Читать книгу Gerald Cranston's Lady - Gilbert Frankau - Страница 32

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The meal, served under the presidency of an antiquated butler by two not particularly efficient maids, was of the simplest. Eating it, Cranston continued to meditate. The Rorkton poverty, it seemed to him, was an unnecessary poverty. Take Alan, for instance. What right had Alan to sponge on his father? “Good Lord,” he thought, listening to the boy’s drawl, “if only I’d had that youngster’s advantages!”

All the same, Hermione’s family had their points. Rich or poor, old aristocrats or new democrats (he realized, listening to their conversation, how much more democratic they were than himself), these people possessed poise, balance, self-certainty, a traditional discipline. Therein—and in a communal tenacity of purpose, which found its expression for the most part through a dry whimsical humor—lay the secret of the power they still wielded: a power political rather than economic, tending—or so it appeared from the earl’s conversation—neither to the extreme Right nor to the extreme Left, but definitely toward a compromise between the two.

“This country will never do any good,” said Hermione’s father, sipping at his inevitable barley-water, “until we get back to party politics. The present system gives too much power to the few, too little to the many.”

“I rather agree.” Doxford, having echoed his father, turned to the silent Cranston. “Don’t you, Gerald?”

“Frankly,” Cranston spoke with his usual directness, “I’m not particularly interested in politics. It always seems to me that industry is infinitely more important than legislation. And in industry, power must belong to the few.”

“To men like yourself, eh?” laughed Doxford.

“Precisely. After all, industry depends on discipline.”

“Industry, though,” one of the aunts chipped in, “will have to be humanized.”

“We must organize our industrial armies before we can humanize them,” retorted Cranston.

“Militant capitalism!” Doxford returned to the attack. “But your industrial armies won’t tolerate conscription. You can’t run a peace like you run a war.”

“Why not? In principle, peace and war are the same. You can’t discipline soldiers if you abolish the death-penalty for cowardice; and you can’t discipline civilians if you abolish the penalty of starvation for idleness and inefficiency.”

“I admit,” objected the earl, “that if you once pay the average man to idle, he will idle. All the same, you can’t, in a Christian community, let your inefficients, or even your idlers, starve to death. Besides,” with a slow smile at his youngest son, “what would happen to the Household Cavalry if our friend Gerald refused them their rations on the ground that they never did any work?”

Battle along these lines continued, amiably enough, till Hermione—once more acutely conscious of her husband’s dissimilarity from the men of her own kind—signaled aunts and cousin to withdraw; and, the Honorable Alan excusing himself after one hasty glass of port, Cranston found himself alone with Doxford and his father-in-law. Then, as the hall-door closed softly behind his youngest son, and the departing chug of a taxi carried in through the worn velvet curtains of the dining-room to the candle-lit mahogany table, the earl changed the conversation.

“It’s a pity about Alan,” he said. “If he resigns his commission, it’ll be the waste of a promising career. His colonel tells me he’s a born cavalry officer; but what’s the good of being a born cavalry officer when you can’t afford to live like one? Don’t you agree, Gerald?”

Cranston, premeditating how best to introduce the subject of the directorship, merely nodded. Doxford, however, tilting the decanter for the second time, put in: “Aren’t you taking the matter a little too seriously, Father? Soldiering is more of a blind alley than a career nowadays.”

“Not so blind an alley as a mythical orange-grove,” retorted the earl. “At least, not for Alan. We’ve to remember, you see”—he looked at his new son-in-law as though to say, “You’re one of us now, and we keep no secrets from you”—“that the boy is one of the weaker vessels. He needs discipline, that particular kind of discipline which boys only get in a good regiment. That’s why, quite apart from the difficulty of finding capital to set him up in a plantation, I’d make almost any sacrifice to keep him with the cavalry.”

“It doesn’t seem to me, Father”—Doxford’s voice, to the carefully listening Cranston, sounded somewhat brusque—“that any further financial sacrifices should be necessary. If Alan were only reasonably careful, five hundred a year and the present rates of pay should more than suffice his needs.”

“They should,” agreed the earl. “But unfortunately they don’t. Recollect—you’ve your mother’s money, Cyril....”

Followed a silence, broken by Cranston’s sudden intervention, “I hope you won’t think it presumptuous of me, sir; but, how much more does Alan require?”

