Chapter XV: Results in London

“How awfully ghastly!” said Amy Rivers.

“Yes,” said Fairfax; “those anarchist people ought to be shot down like dangerous wild beasts whenever they open their mouths! Think of it! not only a fine ship, but half a million in specie, blotted out of existence by this murderous bomb! It will come fearfully heavy on some of the underwriters. There will be a black pay-day at Lloyd’s when they settle up over this. You never saw such excitement as there is in the City. Papers were selling at half a crown apiece!”

“And is it certain that poor Mr. Onslow is drowned?”

“I’m afraid, practically so. The two lifeboats were picked up next morning, and their crews taken into Mobile. When they came to count heads it was found that the captain and Onslow and one of the engine-room hands were missing. In the hurry of the escape they seem to have got into neither lifeboat. The telegram says that no other boat would have lived a minute in the sea that was running at the time, even if one had been lowered. And the mate, who writes, does not think that this was even attempted, because the _Port Edes_ sank before the two lifeboats had driven out of sight. We had a private cablegram at the office before I left, and that told how other steamers crossing that part of the Gulf had been on the look-out, but up to then not even so much as a scrap of wreckage had been sighted. So I fear it is past a doubt that she sank like a stone in deep water, and took those poor fellows down with her.”

“It is horribly sad, especially when one remembers what I heard this morning, Hamilton. The girl Mr. Onslow went wild about six years ago is out in Florida this minute, and free. Duvernay, the man she married, died six months ago of malarial fever. You know Mr. Onslow was engaged to her just after he left Cambridge and went as an _attaché_, and was desperately fond of her, as I imagined he could be; and when her people forced her into marrying the other fellow, he threw up his post and wandered into all the most out-of-the-way corners of the earth to try and forget things. What makes me so interested is this: I’ve just found out that she was a Miss Mabel Kildare before she was married, and when I was a child I used to know her sister Elsie very well indeed. In fact, I believe we were some sort of cousins, and for half a year we had the same governess together, and were as intimate as two children could be. Then her sister married Mr. Duvernay, who had a colonial appointment, and Elsie went with them abroad, and we dropped completely out of touch with one another. Strange, isn’t it, that I should hear of her again the same day that brings news of poor Mr. Onslow’s death?”

“It’s a small world this,” said Fairfax, sententiously, “and coincidences are the commonest things in it. I suppose in a novel the pair of them ought to have come together, and forgiven the past, and married, and settled down in a villa residence with ivy and clematis attachment, and lived happily ever afterwards. Unfortunately, real life is balder and far less romantic.”

“You seem out of spirits,” said his _fiancée_, linking her fingers over his arm.

“I suppose I am. To begin with, this _Port Edes_ business isn’t calculated to enliven one; and then, on the top of that, I’ve had another taste of your blessed guardian’s business methods, which has nearly sickened me out of the office altogether. You know about this ‘Brothers Steamship Company’ which he is trying to float? Well, we had a preliminary meeting to-day—quite a thousand people, and all, comparatively speaking, poor. They were, for the most part, the gang he preaches to on Sunday, with a sprinkling of skippers out of work, and other sea-faring folk who had saved a trifle of money.

“Shelf commenced the business with prayer, which is right enough at its proper time, but struck me as being particularly out of place there. The audience, however, groaned approval, and their confidence in the man seemed to be strengthened. He followed this up with a clever speech about the profits to be made out of the modern sea-carrying trade, and enlarged upon the notorious fact that the losses of the business largely arose from the lack of interest on the part of the ship-masters and other officers. This last, he said, would be entirely removed in the Brothers S. S. Co., because, by the articles of association, no man would hold a responsible position on any one of their vessels who was not an actual shareholder of the company. And then he pointed out that there was an eight per cent. dividend guaranteed on preference stock, and a certain fifteen or eighteen per cent. on the ordinary, and wound up with another dose of cant. The company, he said, would not be alone content with earning income for its bond-holders; it would have as its equal object the spreading of the Gospel and the civilization of England to the uttermost parts of the globe.

