CHAPTER XV.
Amongst a crowd of persons who were waiting to get into the train, at the--station of--railway, was one exceedingly well dressed young man in deep mourning. He was tall, perhaps standing six feet in height, or a little more, exceedingly broad over the chest, with long and powerful arms, and a small waist. His features were fine, and the expression of his countenance though very grave, was engaging and noble. He had a first-class ticket, and got into a carriage in which were already three other passengers. One was a tall middle-aged man, with a dull-coloured handkerchief, high up, upon his chin; another, a young dandified looking person, not very gentlemanly in appearance; and the third, was a short personage, with an air of great importance, a tin case, and a large roll of papers and parchments, tied up with a piece of green ribbon. His face was round, his figure was round, his legs were round, and his hands were round. In short, he would have looked like a congeries of dumplings, if it had not been for the colour of his countenance, which equalled that of an autumnal sun seen through a London fog. Round and rosy countenances are not generally the most expressive; and there was but one feature in that of this worthy personage, which redeemed it from flat insipidity. That was the eye; black, small, twinkling, ever in motion, it was one of the shrewdest, cunningest little eyes that ever rolled in a human head. There was not a vestige of eyebrow above it--nothing but a scalded red line. There was very little eyelash around it, but yet it is wonderful how it twinkled, without any accessories: a fixed star, shining by its own light; and yet the simile is not a good one, for it was anything but fixed, glancing from person to person, and object to object as fast as it could go.
When the stranger entered the carriage, this round gentleman was holding forth to him in the dark handkerchief, upon some subject which seemed to be provocative of that very troublesome quality, called eloquence; but, nevertheless, without for one moment interrupting his declamation, he had in an instant investigated every point of his new fellow-traveller's exterior, while he was getting in, and had doubtless made his own comments thereon, with proper sagacity.
"It matters not one straw, my dear Sir," said the round man, with infinite volubility, "whether it be the broad gauge or the narrow gauge, whether it be well-constructed or ill-constructed, whether well-worked or ill-worked, what are its facilities, whence it comes, whither it goes, or any other accidental circumstance whatever. It is a railroad, my dear Sir--a railroad, in esse or in posse; and a man of sense never considers a railroad, except under one point of view, videlicet, as a speculation. That is the only question for any man--How is it as a speculation? Is it up or down? Has it had its up?--And here I must explain what I mean by having its up. Every railroad that can be conceived, will, and does rise in the market, to a certain height, at some time. Let me explain: By a certain height, I mean a height above its real value. Well, it is sure to reach that height at some time. All things are relative, of course. For instance, and by way of illustration: Suppose some ingenious surveyor, with the assistance of an engineer in some repute--say, Brunel, Cubit, Vignoles--and a railway solicitor, were to start the project of a railway to the Canary Islands. A number of stupid fellows would at once say, 'That is impossible!' and scrip would be very low. But then the projectors would wisely put a number of influential names in the direction. The least scrap of writing in the world, will suffice to justify you in putting a man's name in the direction; and if you cannot get that, you take it for granted that he will support so excellent a scheme, and put him on without. Well, the rail to the Canary Islands is before the public for some time--scrip very low--perhaps no quotations--but two or three knowing ones are well aware that it will have its up, and they buy. It gets rumoured that Rothschild has bought, or Goldschmid has bought, or any other great name has bought; scrip begins to rise. The bill goes in to the Board of Trade--not the slightest chance of its being recommended--never mind! There's an immense deal of bustle, an immense deal of talk: one man says, it is folly; another, that it is a bubble--but then comes some one and says, 'Look at Rothschild, look at Goldschmid, look at the list of directors.' Scrip goes up! People begin to bet upon its passing the Board. Scrip goes up! The last minute before the decision arrives; and then, or at some period before or after, it may be said to have its up. Then all wise men sell, and scrip goes down. If it is a very bad job, it goes down, down, down, till the whole thing bursts. If, however, it is feasible, with good and sturdy men concerned, it will go on varying, sometimes high, sometimes low, for months or years. But I would never advise any one to have to do with such a line as that. The very worst and most impracticable are always the best speculations."
"I do not understand that," said the man in the dull handkerchief. "I made ten thousand clear in one day by the Birmingham, which, after all, is the best line going."
