Damsel Or Two

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Chapter I

" Vu not sure, sir," said the man, when Colonel Selwood inquired if Mr. Mellor was in the hotel. " I'm not sure, sir. What name, sir? " said the man. He was the kind of servant who manages to suggest that the propinquity of his master is largely dependent on the name of his visitor.

" Colonel Selwood," said Colonel Selwood, with a nervous alertness that did not escape the observant man.

" I'm afraid he's not in just now, sir," said the man. He knew that nervousness as well as alertness seldom found his master at home. " You have an appointment perhaps, sir? " he added.

" I have no appointment, but Mr. Mellor will see me," said Colonel Selwood. He was a middle-aged man — tall, well-made, and with a white moustache that suggested a campaigner. People meeting him for the first time began to talk, after a glance at him and a brief calculation, of the First Nile Expedition — some ante-dated their remarks by a year or two and spoke of the Zulu War or Majuba Hill. They wondered what was his private opinion of Majuba Hill. All such people were right: he had been a Captain of Hussars during the South African Campaign of 1879 and 1880, and he had been a Major in the Camel Corps.

" Very good, sir/' said the servant, disappearing through the least expressive door that ever Colonel Selwood had watched close: one could not hear that door close. It somehow made people think of velvet. These were the unimaginative. It made the imaginative think of a mouse— or was it the velvet paws (with something hidden beneath) of a cat that plays with a mouse?

What Colonel Selwood thought of was a fox that he had seen the week before crawling under the bracken of a covert — only for a moment, however, and not definitely, for the room was full of people, and therefore not tending to sustain thought. It was a sort of ante-room to the suite occupied in the Coniston House Hotel, Piccadilly, by Mr. Joseph Mellor, the great financier of the year. Almost every year has now its great financier, and any one who is scrupulous in regard to dates should be warned against the danger of confusing the year of a great financier's glory with the year of his prosecution. Dates having reference to the career of a great public man are so apt to get

mixed.

Colonel Selwood thought of the fox for one moment — following the suggestion of the disappearing servant through the silent-closing door — and the next moment he somehow thought of a theatrical performance in which he had once taken part at Simla. This thought was suggested, not by the company about him, but by the form of the apartment; for he saw that it was a perfect stage room. Rooms with four doors are only to be seen on the stage of a theatre. And when any one goes with a measure of excitement — ^and sometimes people are shown on the stage to be excited — out of one door, the whole side wall of the room quivers sympathetically with the emotion of the exit.

Colonel Selwood looked to see the wall — so chastely decorated with Japanese paper in designs of red and gold — quiver; but the hour of emotion had not yet arrived. Two doors were in one wall, another door was in the middle of the opposite wall, and the fourth was at the end of the room. Yes, the room, Selwood perceived, would serve admirably for the playing of a well-bred farce — z, farce with harmless lovers popping their heads out and quickly slamming doors at intervals, while a highly strung husband, with fully developed suspicions, flies up and down the room and occasionally rushes out, banging the door, and allowing his wife (in a tea jacket) to reassure each head as it pops out in turn.

Yes, but was the whole thing a farce?

That was the question which followed the suggestion of the Simla performance. Was it a serious farce — a farce not of the Palais Royal, but of the Comedie Frangaise, that conservatoire of dulness? Was his mission to Mr. Mellor one of the motifs of the scene? Was Mr. Mellor himself only a farceur, after all? Were the serious people in this room of four doors the ordinary serious " supers " who come on as representatives of the general public in some three-act farces elaborately constructed on the somewhat flimsy basis of, say, a stolen visiting-card?

He looked round at the company. They were a queer lot. After all, he thought, the " supers " in a good theatre are not so ridiculously unrepresentative of the general public as some people think. Around were the possibilities of three acts of rough-and-tumble dulness, he knew. Even a fifth door to the room would not make the play in which these people walked on anything but tedious.

He looked at them.

So many of the men carried cheap imitation leather bags. Two of the men bore unmistakable tokens of half pay. No one who is not on half pay ever wears a really well-brushed coat — a coat bearing the trace of each particular hair of the clothes brush. Water courses made by the brush and the benzine rag could be plainly traced by the naked eye down the front of each coat and on the wellpressed trousers which Colonel Selwood was observing.

One of the men looked extremely silly: he might have been a sapper, Selwood thought — a sapper with ideas which he was anxious to share with all who approached him, on the subject of sewage farms — perhaps the Athanasian creed. The other was sillier still, for he had assumed a look of wisdom far too profound to be at the command of any one human being. He had probably a grievance against the War Office, Selwood thought.

