Читать книгу Jorkens Has a Large Whiskey - Edward 18th Baron of Dunsany Plunkett - Страница 7

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At a corner of our window from which we can see the spring, Jorkens was standing. The seasons in London steal so veiled through the streets, so unnoticed and inconspicuous, like four royal ladies lost in a land that is strange to them, that one cannot claim to see spring from every window. From a corner of ours, however, in the dining-room of the Billiards Club, you can see, when you know where to look, the railings of a little enclosure; and there the leaves of the lilac, when the downs far off are rioting with the vernal festival, push out over the top rail, young and shining, to show that they too have heard the strange call and heeded it, and that London has her part in the magic of woods. Jorkens stood there alone, while the rest of us sat at our long table, smoking cigars or whatever else seemed appropriate to put the final touch to our luncheon; some, I regret to say, smoked pipes, which the smarter clubs seldom allow. There he stood, and looked away towards the lilac, with something of the wistful expression with which a man may sometimes watch the approaching footsteps of spring, but a man thirty or forty years younger. What mood or what memories influenced that silent figure I, for one, did not know; nor when he spoke did any of us at the time understand him. “It is something to have had one’s share in all this,” he said.

He said it more to himself than to any of us; and none of us made any comment, nor did one seem called for. We went on with the topic that some of us were discussing, the comparison of various deals in which we had been engaged, the size of properties that had passed through our hands: one had sold three large Rolls cars in a single day; another had been the secretary of some company that had sold a hundred acres of London, and had himself signed the transfer; and, carried away by our commercial emulation, we forgot the lonely figure at the window. Then he himself joined our discussion. “I once had a pretty big property through my own hands,” said Jorkens.

“What was it?” asked one of us.

“Let me explain,” he said, and came over and sat on the arm of a large chair from which he was able to look down the length of our table. “I was in New Orleans a long time ago, looking out for something to handle on a commission basis, though I scarcely thought of anything of the size of the property that I actually did handle.”

“A big property, was it?” came from somewhere along the table, like the little flick of a whip that used to stimulate carriage-horses.

“Big enough,” replied Jorkens. “Well, I was taking a walk outside New Orleans one day, along a little canal that was just an unending flower-bed: large mauve-and-blue flowers lay along its water, and entirely filled it up: butterflies all the way floated upon the warm air, or darted with sudden speed from languorous attitudes. I had found no sort of business in the town; it had seemed too hot for it; and I was turning things over in my mind, when all of a sudden I met the Spaniard, or whatever he may have been: Mexican Jim was his name. He was coming past the solemn grey-bearded trees, for I had come by then to the edge of a forest growing in miles of swamp, and all the trees there are bearded with long growths of grey moss. On the lonely road he took off his great hat, and holding it still in his hand, first sought my pardon for addressing me; and, when I had assured him of that, he asked me if it would be presuming too far upon our momentary acquaintance, were he to ask me to be so generous to a stranger as to give him a match with which to light his cigarro. This I did, while the great trees looked down on us, as though gravely interested in our courtesies. He asked to be permitted to accompany me on my walk, and I said I should be delighted, as indeed I was, for the more people I got to know in New Orleans, the less hopeless should be my chance of getting the handling of some little property on a commission basis; not that I ever dreamed of the magnitude of the property that would actually come my way. I turned back for the city, taking the way that he was going; and as we talked on our walk, I began to see from a certain indirectness with which he answered questions, a certain parrying wherever information might be concerned, that he was interested in business himself. No further than that did I get before the wide avenues of New Orleans came in sight, with their large flowers flaming; and I went to my hotel, and he to wherever he lived. But not the wide sweep of his hat as he bowed before leaving, nor the really magnificent compliments that he paid me, nor his thanks that were like Southern flowers, had evidently repaid the debt that he felt he owed me on account of my match, for he arranged a meeting on the following evening. And when the next evening came, and we had sat on chairs on the verandah of my hotel for an hour, uttering preliminary compliments, while the frogs chirruped on and on in the cool air, he said that it would be a distinguished pleasure to him if he could obtain for me a remunerative avocation that would, if only partly, reward me for my kindness over the match.

