Her husband smiled in an uneasy effort after nonchalance, and Lord Semingham shot a quick glance at her out of his observant eyes.
"I should be proud of a friend like you if I were Ruston," he said gently, hoping to smooth matters a little.
Mrs. Dennison ignored his attempt.
"Can"t you see?" she asked. "Can"t you see that he"s a man to--to do things? It"s enough for us if we can help him."
She had forgotten her embarra.s.sment; she spoke half in contempt, half in entreaty, wholly in an earnest urgency, that made her unconscious of any strangeness in her zeal. Harry looked uncomfortable. Semingham with a sigh blew a cloud of smoke from his cigarette.
Tom Loring sat silent. He stretched out his legs to their full length, rested the nape of his neck on the chair-back, and stared up at the ceiling. His att.i.tude eloquently and most rudely a.s.serted folly--almost lunacy--in Mrs. Dennison. She noticed it and her eyes flashed, but she did not speak to him. She looked at Semingham and surprised an expression in his eyes that made her drop her own for an instant; she knew very well what he was thinking--what a man like him would think.
But she recovered herself and met his glance boldly.
Harry Dennison sat down and slowly rubbed his brow with his handkerchief. Lord Semingham took up the pen and balanced it between his fingers. There was silence in the room for full three minutes. Then came a loud knock at the hall door.
"It"s Carlin," said Harry Dennison.
No one else spoke, and for another moment there was silence. The steps of the butler and the visitor were already audible in the hall when Lord Semingham, with his own shrug and his own smile, as though nothing in the world were worth so much dispute or so much bitterness, said to Dennison,
"Hang it! Shall we chance it, Harry?"
Mrs. Dennison made one swift step forward towards him, her face all alight; but she stopped before she reached the table and turned to her husband. At the moment Carlin was announced. He entered with a rush of eagerness. Tom Loring did not move. Semingham wrote on his paper,--
"Use your discretion, but make every effort to keep down expenses. Wire progress."
"Will that do?" he asked, handing the paper to Harry Dennison and leaning back with a smile on his face; and, though he handed the paper to Harry, he looked at Mrs. Dennison.
Mrs. Dennison was standing by her husband now, her arm through his. As he read she read also. Then she took the paper from his yielding hand and came and bent over the table, shoulder to shoulder with Lord Semingham. Taking the pen from his fingers, she dipped it in the ink, and with a firm dash she erased all save the first three words of the message. This done, she looked round into Semingham"s face with a smile of triumph.
"Well, it"ll be cheap to send, anyhow," said he.
He got up and motioned Carlin to take his place.
Mrs. Dennison walked back to the window, and he followed her there. They heard Carlin"s cry of delight, and Harry Dennison beginning to make excuses and trying to find business reasons for what had been done.
Suddenly Tom Loring leapt to his feet and strode swiftly out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Mrs. Dennison heard the sound with a smile of content. She seemed to have no misgivings and no regrets.
"Really," said Lord Semingham, sticking his eye-gla.s.s in his eye and regarding her closely, "you ought to be the Queen of Omof.a.ga."
With her slim fingers she began to drum gently on the window-pane.
"I think there"s a king already," she said, looking out into the street.
"Oh, yes, a king," he answered with a laugh.
Mrs. Dennison looked round. He did not stop laughing, and presently she laughed just a little herself.
"Oh, of course, it"s always that in a woman, isn"t it?" she asked sarcastically.
"Generally," he answered, unashamed.
She grew grave, and looked in his face almost--so it seemed to him--as though she sought there an answer to something that puzzled her. He gave her none. She sighed and drummed on the window again; then she turned to him with a sudden bright smile.
"I don"t care; I"m glad I did it," she said defiantly.
CHAPTER VI.
WHOSE SHALL IT BE?
