บท 1: THE STOIC
"Aequam memento rebus in arduis
Servare mentem:"--Horace.
In the City of Liverpool, on a January day of 1905, the Board-room of
"The Island Navigation Company" rested, as it were, after the labours of
the afternoon. The long table was still littered with the ink, pens, blotting-
paper, and abandoned documents of six persons--a deserted battlefield of
the brain. And, lonely, in his chairman's seat at the top end old Sylvanus
Heythorp sat, with closed eyes, still and heavy as an image. One puffy,
feeble hand, whose fingers quivered, rested on the arm of his chair; the
thick white hair on his massive head glistened in the light from a green-
shaded lamp. He was not asleep, for every now and then his sanguine
cheeks filled, and a sound, half sigh, half grunt, escaped his thick lips
between a white moustache and the tiny tuft of white hairs above his cleft
chin. Sunk in the chair, that square thick trunk of a body in short black-
braided coat seemed divested of all neck.
Young Gilbert Farney, secretary of "The Island Navigation Company,"
entering his hushed Board-room, stepped briskly to the table, gathered
some papers, and stood looking at his chairman. Not more than thirty-
five, with the bright hues of the optimist in his hair, beard, cheeks, and
eyes, he had a nose and lips which curled ironically. For, in his view, he
was the Company; and its Board did but exist to chequer his importance.
Five days in the week for seven hours a day he wrote, and thought, and
wove the threads of its business, and this lot came down once a week for
two or three hours, and taught their grandmother to suck eggs. But
watching that red-cheeked, white-haired, somnolent figure, his smile was
not so contemptuous as might have been expected. For after all, the
chairman was a wonderful old boy. A man of go and insight could not butrespect him. Eighty! Half paralysed, over head and ears in debt, having
gone the pace all his life--or so they said!--till at last that mine in Ecuador
had done for him--before the secretary's day, of course, but he had heard
of it. The old chap had bought it up on spec'--"de l'audace, toujours de
l'audace," as he was so fond of saying--paid for it half in cash and half in
promises, and then--the thing had turned out empty, and left him with
L20,000 worth of the old shares unredeemed. The old boy had weathered
it out without a bankruptcy so far. Indomitable old buffer; and never
fussy like the rest of them! Young Farney, though a secretary, was
capable of attachment; and his eyes expressed a pitying affection. The
Board meeting had been long and "snadgy"--a final settling of that Pillin
business. Rum go the chairman forcing it on them like this! And with quiet
satisfaction the secretary thought 'And he never would have got it
through if I hadn't made up my mind that it really is good business!' For
to expand the company was to expand himself. Still, to buy four ships
with the freight market so depressed was a bit startling, and there would
be opposition at the general meeting. Never mind! He and the chairman
could put it through--put it through. And suddenly he saw the old man
looking at him.
Only from those eyes could one appreciate the strength of life yet flowing
underground in that well-nigh helpless carcase--deep-coloured little blue
wells, tiny, jovial, round windows.
A sigh travelled up through layers of flesh, and he said almost inaudibly:
"Have they come, Mr. Farney?"
"Yes, sir. I've put them in the transfer office; said you'd be with them in a
minute; but I wasn't going to wake you."
"Haven't been asleep. Help me up."
Grasping the edge of the table with his trembling hands, the old man
pulled, and, with Farney heaving him behind, attained his feet. He stood
about five feet ten, and weighed fully fourteen stone; not corpulent, but
very thick all through; his round and massive head alone would have
outweighed a baby. With eyes shut, he seemed to be trying to get thebetter of his own weight, then he moved with the slowness of a barnacle
towards the door. The secretary, watching him, thought: 'Marvellous old
chap! How he gets about by himself is a miracle! And he can't retire, they
say-lives on his fees!'
But the chairman was through the green baize door. At his tortoise gait
he traversed the inner office, where the youthful clerks suspended their
figuring--to grin behind his back--and entered the transfer office, where
eight gentlemen were sitting. Seven rose, and one did not. Old Heythorp
raised a saluting hand to the level of his chest and moving to an arm-
chair, lowered himself into it.
"Well, gentlemen?"
One of the eight gentlemen got up again.
"Mr. Heythorp, we've appointed Mr. Brownbee to voice our views. Mr.
