LATE upon that Tuesday night Ole Man Benson boarded the Louis XV. Rosewood Express de Luxe as it steamed out of the Chicago Depot of the M.N. & C.: he was off to his mountain property in Idaho, and in the privacy of his section, Ole Man Benson slept. Not so the forces of Nature, so often destructive of the schemes of pigmy man!
An appalling convulsion altogether exceeding anything heard or dreamt of since the beginning of time, totally destroyed the Popocatapetelian landscape in the small hours of that same morning; and as, a thousand miles to the north, the Louis XV. Rosewood Express de Luxe rolled in a terrific manner upon its insufficient rock ballast, the subterranean river, the perennial fires and the unscrupulously erected edifice of the great dam, shot aloft in a vast confusion and were replaced by a chasm some quarter of a mile in breadth and of a depth unfathomable to mortal plummets. It was March; March 1915. In Iowa in March it snows. The locomotive and two of the cars attached to[30] the Louis XV. Rosewood Express de Luxe were buried a little beyond Blucher in a drift of snow the height and dimensions of which exceeded the experience of the oldest settler in that charming prairie town. The same storm which had caused the misadventure had broken the wires for many miles around.
Ole Man Benson awoke, therefore, to a scene of great discomfort, but upon such a date and with a prospect of so considerable an increase of fortune awaiting him upon that very day, he was the gayest of the company, and in spite of his years he shovelled away with the best of them, a-splendid-type-of-Anglo-Saxon-manhood.
By one o’clock that noon the telegraph at last was working, and the first messages came through to the little depot; they concerned a riot in a local home for paralytics. Next, before two, news was conveyed of an outbreak of religious mania in the town of Omaha. It was not till a late hour in the evening that Ole Man Benson, waiting anxiously for the report of the great speech, heard the earliest tidings of the practical joke which Providence—in spite of Gen. Porfirio Diaz’ equable and masterly rule—had played him in the distant tropics.
The same rapidity of thought which had enabled Theocritus to accumulate his vast fortune enabled him in that moment to perceive that he was ruined. Not indeed necessarily for ever,—he had known such things before—but at any rate in a manner[31] sufficiently hefty to produce his immediate collapse.
When, next morning, he could bring himself to read the papers, the disaster appeared before him in its exact proportions and tremendous scale.
That speech, that statesman-like speech, had never been delivered—and for the best of reasons: Popocatapetl had unbosomed first! In the wild fall of prices nothing had done more to ruin the market than the heavy selling of agents acting on account of Theocritus C. Benson. There were dozens within the roaring walls of the building in Wall Street, thousands in the anxious streets without, who saw in the Benson selling yet another move of diabolical cunning proceeding from that Napoleonic brain. His agents had done their work thoroughly and well. They had anticipated his orders with such promptitude that no stock was left unsaleable upon their hands, and when, before the end of that black day, Popocatapetls were offering at the cost of haulage, they could proudly say that every interest of their client’s in the ruined concern had been disposed of. And Theocritus C. Benson, henceforward known as the Earthquake King, was left with no unsaleable paper upon his hands, but on the contrary with a solid cash result equivalent to at least three cents on the dollar of his yesterday’s fortune. This it is to be faithfully served in the intricacies of modern speculation!
A truce to Ole Man Benson! If I have introduced[32] his wretched commercial adventures at such length it is but to explain the portentous effect which they had upon the fortunes of one British statesman.
Far off in London (Eng.) George Mulross Demaine saw nothing in his morning newspaper but the news (to him a serious matter) that Pink Eye was scratched for the Grand National. His wife, whom her father had shielded from the vulgar atmosphere of commerce, noted indeed the news from the Western Hemisphere and was for a passing moment concerned; but Ole Man Benson did not telegraph, for there were no flies upon him, nor did Ole Man Benson even write, and for the same entomological reason.
Oh! no. Ole Man Benson proceeded to New York, had certain interviews with certain people, took certain drugs, went through a certain cure, laid as he hoped the foundations of yet another scheme, and not until 30th of March, a full week after the matter I have described, did Theocritus dictate a brief note to his daughter, which I will here transcribe:
(If not delivered, please return     
    within three days to
    Theocritus C. Benson.)
“2909 Kanaka Building
New York City
30/3/’15
Coming across on Potassic. Depart 4th—probable arrival Plymouth 11th. Shall cable.
