“I think I ‘m all right in that quarter,” was his lordship’s reflection as he mounted the stairs to his room.
CHAPTER XII. AN EVENING BELOW AND ABOVE STAIRS
It was not very willingly that Mr. Cutbill left the drawing-room, where he had been performing a violoncello accompaniment to one of the young ladies in the execution of something very Mendelssohnian and profoundly puzzling to the uninitiated in harmonics. After the peerage he loved counterpoint; and it was really hard to tear himself away from passages of almost piercing shrillness, or those still more suggestive moanings of a double bass, to talk stock and share-list with Colonel Bramleigh in the library. Resisting all the assurances that “papa wouldn’t mind it, that any other time would do quite as well,” and such like, he went up to his room for his books and papers, and then repaired to his rendezvous.
“I ‘m sorry to take you away from the drawing-room, Mr. Cutbill,” said Bramleigh, as he entered; “but I am half expecting a summons to town, and could not exactly be sure of an opportunity to talk over this matter on which Lord Culduff is very urgent to have my opinion.”
“It is not easy, I confess, to tear oneself away from such society. Your daughters are charming musicians, Colonel. Miss Bramleigh’s style is as brilliant as Meyer’s; and Miss Eleanor has a delicacy of touch I have never heard surpassed.”
“This is very flattering, coming from so consummate a judge as yourself.”
“All the teaching in the world will not impart that sensitive organization which sends some tones into the heart like the drip, drip of water on a heated brow. Oh, dear! music is too much for me; it totally subverts all my sentiments. I ‘m not fit for business after it, Colonel Bramleigh, that’s the fact.”
“Take a glass of that ‘Bra Mouton.’ You will find it good. It has been eight-and-thirty years in my cellar, and I never think of bringing it out except for a connoisseur in wine.”
“Nectar, – positively nectar,” said he, smacking his lips. “You are quite right not to give this to the public. They would drink it like a mere full-bodied Bordeaux. That velvety softness – that subdued strength, faintly recalling Burgundy, and that delicious bouquet, would all be clean thrown away on most people. I declare, I believe a refined palate is just as rare as a correct ear; don’t you think so?”
“I’m glad you like the wine. Don’t spare it. The cellar is not far off. Now then, let us see. These papers contain Mr. Stebbing’s report. I have only glanced my eye over it, but it seems like every other report. They have, I think, a stereotyped formula for these things. They all set out with their bit of geological learning; but you know, Mr. Cutbill, far better than I can tell you, you know sandstone doesn’t always mean coal?”
“If it does n’t, it ought to,” said Cutbill, with a laugh, for the wine had made him jolly, and familiar besides.
“There are many things in this world which ought to be, but which, unhappily, are not,” said Bramleigh, in a tone evidently meant to be half-reproachful. “And as I have already observed to you, mere geological formation is not sufficient. We want the mineral, sir; we want the fact.”
“There you have it; there it is for you,” said Cutbill, pointing to a somewhat bulky parcel in brown paper in the centre of the table.
“This is not real coal, Mr. Cutbill,” said Bramleigh, as he tore open the covering, and exposed a black misshapen lump. “You would not call this real coal?”
“I ‘d not call it Swansea nor Cardiff, Colonel, any more than I ‘d say the claret we had after dinner to-day was ‘Mouton;’ but still I’d call each of them very good in their way.”
“I return you my thanks, sir, in the name of my wine-merchant. But to come to the coal question – what could you do with this?”
“What could I do with it? Scores of things – if I had only enough of it. Burn it in grates – cook with it – smelt metals with it – burn lime with it – drive engines, not locomotives, but stationaries, with it. I tell you what, Colonel Bramleigh,” said he, with the air of a man who was asserting what he would not suffer to be gainsaid. “It’s coal quite enough to start a company on; coal within the meaning of the act, as the lawyers would say.”
“You appear to have rather loose notions of joint-stock enterprises, Mr. Cutbill,” said Bramleigh, haughtily.
“I must say, Colonel, they do not invariably inspire me with sentiments of absolute veneration.”
“I hope, however, you feel, sir, that in any enterprise – in any undertaking – where my name is to stand forth, either as promoter or abetter, that the world is to see in such guarantee the assurance of solvency and stability.”