"You might have made a hundred thousand if it had been the worst," answered the man of rounds. "You say you don't understand it. I will explain--I am always ready to explain. On uncertain lines, very uncertain indeed, there is always the most fluctuation. Now the business of a speculator is to take advantage of fluctuations. You will say it is not safe, perhaps; but that is a mistake. The speculation in the bad-line business can be reduced to a mathematical certainty, as I proved to the worthy gentleman with whom I have been a doing a little business this morning, Mr. Tracy, of Northferry. He preferred good lines, and thought them both safer and more right and proper, and all that sort of thing. So I only dealt with the safeness; for, after all, that is the question with a speculator; and I showed him that the very worst lines have their up at some time; it may not be very great, but the difference between it and the down is greater always than in good lines. 'Suppose, my dear Sir,' I said, 'that the fifty-pound share is at first at ninety per cent. discount; then is the time to buy. You never suppose that it will rise to par; but when the surveying is all done, the notices are served, the forms all complied with, and after a tremendous bustle--always make a tremendous bustle, it tells on the market--and, after a tremendous bustle, you have got your bill into the Board of Trade, the share is sure to go up till it sticks at seventy or seventy-five per cent, discount. Then sell as fast as possible, and you gain more than cent. per cent. upon your outlay.' There is no scheme so bad upon the face of the earth that it cannot be raised full ten per cent. with a little trouble. Let a man start a line to the moon, and if I do not bring it up ten per cent. from the first quotations, my name is not Scriptolemus Bond."
"You must have made a good thing of it, Mr. Bond, I suppose," said the man in the handkerchief.
"Pretty well, pretty well!" answered the other with a shrewd wink of the eye; "not quite up to Hudson yet; but I shall soon be a head of him, for he does nothing but dabble with paltry good lines. I have enough in this box to make three men's fortunes;" and he rapped the tin case by his side.
How the real Charlatan does vary its operations in different ages! This same man, a century ago, would have been selling pills and powders at a fair. His attention, however, was at this point called in another direction, by the tall, elegant stranger in mourning, who had lately come in, inquiring in a quiet tone, "Pray, Sir, does Mr. Arthur Tracy speculate much in railroads?"
"No man more," answered Mr. Scriptolemus Bond. "Are you acquainted with him, Sir?"
"I have seen and conversed with him several times," replied the other; "but we are no farther acquainted."
"Well, Sir, Mr. Tracy is a lucky man," said Mr. Bond; "he has several hundred thousands of pounds in some of the most promising speculations going. Too much in the good lines, indeed, to get as much out of it as possible; but he has this morning, at my suggestion, embarked in an excellent affair. 'The diagonal North of England and John-o'-Groats-House Railway.' The fifty-pound share is now at seventeen and sixpence, and I'll stake my reputation that in six weeks it will be up at five pounds; for a great number of capital people are only waiting to come in when they see it on the rise. Now the very fact of Mr. Tracy having taken five hundred shares will raise them ten or twelve shillings in the market; so that he might sell to-morrow, and be a gainer of fifty per cent. Oh, I never advise a bad speculation. I am always sure, quite sure. Would you like to embark a few hundred pounds in the same spec as your friend, Sir? I have no doubt I could get you shares at the same rate, or within a fraction, if you decide at once. To-morrow they will probably be up to twenty or five-and-twenty. How many shall I say, Sir?" and Mr. Scriptolemus took out his note-book.
"None, I thank you," answered Chandos Winslow; "I never speculate."
"Humph!" said the other; and turning to the dandified young man in the corner, he applied to him with better success. The youth's ears had been open all the time, and the oratory displayed had produced the greater effect, because it was not addressed immediately to him.
No further conversation took place between Chandos Winslow and Mr. Scriptolemus Bond. The latter found that he was not of the stuff of which gentlemen of his cloth make conveniences, and, what is more, discovered it at once. Indeed, it is wonderful what tact a practised guller of the multitude displays in selecting the materials for his work.
At the London terminus, the young gentleman got into a cabriolet, and took his way to a small quiet hotel in Cork-street, and remained thinking during the evening a great deal more of Mr. Scriptolemus Bond and his sayings and doings, than of anything else on earth, except Rose Tracy. It was not that the prospect of making rapidly large sums of money by the speculations of the day had any great effect upon him, although it must be owned that such hopes would have been very attractive in conjunction with that bright image of Rose Tracy, had it not been for certain prejudices of habit and education. But he had a higher flying ambition; he longed not only to win wealth for Rose Tracy's sake, but to win it with distinction, in the straightforward, open paths of personal exertion. He did not wish that his marriage with her should be brought about like the denouement of a third-rate French comedy, by a lucky hit upon the Bourse. It was the words which Mr. Bond had spoken regarding the large speculations of Mr. Tracy which surprised and somewhat alarmed him. He knew well that the railroad mania was the fever of the day, that it affected every rank and every profession, that neither sex and no age but infancy was free; but he was sorry to find that Rose's father was infected with the disease in so serious a form. What might be the consequences of a mistake in such a course, to her he loved best! How great was the probability of a mistake on the part of a man in Mr. Tracy's position! He was removed from all sources of immediate information; he had few means of ascertaining the feasibility of the schemes in which he engaged; he had no means of ascertaining the characters of those with whom he was associated. Young as he was, Chandos saw dangers great and probable in such a course; and not knowing the almost omnipotent power of a popular passion over the minds of men, he could not conceive how a person of Mr. Tracy's sense, blessed with affluence, in need of nothing, with but two daughters to succeed to wealth already great, could yield himself to such infatuation.