“We talked awhile of the river, that river that from the mountains of the North comes down through a continent and whirls round the Gulf of Mexico, and then flows on, without its banks any longer, but still a mighty current, far out to sea. And then he spoke of currents, and of certain sand-banks over which they went, and of shafts of steel that could be driven down into the sand-banks in pairs, with slots that would hold a kind of steel shutter. Perhaps every detail of the technicalities might not have been instantly clear to me, had he not asked my permission to send for a large basin of water; and in this, by currents that he made with his hand, and by sheets of cardboard by which he deflected them, I learned more about the control of ocean-currents than I had thought possible.

“Well, Mexican Jim explained his invention to me, while the little frogs in the night chirruped and chirruped on. And there was business in it, good sound business, as it looked to me, as soon as we got my percentage right. He had suggested 5 per cent for me at first, and I had had to explain that that was only his joke, no such percentage being known in proper business such as we do over here; and in the end he understood, and we got it fixed at ten.”

“And what was the business?” said Terbut.

“I’ll tell you,” said Jorkens. “I’ll tell you as I told Sir Rindle Brindley. I rang him up at Whitehall as soon as I got to England, and I kept on at his secretary till I got him to see I was sane, and then I gradually worked up his curiosity, and in the end I got an interview with Sir Rindle. Of course that took some doing; it took a good deal of doing; but then everything does in business, if you’re going to do it properly. Well, I was shown in to Sir Rindle. I should have liked to have gone a bit slow at first, so that he wouldn’t get scared; but there wasn’t time to do that, so I had to go straight to the point. I told him that I had the selling of a property that was a necessity to the nation, and that I hoped England would get it, but that it did not belong to me, and that the principal for whom I acted might sell it to one of several other countries if I could not negotiate it here. And I told him I wanted a million.”

“A million?” gasped Terbut. “Did he listen to you any more?”

“Certainly,” said Jorkens. “He began to listen then. You see those people think in millions. And it’s not till you begin to talk their talk that they take the least interest in you. He asked what the property was, and then I had to explain to him the method of Mexican Jim for controlling ocean-currents, for diverting them, that is to say, by means of steel shutters that slanted them off from their course. And I had to explain without any basin of water, that had made it so clear to me when Mexican Jim had shown me his method that night in New Orleans. But I got him to understand that a current could be diverted, many degrees from its course, by putting the shutters down in the right place. And, the moment he understood, he stopped me talking; and I saw that it would be easier to get money out of him than time; and he leaned forward and looked at me, and he struck me as being like a large meat-eating fish. And he said: ‘What exactly is it you wish to sell?’

“And I said, ‘The Gulf Stream.’

“Yes, you see, if a man can divert a current, especially near its source, he can send it within reason where he likes, and I wanted England to have it. He couldn’t have sent it down the African coast, but he could have sent it to Greenland or Iceland; and probably could have slipped it through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, if he made a good enough shot. It was to all our interests for England to buy it, and so I told Sir Rindle. If England bought it her climate was safe, while whatever Mexican Jim got for it would be sheer profit, as in that case he would not have to erect a single shutter, but would just leave the Gulf Stream alone.”

“Blackmail,” said Terbut.