(Signed)         Father”
With true business instinct the great organiser[33] dispatched the cable upon the 4th of April, so that his daughter received upon the evening of the same day in her London house the reassuring word “eleventh,” which her reception of the letter a few days later easily enabled her to comprehend; and on 11th of April, sure enough, Ole Man Benson in a grave and sober manner embraced his daughter on the landing-stage at Plymouth. George Mulross Demaine was also there, standing a little behind the affectionate group, clothed in a large green ulster and a cap of the same cloth and colour with an enormous peak.
They got into the train together and all the way up to London the master of empty millions said nothing.
As they were driving to Demaine House he spoke: “Any o’ your folk to supper?” he said.
His daughter with filial gaiety assured him that she had waited his orders, to which he replied, “Good girl Sudie.”
During the meal he was as silent as he had been upon the journey, and at the end of it he gave his son-in-law to understand that he desired to talk business with his daughter and preferred to be alone with her: and George Mulross went out, taking his wine with him, for his wife’s father drank none, but only Toxine.
The message Ole Man Benson had to deliver to Sudie was simple enough: there would, for he could not say how long, be no more money forthcoming.[34] He hoped the position might be retrieved; he was confident it would be retrieved before the Fall, by Thanksgiving at latest. Till then, nit!
Sudie had all her father’s readiness; she pointed out to him at once that under the conditions of English politics the total cessation of an income the source of which was familiar to her husband’s friends, would at once affect her father’s credit in future transactions, and clearly showed that no investment could be more to his advantage than the placing of sums at her disposal for the proper up-keep of his daughter’s position in the society of London.
To this powerful argument Theocritus immediately replied that those who looked for hens’ teeth were liable to be stung; that cigars containing explosive matter had been offered him too frequently in the past for him now to entertain the thought of consuming them; and that when he was bulling London he would advise. By which parables he intended to, and did, convey to his daughter his fixed conclusion that it was up to her to bear futures: and lest she should have failed wholly to seize his point, he told her briefly and in the plainest terms that whatever rocks were going were wanted—badly—to sling at something with more dough in it than Mayfair.
With that their brief discourse was ended.
This little conversation over, Demaine was given to understand that he might re-enter the room. He was a little shy in doing so, for interviews of this sort usually meant some new gift or subsidy, but it[35] was shyness of a pleasant sort and he had little doubt that he should hear in a moment the extent or at least the nature of the new bounty which his young household was to receive. He was therefore only puzzled by the novelty of phrasing when his father-in-law, looking at him in a manner rather humorous than severe, remarked:
“Well, I’ve stacked it up with Sudie, and she may stack it up with you.” Then in a kinder tone, he added: “You catch?”
“Yes sir,” said George untruthfully.
“Why then, ’nuff’s said,” concluded the Captain of Industry, and very thoughtfully he picked his teeth with a long fine silver point which he habitually carried in his waistcoat for that purpose of the toilet. “It’s no call ter last long,” he muttered half to himself and half to the bewildered Demaine; “anyhow the pump’s sucking; and there’s no more oil,”—to elucidate which somewhat cryptic phrase Sudie begged her husband not to stand gaping there like a booby, but to sit down and understand as much of it as he could.
Whereupon in the clearest possible language, punctuated by her father’s decisive and approving nods, she translated into older idioms exactly what had happened, and exactly what it meant. They were worth just ￡1500 a year between them from that day onwards for—well, till there was a change.
It was not tact but nervousness that prevented George at the end of this dreadful passage from[36] suggesting that his father-in-law could do again what he had done before, that the strain was temporary, and that he for his part hoped for the best; but his wife, who was by this time fairly well accustomed to follow his thought, was careful to point out that whatever the future might do for them, the present was dirt black, and the present meant at least two years:
“At least two years?” (to her father).
To which her father very simply and plainly answered her: “Yep.”
There was much of the splendid blood of Theocritus in Sudie; indeed it is often observed that the genius of the father will descend to the daughter—and vice versa. The very next sentence, therefore, with which Sudie prodded her disconsolate spouse, was a demand for a list of those who might be ready to take Demaine House, to take it at once, to take it furnished, to take it high, to take it by the year and not for the season, and, when they had taken it, to pay.
