CHAPTER XX
THE QUORLEY GRANITE COMPANY
I awoke gloomy enough, and found my lonely breakfast a very cheerless meal. After it I set myself to think out Angel's departure, and my consideration of the matter gave me reason to call myself a fool many times. My blindness now seemed to me incredible. I could only think that my first impressions of Angel as almost a child, wearing her hair in a plait, had crystallized into a fixed idea about her, and that, like all fixed ideas, blinding. I was not so vain as to believe that she was suffering from a serious passion; but it was plain beyond disguising that she had been cherishing a girlish fancy for me. Why else had she shown herself so jealous of Dorothy Delamere? In what else lay the explanation of her fits of brooding and restlessness? In the course of a few weeks' absence the fancy would assuredly fade; but it hurt me a good deal to think that she had been suffering all this while through my stupidity. I could easily have set her mind at rest about that little lump of foolish vanity, Dolly. I could only console myself by the thought that if I had discovered that fancy sooner our life at the Temple must the sooner have come to an end.
I turned to wondering what she was doing, and where she had gone. I had very little fear that, for all her beauty, she would come to any harm, for besides her earlier experience of London, she had learned a good deal more of life from us during the last months; her housekeeping had taught her the price of things; she had a balance of nearly twenty pounds in the bank; and that I could replenish. I began to wonder how long it would be before her anger cooled, and she let me know where she was. Then of a sudden an ugly doubt whether she would let me know where she was, at any rate for some time, chilled me. Knowing her as I did, I saw that though her anger might cool, her pride might very well keep her hiding away from me. I thrust the hateful thought away, and assured myself that things would not turn out as bad as that. I fell to regretting that she should be away from me and unhappy. A flight to solitude is no way to deal with unhappiness. Then I got gloomily to my work.
I did but little, and that bad. At one I went off to the club to lunch, with a strong sense of relief at leaving my desolate—desolate was the word—rooms. I had found Angel's absence distressing when she went away to attend to Mrs. Jubb; but then I had been sure of her quick return; this was very different. I went out far a brisk walk round the park after lunch, and when I came back to the club I learned that both Chelubai and Bottiger had been looking for me, and I was reminded that I should have to find for them some reason for Angel's absence. I should not like to say that I avoided them, but it fell out that it was not till the third morning that Chelubai found me at home. After a decent amount of desultory talk about the General Philanthropic and Quorley Granite Companies, talk in which I took a snappish and cantankerous part, he asked me, with a timidity which looked very odd in him, where my sister was.
"She's gone away for a change. The spring in town is trying to growing children," I said, keeping as near as I could to the truth.
He sighed and said, "Will she be back soon?"
"I don't know, and I don't think that she has made up her mind."
"Where is she?" he said diffidently.
"I don't know where she is to-day, or where she will be to-morrow. She's on the move," I said, still hugging the truth.
"Where will a parcel find her? I've found some new chocolates, made by a new Italian, and they're quite wonderful. I want to send her a box."
"Then I shan't tell you where she is," I said firmly, seizing the chance. "For one thing, I will not encourage you in filling the child's head with nonsense."
Chelubai protested sorrowfully, and then he protested angrily, but I was not to be moved. Bottiger, who assailed me later in the day, found me no less inexorable. Unhappy myself, I ought to have been touched by their unhappiness; but I was not; I rather hugged the thought of it to myself, and drew from it a cold comfort. And I was indeed growing unhappy; each day I was missing her more and more. I could not bear my rooms after twilight began to fall, and I hated coming back to their emptiness at night. I had never realized that she filled so much of my life. I began to learn, too, and late enough, that my fondness for her was a good deal more than brotherly. Assuredly, I was beginning to hunger for her as no brother hungers for the companionship of a sister. Once more I cursed myself for a blind idiot.