“Not in the least,” said Jorkens. “And that was not the view that Sir Rindle took. The Gulf Stream is a natural commodity that has been lying about the sea for years, like whales. Anybody who can has a right to take it; or to divert it, or to use it in any way that he may. A man can’t divert a stream on land, because others are sure to have rights in it; but nobody has any rights in the Gulf Stream. Anyone can do what he likes with it. Sir Rindle never said a word to the contrary. Where he did disagree with me, unfortunately, was about the million. I said that it was a matter of national importance; and he agreed. But he said that the Treasury did not put up large sums merely on that account, and instanced the defences of Scapa Flow before the war, and the struggle that there was to get Dreadnoughts. I could see that he meant what he said and was not merely arguing, so I dropped the price to half, and still he would not look at it. ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘we are practically living on America’s bounty, and have never yet paid a penny for it. It’s their Gulf and it’s practically part of their river; and where should we be without it? No summer to speak of, no harbours open in winter; no better off than Greenland; and probably glad of a visit from a few whaling schooners.’ That was Mexican Jim’s argument, and he argued that an American, and especially anyone living around that Gulf, had a right to do what he liked with their own stream. I don’t say I took that view entirely; it seemed to me a bit hard to freeze us out for the sake of a business deal; but I took that line now to encourage Sir Rindle to do business, instead of looking at me like a large well-fed fish. And Mexican Jim could have done it too; there was no doubt of that; and I didn’t want to see Iceland cutting us out and taking our rightful place, just because the Treasury wouldn’t put up two hundred thousand pounds; for that is what I soon brought it down to: I wasn’t grasping.

“ ‘Do you grudge two hundred thousand pounds,’ I said, ‘to save all our harbours from ice, and to hold back a winter that will last right into April?’

“ ‘Not at all,’ he said, ‘but I should have to explain to ten or a dozen men what you have explained to me, before I could get the Treasury to put up such a sum. And it isn’t too easily explained. I understand it myself,’ he hastened to add, ‘but it’s one thing to do that and quite another to convince several other people. All you’ve explained to me about the slant to be given to the current I should have to pass on second hand, and to people that may or may not be as quick of comprehension as myself.’

“ ‘Then Iceland’s to have our climate?’ I said.

“ ‘I can’t pledge the Treasury to £200,000,’ he answered.

“And I saw that he meant it, and dropped the price to a hundred thousand.

“Well, I’d got him more interested than I’ve told you. He quite saw what it would be to sit in that office with the Thames frozen solid, and I thought I was making some headway with him; but just then his secretary began waving his watch about a good deal, and snapping it open and shut, and I saw that my time was up. I dropped the price to fifty thousand as I got near the door, but he wouldn’t rise to that either, and I went out to the office with the Gulf Stream still unsold.

“It wasn’t only having the property still on my hands that worried me; but it was the fear that if I couldn’t dispose of it here, the Mexican might sell it somewhere else, and we should never see spring come round to our shores again. That was what I was fighting for, as much as anything, the English spring. All very well for Browning, or whoever it was, to say ‘Oh, to be in England now that April’s there,’ but it was my job to keep it there. There wouldn’t have been much April left, but for me. So, you see, when I watch these lilac-leaves shoving out through the railings, they set me remembering the past, and what a weary struggle I had to save them. It was spring in London then, a little further on than it is now; and all St. James’s Park, to which I turned from Whitehall, was flashing and dancing with it. I remember wondering if we should ever get another there; knowing we never should, if Mexican Jim should get another customer and drive down his slanting steel shutters into the Gulf Stream. It made me pretty keen that England should get it, and I wasted no time in abusing them for not being able to see what the Gulf Stream meant to them; it was for me to make them see it, and I concentrated all my thought on that. But who should I try next? That was the immediate question.

“I passed a little man hurrying by with a bag, and knew him for a commercial traveller. I thought how easy it was for a man travelling with samples; nothing to do but open his bag and pull one of them out; but my samples, if only I could get people to see it, were the grass gleaming, the leaves flashing, the birds nesting, the crocuses with their radiant colours below and the pale-blue sky overhead, all given us by the gentle warmth that we borrow without a thought, as we have done year after year, from the Gulf of Mexico.

“Well, I sat down on a seat beside the lake, and considered hard what I should do for it.”

“Do for what?” blurted out Terbut with characteristic bluntness.