Demaine immediately suggested the name of such of his acquaintance as might most desire to occupy such a position in London, and were also least able to do so, but he was careful to add after each name, some such remark as “But of course they won’t do,” or “but I don’t think he can afford it,”—until his father-in-law in a pardonable lassitude went out.
“The best thing you can do,” said his wife with[37] renewed decision when they were alone, “is to get up right here and go round to Mary’s.” For it was a notable circumstance in Sudie’s relations with Mrs. Smith that while that lady gave her her full title, she would invariably allude to Mrs. Smith by the more affectionate medium of the Christian name.
Demaine assented. He found his father-in-law at the door; they went out together into the night, and when he had timidly admitted that he was going South towards St. James’s, the financier with rapid decision announced that he was going North towards Marylebone,—and they parted.
Mary Smith was not in. It was only eleven and the theatre detained her. George waited. He took counsel from several valuable pictures, was careful to touch and handle nothing upon her tables (for he knew that she detested an accident and with almost-canine-sagacity could invariably detect his interference), and stood, not at ease.
She came in at twelve; she brought a party with her, and she insisted upon supper. It was one before she could talk to him alone, and she talked to him until two.
The first thing she did was to tell him that he could not let his house that season and that he must make up his mind to it. The second was to discover what balance there was at the bank—and to hear that it was pitifully small. The third was to offer him a short loan that would carry him over at least[38] a few weeks of necessary expense, and the fourth to tell him that, not upon the morrow but upon the day after, she would have decided.
Meanwhile he must post a letter for her.
She sat down and wrote at once to William Bailey.
“When you get outside, George,” she said as she gave him the letter, “you will see a very large pillar box. It is much larger than most pillar boxes; it has two slits in it instead of one. Do you follow me?”
“Yes,” he said humbly.
“You will not put this letter in your pocket, George,” she went on firmly and kindly, as certain practitioners do when they propose to hypnotise their patients. “You will carry it in front of you like this.” She put it into his right hand, crooked his arm, held his wrist upright, so that his eyes could not help falling upon the missive. “The moment you get outside you will put it in the right-hand slit of the pillar box, won’t you?”
He said “yes” again, as humbly as before. And as he went out he did all that she had asked him, though to make the matter more sure she watched for a moment from the window.
When William Bailey received the letter next morning he was in the best of moods. For one thing he was going to leave London for three weeks,—a prospect that always delighted him. For another he was going to do some sea fishing, a[39] sport of which he was passionately fond. For a third, an Austrian money-lender and a baron at that, had shot himself—it had of course been kept out of the English papers, but he had read all the details in one of the anti-semitic rags which are the disgrace of Vienna, and his spirits had risen, buoyant at the news. Finally, and what was of perhaps most importance for an eccentric and middle-aged celibate, the house which he had hired for a month he knew exactly suited him. It was the house of Merry, the architect, and stood just so far from Parham Town as would give him the isolation he adored, yet just so near to Parham Harbour as would put him in touch with the sea.
For all these reasons he read Mary Smith’s little note in great gaiety of heart, and in a mood in which men of influence are willing to do what they can for their kind.
Like many men of wealth and ability whom opportunity has made eccentric, William Bailey could not bear to handle the pen. He hesitated for some moments between the extreme boredom of writing and the tantalising business of the telephone, decided in favour of the former, wrote on a form—
“Get Dolly to make room for him.
(Signed)       Bill”—
and sent the message out to be telegraphed to his cousin.
[40]Mary Smith, receiving it, received with it a great light.
It was not always easy for her to follow the changes that took place in political appointments, but she was certain of this, that the present administration contained more unfamiliar names than she cared to think of, and that there must be room in such a crowd for a man of poor George’s standing.
Now from the moment that such thoughts as these entered Mary Smith’s head about a man’s appointment, that man was safe: poor George’s future was therefore ultimately secure. But there was no time to lose. He must get on to the front bench, and he must get there with a salary, and the salary must be sufficient, and the promotion must be rapid. She remembered that Dolly would be at the Petheringtons’ that evening, and she determined to be there too. She hoped and prayed that nothing would bring George, though since George was everywhere the chances were against her prayer being answered.
For the moment she thought of warning him not to come, then, remembering certain indiscretions of his in the past, she thought it best to say nothing, but to trust to chance.