In the City he knew his power, and made it felt. He united the American rapidity, daring, and instinct in business with the Englishman’s coldness, reserve, and prudence. The union was irresistible. He had quaked and crouched before fine ladies; but when he met the directors of the Bank of England he felt like Napoleon at Tilsit.
He was a magnate in the City, whilst he was still a neophyte in the great world. But his ambitions were of another kind than those which the City gratifies. They were social and political. He meant to die a Cabinet Minister and a Peer. He went to Walmer one Easter and looked at the portraits of the Wardens. “Guess mine’ll hang there one day,” he said to himself.
Everything in his new life was still, in reality, most uncomfortable to him; the very clothes he had to wear were tight and oppressive; he had to drink hocks and clarets, when he longed for gin and beer; he had to eat salmis and relevés when he hungered for bread and cheese and salted pork; he longed to spit on his own carpets, and dared not; he was in awe of his own servants; he was awkward and ill at ease in his own houses; he quailed before the contemptuous eye of his own secretary; and he could not read the bill of fare of his own dinners; and yet, though he pined to be once more in his shirt-sleeves, with a clay pipe in his mouth and a glass of hot grog at his elbow, he was happy in his misery, for he “had arrived.”
Not arrived at the apex as yet; but in full view of it, and within an ace of planting his flag on the summit. And so in all probability he would have done in the opening years of the new century but for one of those small, very small, mistakes, which upset the chariot of successful life as the loose rivet, the weak plank, the uncovered valve destroys the stately steamship, the colossal scaffolding, the rushing and thundering steam-engine.
One day in the autumn of the year the American Consul-General in London received a letter from his “great country” which, although ill-spelt, ill-writ, and signed by a poor workingman, startled his secretary so considerably by its contents that he brought the epistle direct to his chief for instructions.
This letter ran thus:—
“’Onored ’Xcellence, theer’s a-living in London town a man as is callt Willum Massarene; ’e was known in this ’ere township as Blasted Blizzard. B. B. made a big pile an’ went ’ome, and they says as ’e’s a swell an’ kings an’ lords mess wi’ him. That’s neither ’ere nor theer. But theer’s a pore fellar arsts me to writ this, ’cos he hev hisself no larnin’, an’ ’e hev workt many a year on Massarene’s line—Kerosene, Issoura, and Chicago Main Trunk—an’ he’s a platelayer an’ hev allus bin ’onest an’ ’ard-workin’, an’ ’ad his left arm cut hoff two summers ago by a goods-train, and hev arskt for ’Elp an’ got no ’Elp ’cos ’e be a non-Union man, and the Line say as how ’twas ’is own fault ’cos ’e ’ad gone to sleep on the metals. Now this ’ere man, sir—name as is Robert Airley, native o’ Haddington, N.B.—says as ’ow he ’ud be a rich un now but ’e med a mistek: ’e sold a claim to a bit ’o ground as ’ad tin in it to this ’ere Massarene when he was young an’ starving an’ ’is wife in pains o’ labor. Robert Airley ’e say he found some sparkles sticking to roots o’ grass, an’ didn’t know wot ’twas, an’ show it to Massarene, who was thin kippen a drink and play saloon in Kerosene, and Massarene bought his claim to the land for thirty dollars and ever arterwards dared Robert to prove it, and prove he couldn’t, but says as how ’tis God Amighty’s truth as he owned the tin and sold ’is rights un-be-known as I tell ye. Bein’ allus very pore he couldn’t git away from Kerosene, and went on Main Trunk as platelayer, an’ now he arsks yer ’Onor to see Blasted Blizzard and tell ’im as ’ow ’e can work no more and ’e must be purvided for. I writt this for ’im ’cos Robert can’t writt ’isself an’ I be your ’Onor’s ’umble servant,
“George Mathers,
“Lamp-cleaner on K.I.C. Line.
“Written in engine-house.
“Native o’ Sudbury, Suffolk, England, and out in this damned country sore agen his will. Direct Robert Airley, Post Office, Kerosene City, North Dakota, U. S. A.”
The Consul-General read this letter twice through very carefully, for its spelling and its blots made it difficult of comprehension. It did not astonish him, for he knew a good deal about the antecedents of the owner of Harrenden House and Vale Royal. He had never alluded to them in English society, because if American consuls once began to tell what they know, society in Europe would be decimated at once.