Brownbee!" And down he sat.
Mr. Brownbee rose a stoutish man some seventy years of age, with little
grey side whiskers, and one of those utterly steady faces only to be seen
in England, faces which convey the sense of business from father to son
for generations; faces which make wars, and passion, and free thought
seem equally incredible; faces which inspire confidence, and awaken in
one a desire to get up and leave the room. Mr. Brownbee rose, and said
in a suave voice:
"Mr. Heythorp, we here represent about L14,000. When we had the
pleasure of meeting you last July, you will recollect that you held out a
prospect of some more satisfactory arrangement by Christmas. We are
now in January, and I am bound to say we none of us get younger."
From the depths of old Heythorp a preliminary rumble came travelling,
reached the surface, and materialised--
"Don't know about you--feel a boy, myself."The eight gentlemen looked at him. Was he going to try and put them off
again? Mr. Brownbee said with unruffled calm:
"I'm sure we're very glad to hear it. But to come to the point. We have
felt, Mr. Heythorp, and I'm sure you won't think it unreasonable, that--er-
-bankruptcy would be the most satisfactory solution. We have waited a
long time, and we want to know definitely where we stand; for, to be
quite frank, we don't see any prospect of improvement; indeed, we fear
the opposite."
"You think I'm going to join the majority."
This plumping out of what was at the back of their minds produced in Mr.
Brownbee and his colleagues a sort of chemical disturbance. They
coughed, moved their feet, and turned away their eyes, till the one who
had not risen, a solicitor named Ventnor, said bluffly:
"Well, put it that way if you like."
Old Heythorp's little deep eyes twinkled.
"My grandfather lived to be a hundred; my father ninety-six--both of
them rips. I'm only eighty, gentlemen; blameless life compared with
theirs."
"Indeed," Mr. Brownbee said, "we hope you have many years of this life
before you."
"More of this than of another." And a silence fell, till old Heythorp added:
"You're getting a thousand a year out of my fees. Mistake to kill the goose
that lays the golden eggs. I'll make it twelve hundred. If you force me to
resign my directorships by bankruptcy, you won't get a rap, you know."
Mr. Brownbee cleared his throat:
"We think, Mr. Heythorp, you should make it at least fifteen hundred. In
that case we might perhaps consider--"Old Heythorp shook his head.
"We can hardly accept your assertion that we should get nothing in the
event of bankruptcy. We fancy you greatly underrate the possibilities.
Fifteen hundred a year is the least you can do for us."
"See you d---d first."
Another silence followed, then Ventnor, the solicitor, said irascibly:
"We know where we are, then."
Brownbee added almost nervously:
"Are we to understand that twelve hundred a year is your--your last
word?"
Old Heythorp nodded. "Come again this day month, and I'll see what I
can do for you;" and he shut his eyes.
Round Mr. Brownbee six of the gentlemen gathered, speaking in low
voices; Mr. Ventnor nursed a leg and glowered at old Heythorp, who sat
with his eyes closed. Mr. Brownbee went over and conferred with Mr.
Ventnor, then clearing his throat, he said:
"Well, sir, we have considered your proposal; we agree to accept it for the
moment. We will come again, as you suggest, in a month's time.
"We hope that you will by then have seen your way to something more
substantial, with a view to avoiding what we should all regret, but which I
fear will otherwise become inevitable."
Old Heythorp nodded. The eight gentlemen took their hats, and went out
one by one, Mr. Brownbee courteously bringing up the rear.
The old man, who could not get up without assistance, stayed musing in
his chair. He had diddled 'em for the moment into giving him another
month, and when that month was up-he would diddle 'em again! A monthought to make the Pillin business safe, with all that hung on it. That poor
funkey chap Joe Pillin! A gurgling chuckle escaped his red lips. What a
shadow the fellow had looked, trotting in that evening just a month ago,
behind his valet's announcement: "Mr. Pillin, sir."
What a parchmenty, precise, thread-paper of a chap, with his bird's claw
of a hand, and his muffled-up throat, and his quavery:
"How do you do, Sylvanus? I'm afraid you're not--"
"First rate. Sit down. Have some port."
"Port! I never drink it. Poison to me! Poison!"
"Do you good!"
"Oh! I know, that's what you always say."