And then there were two or three very alert gentlemen wearing the most expensive garments to be bought on credit. They talked among themselves with a lightness that suggested anxiousness, and now and again they examined papers — printed papers, laying their heads together. One of them produced from his black brief-bag a map done on tracing paper, with broad washes of pink and blue. Two rather shabby men and one who was anything but shabby formed another interesting group, especially as one of the shabby men held in the hollow of his shabby hat a model that might have been of a new form of gun-carriage— perhaps a new form of milk cart. He had the heavy brows of the Inventor and the projecting under-lip of the Man of Genius.

" Five hundred thousand of a pound each, and five hundred founders' shares, mind — ^not a penny less," the well-dressed man was saying to the shabby man of genius.

The projecting under-lip projected still farther, showing that the man of genius was thinking.

" Founders' shares — ^founders' shares," he said. " Lord ! and must we bribe the brass founders as well as the newspapers? If the newspapers are to get forty thousand pounds, and then "

" Don't be a fool," said the well-dressed gentleman to the man of genius. "Founders' shares — that's us, we are the founders."

" And this is our foundry," said the second shabby man, winking in the direction of the door nearest to him. He was clearly a jocular man. That would account for his shabby coat.

About a dozen other people were in the apartment, and three were ladies, everyone with a black bag.

Selwood had been in the waiting-room of a great physician — no, the crowd here was not quite like that which had been disintegrated by slow degrees by the help of the doctor's man; it rather resembled gatherings in the ante-room of the patron of the eighteenth century. Selwood had seen the thing in pictures — the nondescript crowd of well-dressed adventurers, perky tradesmen, with samples of their latest shoe-buckles and brooches and sword guards in cases; wine merchants, a dancing master or two and several patient men of genius — one a rather impatient monster of a man, but a master of men — a foul, scrofulous fellow with the prospectus of a dictionary — all waiting for the chance of getting into the presence of his lordship.

His Lordship was a mighty man in those days; he sometimes paid as much as fifty guineas for a single dedication to a book of extraordinary worthlessness, but then he usually drank at nights a great deal more wine than was good for him, and on mornings when he was surprised to find his head much better than he expected he did foolish things.

And just as Colonel Selwood was so reflecting, the Duke of Cinque Ports appeared at the upper silent-opening door, spick and span up to his very smile. He had a few papers in his hand neatly done up, but Colonel Selwood was not for a moment led to fancy that any one of these papers contained the rough draft of a dedication for which his Grace had paid his fifty guineas.

No hush fell even for a moment upon the people in the room as the Duke put on a very glossy hat and passed out: they talked away just as if he were an ordinary human being.

Colonel Selwood, being a reflecting man, smiled grimly at the thought of how greatly times had changed. The functions of patron had shifted from the shoulders of his Lordship to the shoulders of the man who, by the aid of a prospector, composes a prospectus. Here was this nineteenth-century ante-room crowded with people, including a man of genius with a prominent under-lip, all of whom were waiting, presumably in patience, for an audience not with his Lordship, not with his Grace, not with his Excellency, but with a man who a year or two before had been a clerk in a stock broker's office — 2i messenger clerk — but who, by the exercise of his wits, was now reputed to be the greatest of living financiers.

It was a remarkable change in social England that had come about. Colonel Selwood thought, and there was some bitterness in his reflection; for he did not for a moment forget that he too was one of the waiting ones — he, the descendant of Selwood of Selwood: the tomb of his ancestor Sir Hugo de Saillewode, with the recumbent figure of the Crusader with his legs crossed, was in the Old Church of Husbandman's Selwood — he too was waiting to offer his homage, and with it a petition, to Mr. Mellor, the Magnate.

Times had changed when such as he was compelled to occupy such a position in relation to such a person as Mr. Mellor, he thought; but that was just where he made a mistake. His Lordship of the eighteenth century was as a man infinitely contemptible, if the pictures which have been drawn by contemporaries of the most notorious are to be regarded as representative of the tribe. Whatever Mr. Mellor may have been, he had certainly better manners and a less insufferable way of treating his inferiors than had, say, the Earl of Chesterfield; and his scheme of morality was assuredly more wholesome. Mr. Mellor had his inferiors; this privilege was denied to Lord Chesterfield.

But men who are descended from Crusaders that visited the Holy Sepulchre, and who are aware of this fact, are given to reflections tinged with gentle melancholy, on the radical and racial changes of the ambUng ages; though most of them are, as Colonel Selwood was, extremely glad to avail themselves of the services of such as Mr. Mellor to enable them to keep the tombs of their ancestors in decent repair.

