There were perhaps a dozen incidents of this sort which Mr Burden could not fit in with what he had known of the world. But the work was too pressing and too exacting to leave energy for comment, or even for hesitation. All these discrepancies made upon Mr Burden’s mind only one general and blurred effect: to wit, that his own judgment was doubtful, and that society around him was more complex, and perhaps more perilous, than he had imagined.
On the 19th the allotment was declared. On the morning of the 21st, though no sales had taken place, the anxious informal bidding, which went on in the house, and afterwards in the street, and even privately between individuals (rigorously as etiquette forbids such things) was offering two and one-sixteenth, two and one-eighth, two and a quarter before evening. The prices began to be talked of, and the selling to be regular within three days; and the price then was over four. The shares rose with the steady movement of a balloon, up on an accelerating curve; “M. D. D.’s.” changing hands with such rapidity, that it was no longer possible to come to any conclusion with regard to the individual motives of the more important buyers and sellers. The pace was the pace of a crusade. As religions take men or the enthusiasms of war, so the public had come to believe in themselves and the M’Korio; in what they could do with the new province. They saw the Delta already drained, already mined—as it will be mined and drained—they saw that the nominal capital of this new company was the petty ransom of a great kingdom in the future of England. By Wednesday, the 26th, the shares were at seven.
It is the most fruitful and the most beneficent of exaltations. It bridges the ford, as Kipling has so finely said; it imposes law; it is creating a new and happy world from the west of Ireland to Pùtti-Ghâl. There is something awful and mysterious about it. As it sweeps by, this missionary creed, this determination and confidence of a whole people, a plain man’s spirit feeling it comes very near to the Hosts of the Lord. On Monday the 31st, the shares were at eight and a quarter, and there they stopped, up, poised upon a summit, as genius poises upon the columns of conquerors: hovering in bronze.
It is not in humanity—even in ours—to bear these moods for ever undisturbed. Some moments of doubt, but not of despair—perhaps it is juster to say some moments of repose will overtake the temper of the firmest race. On Tuesday, the 1st of September, the shares were at six and three-quarters. On Thursday, the 3rd, they were a fraction below five. But something rallied in the soul of England; the country clergy read in the Standard of Saturday morning with something of the throb a trumpet peal evokes, that M.D.D.’s had gone ’way up over seven at the close of the yesterday’s market.
By what avenue shall I approach the analysis of that vast agglomeration of subconscious national forces? Any single method seems crude and petty in the presence of such a complex and Overpowering Whole ... perhaps it is most reasonable to follow the fortunes of one block of shares. For, when great states are fermenting towards ripeness, men are but atoms whirled hither and thither. Economic necessities drive them, and these necessities in their turn are but the expression of some historic will.... Yes, it is better to follow the fortunes of a block of shares than of an individual shareholder: for men pass, but the Company remains....
I will consider the one thousand shares originally allotted to the first cousin of the Secretary for the Fine Arts.
He became the possessor of these upon the 19th, and had paid for them £250; £250 more to be paid (as the prospectus directed) in three months, and the remainder when called for. These were but a part of his holding; but I am dealing with this one block of shares for the sake of example. On the 23rd, I find them bought at the price of three and a quarter by the Bishop of Ballycannon. On the 26th, his lordship sells them at seven to young Lord Berpham, who had been advised by his solicitor that they were a good thing: sincere advice, for his solicitor was also his creditor and trustee. On the 31st, when they touched eight and a quarter, Lord Berpham should have sold, but that young disdainful spirit was too noble. He was too noble. Had he sold, he would have realised no less a sum than £8250 (less brokerage). He was too noble. The blood in him was confident of England, and he held on for a rise. My readers know what followed. The next day they had fallen to six and three quarters. On Thursday, most reluctantly, by the advice, not to say the pressure, of his solicitors, the young man sold at four and seven-eighths, having lost no less a sum than £2100, which he could ill afford. The buyer was Mr Zimmer, the broker, but as I find that Mr Barnett himself acquired them in the same afternoon, I have no doubt that he was the bona fide purchaser; my certitude becomes the more fixed when I find that on Saturday morning, the 5th of September (the shares having then touched seven and a half), Mr Barnett disposed of them to Henry Bowling, the well-known trainer and proprietor of English Racing. He, in his turn, sold them at the same price to Mrs Maidstone, who disposed of them a fortnight later at the same price to her sister-in-law, who sold them at a slight premium in the open market. I see them receding into the distance, passing through the hands of that fine old poet-patriot, Gaystone; then, a wofully disintegrated, a mournful procession, as the winter wanes, they drift off into the middle classes, sink, and are engulfed.
But Mr Burden, he neither bought nor sold. He was astounded at these fluctuations, but more astounded at the permanently high level which M.D.D.’s maintained, in spite of the rough sea upon which they were tossed. Sudden fortunes sprang around him, sudden reputations startled and but half convinced his sober mind. Even that Major Pondo, whose face he thought he must have seen in dreams, was wealthy now, and met him with an easy air.
Then it was, after a month of so much violence, that the old man’s inner spirit, no longer confused or troubled, leant towards its end, and was possessed by sadness continually.
One part of it, the strongest and the safest, the part that had so sanely judged his people and their politics for fifteen years, still dwindled.