Читать книгу The Strange Vanguard - Arnold Bennett - Страница 11

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Lord Furber stood and then sat down. He lighted a cigar and immediately threw it away. The Titan was nervous before Harriet. He felt that he was still sitting for an examination and must pass it, if possible, with honours.

He said to her:

“I’m a self-made man—don’t be afraid, I’m not going to give the details of manufacture. Now there’s always something amateurish about anything ye’ve made yeself. I know I’m amateurish, say rough-finished, in parts. That’s enough about that. I began as a mechanical inventor, and from the first my inventions brought me in a lot of money. When I say a lot, I mean a lot. I wasn’t out after money, never have been, but money overtook me and I couldn’t escape it. Royalties on patents, ye know. I went on inventing until I was thirty-five, and then I dried up. I suppose I’d run through the vein. Happens sometimes. You do come to the ends of things. But money rolled in just the same. Even more. One day I found all of a sudden I was worth a million in gilt-edged stuff. That was nothing. To-day if I was reduced to a million again I lay I should think myself a pauper. Ye notice I don’t tell ye how much I am worth. No reason why I shouldn’t; but it’s more effective not to. If ye knew the figure ye wouldn’t be half as impressed as ye are—no matter how big the figure was.”

“Oh! Shouldn’t I!” said Harriet, rising out of her chair and strolling about the room.

“No, ye wouldn’t! And this piling-up business is still going on, and I can’t stop it. Nothing can stop it. I don’t mind telling ye that Henry VII paid all the expenses of governing England out of an income less than mine is. That’ll give ye a notion. People call me one of the new Huns, because I’m so darned rich. Well, I can’t help it. What could I do? I couldn’t refuse my royalties or the interest on my investments. Silly! I couldn’t burn the money. I’ve been asked why I don’t use my money trying to regenerate society. Society’s all wrong, but it can’t be set right by chucking money about. Silly! It can only be set right by common sense, and common sense is a thing money can’t buy. Same with charity. I do a bit of charity, because I’m afraid not to. But I hate it. I don’t believe in it. It only does harm. Some of the New Huns spend their money on social schemes and charity because they’re ashamed of being rich and they want to dope their consciences. I haven’t a conscience, and if I had one it would be a perfectly clear conscience as far as my money’s concerned. So what in hades am I to do? I try all I can not to let my money accumulate. This yacht’s one of my efforts in that line. My wife does her best, too. No good.” He shook his head. “Nobody can spend more than a certain amount, and nobody’s wife can. You see the difficulty?”

“Quite.”

“Then sit down. It’s against nature for a woman to be trapesing about while a man’s in an easy-chair as easy as this one. Sit down.”

Miss Perkins obeyed.

“Please, may I speak?” she asked modestly.

“I haven’t quite finished,” said Lord Furber.

“I only wanted to remind you that I’m not your secretary yet.”

“No. And if ye keep on tapping your feet like that ye never will be.”

Miss Perkins arose and resumed walking.

“Well,” Lord Furber continued, with a sort of deep growling sigh, “as soon as I stopped inventing I began to be bored. Rather a lark to be raised to the Peerage, and waking up the House of Lords. But I got tired of that after a few months. I had to find something to do. If I’d kept on doing nothing, with all my energy, I should soon ha’ been doing nothing in a lunatic asylum. Then I discovered I had judgment—and financial judgment. I found that out by looking into my investments myself, just for something to occupy myself with. I’d always left ’em to stockbrokers before. I soon found stockbrokers were listening to me, instead of me to them. So I took up finance. Great pity, because it made me richer than ever. But if a man has a faculty he must use it.”

“Besides,” said Harriet, “on the whole, I suppose it’s better to be too rich than too bored, isn’t it?”

The baron gazed at her, frowning absently.

