"Yes, and thought to make your fortune, Mr. Podevin? and now you think you are going to lose it--the chance every man is liable to who speculates or plays poker. You throw a sprat expecting to catch a herring, and at times the herring is not caught, and the sprat is thrown away. You must accept the chances of the game, or else you should not play. Look at me! Think of the thousands I stand to lose if our enterprise miscarries! What are your few hundreds compared to that? Yet I make no lament."
"M'sieur ees so riche and distingué! He vill not see a poor man lose ze sparings of his life," and he bowed cringingly to the chair.
Farmer Belmore vied with him in a gaze of pathetic sweetness and tremulous hungry adoration before the great man who had brought his savings into jeopardy and who yet, if any one could, could bring them safely out. The disclosure made by Podevin had been as unexpected by him as it was sudden. He had fancied himself growing rich, and now to be told that he was stripped of his savings! He would have been furious had he dared--talked of fraud, trickery, and the law; but when he saw Podevin prostrate himself in spirit before the chair, and cry for succour from the hand which had inaugurated the ill, he controlled himself and lay back in his chair, constraining his lips into sugar-coated smiles which the doubtful and hungry gleaning of his eyes deprived of any seductiveness they might otherwise have carried.
"This is simply, gentlemen," said the president, coughing and raising his voice, "one of those circumstances to which every enterprise--especially every enterprise dealing with minerals--is liable. As business men you calculated the risks and counted the cost before you embarked your money. The likelihood of profit appeared sufficient to us all to warrant our running the risk."
"M'sieur did not mention risks ven he so kindly undertook to improve my fortunes. I confide my case to ze generous souvenirs of m'sieur. He vill not permit to suffer ze man who place confiance and dollars in his recommande."
Ralph snorted. "Let us talk business, gentlemen," he cried. "We are not here to scold like old women, or to lament like children. You are men of understanding, who would not have dropped your money but where you saw good promise of a large return. Whether you gain or lose, therefore, you have only yourselves to thank. You know as well as I do that where money is to be made it is also to be lost. If it were not so, all the world would crowd in to make its fortune every time, and there would be nothing for anybody. Therefore, I object to expressions such as have fallen from my friend, Podevin. He regrets them already himself, I am sure, now I mention it, and he brings his clear good sense to bear on the point. Gentlemen! we went in to win. Of course we did! It goes without saying. But, if we have to lose, let us behave like men of business and common sense; let us not cry over spilt milk, but let us make the best of it. And first, let us look the matter in the face. What is it that has happened to us?----"
"Ze cuivre is not zere!" cried Podevin, eager to rally his self-respect and preen the rumpled plumage on which Ralph had sat down so unceremoniously. If his plea for help and relief must be set aside, at least a partial satisfaction might be taken out in scolding, and there seemed an opening here.
"To put it shortly, gentlemen," said Ralph with a shrug, "that would appear to be about the state of the case just at this moment; but I would recommend you not to say it that way out of doors, unless you want to write off every cent you have invested in the undertaking as dead loss. That would not be all either, gentlemen. You, the directors, conjointly and severally, would be liable to suit by each individual stockholder for misrepresenting the value of the property. Is that not so, Jordan?"
"Clearly, they might claim to have their subscribed stock made good. Whether they would secure a verdict, would depend a good deal, of course, on the management of the case on both sides. But that is not all. It is possible that a criminal information might be laid for obtaining money under false pretences, and when commercial miscarriages are fresh in the public mind, there is a proneness in juries to find against the defendants. It is really a serious consideration--a penetentiary offence."
"Mon Dieu!" gasped Podevin with folded hands, gazing at the ceiling with eyes whose watery sorrow threatened momentarily to overflow. Belmore pulled the posy from his button-hole and flung it on the ground, its festive hue and fragrance irritated his senses in the gloom which had fallen on him. If he could but have cast his speculation from him as easily, or hurled the man before him, who had led him into it, to the ground in like fashion, how good it would have been!