Neighbours on the Green

by Mrs. Oliphant

‘Gashes—I don’t think they are gashes,’ said my neighbour. ‘When I saw the white steam flying along the valley just now, I thought it very picturesque. I allow I do not like it too near; but Dinglefield is as safe as if it were in Paradise. No railway will climb your peaceable heights. If there was question however of a railway into Paradise itself, there is the man who would do it,’ he said, looking across the table. ‘I am a mere innocent myself. I do what other people tell me: but there is the dangerous man. I hope, for your sake, that he will give his word against this, for he would survey the moon if he thought it likely to answer.’

I peeped between the little thickets of flowers with which Sophy had covered the table, and looked at the man thus pointed out to me. He was sitting by Ursula Stamford, but he was not talking to her—she, as I have said, was occupied by her other neighbour at her right hand. He was an old man, not far from seventy, according to appearance, with snow-white hair, but a beard still almost black, a combination which is always striking. His features were fine, his dark eyes deeply sunk under eyebrows still dark like his beard. There was a gentleman on the other side of him whom he did not seem to care to talk to, and he was sitting, scarcely speaking, his face in repose.

‘Do you mean that handsome old man?’ I said.

‘Old,’ said my companion, slightly startled; he was about the same age himself if I had thought of it. ‘Well, I suppose he is old,’ he added, with a little laugh. ‘You should talk to him. I don’t know a more interesting man; and, as I tell you, he is the man to whom, if there was a railway to be made to the moon, everybody would turn. If he took the Channel tunnel in hand he would carry it through.’

‘But that must be impossible,’ said I. ‘I hate the crossing; but I would not trust myself in a tunnel under the sea, not for—— But you are laughing—it is impossible——’

‘Impossible!—not in the very least—ask him. I think myself he’s too speculative. But there is one thing certain. If Oakley took it up, it would go through. He’d do it. He is a man who does not believe in difficulties. There might be a great catastrophe next day, but one way or other he’d drive it through.’

I am a very quiet person myself, therefore it stands to reason that I should like a man who drives things through. Besides, he was a handsome old man. I looked at him again behind the flowers, while my companion went on talking, and I saw something which interested me. Miss Stamford came to a pause in her conversation with the man at her right hand, and she seized the opportunity to turn to the man on her left. At the first sound of her voice his abstract countenance lighted up. He turned hastily round with a look of recognition. How could he know Ursula Stamford, I said to myself? His face lighted up with a gleam of intelligence and pleasure, and something which, not knowing any other word, I can only call sweetness. He turned quite round to her, and began to talk with an interest and warmth which roused my immediate sympathy. I seemed to be looking on at an interesting scene in the theatre, seen from so great a distance that it was only the dumb-show which made it intelligible. And my neighbour carried on his discourse all the time.

‘He has sprung from nothing,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if he ever had a father. He began in the humblest way. The first time I heard of him was about thirty years ago, when he was struggling into business. He was not what you would call a young man then. (You ladies are hard upon age—you don’t like it talked about when it concerns yourselves, but you stamp us down as old men without a bit of fellow-feeling——)’

Here I interrupted my instructor. ‘I thought it was a weakness of ours only to dislike to be called old. I thought men were superior to such a little vanity—as to so many others.’

‘You are satirical now. You think we are not superior to any vanity, and I shouldn’t wonder if you were right. I was saying old Oakley was not a young man to start with. He was a sort of an engineer, self-taught, all self-taught, and he was trying to get into business as a contractor. Mrs. Mulgrave,’ said my companion solemnly, ‘have you any idea what that man is worth now? I thought so, as you didn’t seem impressed. He is worth more than a million, that is the fact—he is made of money; losses don’t seem to touch him. I do not suppose,’ my friend added, with awe in his voice, ‘that he knows how much he has.’