Oswald Cray: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Mark Cray's money had effected wonders, or rather his wife's; for hers it was. A great many of these magnificent projects are nipped ignobly in the bud through want of a little ready money to set them fairly going. But for Mrs. Cray's thousands, Mr. Barker's mine of gold might never have been heard of by the world, and Mr. Barker's name had not attained to its enviable preeminence. These thousands did it all. They got up the company, they set the mine a-working, they paid for the costly offices, they dazzled the eyes of the public, they gave earnest of present wealth, they seemed to assure future success. Certainly, if any mine had ever a fair prospect of realising a golden fruition, it appeared to be the Great Wheal Bang. The working of it had begun most promisingly, and every success was fairly looked for. In calling it a gold mine just now, you of course understood that I was speaking metaphorically; for gold mines are not yet common among us, even in Wales. This very valuable mine (as it could but turn out to be) was not rich in gold, but in lead; and, as we all know, the one is speedily converted into the other. The previous autumn, in consequence of some trifling difficulty in London, Mr. Barker found it convenient to enter on a temporary sojourn at a distance; and he penetrated to a remote district of South Wales. While there, with the good luck which that gentleman believed he was born to and should some time realise, a vein of lead was discovered of a most promising nature. He contrived to secure a large interest in it, and undertook to get up a company for the working of it.

How he would lave accomplished this, or whether he ever would have accomplished it, is doubtful, had he not found a coadjutor in Mark Cray, and an aid in Mark's money. Mark resigned the control of the money to him, and Mr. Barker did not spare it. No earthly adjunct was wanting to ensure the success of the scheme, provided the mine only realised its present promises.

Has anybody who may happen to read this ever assisted in getting a newly-discovered mine into working order? If so, he may remember the money it cost. How it ran out of the hands like water that is poured through a broad-necked funnel, disappearing nobody knew where, and leaving little trace behind! How the pounds went, and the hundreds went, and the thousands went--if he was fortunate enough to possess thousands to go--he may not recollect without wincing, to this hour. Mark Cray's thousands went. But ere they had come quite to an end, the Great Wheal Bang Company was in full operation in London, the shareholders had answered to their calls, and the money was flowing in.

No lack of money to be feared then. And the operations at the mine were conducted on a much grander scale than heretofore, and the returns were certain to be without parallel, and Mr. Barker was in a glow of triumph, and Mark Cray in a state of ecstatic delight, and the lucky shareholders leaped up sixteen scales in the ladder of society. How many set up carriages on the strength of their future riches it is beyond my power to tell. The money flowed down to the mine, and the works went on beautifully, and the specimens of ore that came up to town were said to be more valuable than any ore ever was before. As to Mr. Barker and Mark, their expenses were not deemed worthy of a thought: with all that money going out weekly for the mine, personal expenditure was but as a drop of water in the ocean, and of course it was unnecessary to think of limiting it. Mrs. Cray, with her vanity and her love of display, was in the seventh heaven; while Mark looked back to his prosy life at Hallingham and wondered how he had endured it. He wondered how any of the doctors left there endured it, and pitied them from his heart. The thousand a-year or so he once thought to enter upon as successor to Dr. Davenal was recollected with contempt now.

This much must be said for the Great Wheal Bang Company--that its projectors were at least honest in their belief of its genuineness. In that they differed from some other companies we have heard of, which have turned out to be nothing but a swindle--if you will excuse the word--from the earliest commencement, the very first dawning dream of their projectors. Mr. Barker was of that strangely sanguine nature which sees a fortune in the wildest scheme, and plunges head and heart and creed into the most improbable speculation: Mark, an utter tyro in mines and all that concerns them, including companies, saw only with Barker's eyes. When Mr. Barker assured the entranced shareholders that one hundred pounds put into the Great Wheal Bang would multiply tenfold and tenfold, he spoke only the sanguine belief of his heart. When Mark Cray declared to his brother Oswald that a thousand pounds embarked in it by him would make him a rich man for life, he asserted the honest truth according to his conviction. No wonder the two gentlemen-promoters were eloquent.

