What an unfamiliar spectacle he beheld from these high windows of the Savoy Hotel! The River gave promise of soon being frozen from bank to bank. Great lumps of shining ice protruded from its black face, and thousands of idlers were ready to play in the arena this memorable winter would create for them. Far away, to Westminster and beyond, the scene suffered no change, the river of ice flashed in the wan sunlight of the bitter day. He had heard yesterday of a pageant the city would prepare, and here this morning were the outposts; jovial men who waited to prepare the theatre, hew down the hummocks, and make many a broken path straight. An ox would be roasted whole upon the Thames to-morrow, and many a keg of good beer broached. The citizens themselves watched the strange scene from the banks and the bridges, thousands of them in black lines—well-to-do and ill-to-do; men and women about whose glowing bodies fortune had put fair furs; wretched out-of-works who shivered in the cold and had hardly a rag to cover them. Stress of weather could break many a barrier; there would be little caste in England when a few weeks had run.
Faber regarded the scene for a little while in silence; then he took up the conversation at the exact point where Morris had left it.
"Does Benjamin name me in this?"
"Be sure he does; you're the marrow of it. What's Faber going to do with the wheat he's cornered? That's what he asks. I don't suppose you'll tell him, and so I ask also. What are you doing in corn?"
"I'm buying it, Bertie. I began about a month ago when the weather first did stunts. Of course, you don't say that. For Benjamin the news is that I happen to hold a number of steamers at Liverpool and in the Thames, and that the men on strike there won't unload them. Say I'm a d——d unlucky man, and leave it there."
"I'll do that, sure. The British public won't, though. Guess you're out for a big scoop this time, John. I'm d——d if you're not the quickest flier I ever saw at any game you like. Selling it, I suppose to the philanthropic agencies? Is that the line? They pay a hundred per cent. to feed the hungry, and you look on and bless 'em! What a story for Benjamin! How he would put the ginger in!"
"Dare say he would. I know Benjamin. The philanthropic agency business is in his line. He met Miss Silvester, I think, when she was over. Does he know that she's at the head of this good Samaritan flare? Has he heard of the national committee with her name among the four hundred? I'd say something about that if I were you; it's the 'homes of the people' lay, and goes down every time."
"I don't think—a committee for feeding the people and a minister's daughter at the head of it. Shall I tell 'em they must buy the corn from you in the end at a forty per cent. rise? By gosh! that laugh would be on time, anyway."
"Why, it would, certainly. But you may leave my name out there. Say I take a serious view of the situation, and if the frost holds, I look for something like a panic."
"Then you don't think the government can feed them?"