“I should say”—the earl’s fine ringless fingers toyed uncomfortably with his cigar, while the viscount’s steel-gray pupils glanced well-bred surprise across the table-cloth—“that another fifty pounds a quarter ought to see him through. With luck, he’ll get his captaincy next year.”

Followed another, longer silence; during which it became fairly obvious to the new member of the family that he would need considerable tact to avoid giving offense.

“It’s a most curious coincidence, sir,” he began gingerly, “and I do hope that both you and Cyril will understand it is purely a coincidence, that I should have been wondering, during the greater part of the evening, whether by any chance I could persuade you to accept the identical sum you have just mentioned.”

“Persuade me?”

“Persuade Father?”

The earl’s and his son’s eyebrows lifted simultaneously; but Cranston, unperturbed, went on in frank, businesslike phrases to propound his scheme. “You understand, of course, sir,” he ended, “that should you accept this directorship, you will not only be benefiting Alan, but conferring a great favor on me.”

“Quite so.” Hermione’s father, who had listened without comment, took a slow puff at his cigar. “Quite so, Gerald.”

The earl’s decision, however, tarried—till eventually, having asked several shrewdly pertinent questions, to which and their answers his eldest son listened like a judge on the bench, he proposed adjournment to his library. “I wonder if you’d mind making our excuses to the ladies, Cyril,” he suggested as the three of them rose from the dinner-table.

The library, which led out of the dining-room, was a chill, rather poverty-stricken apartment; and Cranston, eying its soiled carpet as he settled his long body, at its owner’s bidding, in an ill sprung leather arm-chair set sideways to the ill polished mahogany desk, found the old man’s hesitation difficult to understand. “What’s he brought me in here for?” thought Cranston, lifting his eyes from the carpet to inspect the fine features which showed care-worn in the light of a green-shaded reading-lamp. “If I were in his position, Alan or no Alan, I shouldn’t have thought twice about accepting an extra two hundred a year.”

Cranston’s father-in-law, however, was not Cranston. “If you don’t mind,” he began, to the other’s surprise, “we’ll leave the question of the directorship in abeyance till we’ve discussed another little matter. The matter of Hermione’s boy! Hermione and Cyril”—the veined hands played with a paper-knife—“have always been rather at loggerheads on the subject of her first marriage. That’s why I took the opportunity of getting rid of him. Cyril, you see, regards the baby as a Cosgrave liability. That would be all very well if the Cosgraves were willing to see things in the same light. Unfortunately, they don’t. The responsibility, therefore, is yours and mine. You remember, perhaps, our previous conversation on that point?”

“Perfectly, sir.” It had taken Cranston, his mind still concentrated on his business, a full quarter-minute to follow his father-in-law’s new drift; and as the old man, his innate tact skating gracefully over the thinnest of thin ice, went on: “You will remember, too, that when your marriage to my daughter was originally on the tapis, I suggested that your simplest way of shouldering the responsibility in question would be by a legal settlement?” it took him yet another quarter-minute to realize the full extent of the earl’s diplomacy.

“I believe you did make some such suggestion, sir,” he answered, after a pause.

“You, however, if my memory serves me,” continued the old-fashioned diplomacy, “vetoed that suggestion on the ground that it would tie up too much of your capital. Naturally”—the paper-knife tapped diffidence on the desk-top—“if the grounds of that veto still hold good, I have nothing further to say. If, on the other hand, as I rather gathered from the talk we have just had, your affairs are prospering, it certainly does seem to me—human life and human marriage being what they are—that Cosgrave’s boy, and if possible my daughter, should be safeguarded by some such method as the one I originally proposed.”

The paper-knife ceased its tapping, the earl his speech; and for the second time that day Gerald Cranston felt himself confronted by a power greater than his own. The adequacy of that power, the smooth method of its wielding, irritated him. “The old man’s trying to drive a bargain,” he thought. “If I’ll make a settlement, he’ll join the board.” Nevertheless, the selflessness of the bargain—the sheer altruism of his father-in-law’s demands—was impressive.

“Hermione and the boy are both provided for in my will, sir,” he hedged.

“I realize that, my dear Gerald; and I realize”—the modulated voice was friendly—“that the provisions of your will are extremely liberal. All the same, my original view—more especially having regard to our conversation after dinner—has not altered.”

“Do I understand, then”—Cranston, undecided, continued to hedge—“that you insist....”