The next morning passed in visits to several of his old friends and some of his mother's relations. His story, as far as regarded his father's will, was already known, and he was received everywhere with kindness--apparent, if not real; for it is a mistake to suppose that the world is so impolitic as to show its selfishness in a way to ensure contempt. One or two were really kind, entered warmly into his feelings and his wishes, and consulted as to how his interests were best to be served, his objects most readily to be gained. A cousin of his mother's, an old lady with a large fortune at her disposal, wrote at once to her nephew, one of the ministers, who had a good number of daughters, begging him to espouse the cause of Chandos Winslow, and obtain for him some employment in which his abilities would have room to display themselves. An answer, however, was not to be expected immediately; and Chandos went back to his solitary hotel with gratitude for the kindness he had met with, but nevertheless with spirits not raised.
Several days passed dully. The hopes of youth travel by railroad, but fulfilment goes still by the waggon. He found petty impediments at every step: people out whom he wanted to see; hours wasted by waiting in ante-rooms; ministers occupied all day long; friends who forgot what they had promised to remember, and were very much ashamed to no effect. To a man who seeks anything of his fellow-men, there is always a terrible consumption of time. Sometimes it is accidental on the part of those who inflict it--sometimes, alas! though by no means always--it is in a degree intentional, for there is a pleasure in keeping application waiting. It prolongs our importance.
"My dear Sir, I am very sorry to have detained you," said a high officer one day, running into the waiting room and shaking his hand; "but I have had pressing business all the morning, and now I must ask you to call on me to-morrow about two, for I am forced to run away upon a matter that cannot be delayed."
What had he been doing for the last hour? What was he going to do? He had been reading the newspaper. He was going to trifle with a pretty woman.
A fortnight passed, and on the second Saturday of his stay in London, Chandos, who loved music, went with a friend, a young guardsman, to the opera. During the first act, for they were both enthusiasts in their way, neither Chandos nor Captain Parker saw or heard anything but what was going on upon the stage--I call him Captain Parker by a licence common to those who write such books as this; for in reality his name was not Parker, though in other respects the tale is true. At the end of the first act, as usually happens with young men, they began to look round the house from their station below in search of friendly or of pretty faces. "There is my aunt, Lady Mary," said Parker; "I must go up and speak with her for a minute. Will you come, Winslow? I will introduce you. My two young cousins are very handsome, people think."
"Not to-night," said Chandos; "I am out of spirits, Parker, and unfit for fair ladies' sweet companionship."
Parker accordingly went away alone, and spent some time in his aunt's box. Chandos looked up once, and saw bright eyes and a glass turned to where he sat in the pit. "Parker is telling my story," he thought; and an unpleasant feeling of being talked about made him turn away his eyes and look at some other people. A few minutes after, his friend rejoined him, and sat out the opera; then went to speak with some other party; and Chandos, who was in a mood to be bored by a ballet, and to detest even Cerito, walked slowly out. There were a good many people going forth, and a crush of carriages. Lady Mary Parker's carriage was shouted forth. (There may be another Lady Mary Parker; I believe there is.) The lady advanced with her two daughters: the servant was at the carriage-door: a chariot dashed violently up, and, as her carriage had not drawn close to the curb, on account of another that was before, cut in, jamming the footman, and almost running down the old lady. Chandos started forward, caught the intruding horses' heads, and forced them back, the coachman, as such cattle will sometimes do, cutting at him with his whip. Of the latter circumstance Chandos took but little notice, the police interfering to make the coachman keep back when the mischief was done, according to the practice of the London police; but he instantly approached Lady Mary, expressing a hope in very courteous terms, that she was neither hurt, nor much alarmed.
"Oh, no! Mr. Winslow," said the lady, leaning on her eldest daughter; "but I fear my poor servant is. He was jammed between the carriages."
Ere Chandos could say anything in return, some one pushed roughly against him, exclaiming, "Get out of the way, fellow!" and the next moment Lord Overton was before him.
"What do you mean, Sir?" cried Chandos, turning upon him fiercely, and for an instant forgetting the presence of women.
"I mean that you are an impertinent, blackguard," replied Lord Overton. "I hope, Lady Mary, my fellow did not frighten you. He is rather too quick."
"So quick, my lord, that he should be discharged very quickly," said Lady Mary Parker, taking Chandos's arm unoffered, and walking with him to the side of her carriage. The young ladies followed; a question was asked of the footman, who said he was a little hurt, but not much; and the door was shut.
Before the vehicle drove on, however, the ladies within had the satisfaction, if it was one, of seeing Chandos Winslow lead Lord Overton towards his carriage by the nose.