On the fifth morning I came to breakfast to find a letter from her lying beside my plate, and my heart leaped at the sight. I tore it open, and my heart sank to see that there was no address. It ran:
My hopes raised by the sight of the letter sank again; there was much too much gratitude in it for me. I read it again, trying to read between the lines. There was nothing to read between them; she was ashamed of her seeming thanklessness, and trying to make amends for it; that was all there was to it. But I was pleased that she did not seem to think that her actual anger needed defence; plainly she held to her right to take exception to my lunching with Dorothy Delamere, and I wanted her to hold to that right. But I was vexed and discouraged; I did not want her gratitude; I wanted much more, and above all, I wanted the opportunity of getting much more. To all seeming this opportunity was to be denied me.
I put the letter in my case, and looked at the envelope. The postmark was Euston, and one might post at Euston from Bloomsbury, or from North London, or starting on a journey. Plainly I was to hear no more from her for a long while. Should I set about seeking her? Since I could gain nothing by doing nothing, I would; and action might soothe the restlessness which was beginning to invade me. However, the affairs of the Quorley Granite Company grew pressing and filled my days. There were conferences with Morton and Pleever; there was the careful mastering of the details of Pudleigh's deliberate mismanagement of the company, in case I should be called upon to arrange the present Board of Directors; and there was the arranging of our measures to secure the control. In this Pleever was one of the greatest helps to us. With a serene but senseless confidence in the underpaid, Pudleigh left all the matters connected with the Granite Company in his hands. He never interfered in the matter save to find fault with Pleever's work; and Pleever entered into our plans without a scruple. So it came about that Pudleigh never saw our special resolution to dismiss the directors and appoint new ones, and Pudleigh's nominees on the board, Pratt and Wiggins, were kept in an equal ignorance. I warned Honest John Driver by letter, and Gutermann by word of mouth, not to tell Pudleigh of it, though there was little chance of either of them meeting him; and it seemed likely that he would know nothing about it till he came to the meeting. We did not want him to try to allot the rest of the shares of the company to his clerks, or play any like financial trick upon us by way of giving needless trouble.
Two days before the meeting Pudleigh did give a little thought to the matter. He gave Pleever instructions to arrange that the two directors who retired, by the articles of association, should be Driver and Gutermam, and when they presented themselves for re-election they were not to be re-elected, but two more of his clerks, Davis and Gay, were to be elected in their places. Also he bade him transfer Angel's shares to his name. Pleever asked for the transfer; but when Pudleigh told him that that would be all right, he said no more about it; only he waited for the transfer before making the change.
Though this affair kept my mind at work, my temper during those days grew worse and worse. I treated Ghelubai and Bottiger with contumely whenever they introduced by roundabout ways the question of the return or the whereabouts of Angel, till they grew chary indeed of introducing it at all. And so far from my coming to feel sympathy with these companions in misfortune, for the time being I hated them for daring to share it. I preserved a cantankerous demeanor at the club, and I came to the meeting of the company spoiling for a fight, burning to dance on the prostrate Albert Amsted Pudleigh.
It was held in a room at the Moorgate Street Hotel, and the attendance was small. There was a little band of Pudleigh's clerks, three or four hangers-on of Honest John Driver and Gutermann, half a score of small, burred shareholders from the north, and ourselves. I had not seen Albert Amsted Pudleigh since the evening on which he had danced down the steps of Driver's office, and he had changed very little. Possibly he was a little greasier; the copper shade of his complexion was possibly a little darker; I could not be sure. But I was surer than ever that Chelubai's failure in philanthropy had been of no service to the world. I sat as near the directors as I could, for I wanted to hear Pudleigh when he read the Agenda paper.
Honest John Driver, honester than ever, called on Pleever to read the minutes of the last meeting, and when he had done Pudleigh rose and began the usual speech on the directors' report, or rather on the directors' lament on the conditions of the company. His soothing and apologetic statements were received with loud derision by the little group of shareholders from the north, worthies, doubtless, from the neighborhood of Quorley, who knew the quarry to be a good property, and had invested their savings in it. He grew very angry under their interruptions, and when he had done he had reason to grow angrier, for a savage old gentleman, with a strong northern burr in his speech, sprang up and abused him roundly for his disgraceful mismanagement of the company. Pudleigh's clerks tried to shout him down; they might as well have tried to shout down a northwesterly gale. His friends applauded him, and so did we. Pudleigh's little eyes moved quickly about the room from one to another of us; and when the old gentleman had done, he rose, looking very truculent, and asserted that the directors had done everything in their power to make a success of the company.