“That is precisely what made me think of you; precisely what led me to say to Culduff, ‘Bramleigh is the man to carry the scheme out.’”
Now the familiarity that spoke of Culduff thus unceremoniously in great part reconciled Bramleigh to hear his own name treated in like fashion, all the more that it was in a quotation; but still he winced under the cool impertinence of the man, and grieved to think how far his own priceless wine had contributed towards it. The Colonel therefore merely bowed his acknowledgment and was silent.
“I’ll be frank with you,” said Cutbill, emptying the last of the decanter into his glass as he spoke. “I ‘ll be frank with you. We ‘ve got coal; whether it be much or little, there it is. As to quality, as I said before, it is n’t Cardiff. It won’t set the Thames on fire, any more than the noble lord that owns it; but coal it is, and it will burn as coal – and yield gas as coal – and make coke as coal, and who wants more? As to working it himself, Culduff might just as soon pretend he ‘d pay the National Debt. He is over head and ears already; he has been in bondage with the children of Israel this many a day, and if he was n’t a peer he could not show; but that’s neither here nor there. To set the concern a-going we must either have a loan or a company. I ‘m for a company.”
“You are for a company,” reiterated Bramleigh, slowly, as he fixed his eyes calmly but steadily on him.
“Yes, I ‘m for a company. With a company, Bramleigh,” said he, as he tossed off the last glass of wine, “there ‘s always more of P. E.”
“Of what?”
“Of P. E. – Preliminary expenses! There ‘s a commission to inquire into this, and a deputation to investigate that. No men on earth dine like deputations. I never knew what dining was till I was named on a deputation. It was on sewerage. And didn’t the champagne flow! There was a viaduct to be constructed to lead into the Thames, and I never think of that viaduct without the taste of turtle in my mouth, and a genial feeling of milk-punch all over me. The assurance offices say that there was scarcely such a thing known as a gout premium in the City till the joint-stock companies came in; now they have them every day.”
“Revenons à nos moutons, as the French say, Mr. Cutbill,” said Bramleigh, gravely.
“If it’s a pun you mean, and that we ‘re to have another bottle of the same, I second the motion.”
Bramleigh gave a sickly smile as he rang the bell, but neither the jest nor the jester much pleased him.
“Bring another bottle of ‘Mouton,’ Drayton, and fresh glasses,” said he, as the butler appeared.
“I ‘ll keep mine; it is warm and mellow,” said Cutbill. “The only fault with that last bottle was the slight chill on it.”
“You have been frank with me, Mr. Cutbill,” said Bramleigh, as soon as the servant withdrew, “and I will be no less so with you. I have retired from the world of business – I have quitted the active sphere where I have passed some thirty odd years, and have surrendered ambition, either of money-making, or place, or rank, and come over here with one single desire, one single wish – I want to see what’s to be done for Ireland.”
Cutbill lifted his glass to his lips, but scarcely in time to hide the smile of incredulous drollery which curled them, and which the other’s quick glance detected.
“There is nothing to sneer at, sir, in what I said, and I will repeat my words. I want to see what’s to be done for Ireland.”
“It ‘s very laudable in you, there can be no doubt,” said Cutbill, gravely.
“I am well aware of the peril incurred by addressing to men like yourself, Mr. Cutbill, any opinions – any sentiments – which savor of disinterestedness, or – or – ”
“Poetry,” suggested Cutbill.
“No, sir; patriotism was the word I sought for. And it is not by any means necessary that a man should be an Irishman to care for Ireland. I think, sir, there is nothing in that sentiment at least which will move your ridicule.”
“Quite the reverse. I have drunk ‘Prosperity to Ireland’ at public dinners for twenty years; and in very good liquor too, occasionally.”
“I am happy to address a gentleman so graciously disposed to listen to me,” said Bramleigh, whose face was now crimson with anger. “There is only one thing more to be wished for – that he would join some amount of trustfulness to his politeness; with that he would be perfect.”
“Here goes, then, for perfection,” cried Cutbill, gayly. “I ‘m ready from this time to believe anything you tell me.”
“Sir, I will not draw largely on the fund you so generously place at my disposal. I will simply ask you to believe me a man of honor.”