“The lake,” said Jorkens. “I wanted to prevent it freezing solid. I knew pretty well what Mexican Jim would be likely to do with the Gulf Stream if I couldn’t get an offer for it in England. And I saw pretty soon that the people to try next would be some big firm in the City. They wouldn’t want the kind of changes that the loss of the Gulf Stream would bring: business is too delicate for that. They didn’t want polar bears ambling down Fleet Street. And these firms would be run by men intelligent enough to understand Mexican Jim’s methods, and the awful effect of them upon London, if put into practice.

“When I had decided on that I didn’t even go home. I went straight to the nearest post office, and telephoned to a man I had once met who was the president of one of those firms that I had in mind, in the City. I got on to his secretary and asked for an interview as soon as possible; a matter of business, I told him, worth twenty-five thousand pounds: that was good enough for the secretary. I arrived at the £25,000 by deciding that whenever I failed to get any definite price for the Gulf Stream from any responsible person I should have to regretfully recognize that that sum couldn’t be got, and start next by asking half, wherever I asked it. Sir Rindle Brindley had refused me £50,000 as I went out through his door, so I started with Evvans at twenty-five thousand. It was no use touting the Gulf Stream round the City at a price that I had found I could not get for it. There was not time for that. Mexican Jim might have got impatient and sold it to Iceland or Greenland, and you’d all be sitting huddled over the fire, and wearing furs even then. Well, I got my interview for the following morning, the only crab being that Evvans appeared to be even a busier man than I wanted, and I wanted a fairly busy one, or he wouldn’t be likely to touch a new thing: the more interests he had, the more likely he’d be to take things up. But Evvans could only give me four minutes.

“So next morning at the appointed time I walked in and found him sitting at his desk, a thin face and intensely bright blue eyes. I walked up to him and shook hands as quick as I could, and sat down where he pointed. ‘It’s about ocean currents,’ I said, ‘and a method for controlling them. How long will it take you to understand my system?’ Rude, but there was no time for courtesies. Mexican Jim would spend an hour over them, before he came to business.

“ ‘A minute,’ said Evvans.

“So I raced through my explanations in a minute, and sure enough he did.

“ ‘Now,’ I said, ‘my senior partner in America can twist the Gulf Stream twenty or thirty degrees out of its course, and within those limitations can send it where he likes. Is it worth £25,000 to England, and will your firm put up that to keep it where it is?’

“His answer surprised me. ‘It is worth fully that to England,’ he said, ‘but there are other and cheaper ways of preventing your friend from tampering with the Gulf Stream.’

“I sat and looked at him, wondering what influence he wielded, whether it stretched as far as the Gulf of Mexico, how he meant to use it, and exactly who would approach my sharp friend in New Orleans and what they would say or do to him; and I often wonder still. And as I sat wondering and Evvans sat saying nothing further, and scarcely even smiling, unless very slightly, I saw that my time was very nearly up.

“ ‘Your firm, then ...’ I began.

“ ‘No,’ answered Evvans. And that was all he said.

“I felt that it was no use trying to bargain with him; and, besides, there was no time. So I thanked him and walked out; and the Gulf Stream was now below £25,000.

“And the next man I tried was Lord Looborough, as he is now. He was chairman of a large concern in the City, and I got an introduction and fixed up a meeting, and went into his office and halved it: I offered him the Gulf Stream for £12,500.

“He was a pleasant, and even a hearty man, and I think that he would have readily put up the money, for he had spent far more than that, without a murmur, on fox-hunting; only I couldn’t get him to see it. I couldn’t get him to understand that, if you headed a current off in a certain direction, that was the direction it would take: he seemed to think that after a bit it would turn round and come home, like a carrier-pigeon or a cat. And I couldn’t get him to remember that he had understood how the current could be diverted by slanting screens: he understood it when I explained it, but kept on forgetting how the thing worked, and I had to explain it all again and again. I knocked off £2,500 to see if that would help him, but at £10,000 (which would have been nothing to his firm) he couldn’t understand it any better than when I was asking £12,500. I suppose I was beginning to be annoyed, but he asked me so pleasantly if I had ever been out with the North and West Middlesex, or one of those smart packs, that I somehow couldn’t be angry; but I was unable to get him to do business, and I left with the Gulf Stream unsold at £8,000.