Mark had made several visits to the scene of the mines, and he came back each time with (if possible) renewed assurance of the brilliant future; with increased ardour. Had the Chancellor of the Exchequer obligingly made Mark an impromptu present of a hundred thousand pounds, Mark would have flung it broadcast into the mine, did the mine thirst for it. He did not understand these things in the least; and the perpetual bustle going on, the number of the miners, even the very money paid in wages and suchlike expenses, were to Mark only an earnest of the rich returns that were to come hereafter. Mark would go back to London in a glowing state, and send his friends the shareholders into a fever, longing to realise the prosperity that seemed so close at hand. The weekly reports overshadowed other weekly reports with envy, and created a furore in the speculating world. Some of the shareholders who understood mines, or thought they did, better than Mark, went down to the Principality, and examined into the state of things for themselves; they found them quite satisfactory, and came away as charmed as Mark. In point of fact, prospects did look well; the lead was of an unusually good quality, and there seemed no reason whatever to anticipate anything but success. Caroline had accompanied her husband once to the mines; but the stay there (putting prospects aside) did not please her: it was "rough," she told Mark, and it was very dull at the little inn; and she was glad to come away from it all ere the second day was over.

Perhaps the only person within the circle of Mark Cray's acquaintance not bitten by the Wheal Bang fever was Miss Davenal. Even Oswald Cray was to succumb at last. He would not become a shareholder; he was too cautious a man to enter upon possible future liabilities, the extent of which no human being could foretell: but he did feel inclined to put a thousand pounds into Mark's hands, and tell him to do the best with it. It may almost be said that Oswald was worried into doing this. Mark would not let him rest. At the onset of the affair, when the glorious prospects of the Wheal Bang were first astonishing the world, Mark had urged Oswald to become one of them; a director or at least a shareholder; but Oswald had turned a deaf ear. He felt greatly vexed at Mark's imprudence at abandoning Hallingham and his profession, leaving a certainty for an uncertainty: he felt more than vexed at the manner in which Mrs. Cray's money was disposed of, so entirely opposed to the dying injunction of Dr. Davenal, so opposed (Oswald deemed) to all wisdom and prudence; and he set his face resolutely against the Wheal Bang. But Oswald was but mortal. As the weeks and months went on, and the mines became to all appearance valuable, the company flourishing, and Mark, in conjunction with others, dinned for ever into his ear the fortune he might make at it, Oswald began to waver. He had a thousand pounds laid by, and he felt half inclined to risk it; Mark over-persuaded him; and his visit to the Messrs. Knollys's office the day he encountered Sara Davenal was for the purpose of making certain inquiries of those gentlemen relating to the Wheal Bang.

Not so with Miss Bettina Davenal She set her face resolutely against the Great Wheal Bang from the first, and nothing turned her. She had never forgiven Mark and his wife for quitting Hallingham, and her reproaches to them could not cease. The apparent prosperity of the Great Wheal Bang changed not her opinion in the least. Mark asked her once whether she would take shares in it, and produced a Wheal Bang prospectus to point to its merits. She angrily replied that she would as soon throw her money into the Thames, that it would not be a surer way of getting rid of it, and rang the bell for Mark and his prospectus to be shown out of her house.

Mark Cray sat in the board room at the city offices of the Great Wheal Bang. A noble room, the cloth on its long table of the freshest green and the finest texture. Mark leaned his elbow upon this cloth as he talked and laughed with some of the friends of the Great Wheal Bang, who were getting rich so easily. It was not a board day; but visitors were numerous at all times.

"I had a line from him this morning," said Mark, continuing the conversation. "Spirits? I should think he does write in spirits!--what are you talking of? They are getting up quantities of ore now. It will soon be ready for the market."