And then the other people, that bought the shares for cash! Well, they could sell out too; they could all sell out!
Then Peter Halket’s mind got a little hazy. The matter was getting too difficult for him, like a rule of three sum at school when he could not see the relation between the two first terms and the third. Well, if they didn’t like to sell out at the right time, it was their own faults. Why didn’t they? He, Peter Halket, did not feel responsible for them. Everyone knew that you had to sell out at the right time. If they didn’t choose to sell out at the right time, well, they didn’t. “It’s the shares that you sell, not the shares you keep, that make the money.”
But if they couldn’t sell them?
Here Peter Halket hesitated.—Well, the British Government would have to buy them, if they were so bad no one else would; and then no one would lose. “The British Government can’t let British share-holders suffer.” He’d heard that often enough. The British taxpayer would have to pay for the Chartered Company, for the soldiers, and all the other things, if IT couldn’t, and take over the shares if it went smash, because there were lords and dukes and princes connected with it. And why shouldn’t they pay for his company? He would have a lord in it too!
Peter Halket looked into the fire completely absorbed in his calculations.—Peter Halket, Esq., Director of the Peter Halket Gold Mining Company, Limited. Then, when he had got thousands, Peter Halket, Esq., M.P. Then, when he had millions, Sir Peter Halket, Privy Councillor!
He reflected deeply, looking into the blaze. If you had five or six millions you could go where you liked and do what you liked. You could go to Sandringham. You could marry anyone. No one would ask what your mother had been; it wouldn’t matter.
A curious dull sinking sensation came over Peter Halket; and he drew in his broad leathern belt two holes tighter.
Even if you had only two millions you could have a cook and a valet, to go with you when you went into the veld or to the wars; and you could have as much champagne and other things as you liked. At that moment that seemed to Peter more important than going to Sandringham.
He took out his flask of Cape Smoke, and drew a tiny draught from it.
Other men had come to South Africa with nothing, and had made everything! Why should not he?