely upon subordinates. His suspicion, that sixth sense of the man of business, was relaxed. The strong opiate of self-sufficiency had begun to work in his veins. He was the conscious conqueror, walking with uplifted head, and no longer closely watchful of the way he trod.

With him Elisha Scales had risen too. The clerk, with his mean face and crafty eyes, had proved himself indispensable. Masterman's dislike for him remained, but use and contiguity had worn down much of his original prejudice. He could not but admit his ability. Beyond that, however, he did not care to go. He knew him to be adroit, patient, obsequious, daring; but the inner springs of his character remained inscrutable.

It was Scales who had really engineered the Brick Trust. The purchase of the Leatham brick-yard had been but the first of a great number of similar transactions. No sooner was the Amalgamated floated than it achieved a miraculous success. There was a fortnight of frantic buying by the public; gold poured into the treasury; the financial papers, duly subsidised by copious advertis.e.m.e.nt, pushed the boom; and at the end of three months the name of Masterman was enrolled among the great magnates of modern commerce. His portrait appeared in the journals.

The story of his early struggles was adorned with legendary marvel.

Due stress was laid upon his piety: was he not the deacon of a church, a man of strict morals, a man who might be safely trusted, a man of solid character? And of all the baits that drew the public, perhaps this was the most successful. The small investor rallied to him.

Humble folk in remote religious communities learned his name, discussed his doings, and struggled for the chance to lay their savings at his feet. If any word of warning reached them, it was disregarded. Six per cent. is so much more attractive than four, that, when it is guaranteed by the piety and genius of a Masterman, the voice of prudence speaks in vain.

A few months of secret campaigning, a month of deafening publicity, and behold the result--Scales flourishing in a house of new and expensive furniture, the possessor of a carriage; Masterman enthroned in s.p.a.cious offices, from whose windows he beholds all the vanities of earth--sheriffship, mayoralty, knighthood, and the like--moving steadily towards him in a golden pageant.

Has the reader ever seen a balloon of paper, with a tiny light burning in its centre, soar into the evening air? It is a pretty spectacle.

One wonders how so frail a thing can hold so perilous a force as flame.

We watch with astonishment its little lamp borne aloft, carried hither and thither like a starry feather on the delicate tides of air, yet always moving higher. Watch it long enough, and you will see something else. Sooner or later there comes a flash of fire, a dim red spark, visible for an instant, and where is the balloon? Its very fragments are undiscoverable, and it is seen no more.

Masterman's balloon soared bravely in those first six months. Then something happened which no sagacity could predict--a wind of war arose suddenly, and the lamp showed dangerous flickerings.

When war happens to a nation it at once becomes the supreme interest.

And this was no common war. From insignificant beginnings, at which the nation smiled in proud contempt, it grew into a devastating struggle. Troops were poured to the front, until the martial resources of the nation were exhausted. There was a cry for volunteers; and city offices and warehouses were depleted by whole battalions of heroic youth. All business was arrested, and sank into narrow channels. The daily crash of bankruptcy filled the air. And, since the last thing men do at such a time is to extend their premises and build houses, it came to pa.s.s that there was no demand for bricks. The Brick Trust ruled the market; but, when there is no market, this appears a hollow boast. And yet there were dividends that must be paid, for they were guaranteed; there was an appearance of prosperity which must be maintained at all costs. There came at last a day when a chill apprehension began to spread through the offices of the Trust. It was at first but a tiny cold wave, but it crept higher, for a whole sea lay behind it. Masterman, sitting in his office, heard the lapping of the rising tide, and saw it carrying away the broken gauds of the pageant of which he had dreamed.

"The war will end in a month!" he cried. But it did not end. "It will end in three months," he prophesied; "and then will come a marvellous prosperity." But the prophecy proved false. On lonely veldt and behind una.s.sailable kopjes a daring and sullen foe held on. "It looks as if it will go on for ever!" he exclaimed at last, in the bitterness of his heart. And the day when he said that brought with it something the strong man had never known before--a sudden loosening of the bonds of all his vigour. For weeks he had slept little; he had grown gaunt and nervous; and now there came this thrill of weakness, this collapse of force. In the gray winter dawn he rose and dressed as usual, but his strong hands trembled, and his head swam. A newsboy, racing past his house, shouted, "Another British defeat!" That was the last stroke. He sank helpless to the ground. When he woke he was in bed.

"I must go to the city!" he cried.

"You cannot!" said the voice of Dr. Leet. "If you don't obey my orders now, you will never go to the city again."

"A million of money is at stake!" he groaned.

"So is your life," said the doctor.