“Then, sir,” he said, “we'll come to business. For it's on business that we've come. My friend Mr. MacHewlett, is, like myself, in charge of one of the biggest mills in the country; here's Mossier Delmont of the great mill at Clermont-Ferrand, and Mr. Meyer from Germany. My own name's a plain one—like myself—but an honest one; it's John Thompson.”
Lord Ferriby bowed, and Major White looked at John Thompson with a placid interest, as if he felt glad of this opportunity of meeting one of the Thompson family.
“And we've come to ask you to be so good as to explain your position as regards malgamite. What are ye, anyway?”
“My dear sir,” began Lord Ferriby, with one hand upraised in mild expostulation, “let us be a little more conciliatory in our manner. We are, I am sure (I speak for myself and my fellow-directors, whom you see before you), most desirous of avoiding any unpleasantness, and we are ready to give you all the information in our power, when”—he paused, and waved a graceful hand—“when you have proved your right to demand such information.”
“Our right is that of representatives of a great trade. We four men, that have been deputed to see you on the matter, have at our backs no less than eight thousand employees—honest, hard-workin' men, whose bread you are taking out of their mouths. We are not afraid of the ordinary vicissitudes of commerce. If ye had quietly worked this monopoly in fair competition, we should have known how to meet ye. But ye come before the world as philanthropists, and ye work a great monopoly under the guise of doin' a good work. It was a dirty thing to do.”
Lord Ferriby shrugged his shoulders. “My dear sir,” he said, “you fail to grasp the situation. We have given our time and attention to the grievances of these poor men, whose lot it has been our earnest endeavour to ameliorate. You are speaking, my dear sir, to men who represent, not eight thousand employes, but who represent something greater than they, namely, charity.”
“Ah'm thinking!” began Mr. MacHewlett, plaintively, and the very richness of his accents secured a breathless attention. “Damn charity,” he concluded, abruptly.
And Major White looked upon him in solid approval, as upon a plain-spoken man after his own heart.
“And we,” said Mr. Thompson, “represent commerce, which was in the world before charity, and will be there after it, if charity is going to be handled by such as you.”
There was, it appeared, no possibility of pacifying these irate paper-makers, whose plainness of speech was positively painful to ears so polite as those of Lord Ferriby. A Scotchman, hard hit in his tenderest spot, namely, the pocket, is not a person to mince words, and Lord Ferriby was for the moment silenced by the stormy attack of Mr. Thompson, and the sly, plaintive hits of his companion. But the chairman of the Malgamite Fund would not give way, and only repeated his assurances of a desire to conciliate, which desire took the form only of words, and must, therefore, have been doubly annoying to angry men. To him who wants war there is nothing more insulting than feeble offers of peace. Major White expressed his readiness to fight Messrs. Thompson and MacHewlett at one and the same time on the landing, but this suggestion was not well received.