“Only that? No more than that?”
“No more, I pledge you my word.”
“My dear Bramleigh, your return for the income-tax is enough to prove that. Nothing short of high integrity ever possessed as good a fortune as yours.”
“You are speaking of my fortune, Mr. Cutbill, not of my character.”
“Ain’t they the same? Ain’t they one and the same? Show me your dividends, and I will show you your disposition – that’s as true as the Bible.”
“I will not follow you into this nice inquiry. I will simply return to where I started from, and repeat, I want to do something for Ireland.”
“Do it, in God’s name; and I hope you ‘ll like it when it ‘s done. I have known some half-dozen men in my time who had the same sort of ambition. One of them tried a cotton-mill on the Liffey, and they burned him down. Another went in for patent fuel, and they shot his steward. A third tried Galway marble, and they shot himself. But after all there ‘s more honor where there ‘s more danger, What, may I ask, is your little game for Ireland?”
“I begin to suspect that a better time for business, Mr. Cutbill, might be an hour after breakfast. Shall we adjourn till to-morrow morning?”
“I am completely at your orders. For my own part, I never felt clearer in my life than I do this minute. I ‘m ready to go into coal with you: from the time of sinking the shaft to riddling the slack, my little calculations are all made. I could address a board of managing directors here as I sit; and say, what for dividend, what for repairs, what for a reserved fund, and what for the small robberies.”
The unparalleled coolness of the man had now pushed Bramleigh’s patience to its last limit; but a latent fear of what such a fellow might be in his enmity, restrained him and compelled him to be cautious.
“What sum do you think the project will require, Mr. Cutbill?”
“I think about eighty thousand; but I’d say one hundred and fifty – it’s always more respectable. Small investments are seldom liked; and then the margin – the margin is broader.”
“Yes, certainly; the margin is much broader.”
“Fifty-pound shares, with a call of five every three months, will start us. The chief thing is to begin with a large hand.” Here he made a wide sweep of his arm.
“For coal like that yonder,” said Bramleigh, pointing to the specimen, “you ‘d not get ten shillings the ton.”
“Fifteen – fifteen. I’d make it the test of a man’s patriotism to use it. I ‘d get the Viceroy to burn it, and the Chief Secretary, and the Archbishop, and Father Cullen. I ‘d heat St. Patrick’s with it, and the national schools. There could be no disguise about it; like the native whiskey, it would be known by the smell of the smoke.”
“You have drawn up some sort of prospectus?”
“Some sort of prospectus! I think I have. There’s a document there on the table might go before the House of Commons this minute; and the short and the long of it is, Bramleigh” – here he crossed his arms on the table, and dropped his voice to a tone of great confidence – “it is a good thing – a right good thing. There ‘s coal there, of one kind or other, for five-and-twenty years, perhaps more. The real, I may say, the only difficulty of the whole scheme will be to keep old Culduff from running off with all the profits. As soon as the money comes rolling in, he ‘ll set off shelling it out; he ‘s just as wasteful as he was thirty years ago.”
“That will be impossible when a company is once regularly formed.”
“I know that, – I know that; but men of his stamp say, ‘We know nothing about trade. We have n’t been bred up to office-stools and big ledgers; and when we want money, we get it how we can.’”
“We can’t prevent him selling out or mortgaging his shares. You mean, in short, that he should not be on the direction?” added he.
“That’s it, – that’s exactly it,” said Cutbill, joyously.
“Will he like that? Will he submit to it?”
“He ‘ll like whatever promises to put him most speedily into funds; he’ll submit to whatever threatens to stop the supplies. Don’t you know these men better than I do, who pass lives of absenteeism from their country; how little they care how or whence money comes, provided they get it? They neither know, nor want to know, about good or bad seasons, whether harvests are fine, or trade profitable; their one question is, ‘Can you answer my draft at thirty-one days?’”
“Ah, yes; there is too much, far too much, of what you say in the world,” said Bramleigh, sighing.
“These are not the men who want to do something for Ireland,” said the other, quizzically.
“Sir, it may save us both some time and temper if I tell you I have never been ‘chaffed.’”