"You've a monstrous constitution, Sylvanus. If I drank port and smoked
cigars and sat up till one o'clock, I should be in my grave to-morrow. I'm
not the man I was. The fact is, I've come to see if you can help me. I'm
getting old; I'm growing nervous...."
"You always were as chickeny as an old hen, Joe."
"Well, my nature's not like yours. To come to the point, I want to sell my
ships and retire. I need rest. Freights are very depressed. I've got my
family to think of."
"Crack on, and go broke; buck you up like anything!"
"I'm quite serious, Sylvanus."
"Never knew you anything else, Joe."
A quavering cough, and out it had come:
"Now--in a word--won't your 'Island Navigation Company' buy my ships?"A pause, a twinkle, a puff of smoke. "Make it worth my while!" He had
said it in jest; and then, in a flash, the idea had come to him. Rosamund
and her youngsters! What a chance to put something between them and
destitution when he had joined the majority! And so he said: "We don't
want your silly ships."
That claw of a hand waved in deprecation. "They're very good ships--
doing quite well. It's only my wretched health. If I were a strong man I
shouldn't dream...."
"What d'you want for 'em?" Good Lord! how he jumped if you asked him a
plain question. The chap was as nervous as a guinea-fowl!
"Here are the figures--for the last four years. I think you'll agree that I
couldn't ask less than seventy thousand."
Through the smoke of his cigar old Heythorp had digested those figures
slowly, Joe Pillin feeling his teeth and sucking lozenges the while; then he
said:
"Sixty thousand! And out of that you pay me ten per cent., if I get it
through for you. Take it or leave it."
"My dear Sylvanus, that's almost-cynical."
"Too good a price--you'll never get it without me."
"But a--but a commission! You could never disclose it!"
"Arrange that all right. Think it over. Freights'll go lower yet. Have some
port."
"No, no! Thank you. No! So you think freights will go lower?"
"Sure of it."
"Well, I'll be going. I'm sure I don't know. It's--it's--I must think.""Think your hardest."
"Yes, yes. Good-bye. I can't imagine how you still go on smoking those
things and drinking port.
"See you in your grave yet, Joe." What a feeble smile the poor fellow had!
Laugh-he couldn't! And, alone again, he had browsed, developing the idea
which had come to him.
Though, to dwell in the heart of shipping, Sylvanus Heythorp had lived at
Liverpool twenty years, he was from the Eastern Counties, of a family so
old that it professed to despise the Conquest. Each of its generations
occupied nearly twice as long as those of less tenacious men. Traditionally
of Danish origin, its men folk had as a rule bright reddish-brown hair, red
cheeks, large round heads, excellent teeth and poor morals. They had
done their best for the population of any county in which they had
settled; their offshoots swarmed. Born in the early twenties of the
nineteenth century, Sylvanus Heythorp, after an education broken by
escapades both at school and college, had fetched up in that simple
London of the late forties, where claret, opera, and eight per cent. for
your money ruled a cheery roost. Made partner in his shipping firm well
before he was thirty, he had sailed with a wet sheet and a flowing tide;
dancers, claret, Cliquot, and piquet; a cab with a tiger; some travel--all
that delicious early-Victorian consciousness of nothing save a golden time.