But the last thought which Colonel Selwood had was not of the degeneracy of the nineteenth century as compared to the eighteenth — ^it was not of that monstrous man of genius who waited, when on his ignoble search for a patron of profound immorality, in his Lordship's ante-room, and later in life became the hanger-on to a vulgar beerbrewer who died of gluttony — no, his last thought — it was possibly due to his recollection of his ancestor's effigy with the crossed legs — ^was of the Pool of Siloam.

It was a curious thought to have among the enormously decorated apartments of the Coniston House Hotel; but it came to him as he glanced once more round the room and saw the people who were waiting — ^waiting. There was the great crowd of impotent folk waiting for the moving of the waters, all anxious for the appearance of the angel that came down and troubled the water — there was the crowd, but where was the angel?

The door at the upper end of the room opened and the angel appeared.

Chapter II

A RATHER undersized man with a face smiling like a cobweb — 3. shrewd, large face, clean shaven — a face that made quite a pleasing cushion for a nose to rest upon. The nose was large, but it did not suggest the vulture of the Holy Land: it rather made one think of the cormorant of St. James's Park.

And he was smiling.

He was dressed in a suit of rough tweed — ^the rough tweed of country gentlemen — nor did he forget the boxcloth gaiters of the country gentleman who does not know the moment when he may have to spring into his saddle and gallop off to settle some difficult question at one of his outlying farms — ^ question of shearing, perhaps: Mr. Mellor looked the very man to settle some question of shearing. But he certainly did not look like a country gentleman. He had only the gaiters, not the gate, and this made a difference.

And yet he was a country gentleman — ^yes, of two years' standing. He had acquired, by perfectly legal methods, a large estate at Ashampton, and had at once become the most popular of landlords,

II for he soon proved to the aboriginal inhabitants that he had none of those confusing, new-fangled theories on the subject of night schools and the like. He explained to his tenantry that to be a good old English gentleman was good enough for him, and if that wasn't good enough for them they might all go hang — oh, yes, he was a plain-spoken man; he didn't care who knew it, he said, and there was a hogshead or two of beer — the real Brown October of the old times — ^ready broached for all comers at the Royal George, and he hoped that there was no new-fangled temperance spouter — a cold water spouter, he called such a chap — in the neighbourhood who would tell them that it was a sin and a crime to drink to the health of an old English gentleman in good old English beer. If there was — ^well, he had heard of horse-ponds: there was plenty of cold water, enough to satisfy the thirstiest cold water spouter, in an average horse-pond; and if there was any farm on his estate that hadn't a big enough horse-pond, he'd send a hundred labourers round to that farm to make the horse-pond as big as the Atlantic Ocean, big enough to accommodate all the temperance spouters in the kingdom, and they were growing, mind.

That was the substance of the speech which Mr. Mellor made to his tenants when " reading himself in," so to speak, at Ashampton Manor, and his tenantry cheered him until they were hoarse — they knew that the more they cheered the drier their throats would become, and thus the nearer to the ideal aimed at by such as had a chance of unlimited beer.

Thus it was that Mr. Mellor had won the right to wear the boxcloth gaiters up to his knees.

But if he respected the bucolic gaiters of the country gentleman, he was not unmindful of the symbolic gaiters — the clerical adaptation of the same protectors. He had offered to put a couple of spires on Westminster Abbey — ^it was the original intention of the spirited architect of that structure to have a couple of spires on the towers, he reminded the Authorities, and the Authorities with the gaiters were delighted to find how erudite on ecclesiastical lore was a representative of finance, and resolved to consolidate the good feeling existing between the Church and the City by accepting Mr. Mellor's offer to beautify the Abbey.

The newspapers wrote leading articles on the munificence of Mr. Mellor; but some people carped. But when Mr. Mellor had bought half a dozen race-horses the voice of carping was silenced.

And now Mr. Mellor had entered the great ante-room to his suite of apartments at the Coniston House Hotel, as if in response to Colonel Selwood's question respecting the angel of the Pool of Siloam who was to trouble the waters for the ^ 13 healing of this great crowd of impotent folk that awaited his arrival.

By his side was Lord de Crecy — ^his ancestor had been by the side of the Black Prince in France — ^and he also was smiling — ^possibly at the jest made by Mr. Mellor, for this was certainly the jest at which Mr. Mellor was smiling.

" Ta-ta, old chap— ta-ta," said the latter, giving his off hand in an off-hand way to his Lordship; he had put out his other hand to Colonel Selwood. " Ta-ta, old chap. — Morning, Selwood."

" Ten thousand down — ^that's understood," said Lord de Crecy, pressing the off hand of the New Patron.

