For a moment he hesitated. If he chose, there was now within his grasp all that he had been playing for. A hansom to the City; two careful words to his broker, for the unloading must be done very swiftly; then to his music and his baronetcy. In an hour the market would close till Monday, for Saturday was a holiday; but before Monday, on the other hand, would come fresh news from the mine. He debated with himself intently for a moment, and as he waited the tape ticked under his hand.
"Carmel," it spelled out, "five and five-eighths, five and three-quarters."
That was enough. For to-day nothing could stop the rise. There would be time to sell on Monday morning.
He called for a hansom; he was going to spend from Friday till Monday in the country, and not having more than enough time to catch the train, drove straight to Waterloo, where his valet would meet him with his luggage.
[CHAPTER VIII]
MR. ALINGTON LEAVES LONDON
Mr. Alington had never felt more at peace with himself, or in more complete harmony with his environment (a crucial test of happiness), than when he drove off to Waterloo from the doors of the Beaconsfield Club, of which he had lately become a member, after reading the last quotation of Carmel. All his life he had been working towards the consummation which was now practically his. His desire was satisfied, he had enough. A few forms only still remained to be put through, and he would be finally quit of all markets. On Monday morning his broker would sell for him every share he held in Carmel. On Monday morning, too, would that shrewd operator, Mr. Richard Chavasse, follow, as if by telepathic sympathy, the workings of Mr. Alington's mind, arriving at the same just conclusions, and a close with the offer made him by the Varalet Company in Paris for all the patents he owned in the motor business en bloc—at a considerable sacrifice, it is true—completed his financial career. Keen, active, and full of the most flattering triumphs as had been his progress towards this acme of his fortunes, yet he had never thought of it as anything but a progress, a road leading to a goal. Never had he let the edge of his artistic sensibilities get blunt or rusty from want of use, and he found, now that his more material work was over, that he himself, the vital and essential man, who dwelt in the financier, looked forward, like an eager youth on the threshold of manhood, to the real and full life which he was about to enter.
Humble thankfulness and grateful contentment with the dealings of Providence with him was his also. He had fifty years behind him; pleasant years and wholesome with hard work, during which he had used to great advantage many excellent gifts. The business of his life hitherto had been to make money; in that he had shown himself to be on the large scale. But more essential to him throughout all these years had been his growing artistic perceptions, his increasing love of beauty; that he felt to be the reason and the spring of his happiness. In this regard he had ever cultivated, with the assiduous patience born of love, his natural taste. That keen appreciation of Palestrina and the early melodists was no original birthright of his; it was a cultivated pleasure; a pleasure, no doubt, of which the germ was inborn, but cultivated to a high degree and with effort, because, simply, he believed it to be his duty to make the most of a gift.