“I began to wish I was dealing in some smaller commodity, something solid, or liquid for that matter, but more easily handled. It wasn’t its being liquid that I minded. Not at all. Let me see: what was I saying?”

“Waiter,” I said, and indicated what Jorkens wanted. Then Jorkens thanked me with compliments that I suppose I should not put down here. And when he had moistened his mouth he continued his story.

“I saw it was time,” he said, “to go to somebody more definitely concerned than any I had tried yet. All of us in these islands are of course concerned with the Gulf Stream, greatly concerned with it; but I went now to people that actually saw it and sailed on it. I went to the Green-funnel Line. I went to their office in Swampgate and saw Sir Edward Bant and told him about the theory of the control of currents, and he understood at once. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘do you want your harbours frozen?’

“ ‘Well, no,’ he said, pretty thoughtfully.

“ ‘For £4,000,’ I said, ‘the Gulf Stream is yours.’

“ ‘The trouble is,’ he said, ‘and I don’t want you to pass this on to anybody’ (and I didn’t for twenty years, but they went broke years ago and sail the Gulf Stream no longer). ‘The trouble is that we are not paying a dividend this year. That leaves us nothing at all to splash about.’

“ ‘Splash about!’ I said. ‘That four thousand will just save you. If the Gulf Stream goes astray you’ll be broke.’

“ ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but so will a lot of other people too. It’s one thing to be caught in a universal disaster, and quite another to have people pointing you out and saying “That’s the man who’s gone bankrupt.” If all the pipes in my club freeze I trust we shall bear it like men, but it’s quite another matter to be called before the Committee and asked to explain to them one’s financial affairs.’

“ ‘I’ll let you have it for £3,000,’ I said.

“And he refused that too. And I saw how broke he must be; for he clearly understood what the loss of the Gulf Stream meant.

“So away I went with the property still unsold. I was getting to the end of the people I knew in the City and was wondering whom to try next; when, oddly enough, Swinburne helped me. I was in my lodgings pondering what to do, when I idly pulled out of a shelf, low on the wall, a copy of Atalanta in Caledon, and I hadn’t read two pages when, as often happens when you are worrying over anything, a word caught my eye in the book, that was the very word I was thinking of. I read the word gulf-stream: ‘that the sea-waves might be as my raiment, the gulf-stream a garment for me.’ And that gave me the idea to sell the thing to a tailor.

“So I went straight off to the smartest tailor I knew of, and told him that I had a property to sell. ‘What kind of property?’ of course he asked.

“ ‘Wait a moment,’ I said. ‘Do you want to see people going about huddled in furs and all wrapped up in old coats; waists gone, spats gone, tail coats gone?’

“ ‘What’s it all about?’ he asked.

“And then I told him.

“ ‘And it would have that effect?’ he asked. ‘Freeze us all up?’

“ ‘Ask anyone,’ I said. ‘Ring up the Royal Geographical Society. Or merely look at a map and see what kind of countries are on our latitude when they haven’t got any Gulf Stream. There are polar bears in Siberia about the same latitude as Dublin.’

“ ‘What are you asking for it?’ he said.

“ ‘Fifteen hundred pounds,’ I told him. ‘And cheap for what it is.’

“ ‘You know,’ he said, ‘people think that tailors make big profits. And so we do from the best of our customers. But what about those that never pay? And where do our profits all go, those that we do make?’

“ ‘Ground rents,’ I said, for I knew the line of argument.

“ ‘Exactly,’ he said.

“ ‘I’ll let you have it for a thousand,’ I told him.

“And that was no good either.

