Mammon and Co.

by E. F. Benson

The financier travelled in a smoking compartment, the two ladies in a carriage to themselves, and as the train slid out towards Vauxhall high among the house-roofs, Mr. Alington felt that in more than this literal sense he was leaving London, that busy brain of the world, behind and below him. And though his parting glances were certainly not regretful, they were very kindly. He had been well treated by this inn at which he had passed so many years, laboriously building his house and the fortunes of his house. That was done; he needed hired chambers no longer. The newsboys, who at this very station had looked on him as a regular purchaser of the more financial of the evening papers, found him to-day quite indifferent to their wares, and even the placard "Extraordinary Scenes on the Stock Exchange" met an uninterested eye. One boy, indeed, had been so accustomed to give him the Evening Standard that, seeing his large profile against the carriage window before the train started, had without request handed him in the paper. But Mr. Alington pushed it gently aside.

"Not to-day, my lad—not to-day," he had said; "but here's your penny for you."

The carriage was empty and, as London fell back behind the train, Mr. Alington's spirits, usually so equable and so seldom falling below the temperate figures of content, or rising into feverish altitudes, became strangely light and buoyant. He had often wondered in anticipation how this moment—the moment of casting off from him the chains of fortune-building—would affect him. Exciting and exhilarating hours had often been his; numerous had been the triumphs which his clear-sighted scrutiny of the financial heavens had brought him. He had felt a real passion for his pursuit; but the joy of the pursuit had never blinded him to the fact that it was an object he was pursuing. He wanted a certain amount of money, and he had now got it, and already the joy of having attained had swallowed up the lesser joy of attaining. He had often asked himself whether the habit and the desire of obtaining were not becoming too integral a part of him; whether, when his purpose was achieved, he would not feel suddenly let down—put out of employment. If that should prove to be so, he felt that his life would largely be a failure: he would have elevated the means into the end.

But the moment had come; it was his now, and he knew within himself that he had kept clear of so deplorable an error. He felt like a boy leaving school after a successful term, having won, and having deserved to win, some arduously-reached distinction. The thought gave gaiety to his glance: his eye sparkled unwontedly, he had a mind to dance. But the mood deepened; the surface gaiety became transformed into a thankfulness of a far more vital kind, and as the train devoured the miles between Clapham Junction and Waterloo, he knelt down on the dusty carpet of his carriage, and, with bared head and closed eyes, he thanked God for having given him the brain and the will to succeed, and, during that pursuit of the transient stuff, for not having let his heart be hardened at the daily touch of gold. Money-making, in the moment of this success, he still saw to be not an end in itself. The danger of that insidious delusion he had escaped. And before he rose he registered a vow to use the fortune of which he had thus been made steward temperately and wisely.

A large party was going to gather at Mrs. Murchison's next day, but till then there would only be the three who had come down by this train, and four or five more who had proposed to embark on the danger of the slip-carriage train, which would, if it ever came to port, land them in Winchester in time for dinner.

Mr. Alington had eagerly accepted the earlier invitation, in order that he might spend the Saturday in examining the monuments and antiquities of the old town. He had brought with him a compendious green guide to the city, and having mastered its principal contents in the train, he was able to point out to the ladies the buildings of interest which they passed in their drive out. The college, above all, attracted his benevolent gaze, and his pale-blue eyes grew dim as they rolled by those lines of gray wall, the dimpling river which crossed beneath the road, the mellow brick of the Warden's house, and the delicate grace of the chapel tower, which dominated and blessed the whole.

"A priceless heritage! A priceless heritage!" he murmured. "Nothing can make up to me for not having been to one of the great public schools. The boys seem careless enough, heedless enough, God bless them!" he said, as a laughing mob of them streamed out of the college gate; "but the gracious influences are entering and working in them every day, every hour, forming an unsuspected foundation for the after-years. The peace and the coolness of this sweet corner of the world is becoming a part of them. All that I have missed—all that I have missed!"

He sighed softly, while Lady Haslemere yawned elaborately behind her hand. But the elaborate yawn ended in a perfectly natural laugh.

"Dear Mr. Alington," she said, "you are quite deliciously unexpected and appropriate. For you to be discontented with your lot is a splendid absurdity. I would have lived in a suburb all my life if to-day I could have sold your number of Carmel shares at the price I got."

Mr. Alington looked at her a moment, pained but forbearing.