“I have nothing to say excepting what I have already said,” answered Arthur, “namely, that you promised to go shares with me in the Bread Company.”
“Now, that is exactly the objection I have to doing business with a gentleman,” remarked Mr. Black; “it is impossible to make him understand, excepting literally, a sentence which would be plain as a pikestaff to a boy in the London streets. Tell me the construction you took out of that speech, which, I confess, I never remember to have uttered.”
“You said you would have twenty or thirty thousand out of this bakery affair, and were willing to give me half.”
“Precisely! not willing to give you half of my earnings, but willing to give you a chance of winning fifteen thousand, which you would have done but for that meddling idiot, Stewart. He has dished me, too, you know. Deuce a thing I have had out of the Company except trouble, my shares, and position. It certainly has given me position. I meant we should have made—you and I together—thousands and thousands out of it, instead of which, when I had served my gentleman’s turn, he bows me off with, ‘The Company won’t bear this, and the Company can’t afford that. Whatever houses and offices we buy, must be bought on the mart. Our grain shall not be supplied through any friend of yours. I shall put in my own people to see you do not make sixpence out of that which owes its very existence to you.’ Damn him,” added Mr. Black, heartily; “the next time I go praying and begging for a great man’s name, I’ll get what I have got this time—insolence instead of thanks—the door instead of money.”
There was no sham about Mr. Black’s manner while he delivered himself of this sentence.
Clearly, Allan Stewart had rubbed his hair up the wrong way, and hurt the promoter grievously in the process. Arthur sat silent for a moment, surprised—wondering what he had best say next, and, while he meditated, Mr. Black opened his mouth again:
“And, on the top of all this, you come,” he proceeded; “you come dissatisfied with what I have done for you—indignant that I have failed to do more. You are angry because I could not force the Company to buy that cursed place of yours in Lincoln’s Inn, which, I wish to Heaven, had never been for sale, just as though Stewart did not serve me the same trick about that shop in the Poultry. I bought it on spec, pulled the old buildings down, ran up a splendid new shop as far as the first floor, and then offered it to the board. Do you think they would have it? ‘Pooh, pooh!’ says Mr. Stewart; ‘what do we want with establishments in the Poultry? Less expensive situations will do for us;’ and the confounded thing was thrown upon my hands. Had it not been for the ‘London and Home Counties Bank,’ which had on its board a man I knew, I should have been swamped—I tell you fairly that I should, Dudley. As it was, I sold my interest to the Company at a switching profit, which enabled me to give my friend ten per cent. on the purchase-money, and that pulled me through; and there the bank is now as prosperous a concern as any in London. Shares up to eight premium.”
It might all be true. With a terrible shock it occurred to Squire Dudley that there were other people besides himself in the world—other people looking for their halves, and percentages, and paid up shares also.
In a moment he seemed to understand that he had taken a hand at a game of chances, in which no one, not even those best experienced in the cards, could ensure success. It was a lottery in which he had embarked; and, although he might blame those who had led him up to the wheel, still he felt he could not complain when the man who had been most sanguine of success drew a blank also. He was a gentleman. Even in his blackest hour of need, Arthur, with all his faults, weaknesses, and sins, never was untrue to his training and his ancestry. He had been born—weak fool though he was—a gentleman, bred one, remained one, and he could not bandy words with this clever, plausible swindler, who, seeing his companion’s hesitation, continued:
“I have not much time to spare this afternoon, for I have letters to write, and lots of people to see; but as I perceive you are dissatisfied, Dudley, I’ll tell you what I’ll do: transfer to you a couple of hundred of my shares in the ‘Protector,’ paid up. That’s two thousand pounds, at the worst; and if I see I can do anything more for you, I will. Don’t be in too great a hurry, old fellow. That is the worst of all you country people—you think a fortune is to be made just in a minute. I’ll stand by you, if you stand by me. I swear it to you, Dudley; there’s my hand upon it. Now, do not—do not, I entreat of you, go and make yourself and that dear wife of yours uncomfortable. If you have to raise a few thousands on Berrie Down, what matter? Did Berrie Down ever do anything for you that you should do anything for it? Stick to the Protector and Allan Stewart—that’s my advice; and when you are in any difficulty come to me—that is my advice also. Now, good-bye—ta-ta—God bless you, Dudley!”