CHAPTER V
THE MAN OF THE MOMENT
I
It was quite true that Faber had been summoned to Downing Street; equally true to declare that not even the wit of that engaging Paul Pry, Master Bertie Morris, would have divined the nature of the interview.
Perhaps good common sense might have helped him had he trusted to such a cicerone rather than to his ears.
Here was the head of one of the most famous engineering firms in the world held prisoner in London during these days of national tribulation. The house of John Faber and Son had achieved colossal undertakings in all quarters of the globe. Its transport mechanism was beyond question the finest in existence. The genius of it was known to be the man who had recently sold some millions of rifles to Germany—a man accredited by rumour with such sagacity that he had cornered the wheat-market during the earliest days of this memorable winter. The latter proceeding did not help his popularity in England, though it was ignored by the politicians who invited him to Downing Street. In a word, they desired to know how he was going to bring his wheat into England.
Faber was some hours at the conference, and directly it was over he left London with Rupert Trevelle, and set off for Liverpool. Unusually quiet and obviously troubled by a "brain fit," he delved into a mass of newspapers while the train rolled on over the frozen fields, and it was not until they had passed Crewe that he laid the paper aside and addressed a remark to his ready friend.
"I guess London is pretty well like a rat pit just now; at least these newspaper men make it so. Hunger's a useful sort of dog when his dander is risen. I suppose Miss Silvester has found that out already?"
Trevelle, who smoked an immense cigar, and wore a fur coat with a wonderful collar of astrachan, rose to the occasion immediately.
"We are living on a volcano," he said. "The government knows it, and others must guess it. I am waiting every day to see the shell burst and the lava come out. We want imagination to understand just what is going on in England at the present time. That is where we are short. All the way down here, I have been looking at these cottages and asking myself in how many of them the children have no bread this night. My God! think of the women who are bearing the burden—but, of course, you are the man who has thought of it. I wonder sometimes how much you would have made but for certain things. You didn't buy corn to give it away in Stepney, Mr. Faber; that wasn't in your mind a month ago. I'll swear you had very different intentions."