“Then the meeting cheered and amenned, and wrote out an application for 10,000 £5 shares then and there in the room on forms which were handed round; and down your blessed guardian went on his knees again, and prayed for grace to bless his efforts; and when the poor fools dispersed, Mr. Theodore Shelf and I drove back to the offices.

“‘Look here,’ I said to him; ‘you’ve put me down on the directorate of this thing with a salary of £1000 a year. I want to resign.’

“‘What on earth for?’

“‘Oh! Shall we say I haven’t sufficient loose money to take up enough shares?’

“‘But,’ he said quickly, ‘you needn’t take up many. You can draw your first quarter’s salary and pay that back to the company’s bankers on your first call. That will qualify you.’

“‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to do that. I’m going to be mixed up with this new company in no degree whatever. Flatly, I don’t believe in the thing one bit. It’s a notorious fact that freights are so low just now that thousands of tons of shipping is laid up because it can’t be run at a profit; and if you put more in commission, freights will tumble down still lower.’

“‘You speak from your ignorance,’ he said. ‘I should remind you that I am by far an older man, and have a much deeper experience. The business of Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf is a lasting monument of what my humble talents can accomplish, and you will some day see for yourself the newer company on an equal footing. Did you not notice what enthusiastic confidence in its prosperity those humble friends of mine showed this afternoon?’

“‘A fat lot they know about the shipping business,’ said I. ‘In the mood you worked them up to, they’d have believed in an advertising stock-broker’s circular if only there were a text at the head of the page.’

“Shelf pulled the check-string, and his brougham stopped against the kerb. ‘Mr. Fairfax,’ said he, ‘your attitude pains me. Let us part here for the time, and let us both pray that when next we meet you may be in a more Christian mind.’ Whereupon out I stepped, and came along here to Park Lane. Amy dear, I don’t like the look of things at all. The other business, the ‘Oceanic Steam Transport Company,’ as it is called officially, is by no means in a healthy condition, and, remembering that, it seems to me that starting this new company is something very nearly approaching a swindle. I believe that Theodore Shelf is finding out that he is in low water, and is getting desperate.”

“I don’t know about the last,” replied the girl, thoughtfully; “but as for being in low water, there I think you are wrong. Every week here they seem to spend more money than they did the week before. Mrs. Shelf was at a picture sale yesterday, and bought two old masters at four thousand guineas apiece, and it isn’t likely she’d throw away that sum on what is absolutely and entirely a luxury unless money were pretty plentiful with her.”

“It can’t go on at this pace,” said Fairfax. “I know what the limits of the business are, and I’m certain it can’t stand the drain on them which all this gorgeousness must entail. Last year the profits were almost nil, and yet did Mrs. Shelf retrench at all? Not a bit. She goes in for more and more display every week she lives. This pace must bring about a wreck, and if the ‘Oceanic Steam Transport Company’ goes down, it is an absolute certainty that this new ‘Brothers Company’ will be swamped with it.”

“And then?”

“More than a thousand poor people, for the most of them old, will find that the savings of a lifetime have vanished into nothingness before their eyes. It is an awful thing even to think such a suspicion against a man; but the idea is growing upon me, and Theodore Shelf saw what I thought when he showed me out of his brougham this afternoon.”

“Then what,” asked the girl in a horrified whisper, “will you do?”

“Nothing. What can I do? To breathe a word of it aloud would be a libel; and if I did not get sent to jail, they would pack me off to Hanwell as a malicious madman. Shelf’s name is as good as a banknote in the City this day, and, for everybody’s sake, I trust that I have wronged him foully, and that it may always continue so. But, Amy dear, I have a heavy foreboding on me that in less than half a year’s time there will be a mob of wretched people shooting themselves or going to the workhouse because he has ruined them, and they haven’t the pluck or the thews left to commence life afresh.”