“Pardon me”—the earl’s voice grew a shade less friendly—“there is no question of insistence. Even had I the right, I should not insist. Under any circumstances, I should only suggest, though perhaps a little more strongly if I were an associate in your commercial enterprises, instead of merely your father-in-law, that a man’s obligations toward his wife—and in your particular case toward his wife’s child—are at least as important as his obligations toward his business. As a business man, moreover—forgive me the further suggestion—you should be the first to recognize that a will is a revocable document, whereas a legal settlement ...”

The purposeful sentence did not finish; and for an appreciable time the two men’s eyes clashed, young blue against old gray across the projected radiance of the reading-lamp.

At last, more in courtesy than as a sign of decision reached, the younger man asked: “And if I were to agree to make a settlement, sir, how much, in your opinion, would be reasonable?”

“The amount”—the elder man’s eyebrows lifted—“would be for you to decide. On the one hand, it must not be so heavy as to handicap your business operations; yet, on the other, it should be sufficient—according to my idea—for the boy’s maintenance, and, in case of need, Hermione’s.”

“Naturally, sir.” Cranston’s tone continued courteous, and the earl’s eyebrows resumed their normal position. “I take it, too, that in the event of Arthur Cosgrave dying before his mother, the suggested settlement would revert to her.”

“Presumably.” The earl, his point driven home, relaxed. “But that, also, would be for you to decide. I don’t pretend to be a lawyer. So long as you admit the principle of a settlement, I should be quite content to leave the details to some trustworthy firm of solicitors—say Poole, Cartwright & Poole.”

“I’m afraid”—Cranston smiled rather grimly—“that Poole, Cartwright & Poole don’t approve of my methods. We had some correspondence recently, about their neglect of Hermione’s, or rather Arthur’s property.”

“Then by all means, Gerald,” the earl rose as he spoke, “have your own solicitors. And please don’t think, or let them think, that I’m trying to rush you into this decision. There’s no hurry whatsoever. Consider the matter at your leisure, and, when you have considered it, do as your conscience dictates. Meanwhile”—he moved toward a safe in the far corner of the room and began fumbling in his pockets for the key of it—“since I’ve presumed to give you my advice on one subject, here’s another on which I’d be very grateful for yours. These documents”—the safe had opened without difficulty, and its owner, having extracted certain papers and relocked it, was now returning to his desk—“are all I have to show from my last—I may say my only—adventure in the City. Marankari Concessions—you will see, if you refer to the top document, that Marankari lies south of Gantam in the northern provinces of Nigeria—failed rather through lack of capital than through lack of inherent value. Given capital, I am convinced that the tin, to say nothing of the other minerals on the property, could be mined at a considerable profit. Anyway, the lease—my lease—for, quixotically perhaps, when the original syndicate ran out of money, I decided it my duty to recoup the poorer shareholders out of my own pocket—still holds good....”

“I’m afraid, sir,” interrupted Cranston, scrutinizing the documents, “that my advice won’t be of much value. I know nothing about tin—and still less about Nigeria. I can make some inquiries, if you wish me to——”

“Do so, by all means.” The earl, rising for the second time, signified the unsatisfactory interview almost at an end. “And when you have an hour to spare, go through the papers yourself. You’ll find them, I can promise you, rather an interesting study. According to Ibbotsleigh’s report on the main lode, Marankari Concessions ought to be worth a fortune.”

“Ibbotsleigh!” Cranston, too, rose. “Is that the Ibbotsleigh I know—Gordon Ibbotsleigh?”

“Yes.” The earl turned back to his desk. “I had a letter from him on the subject a day or two ago. He asked me—as far as I can recollect—if it wouldn’t be possible to resuscitate the original little company and send him out to continue boring operations. He estimates—I’ll put my hand on his letter in a minute or two—that another five thousand pounds, carefully expended, might easily expose sufficient ore (cassiterite, he calls it) to justify a small flotation. Personally, I rather doubt if five thousand would be enough. Still, I’ve the greatest faith in Gordon Ibbotsleigh....”

The old man continued to testify his faith in the engineer and to search the dusty pigeonholes for his letter, till a discreet knock and the antiquated butler’s face peering through the library doorway to announce, “Her ladyship asked me to tell your lordship that Mrs. Alastair Rawley and Miss Cynthia Rawley are about to take their departure,” interrupted the processes. Then, with a resigned, “I’m afraid that means we’ll have to join the ladies,” he abandoned his search and led the way up-stairs.