“That sounds to me like a man saying, I have never been out in the rain; but as it is so, there ‘s no more to be said.”
“Nothing, sir. Positively nothing on that head.”
“Nor indeed on any other. Men in my line of life could n’t get on without it. Chaff lubricates business just the way grease oils machinery. There would be too much friction in life without chaff, Bramleigh.”
“I look upon it as directly the opposite. I regard it as I would a pebble getting amongst the wheels, and causing jar and disturbance, sir.”
“Well, then,” said Cutbill, emptying the last drop into his glass, “I take it I need not go over all the details you will find in those papers. There are plans, and specifications, and estimates, and computations, showing what we mean to do, and how; and as I really could add nothing to the report, I suppose I may wish you a good night.”
“I am very sorry, Mr. Cutbill, if my inability to be jocular should deprive me of the pleasure of your society; but there are still many points on which I desire to be informed.”
“It’s all there. If you were to bray me in a mortar you could n’t get more out of me than you ‘ll find in those papers; and whether it ‘s the heat of the room, or the wine, or the subject, but I am awfully sleepy,” and he backed this assurance with a hearty yawn.
“Well, sir, I must submit to your dictation. I will try and master these details before I go to bed, and will take some favorable moment to-morrow to talk them over.”
“That’s said like a sensible man,” said Cutbill, clapping him familiarly on the shoulder, and steadying himself the while; for as he stood up to go, he found that the wine had been stronger than he suspected. “When we see a little more of each other,” said he, in the oracular tone of a man who had drunk too much; “when we see a little more of each other, we ‘ll get on famously. You know the world, and I know the world. You have had your dealings with men, and I have had my dealings with men, and we know what’s what. Ain’t I right, Bramleigh?”
“I have no doubt there is much truth in what you say.”
“Truth, truth, it’s true as gospel! There’s only one thing, however, to be settled between us. Each must make his little concession with reci-procity – reci-procity, ain’t it?”
“Quite so; but I don’t see your meaning.”
“Here it is, then, Bramleigh; here’s what I mean. If we ‘re to march together we must start fair. No man is to have more baggage than his neighbor. If I ‘m to give up chaff, do you see, you must give up humbug. If I ‘m not to have my bit of fun, old boy, you ‘re not to come over me about doing something for Ireland, that’s all,” and with this he lounged out, banging the door after him as he went.
Mr. Cutbill, as he went to his room, had a certain vague suspicion that he had drunk more wine than was strictly necessary, and that the liquor was not impossibly stronger than he had suspected. He felt, too, in the same vague way, that there had been a passage of arms between his host and himself; but as to what it was about, and who was the victor, he had not the shadow of a conception.
Neither did his ordinary remedy of pouring the contents of his water-jug over his head aid him on this occasion.
“I’m not a bit sleepy; nonsense!” muttered he, “so I’ll go and see what they are doing in the smoking-room.”
Here he found the three young men of the house in that semi-thoughtful dreariness which is supposed to be the captivation of tobacco; as if the mass of young Englishmen needed anything to deepen the habitual gloom of their natures, or thicken the sluggish apathy that follows them into all inactivity.
“How jolly,” cried Cutbill, as he entered. “I ‘ll be shot if I believed as I came up the stairs that there was any one here. You haven’t even got brandy and seltzer.”
“If you touch that bell, they ‘ll bring it,” said Augustus, languidly.
“Some Moselle for me,” said Temple, as the servant entered.
“I’m glad you’ve come, Cutty,” cried Jack; “as old Kemp used to say, anything is better than a dead calm; even a mutiny.”
“What an infernal old hurdy-gurdy! Why haven’t you a decent piano here, if you have one at all?” said Cutbill, as he ran his hands over the keys of a discordant old instrument that actually shook on its legs as he struck the chords.
“I suspect it was mere accident brought it here,” said Augustus. “It was invalided out of the girls’ schoolroom, and sent up here to be got rid of.”
“Sing us something, Cutty,” said Jack; “it will be a real boon at this moment.”
“I’ll sing like a grove of nightingales for you, when I have wet my lips; but I am parched in the mouth, like a Cape parrot. I ‘ve had two hours of your governor below stairs. Very dry work, I promise you.”