Probably no one is always wrong; at any rate, Mr. Otto Heather was right now and then, and he had hit the mark when he accused Willie Ruston of "commercialism." But he went astray when he concluded, _per saltum_, that the object of his antipathy was a money-grubbing, profit-s.n.a.t.c.hing, upper-hand-getting machine, and nothing else in the world. Probably, again, no one ever was. Ruston had not only feelings, but also what many people consider a later development--a conscience. And, whatever the springs on which his conscience moved, it acted as a restraint upon him.
Both his feelings and his conscience would have told him that it would not do for him to delude his friends or the public with a scheme which was a fraud. He would have delivered this inner verdict in calm and temperate terms; it would have been accompanied by no disgust, no remorse, no revulsion at the idea having made its way into his mind; it was just that, on the whole, such a thing wouldn"t do. The vagueness of the phrase faithfully embodied the spirit of the decision, for whether it wouldn"t do, because it was in itself unseemly, or merely because, if found out, it would look unseemly, was precisely one of those curious points with which Mr. Ruston"s practical intellect declined to trouble itself. If Omof.a.ga had been a fraud, then Ruston would have whistled it down the wind. But Omof.a.ga was no fraud--in his hands at least no fraud.
For, while he believed in Omof.a.ga to a certain extent, Willie Ruston believed in himself to an indefinite, perhaps an infinite, extent. He thought Omof.a.ga a fair security for anyone"s money, but himself a superb one. Omof.a.ga without him--or other people"s Omof.a.gas--might be a promising speculation; add him, and Omof.a.ga became a certainty. It will be seen, then, that Mr. Heather"s inspiration had soon failed--unless, that is, machines can see visions and dream dreams, and melt down hard facts in crucibles heated to seven times in the fires of imagination.
But a man may do all this, and yet not be the pa.s.sive victim of his dreams and imaginings. The old buccaneers--and Adela Ferrars had thought Ruston a buccaneer modernised--dreamt, but they sailed and fought too; and they sailed and fought and won because they dreamt. And if many of their dreams were tinted with the gleam of gold, they were none the less powerful and alluring for that.
Ruston had laid the whole position before Baron von Geltschmidt of Frankfort, with--as it seemed--the utmost candour. He and his friends were not deeply committed in the matter; there was, as yet, only a small syndicate; of course they had paid something for their rights, but, as the Baron knew (and Willie"s tone emphasised the fact that he must know) the actual sums paid out of pocket in these cases were not of staggering magnitude; no company was formed yet; none would be, unless all went smoothly. If the Baron and his friends were sure of their ground, and preferred to go on--why, he and his friends were not eager to commit themselves to a long and arduous contest. There must, he supposed, be a give-and-take between them.
"It looks," he said, "as far as I can judge, as if either we should have to buy you out, or you would have to buy us out."
"Perhaps," suggested the Baron, blinking lazily behind his gold spectacles, "we could get rid of you without buying you out."
"Oh, if you drove us to it, by refusing to treat, we should have a shot at that too, of course," laughed Willie Ruston, swallowing a gla.s.s of white wine. The Baron had asked him to discuss the matter over luncheon.
"It seems to me," observed the Baron, lighting a cigar, "that people are rather cold about speculations just now."
"I should think so; but this is not a speculation; it"s a certainty."
"Why do you tell me that, when you want to get rid of me?"
"Because you won"t believe it. Wasn"t that Bismarck"s way?"
"You are not Bismarck--and a certainty is what the public thinks one."
"Is that philosophy or finance?" asked Ruston, laughing again.
The Baron, who had in his day loved both the subjects referred to, drank a gla.s.s of wine and chuckled as he delivered himself of the following doctrine:
"What the public thinks a certainty, is a certainty for the public--that would be philosophy, eh?"
"I believe so. I never read much, and your extract doesn"t raise my idea of its value."
"But what the public thinks a certainty, is a certainty--for the promotors--that is finance. You see the difference is simple."
"And the distinction luminous. This, Baron, seems to be the age of finance."
"Ah, well, there are still honest men," said the Baron, with the optimism of age.