Priam re-read the letter aloud.
"What does it all mean?" asked Alice quietly.
"Well," said he, "that's what it means."
"Does it mean--?" she began.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I forgot. I saw something on a placard this morning about Cohoon's, and I thought it might interest you, so I bought it." So saying, he drew from his pocket the Financial Times, which he had entirely forgotten. There it was: a column and a quarter of the Chairman's speech, and nearly two columns of stormy scenes. The Chairman was the Marquis of Drumgaldy, but his rank had apparently not shielded him from the violence of expletives such as "Liar!" "Humbug!" and even "Rogue!" The Marquis had merely stated, with every formula of apology, that, owing to the extraordinary depreciation in licensed property, the directors had not felt justified in declaring any dividend at all on the Ordinary Shares of the company. He had made this quite simple assertion, and instantly a body of shareholders, less reasonable and more avaricious even than shareholders usually are, had begun to turn the historic hall of the Cannon Street Hotel into a bear garden. One might have imagined that the sole aim of brewery companies was to make money, and that the patriotism of old-world brewers, that patriotism which impelled them to supply an honest English beer to the honest English working-man at a purely nominal price, was scorned and forgotten. One was, indeed, forced to imagine this. In vain the Marquis pointed out that the shareholders had received a fifteen per cent, dividend for years and years past, and that really, for once in a way, they ought to be prepared to sacrifice a temporary advantage for the sake of future prosperity. The thought of those regular high dividends gave rise to no gratitude in shareholding hearts; it seemed merely to render them the more furious. The baser passions had been let loose in the Cannon Street Hotel. The directors had possibly been expecting the baser passions, for a posse of policemen was handy at the door, and one shareholder, to save him from having the blood of Marquises on his soul, was ejected. Ultimately, according to the picturesque phrases of the Financial Times report, the meeting broke up in confusion.
"How much have you got in Cohoon's?" Priam asked Alice, after they had looked through the report together.
"All I have is in Cohoon's," said she, "except this house. Father left it like that. He always said there was nothing like a brewery. I've heard him say many and many a time a brewery was better than consols. I think there's 200 £5 shares. Yes, that's it. But of course they're worth much more than that. They're worth about £12 each. All I know is they bring me in £150 a year as regular as the clock. What's that there, after 'broke up in confusion'?"
She pointed with her finger to a paragraph, and he read in a low voice the fluctuations of Cohoon's Ordinary Shares during the afternoon. They had finished at £6 5s. Mrs. Henry Leek had lost over £1,000 in about half-a-day.
"They've always brought me in £150 a year," she insisted, as though she had been saying: "It's always been Christmas Day on the 25th of December, and of course it will be the same this year."
"It doesn't look as if they'd bring you in anything this time," said he.