“Did he offer you nothing to drink?” asked Jack.
“Yes, we had two bottles of very tidy claret. He called it ‘Mouton.’”
“By Jove!” said Augustus, “you must have been high in the governor’s favor to be treated to his ‘Bra Mouton.’”
“We had a round with the gloves, nevertheless,” said Cutbill, “and exchanged some ugly blows. I don’t exactly know about what or how it began, or even how it ended; but I know there was a black eye somewhere. He’s passionate, rather.”
“He has the spirit that should animate every gentleman,” said Temple.
“That’s exactly what I have. I ‘ll stand anything, I don’t care what, if it be fun. Say it’s a ‘joke,’ and you’ll never see me show bad temper; but if any fellow tries it on with me because he fancies himself a swell, or has a handle to his name, he ‘ll soon discover his mistake. Old Culduff began that way. You ‘d laugh if you saw how he floundered out of the swamp afterwards.”
“Tell us about it, Cutty,” said Jack, encouragingly.
“I beg to say I should prefer not hearing anything which might, even by inference, reflect on a person holding Lord Culduff’s position in my profession,” said Temple, haughtily.
“Is that the quarter the wind ‘s in?” asked Cutbill, with a not very sober expression in his face.
“Sing us a song, Cutty. It will be better than all this sparring,” said Jack.
“What shall it be?” said Cutbill, seating himself at the piano, and running over the keys with no small skill. “Shall I describe my journey to Ireland?”
“By all means let’s hear it,” said Augustus.
“I forget how it goes. Indeed, some verses I was making on the curate’s sister have driven the others out of my head.”
Jack drew nigh, and leaning over his shoulder, whispered something in his ear.
“What!” cried Cutbill, starting up; “he says he’ll pitch me neck and crop out of the window.”
“Not unless you deserve it – add that,” said Jack, sternly.
“I must have an apology for those words, sir. I shall insist on your recalling them, and expressing your sincere regret for having ever used them.”
“So you shall, Cutty. I completely forgot that this tower was ninety feet high; but I ‘ll pitch you downstairs, which will do as well.”
There was a terrible gleam of earnestness in Jack’s eye as he spoke this laughingly, which appalled Cutbill far more than any bluster, and he stammered out, “Let us have no practical jokes; they’re bad taste. You’d be a great fool, admiral” – this was a familiarity he occasionally used with Jack – “you ‘d be a great fool to quarrel with me. I can do more with the fellows at Somerset House than most men going; and when the day comes that they ‘ll give you a command, and you ‘ll want twelve or fifteen hundred to set you afloat, Tom Cutbill is not the worst man to know in the City. Not to say, that if things go right down here, I could help you to something very snug in our mine. Won’t we come out strong then, eh?”
Here he rattled over the keys once more; and after humming to himself for a second or two, burst out with a rattling merry air, to which he sung, —
“With crests on our harness and breechin,
In a carriage and four we shall roll,
With a splendid French cook in the kitchen,
If we only succeed to find coal,
Coal!
If we only are sure to find coal.”
“A barcarolle, I declare,” said Lord Culduff, entering. “It was a good inspiration led me up here.”
A jolly roar of laughter at his mistake welcomed him; and Cutty, with an aside, cried out, “He’s deaf as a post,” and continued, —
“If we marry, we ‘ll marry a beauty,
If single we ‘ll try and control
Our tastes within limits of duty,
And make ourselves jolly with coal,
Coal!
And make ourselves jolly with coal.
“They may talk of the mines of Golcondar,
Or the shafts of Puebla del Sol;
But to fill a man’s pocket, I wonder
If there’s anything equal to coal,
Coal!
If there ‘s anything equal to coal.
“At Naples we ‘ll live on the Chiaja,
With our schooner-yacht close to the Mole,
And make daily picknickings to Baja,
If we only come down upon coal,
Coal!
If we only come down upon coal.”
“One of the fishermen’s songs,” said Lord Culduff, as he beat time on the table. “I ‘ve passed many a night on the Bay of Naples listening to them.”
And a wild tumultuous laugh now convulsed the company, and Cutbill, himself overwhelmed by the absurdity, rushed to the door, and made his escape without waiting for more.