“I began to see that it was time to leave London and to get to some place that was more in touch with the Gulf Stream, Devon or Cornwall where they could feel the warmth that was sent them across the Atlantic, and probably took some pride in it. One more shop I tried before I gave up London as hopeless, a large jewellers that I happened to come to. I went in and saw one of their principal men. He had to listen to me, because he didn’t know but that I might be wanting some jewellery; and before he found out that I wasn’t, I had explained to him the method of diverting ocean-currents in the shallows near to their sources. Of course he didn’t see what ocean-currents had to do with his business; and I told him that the Gulf Stream, which is not many yards across, could be diverted easier than most of them. It was then that he asked me politely, but rather firmly, what his shop had to do with the Gulf Stream; and I told him something of the climate that is brought north from New Orleans for us. Again the polite question: what had that to do with his firm? But with a little more insistence this time. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I never heard that trade followed the polar bear.’ And he began to see.

“ ‘My partner is offering the Gulf Stream,’ I said, ‘for £500.’

“But he shook his head.

“ ‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘we have to show a profit on our transactions.’

“ ‘Oh,’ I mumbled.

“ ‘Yes, share-holders, you see,’ he told me.

“A profit! As though the plane-trees in the parks, the large beds of hyacinths, the neat swards, the azaleas, the unfrozen Serpentine, the myriads of birds, and the warm air loitering along our streets, were not a profit worth millions per cent on what I was asking. But I saw his point, and lowered my price to four hundred.

“But he was a man with no width of imagination, no length of vision; and I saw that he’d never see the larger issues beyond his immediate profits. So I left him, and left London altogether, and took a train for the West country, with the Gulf Stream priced for my next customer at no more than £200. And he was there in the railway carriage with me, the man that I hoped to be my customer for the Gulf Stream. We were alone in the carriage together, and I got into conversation. He seemed at first sight to be quite a pleasant fellow, though you cannot always tell from appearances. I drew from our conversation that he owned a small villa in Cornwall, a house he had recently bought, in sight of the sea. He seemed the ideal man for my class of business. I began to speak of the warm Cornish climate, of the rare flowers and ferns that grew there, and the sea glistening in April with a brightness little less than the smiles of the Mediterranean. I had never seen it then, but I had read the advertisements. He agreed with all I said, and indeed seemed so keen on Cornwall that I was a little doubtful if he would allow any credit to a Mexican stream like the one I was interested in. But he did, all right, when I mentioned it. He evidently looked on the Gulf Stream as a natural part of Cornwall; which of course it is in a way, it had been lulling that coast and nurturing all its flowers, since Cornwall was first inhabited. So I said, ‘What if icebergs should come that way, drifting by in sight of your villa?’ And he said they couldn’t. And I said, ‘What if the coast froze solid for half a mile out?’ And he said I didn’t know the Cornish coast.

“And then I explained to him the method for diverting the Gulf Stream, in the shallows near to its source, and told him the icebergs would come all right, and that he’d probably be able to feed polar bears from his window; but that for £200 I’d sell him the Gulf Stream and he could keep Cornwall just as it was.

“Do you know, there are all kinds of men in the world, though some of them you hardly expect to meet. Whether he had ever done business with anyone in his life I don’t know, or what he supposed was at the back of my perfectly straight offer, but he sat thinking a moment without speaking, and then stood up with his hand stretched upward and said: ‘Any more of it, and I’ll pull the communication cord.’

“Well, you can’t do business with a man who behaves like that, and I changed my carriage at the next station, and the Gulf Stream was still unsold.

“Somebody a bit more responsible for his actions was what I was looking for now.

“So I decided to get in touch with municipal authority; and this is what I did as soon as we got in, after taking a walk along the beach to pick up local colour, for if you know nothing of a man’s chief interests you usually can’t do business with him.

“Well, I went and saw the Town Clerk; I won’t say of what town, for I didn’t get on very well with him. He probably has his side of the case, but I don’t want to get into correspondence with him about that after all these years, if my words leak out.” And Jorkens looked sidelong at me.