"That's what I said; isn't my word good enough, old chap? Look you here, de Crecy, if you'd like it in black and white, you can have it, you know," said Mr. Mellor.

"Skittles!" cried the representative of the Black Prince's esquire. " Skittles ! my dear boy. Your word's good enough for me. Ten thousand? "

" You'd fancy it was ten million," said Mr. Mellor with an indulgent, refulgent smile at Colonel Selwood when Lord de Crecy had gone away. "Upon my soul, Selwood, I prefer dealing with your man of millions than your man of hundreds. Great Queen of Sheba! what's ten thousand pounds? Come this way."

He opened one of the doors to his right and showed Colonel Selwood the way through the room beyond. He paid no attention to the people in the ante-room. He ignored the half-pay sappers as completely as if they were intelligent men.

But no one in the room made any advance toward him. Had he not called Lord de Crecy " old chap "? Had he not sent away the Duke of Cinque Ports as if he were of no more account than a Man of Genius? A man like this is not the one to whom advances are to be made on the impulse of a moment.

" A busy morning, Selwood — a busy morning," said Mr. Mellor cheerfully, pointing to one of the red leather imitation Chippendale chairs, which gave the second room of the suite quite a bright appearance and were in perfect harmony with the panelled walls. " Try one of those smokes — Carolinas? "

He helped himself to a big cigar, and passed the box across the table to Selwood.

" I wanted to have a talk with you about those Rockingham shares," said Selwood, taking a cigar and looking at it thoughtfully. " I hope that when "

"A busy morning, Selwood — ^busy," said Mr. Mellor, ignoring the fact that his visitor was in the act of speaking. As a rule Mr. Mellor ignored what other people said. " Yes, my dear Selwood, it isn't all beer and — ^and — You know the Duke of Cinque Ports, I suppose? No? Decent chap he is, but not much of a head. He has some notion of becoming director of the Dairy Combine. We're working a big thing in the Dairy Trust, Selwood — too big a thing for Cinque Ports. He thinks his name should be good enough for fifty thousand. He's a bit of an ass. Fifty thousand, if you please! Says he heard that his name would fetch me for fifty thousand. That's how people jabber, giving me a bad name. Fifty thousand! I give you my word of honour, Selwood, that the most I ever gave a man for letting his name go on the back of a prospectus was twenty thousand. Frankly, I don't believe that any man's name is worth more. As a matter of fact, it's only when a prospectus wants a bit of stiffening that any name is worth so much."

" I thought it better to come to you direct rather than to write about this business," said Selwood. " You see "

" The way those chaps try to bleed me would

take your breath away, Selwood, if you only knew

it," resumed Mr. Mellon " Twenty thousand here

— thirty thousand there — the money must be flung

about before we get a thing on its legs, and then

every one talks about the mammoth sums that I

clear off a flotation. There's de Crecy, as good a

chap as lives, but he comes here wanting twenty

i6 thousand for letting his name be put on the back of our new Flag of England deal. ' Twenty thousand is over the market price for that commodity, de Crecy, old chap/ said I. * Is it? * said he. ' Not much, if you clear a million off the deal, like you did off the Quinine Trust.' He had the cheek to accuse me of clearing a million off Quinines, when all I made was six hundred thousand — I give you my sacred word of honour, Selwood — ^a paltry six hundred thousand! "

" Still, that was better than nothing," said Selwood. His own financial troubles seemed wretchedly small now that Mellor was sneering at half millions. What was a matter of a few shares in an old-established bank when the other was tossing millions about as if they were tin counters?

"You've no notion how I'm bled, Selwood," continued the financier. " Every one looks on me as fair game for blackmail. I hope to heavens I'll have a chance some day of rounding on the lot of them. It will surprise the world to learn how public men — ^members of Parliament, members of the Carlton Club, by George, sir — are ready to sell their souls ; but wasn't it playing a bit low down for the archdeacon to abuse me like a pickpocket, simply because I had asked him what he thought of the chances of floating a Bible Trust — buying up all the vested interests in Bible societies, and then running them so as to limit the output and so raise the value on the market? I gave the archdeacon the option of heading the list of directors — I assure you I did; and I offered him a hundred founders' shares if he could get the archbishop for us; but if I had been a hard shell atheist he couldn't have abused me more. And that, mind, after I had made that offer about the Abbey. Is it any wonder that infidelity has become rampant? Is it any wonder that the Established Church of our country — this great England of ours, mind — should be tottering to its fall? No one abhors Nonconformity more than myself, Selwood, and yet sometimes I think . . . Ah, never mind. But you'll agree with me that ingratitude ... I can't put up those spires under a hundred thousand pounds apiece. Think of that! "

" It's a lot of money," said Selwood.

