IT was more solemn than anybody suspected. The news from the mines had been good; but it was nothing to what it was going to be. When Mr. Cato came home in the afternoon, two days later, he found a smart brougham at the door. On the hall table lay a card: ‘Baron Blumenstrauss.’ The famous Baron in his house! The drawing-room was empty. He went into the library. There he beheld an elderly bald-headed Jewish gentleman in a white waistcoat, with fat little purple hands clasping his spread knees, gazing with baggy eyes through dishevelled gold pince-nez at Prince Dwala, who lay back in an armchair, lids down, breathing heavily. At Mr. Cato’s entrance, the visitor took off his pince-nez and looked up.
‘It iss an extra-ordinary ting,’ he said: ‘de shendlemann ’as gone to sleep!’
The Prince awoke at this and leaned forward blinking.
‘Pray continue. It is most interesting.’
‘I am not used to ’ave my beesness bropositions receift in soch a way. I am Baron Blumenstrauss,’ he said, turning to Mr. Cato, with gurgling guttural r’s.
‘Yes?... I am Mr. Cato—Mr. Wyndham Cato ... I ... I live here, you know.’
‘Ah—sit down, Mister Cato. I ’ave read your speeches. You are cleffer man; you ’ave ideas; wrong ideas, bot cleffer. What can I do wid a shendlemann dat go to sleep when I make him beesness bropositions? I offer to make him very rich man, he say “rippin’”; I say four hunderd tousand pount a year, he shut his eye; I say fife hunderd tousand pount, he go to sleep.’
‘Five, hundred ... thousand ... pounds!’ ejaculated Mr. Cato faintly, overwhelmed.
‘Effery year.’
‘Why?’
The Baron winked ponderously, with an effort, and smiled with exquisite penetration of Mr. Cato’s labyrinthine slyness.
‘Nod for nussing!’
‘What is the proposition?’
‘Are you de shendlemann’s guardian?’ returned the Baron abruptly.
‘Why no,’ reflected Mr. Cato: ‘I suppose I am not. But I’m his principal adviser.’
‘Ah! I know.’
The Baron rose suddenly, snatching up his white-lined hat and lavender gloves.
‘Well, goot-bye, shendlemen. I haf laties wait for me at home. Adieu, mon Prince.’
‘Good-bye, good-bye,’ said Dwala, with careful intonations: ‘I hope you’ll look in again some time.’
‘Goot-bye, I leaf you to your books, your studies. Goot-bye ... Dis vay?’ he appealed to Mr. Cato, moving towards the door.
‘I’ll see you out.’
‘Goot! You haf charming leetle house. Man can see dat Madame haf excellent taste.’
He stopped at the hat-rack, took down a hat and put it into Mr. Cato’s hand, nodding and smiling.
‘Put him on. You come wid me.’
‘I wasn’t going out.’
‘Come alonk. I make you beesness broposition.’ He hurried him down the steps. ‘Leedle flower’s all dead,’ he said, half glancing at the wintry garden. ‘Half-past seex,’ he added, looking at his watch.
As they bowled along in the smooth brougham, night fell. The Baron talked; Mr. Cato began to see dimly the gigantic outline of the thing that he had done. His mind was still numbed with the vastness of big figures; he hardly perceived the order in which things happened. The Baron had drawn a paper from some recess of the carriage and put it in his hand; he was fascinated by the purple unconscious forefinger striding about it, and the continuous voice in his ear. It was a map, a copy of the map of the Sooching forest made by the lawyers: ‘As shown in the map appended hereto, and marked C,’ he repeated to himself. Yellow squares, and circles and figures in black had grown on the bare centre since he last saw it. The purple blood-gorged finger was running rapidly from pit to pit; they were all full of gold, and the finger was peeping and gloating and chuckling, planning schemes of union and division, conquest and annihilation. The coachman’s steady back looked in with its two silver eyes from the box, like the face of a giant Fate, rumbling and gliding them to inevitable ends.
The burst of a barrel organ brought him to everyday consciousness. The Baron was still talking.
‘“Are de Government mad?” said my friends to me. “Dey might haf taken de whole ting wid deir retchiment of men; and dey let it all go to one shendlemann. An’ now dere can neffer be a war for it; it is brivate broperty. Dey leaf it to de Soochinks? Goot! Someday de Soochinks rebel; dey oppose de Ettucation law, de Tynamite law, de Church law: de Government take it away from dem. Goot! Dat is Bolitics. But dey have made it Broperty: dere is no Bolitics wid Broperty. We shall see big row. De Government will fall.”’
‘They have many things to answer for.’
‘It is solid gold!’
‘Ten thousand butchered Bulgarians lie at their door.’
‘Polgarrians? What are your ten tousand Polgarrians to me, ten hunderd tousand Polgarrians, ten million Polgarrians? A tousand tons of solid gold, I tell you. Dey know nussing, your Government. All de land is one big reef. I haf known it tree munt, you haf known it, efferybody haf known it; but de Government knows nussing, de Brivy Gouncil knows nussing.’
‘Do you mean that the gold runs right across this map, where these marks are?’
‘Natürlich.’
‘Is it a choke? Bah! Den why haf you made soch friends of de Brince?’
‘What’s your proposal?’