“I said to him: ‘This is the English Riviera. You have a coast-line unrivalled by foreign watering-places, and matchless for beauty and perfection.’ Their kind of talk you know.

“He agreed that this was so. Then I explained to him the theory of ocean-currents, as told me by Mexican Jim. And I thought that I had got him to understand it.

“ ‘I am asking £100 for the Gulf Stream,’ I said.

“Well, either he hadn’t understood it at all, or he refused to believe from my merely verbal credentials that I was the appointed representative of Mexican Jim.

“Best be brief: he was rude; I lost my temper. I lost my temper and was I think more insulting than I have ever been before or since, and you know you can be damnably insulting with the politest words.

“ ‘You’ve got funny little holes in the cliff,’ I said, ‘just by Tregantle.’

“ ‘Rabbit-holes,’ he said hurriedly. As though rabbits would live in a sheer cliff, and square holes at that.

“I oughtn’t to have said it, and I have regretted it ever since; but I had utterly lost my temper. ‘Harbour lights,’ I answered.

“You know there is some story, and I’m afraid it’s true, of Cornish people luring ships to the rocks by putting harbour lights in a sheer cliff. And as a matter of fact that’s what those holes were for. Well, I need hardly say we did no business after that. I was shown out; that is the word for it; and the Gulf Stream was still unsold.

“With the Gulf Stream, as one may say, still in my pocket, I went next to a big hotel and asked to see the manager.

“ ‘Your coast-line,’ I said to him ‘is without rival for excellence; superbly placed as it is in a commanding position, it successfully challenges all claims from continental resorts to provide those conveniences and refinements that the recherchés rightly demand.’

“ ‘Yes, that is so,’ he said thoughtfully.

“ ‘And where would you be without the Gulf Stream?’ I asked.

“And then I explained to him Mexican Jim’s theory and told him that I was his accredited representative, and it wasn’t long before he understood the whole business, and I offered him the Gulf Stream for £50.

“Yes, he understood all right, but he countered with a point that I hadn’t thought of.

“ ‘We’ve central heating in my hotel,’ he said. ‘As good a system as there is on the market. And if it comes to freezing, there’s no hotel in these parts that will be able to compete with us.’

“ ‘But they won’t come to these parts at all,’ I said, ‘except to catch walruses.’

“ ‘Don’t you think it,’ he answered. ‘It’s the fashion to come here in the winter, and if you think icebergs will stop that, you don’t know what fashion is.’

“I dropped it to forty then, but he wouldn’t take it; and lower than that I told him he could not have it, as I wouldn’t cheapen the Gulf Stream.

“But the thing was still on my hands, and as it didn’t seem to fetch £40, I had to cheapen it at the next place; another hotel. This was a much smaller affair, and when I said to the man who was running it that I had come in the interests of the hotels of the English Riviera he didn’t seem very keen, telling me that the hotel I had just left got all the business, and that anything done in support of the tourist trade ought to be done by them. Well, to put it briefly, I told him the whole story, and offered him the Gulf Stream at £20. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand, but he told me that the climate was not what they worked it on; they advertised, and when that was properly done it brought visitors just as well whether there was bright sunshine or whether they only had icebergs drifting through fog. Well, I had to admit that he was right about that, so it was no use bargaining, and without cheapening the Gulf Stream any further I set out once more on my long hunt for a customer. And as I went I saw a man with a large bag covered with labels, who hailed me as soon as he saw me, calling out across the street: ‘Say, can you tell me any little old place where I can get a lodging?’

“ ‘Stranger,’ I said, ‘I sure can.’

“He came across the street to me. ‘I’m sure grateful,’ he said. ‘What’s the name of it?’

“ ‘The name of it,’ I said. ‘Now that’s what I can’t remember, these lodging-houses have such odd names; but I’ll show you just where it is. It’s the best lodging-house on this coast.’