" I should have been able to get at the whole Chapter for half the money," said Mr. Mellor. " I would have got them if there remained among them any real affection for the Church. But no, they are not sincere. It's things like this that make a man lose faith in all that he once reverenced, it is indeed. But I'm in treaty for a newspaper at this moment — the most powerful organ in England, sir, and my three-year-olds are entered for all the big events, so I think I'll pull through. When the archdeacon hears that I've won the Derby, he'll wish that he hadn't spoken. Well,

i8 good day. It was friendly of you to drop in like this. I'm always glad to see my friends. They don't find that my head is turned because I happen to be at the top of the tree, do they now? No, I'm a simple English country gentleman first, and a man of business after."

" It was as a man of business I came to you to-day," said Selwood, as Mr. Mellor got upon his feet and glanced at the clock. " I didn't mean to delay you long. I only wish to talk to you about those shares of Rockingham's."

"What shares are those — Rockinghams? I don't seem to remember," said Mr. Mellor. " Rockinghams? Isn't there a Rockingham's Bank? Of course there's a Rockingham's Bank. A one-horse concern — a family-chaise sort of bank, eh? "

" You must surely recollect that I deposited with you the hundred shares which I held in Rockingham's Bank, as security for the advance you made to me to meet the call upon those confounded Richland Marshes," said Selwood quickly. He was beginning to be irritated.

" Oh, that must have been a year ago — ^yes, quite a year ago. How can you expect a chap to remember trifles like that of a year's standing? " asked Mr. Mellor. " When a chap is in the way of handling millions how can he be expected to remember such things as — ^what did you call them?

—Rocking-horses? Ha! not a bad name for them — Rocking-horses! If they ever reached the House that's what they'd be called. Well, what about your Rocking-horses, Selwood? "

" There's only this about my Rockingham shares, Mr. Mellor; I want them back now, and I have brought you a cheque for the amount of the advance you made to me."

" Oh, you want them back, do you? I understood that you sold them outright to me."

" You are bent on proving that what you said just now is true: when a man has been handling millions he cannot be expected to remember the details of such trifles as a couple of thousand. But it so happens that the shares were only to be held by you until I should be in a position to repay you the two thousand two hundred pounds which you advanced to me."

" That's a bit queer, isn't it, considering that the shares were duly transferred to me? "

" It was undoubtedly queer that you should insist, as you did, on having the transfer duly made to you."

" It was jolly queer, considering that you could have gone to any bank in the kingdom and got the advance made to you on the same security. Why didn't you go to your bank and get the money, Selwood, instead of coming to me? "

" Good heavens, man, don't you remember that it was you yourself who made the offer to find the money for me on the security of those shares? You were staying down at my place, and you agreed to let me have back the shares when I should get the money. Well, here's the money."

Mr. Mellor looked at his visitor with perturbing deliberation, then he flung the end of his cigar into the grate, and selected another with a deliberation that was almost ludicrous. He cut off the end and struck a match. After half a dozen exhalations he looked at Selwood straight in the face, and said:

" Dear old chap, I can remember anything in reason, but give me a chance — give me a chance."

"What do you mean by that? — give you a chance? " asked Selwood.

" I mean, Selwood, that you should talk of business to business men in business hours, and then go about your business," said Mellor. " I mean that those shares in Rockingham's Bank were sold to me at a fair price, and that I'm not inclined to part with them."

Chapter III

Colonel Selwood was on his feet in a moment.

Mr. Mellor continued smoking away quietly with his head slightly bent. He was plainly thinking out something in which millions were involved. The question of a couple of thousands had ceased to swim into his ken.

Colonel Selwood sat down.

" Mr. Mellor, I must ask you to recall the terms of that transaction of ours," he said.

" I have too much on hand, and that's a fact," said Mr. Mellor. " It's the right thing for a man like me to have a racing stud, don't you know? I don't want to be anything better than an English country gentleman. I have a black pig or two — I mean to show what can be done with black pigs — and a race horse or two. I didn't buy them to make cats' meat of them, but to race them. It's expected of me — ^the public have come to expect it of me. And then there's the theatre — I am backing the Legitimate, you know. It's about time that Shakespeare got a chance in this town, isn't it? Well, I'm going to give good old Shakespeare his chance at last — Shakespeare and Miss Roy Deveen. Fine woman, Miss Deveen! A chap should do something for Art before he dies; and I'm going to do my little for Shakespeare — ^he's such a true Englishman. Shakespeare is the poet of the English country gentleman, Selwood, and ''