It was all so full and mellow that he was forty before he had his only love
affair of any depth--with the daughter of one of his own clerks, a liaison
so awkward as to necessitate a sedulous concealment. The death of that
girl, after three years, leaving him a natural son, had been the chief,
perhaps the only real, sorrow of his life. Five years later he married. What
for? God only knew! as he was in the habit of remarking. His wife had
been a hard, worldly, well-connected woman, who presented him with
two unnatural children, a girl and a boy, and grew harder, more worldly,
less handsome, in the process. The migration to Liverpool, which took
place when he was sixty and she forty-two, broke what she still had of
heart, but she lingered on twelve years, finding solace in bridge, and
being haughty towards Liverpool. Old Heythorp saw her to her rest
without regret. He had felt no love for her whatever, and practically nonefor her two children--they were in his view colourless, pragmatical, very
unexpected characters. His son Ernest--in the Admiralty--he thought a
poor, careful stick. His daughter Adela, an excellent manager, delighting
in spiritual conversation and the society of tame men, rarely failed to
show him that she considered him a hopeless heathen. They saw as little
as need be of each other. She was provided for under that settlement he
had made on her mother fifteen years ago, well before the not altogether
unexpected crisis in his affairs. Very different was the feeling he had
bestowed on that son of his "under the rose." The boy, who had always
gone by his mother's name of Larne, had on her death been sent to some
relations of hers in Ireland, and there brought up. He had been called to
the Dublin bar, and married, young, a girl half Cornish and half Irish;
presently, having cost old Heythorp in all a pretty penny, he had died
impecunious, leaving his fair Rosamund at thirty with a girl of eight and a
boy of five. She had not spent six months of widowhood before coming
over from Dublin to claim the old man's guardianship. A remarkably
pretty woman, like a full-blown rose, with greenish hazel eyes, she had
turned up one morning at the offices of "The Island Navigation Company,"
accompanied by her two children--for he had never divulged to them his
private address. And since then they had always been more or less on his
hands, occupying a small house in a suburb of Liverpool. He visited them
there, but never asked them to the house in Sefton Park, which was in
fact his daughter's; so that his proper family and friends were unaware of
their existence.
Rosamund Larne was one of those precarious ladies who make uncertain
incomes by writing full-bodied storyettes. In the most dismal
circumstances she enjoyed a buoyancy bordering on the indecent; which
always amused old Heythorp's cynicism. But of his grandchildren Phyllis
and Jock (wild as colts) he had become fond. And this chance of getting
six thousand pounds settled on them at a stroke had seemed to him
nothing but heaven-sent. As things were, if he "went off"--and, of course,
he might at any moment, there wouldn't be a penny for them; for he
would "cut up" a good fifteen thousand to the bad. He was now giving
them some three hundred a year out of his fees; and dead directors
unfortunately earned no fees! Six thousand pounds at four and a half per
cent., settled so that their mother couldn't "blue it," would give them a
certain two hundred and fifty pounds a year-better than beggary. And themore he thought the better he liked it, if only that shaky chap, Joe Pillin,
didn't shy off when he'd bitten his nails short over it!
Four evenings later, the "shaky chap" had again appeared at his house in
Sefton Park.
"I've thought it over, Sylvanus. I don't like it.
"No; but you'll do it."
"It's a sacrifice. Fifty-four thousand for four ships--it means a
considerable reduction in my income."
"It means security, my boy."
"Well, there is that; but you know, I really can't be party to a secret
commission. If it came out, think of my name and goodness knows what."
"It won't come out."
"Yes, yes, so you say, but--"
"All you've got to do's to execute a settlement on some third parties that
I'll name. I'm not going to take a penny of it myself. Get your own lawyer
to draw it up and make him trustee. You can sign it when the purchase
has gone through. I'll trust you, Joe. What stock have you got that gives
four and a half per cent.?"
"Midland"
"That'll do. You needn't sell."
"Yes, but who are these people?"
"Woman and her children I want to do a good turn to." What a face the
fellow had made! "Afraid of being connected with a woman, Joe?""Yes, you may laugh--I am afraid of being connected with someone else's
woman. I don't like it--I don't like it at all. I've not led your life,
Sylvanus."
"Lucky for you; you'd have been dead long ago. Tell your lawyer it's an
old flame of yours--you old dog!"
"Yes, there it is at once, you see. I might be subject to blackmail."
"Tell him to keep it dark, and just pay over the income, quarterly."
"I don't like it, Sylvanus--I don't like it."
"Then leave it, and be hanged to you. Have a cigar?"
"You know I never smoke. Is there no other way?"
"Yes. Sell stock in London, bank the proceeds there, and bring me six
thousand pounds in notes. I'll hold 'em till after the general meeting. If
the thing doesn't go through, I'll hand 'em back to you."
"No; I like that even less."
"Rather I trusted you, eh!"
"No, not at all, Sylvanus, not at all. But it's all playing round the law."
"There's no law to prevent you doing what you like with your money.
What I do's nothing to you. And mind you, I'm taking nothing from it--not
a mag. You assist the widowed and the fatherless--just your line, Joe!"
"What a fellow you are, Sylvanus; you don't seem capable of taking
anything seriously."
"Care killed the cat!"
Left alone after this second interview he had thought: 'The beggar'll
jump.'
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