“Well, he thanked me and we went on, and I did what I could for him, which wasn’t too easy, as I’d never been near the place before. But I had a good enough instinct for the part of the town where the lodging-houses would be: it was just where I was going myself. And when I got there I chose, as far as one could choose by exteriors, the one that looked the nicest. ‘There it is,’ I said. ‘The Laburnums.’

“We went up the steps and I rang the bell, and a maid with large blue eyes that should have been looking after sheep appeared out of the dinginess as she opened the door.

“ ‘Is she in?’ I said.

“ ‘Who? Mrs. Smerkit?’ she asked.

“ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘This gentleman would like to see her best rooms, if she’d kindly come.’

“Away ran the maid and called her; and out came Mrs. Smerkit in her sequins and black dress, the perfect seaside lodging-house-keeper, showing that one can judge a whole house by exteriors. Well, she showed us over the rooms, nice rooms looking out over that happy sea that was still being tended and protected from ice and fog by the Gulf Stream, and I took the first opportunity of drawing Mrs. Smerkit aside, while her prospective guest was gazing out at the view.

“ ‘And the price?’ I asked.

“ ‘£3 a week,’ she said hesitatingly.

“ ‘You don’t understand,” I said, ‘and there’s not time to explain. But say £5.’

“A moment’s look of surprise, and then she said it; and we got it all fixed up. The stranger, quite grateful to me, for they really were nice rooms, went to get the rest of his luggage, and I was alone with Mrs. Smerkit. Briefly then I told her what the climate meant to that sunny English coast, instancing the arrival of this new guest from the other side of the Atlantic, and carefully explaining to her the theory of the control of ocean-currents, and told her all about my friend who was waiting for me in New Orleans.

“ ‘Now,’ I said, ‘I am this Mexican gentleman’s authorized agent, and we can let you have the Gulf Stream for £10.’

“She had a real laburnum in her garden and I pointed to it as I spoke, and waved my hand along that sunny coast-line. The laburnum’s buds were just yellowing, and she seemed to see more clearly than any of the men I had spoken to what the Gulf Stream meant to that laburnum of hers, and to the whole of our coast. Though she saw it at once she did not answer at once, but stood there with her arms lightly folded, considering, as I have so often seen one of them considering some question of tariff that a lodger of theirs may have put to her. And in the end the good sensible woman took it. Yes, she saw what it meant to the whole of the tourist traffic, and backed her judgment with ten pounds of her money; and so I sold the Gulf Stream.

“Don’t look at the price of it: look at the size of the property that I handled: look at the value to England of having the Gulf Stream left where that staunch old landlady left it, when the Government of the country and some of the biggest financial houses would do nothing at all in the matter.

“And a few months later I was back again in New Orleans, in connection with another type of business. And I strolled out every morning to the edge of the forest that stood in the swamp, with its trees grey-bearded and brooding, as though they remembered Spain. And I hadn’t gone there more than two or three times when I saw the hidalgo-like figure of Mexican Jim coming along under his great hat. When his elaborate courtesies were over and we came down to mere business, I apologized for the short-sightedness of some of my countrymen, and told him that fifty dollars had been all I could get for his Gulf Stream. Mexican Jim was delighted. Possibly his busy mind had forgotten about it altogether; possibly he had not expected to find an English purchaser, who saved him the time and trouble of moving the Gulf Stream at all, so that that £10 was sheer profit, small though it was, with no expenses except my 10 per cent commission, which he paid me there and then. And many a larger sum I’ve had paid me with less grace, but the receipt of the trivial amount that I had from Mexican Jim is a mellow memory with me yet.

“And there on that road, under the bearded trees, with a sweep of his hat that seemed to carry his thanks beyond the point where words ended, we parted for the last time.”

“But,” began Terbut, and would have developed some theory of his, either about business or currents. But Jorkens had gone back to that window again, and was watching the leaves of the lilac pushing out through those railings, with what almost looked to me like an air of paternal benevolence.