Roden's Corner

by Henry Seton Merriman

“Read that,” said Mr. Wade, gravely.

But Mr. Wade was always grave—was clad in gravity and a frock-coat all his waking moments—and Cornish took up the newspaper carelessly. He stretched out his legs and lighted a cigar. Then he leisurely turned to the column indicated by his companion. It was headed, “Crisis in the Paper Trade: the Malgamite Corner.”

And Tony Cornish did not raise his eyes from the printed sheet for a full ten minutes. When at length he looked up, he found Mr. Wade watching him, placid and patient.

“Can't make head or tail of it,” he said, with a laugh.

“I will make both head and tail of it for you,” said Mr. Wade, who in his own world had a certain reputation for plain speaking.

It was even said that this stout banker could tell a man to his face that he was a scoundrel with a cooler nerve than any in Lombard Street.

“What has occurred,” he said, slowly folding the advertisement sheet of the Times, “is only what has been foreseen for a long time. The world has been degenerating into a maudlin state of sentiment for some years. The East End began it; a thousand sentimental charities have fostered the movement. Now, I am a plain man—a City man, Tony, to the tips of my toes.” And he stuck out a large square-toed foot and looked contemplatively at it. “Half of your precious charities—the societies that you and Joan Ferriby, and, if you will allow me to say so, that ass Ferriby, are mixed up in—are not fraudulent, but they are pretty near it. Some people who have no right to it are putting other people's money into their pockets. It is the money of fools—a fool and his money are soon parted, you know—but that does not make matters any better. The fools do not always part with their money for the right reason; but that also is of small importance. It is not our business if some of them do it because they like to see their names printed under the names of the royal and the great—if others do it for the mere satisfaction of being life—governors of this and that institution—if others, again, head the county lists because they represent a part of that county in Parliament—if the large majority give of their surplus to charities because they are dimly aware that they are no better than they should be, and wish to take shares in a concern that will pay a dividend in the hereafter. They know that they cannot take their money out of this world with them, so they think they had better invest some of it in what they vaguely understand to be a great limited company, with the bishops on the board and—I say it with all reverence—the Almighty in the chair. I would not say this to the first-comer because it would not be well received, and it is not fashionable to treat Charity from a common-sense point of view. It is fashionable to send a cheque to this and that charity—feeling that it is charity, and therefore will be all right, and that the cheque will be duly placed on the credit side of the drawer's account in the heavenly books, however it may be foolishly spent or fraudulently appropriated by the payee on earth. Half a dozen of the fashionable charities are rotten, but we have not had a thorough-going swindle up to this time. We have been waiting for it ... in Lombard Street. It is there....”

He paused, and tapped the printed column of the Times with a fat and inexorable forefinger. He was, it must be remembered, a mere banker—a person in the City, where honesty is esteemed above the finer qualities of charity and beneficence, where soul and sentiment are so little known that he who of his charity giveth away another's money is held accountable for his manner of spending it.

“It is there, ... and you have the honour of being mixed up in it,” said Mr. Wade.

Cornish took up the paper, and looked at the printed words with a vague surprise.