“Interested me for quite a time, finance did. But in the end I saw there was no real point to it. Ye see, it isn’t creative, and doesn’t get ye anywhere. Then I simply let my money stew in its own dividends. Then I thought of the press and bought a newspaper. Bought several. Before I knew where I was I’d grown into a press-lord. Imagined I should have power if I owned a few papers, and I expect it’s power I’m after more than anything. Disappointing. Yes. A newspaper must pay. If it doesn’t it’s a toy. I hate toys. If it is to pay it must be read. But the public will only read what it wants to read. So the newspaper owner must keep his ear to the ground. It’s like this. Ye find out what the public’s thinking, and then ye tell ’em they must think just that, and they go on thinking just that, and ye say ye’ve influenced ’em—and call it power. There’s nothing to it. It’s not real. The world will roll on in its own way. Newspaper stunts are childish. Two o’ my papers are now trying to get taxi-fares lowered in London. They may succeed. But lowering taxi-fares isn’t much to sing about for a newspaper enterprise with twelve millions of capital, and charging advertisers £1,400 per insertion for a front page. No, young woman, the power of the press-lords isn’t worth mentioning compared to the trouble they take and the money they make and the infernal worries they have with labour.”

At this moment the bashful under-secretary, Tunnicliff, ventured timorously into the room and stood close to the door awaiting notice.

“Well, my lad?”

“If Mrs. Bumption could speak to your lordship for a moment. She says it’s urgent.”

“Where is she?”

“In the dining-saloon, my lord.”

“All right.”

Mr. Tunnicliff vanished.

“I’ve tried the stage,” his lordship went on, very deliberately and gloomily. “A bit of a bottomless pit, that. And I never was fond of children. Nobody on the stage ever grows up. They’ll spend five shillings on a telegram to tell you they haven’t three halfpence to buy stamps with. They’ll interview you about putting on a play that’s a sure fortune, and they promise to come and read you the thing next day, and ye never hear of ’em again until ye read in the paper they’ve gone to New York to play an English gentleman in a French melodrama; and they don’t come back for ten years. That’s the stage.”

He moved towards the door, thinking: “I’m doing this rather well. It’s a good story. She’s impressed.” Then he stopped.

“There’s racing. Scoundrels behind ye. Snobs in front of ye. If the jockey’s to be trusted the horse isn’t. Ye can have racing.”

“But the cinema!” said Miss Perkins vivaciously. “Surely Providence allowed the cinema to be invented in order that a Lord Furber might exploit it.”

“Young woman,” the baron replied. “Yer tongue’ll get ye into mischief one day.”

“It has done already. I told you.”

“And sooner than ye think for, too. I’ve tried the cinema. I could stand the film kings, and I could stand the film stars. It was the lady continuity-writers that drove me off. They all have flaxy hair and come from Nebraska. No! Ye couldn’t give me the cinema. Well, I suppose I must go and get it over with Mrs. Bumption. She’s the majestic consort of my chief steward. Hell’s delight!” He yawned. “I’m more bored than the prince in the fairy-tale.”

“Your case is serious,” said Harriet.

“It’s more serious than ye think, miss.”

“It couldn’t be, you poor dear!” said Harriet brightly.

The baron went out. But already he was looking forward to the moment when, having pitched Mrs. Bumption overboard, he could return to Harriet. Not that he had any real hope of finding the courage to pitch Mrs. Bumption overboard.

It suddenly occurred to him that he had forgotten one point, and he went back to Harriet.

“I say. A bit ago ye had the impudence to suggest that I was like yeself, taking everything from society and giving nothing. What about my inventions?”

“My fault!” said Harriet. “Honestly, I’d never heard of them. Another grievance, I suppose.”

Lord Furber slammed the door on her. And while talking to Mrs. Bumption he was thinking: “I know the wench’ll end by being my secretary, and I don’t want her to be my secretary. Might as well have a catherine-wheel for a secretary. Could I safely pretend I was only joking when I offered her the job? I wonder if I have impressed her—passed my exam.”