‘Wait!’ He put his head out of window and shouted to the driver: ‘Kvicker! Kvicker!’.... ‘I tell you at home. Haf a smoke?’ He held out a fat cigar-case.
‘No thank you.’
‘Take it! take it! Fifty pount a box.’ Mr. Cato still refused.
Gates opened before them; they drove over a gravel court, and ascended broad steps on a red carpet rolled down by footmen.
‘To de English room.’
They flew through a monstrous hall, with three footmen after them; fountains, palms, mosaics, tiles, pillars, galleries, lights; a card-table, dwarfed by the vastness; card-players, lounging men, thin contemptuous women smoking cigarettes. As they bowled rapidly by, the Baron waved flickering red fingers:
‘My exguses laties. Come along Max: beesness!’
A young Jew arose from the table, threw down his cards, made apologies, and followed quickly.
In the English room the Baron cast rapid gestures at the pictures on the walls:
‘Reynolds, Cainsborough, Dicksee, Constable, Leader, Freeth. Come along, Max. Bring champagne,’ he said to the footmen.
‘Not for me, thank you,’ said Mr. Cato.
‘Goot! I will drink it mysailfe.’
They sat in a blaze of electric light, velvet, gold, Venetian glasses; everything exhaled a fat smell of luxury. This was the stunning atmosphere in which the Baron preferred to make his ‘broposition.’ Papers flitted about the table; champagne and diamond rings flickered before Mr. Cato’s eyes.
The Baron planned an amalgamation, a monopoly; harmony and understanding; big handling and cheap production; the sales regulated; the market chosen; the rate of exchange manipulated. A mass of companies, with different names, different directorates, even different supposititious localities.
‘If I call him Cato Deeps, and say he is in Mexico, who knows? who cares? De enchineer? I pay him. De public? De diffidends are all in Treadneedle Street.’
An oscillation of good reports and bad reports, share-prices going up and down, with the Baron and his friends in the middle of the see-saw, and money rolling to them from alternate ends of the plank.
‘Gold is goot, but gompanies are better,’ he said.
But the Baron must have a free hand; it amounted to a purchase, a right to exploit. Everything depended on the Prince, and evidently the Prince depended on Mr. Cato. For the one there waited the 500,000l. a year in perpetuity, guaranteed on his own property; for the other, directorships, fees, shares, pickings at every corner; a safe income of at least ten thousand to be had for the asking. He had only to get the Prince’s consent to the bargain.
Mr. Cato flipped aside the personal question without a word. But for the Prince? 500,000l. a year. No one could reasonably ask more of life. Had he a right to refuse it? But these companies! tricks of promotion! all the garbage of the money market. Had he a right to accept it? He hesitated.
The butler came in, and murmured in the Baron’s ear.
‘Where?’
‘Just outside, sir.’
‘Gif him a smoke, and tell him to vait.’
‘Can I come in?’ said a voice at the door.
‘Aha, cher Duc!’ cried the Baron with brazen-voiced, brutal bonhomie: ‘go to de pilliard room and vait.’
‘Can’t you spare a moment?’
‘Ne voyez-vous pas?’ The bonhomie passed to imperial fierceness. ‘I am peezy!’
‘Well?’ he said, as Mr. Cato still sat plunged in thought. ‘For you it is leetle question—for de Brince, leetle question: it is me or somebody else. Fife hunderd tousand pount, effery year.’
Mr. Cato still pondered. He thought he saw his duty clearing before him.
‘Well? De Duke vaits; I vait. You impoverish de world: you widdraw me from circulation. Is it Yes?’
‘No!’ said Mr. Cato, pushing back his chair. ‘It is No.’
‘Ah?... Who will manage de mines?’
‘The Prince will manage the mines. I will manage the mines.’
‘Goot! You hear, Max? Dis shendlemann will manage de mines.’
Max only stared palely at Mr. Cato. The irony was too great for laughter. He saw a man putting to sea on a plank, unconscious of the deep voice of the gathering tornado; a child going out with a wooden gun to make sport of an angry crowd of sans-culottes.
‘Can I get a copy of the corrected map anywhere?’ asked the Child.
‘Gif him de map, Max,’ said the Baron, with a short, indulgent laugh. ‘My secret achents haf brepared it, Mr. Cato. Gif him de figures, all de papers. Let him haf efferyting. Goot-bye, Mr. Cato. See him to de carriage, Max.’
‘I’ll walk, thank you.’
‘Better drive. Goot-bye.’
‘You will haf deeficulties, Mr. Cato.’
Mr. Cato went home by omnibus. His heart sank as he looked at the map, divorced from the purple finger.
There is lightheartedness in great conflict: we see the larger outline; our forces are fed by the consciousness of it. A field of gold, still in possession; a thing still to sell, if need be: it was an impregnable position. But courage is needed after the battle; we see partially, at short range. To have rejected a magnificent offer, to have so little in its place—some papers, an idea, a consciousness that needed an atlas to explain it. To have rejected the proposals of confident authority creates a helpless mid-air terror; that is the power of religions. Mr. Cato felt like a heretic of the Middle Ages, wondering, on the way to the stake, if after all the Pope were not right.
He went straight to his bedroom; walked up and down in his slippers, lay awake for hours in long moods of elation and depression, and fell asleep at last very cold.