CHAPTER VIII.
CONVERTS AND HERETICS.
Had Lord Semingham and Harry Dennison taken an opportunity which many persons would have thought that they had a right to take, they might have shifted the burden of the Baron's douceur and of sundry other not trifling expenses on to the shoulders of the public, and enjoyed their moors that year after all; for at the beginning Omofaga obtained such a moderate and reasonable "boom" as would have enabled them to perform the operation known as "unloading" (and literary men must often admire the terse and condensed expressiveness of "City" metaphors) with much profit to themselves. But either they conceived this course of conduct to be beneath them, or they were so firm of faith in Mr. Ruston that they stood to their guns and their shares, and took their seats at the Board, over which Mr. Foster Belford magniloquently presided, still possessed of the strongest personal interest in the success of Omofaga. Lady Semingham, having been made aware that Omofaga shares were selling at forty shillings a piece, was quite unable to understand why Alfred and Mr. Dennison did not sell all they had, and thereby procure moors or whatever else they wanted. Willie Ruston had to be sent for again, and when he told her that the same shares would shortly be worth five pounds (which he did with the most perfect confidence), she was equally at a loss to see why they were on sale to anybody who chose to pay forty shillings. Ruston, who liked to make everybody a convert to his own point of view, spent the best part of an afternoon conversing with the little lady, but, when he came away, he left her placidly admiring the Omofaga mantle which had just arrived from the milliner's, and promised to create an immense sensation.
"I believe she's all gown," said he despairingly, at the Valentines in the evening. "If you undressed her there'd be no one there."
"Well, there oughtn't to be many people," said young Sir Walter, with a hearty laugh at his boyish joke.
"Walter, how can you!" cried Marjory.
This little conversation, trivial though it be, has its importance, as indicating the very remarkable change which had occurred in young Sir Walter. There at least Ruston had made a notable convert, and he had effected this result by the simple but audacious device of offering to take Sir Walter with him to Omofaga. Sir Walter was dazzled. Between spending another year or two at Oxford in statu pupillari, vexed by schools and disciplined by proctors—between being required to be in by twelve at night and unable to visit London without permission—between this unfledged state and the position of a man among the men who were in the vanguard of the empire there rolled a flood; and the flood was mighty enough to sweep away all young Sir Walter's doubts about Mr. Ruston being a gentleman, to obliterate Evan Haselden's sneers, to uproot his influence—in a word, to transform that youthful legislator from a paragon of wisdom and accomplishments into "a good chap, but rather a lot of side on, you know."
Marjory, having learnt from literature that hers was supposed to be the fickle sex, might well open her eyes and begin to feel very sorry indeed for poor Evan Haselden. But she also was under the spell and hailed the sun of glory rising for her brother out of the mists of Omofaga; and if poor Lady Valentine shed some tears before Willie Ruston convinced her of the rare chance it was for her only boy—and a few more after he had so convinced her—why, it would be lucky if these were the only tears lost in the process of developing Omofaga; for it seems that great enterprises must always be watered by the tears of mothers and nourished on the blood of sons. Sic fortis Etruria crevit.