Two or three more northern shareholders rose and abused him, and again he rose and said even more truculently that he had said his say, and that if the shareholders did not like it the remedy was in their own hands, they could elect fresh directors. He did not know it, but he was speaking the truth.
There was no little uproar, but after a while Honest John Driver declared the report passed. Then Chelubai rose and moved the resolution, of which he had given notice, to remove the present directors and appoint others in their places.
I saw Pudleigh snatch up the Agenda paper, look through it, and lean forward to Pleever.
"What's this? What's this?" I heard him say. "Why didn't you tell me about this resolution?"
"You wouldn't let me," said Pleever. "I came to you about the Quorley Granite Company last Tuesday afternoon, and you said you were too busy with South African Blacking to attend to the matter."
"You ought to have told me! What do I pay you for?" snarled Pudleigh.
Pleever shrugged his shoulders.
"Are the proxies all right?" said Pudleigh.
"They're quite regular," said Pleever.
Pudleigh sat back with an easy air, but he kept looking at Driver and Gutermann with no little suspicion. Then I rose and seconded Chelubai's resolution, and supported it in a short speech, in which I dealt with the maladministration of the company's affairs, and accused the directors of letting its business dwindle and dwindle with a view to getting the property into their own hands for a fiftieth part of its value.
We soon proposed and seconded our men, and after a dispute as to whether they were or were not elected by show of hands, got to voting. Pudleigh sat back with folded arms, plainly in the part of a copper-colored Napoleon of Finance.
But when Pleever read out the result—the election of Chelubai, Bottiger, Morton and myself by between fifty and sixty thousand votes—the little band from the north voted for us to a man—Pudleigh was indeed startled out of his conqueror's attitude.
"You dolt!" he muttered to Pleever. "Didn't I tell you to transfer the vendor's 40,000 shares to me?"
"I couldn't," said Pleever sulkily. "You never gave me the transfer."
Pudleigh sprang up and danced about like a copper-colored india-rubber ball. "I challenge the votes!" he cried. "I demand a scrutiny! I hold the bulk of the shares in the company! I bought the vendor's forty thousand shares months ago!"
Morton rose and said quietly, "I represent the vendor. The shares have never passed out of her possession."
"It's a lie! " roared Pudleigh. "This is a conspiracy—a conspiracy to rob me!"
I rose and said, "Till that sale is proved, I propose to consider myself a duly qualified director, and to act as one."
"So do I," said Chelubai.
The little northern band applauded vigorously, and Pudleigh roared, "I shall fight this—right away to the House of Lords, if I have to!"
"I don't care," I said.
Again there was an uproar and Gutermann rose and came round the table to me, smiling. Pudleigh suddenly rushed round after him, and crying, "This is your doing, you dirty Jew! You think you're going to throw me out! But you aren't, and don't you think it!" He shook his fist in Gutermann's face.
I said very clearly and distinctly, "One more 'ug, ducky."
Pudleigh bounced round and stared at me with bulging eyes; his copper-colored face faded to a red lilac, and then to a mottled mauve; he gasped and collapsed into the nearest chair.
"Now, look here, you rogue," I said, in a low, clear voice, "you set out to rob the wrong orphan. You've had one lesson from her friends down by the Oval; you're trying for another. Let up on it—let up on it."
He stared at me with unbelieving eyes, in which terror and malignity seemed nicely mixed. "My goodness!" he muttered. "My goodness!"
I looked well into his eyes till they fell, and then I said sharply, "You've had everything to do with this company you're going to have. You're out of it. And now make yourself scarce. Go home and keep out of our way. Get out!"
He rose, and looking back at me sidled, stumbling, to the door, and slipped out of it. I thought as it closed behind him that though the General Philanthropic Removal Company might have introduced new methods into business, they were undoubtedly useful ones.