Roden's Corner Part 7

The Villa des Dunes stands, as its name implies, among the sand hills, facing south and west. It is upon an elevation, and therefore enjoys a view of the sea, and, inland, of the spires of The Hague. The garden is an old one, and there are quiet nooks in it where the trees have grown to a quite respectable stature. Holland is so essentially a tidy country that nothing old or moss-grown is tolerated. One wonders where all the rubbish of the centuries has been hidden; for all the ruins have been decently cleared away and cities that teem with historical interest seem, with a few exceptions, to have been built last year. The garden of the Villa des Dunes was therefore more remarkable for cleanliness than luxuriance. The house itself was uninteresting, and resembled a thousand others on the coast in that it was more comfortable than it looked. A suggestion of warmth and lamp-light filtered through the drawn curtains.

Roden led the way into the house, admitting himself with a latch-key.

"Dorothy," he cried, as soon as the door was closed behind them--the two tall men in their heavy coats almost filled the little hall--"Dorothy, where are you?"

The atmosphere of the house--that subtle odour which is characteristic of all dwellings--was pleasant. One felt that there were flowers in the rooms, and that tea was in course of preparation.

The door on the left-hand side of the hall was opened, and a small woman appeared there. She was essentially small--a little upright figure with bright brown hair, a good complexion, and gay, sparkling eyes.

"I have brought Mr. Cornish," explained Roden. "We are frozen, and want some tea."

Dorothy Roden came forward and shook hands with Cornish. She looked up at him, taking him all in, in one quick intuitive glance, from his smooth head to his neat boots.

"It is horribly cold," she said. One cannot always be original and sparkling, and it is wiser not to try too persistently. She turned and re-entered the drawing-room, with Cornish following her. The room itself was prettily furnished in the Dutch fas.h.i.+on, and there were flowers. Dorothy Roden's manner was that of a woman; no longer in her first girlhood, who had seen en and cities. She was better educated than her brother; she was probably cleverer. She had, at all events, the subtle air of self-restraint that marks those women whose lives are pa.s.sed in the society of a man mentally inferior to themselves. Of course all women are in a sense doomed to this--according to their own thinking.

"Percy said that he would probably bring you in to tea," said Miss Roden, "and that probably you would be tired out."

"Thanks; I am not tired. We had a good pa.s.sage, and everything has run as smoothly. Do you take an active interest in us?"

Miss Roden paused in the action of pouring out tea, and looked across at her interlocutor.

"Not an active one," she answered, with a momentary gravity; and, after a minute, glanced at Cornish's face again.

"It is going to be a big thing," he said enthusiastically. "My cousin Joan Ferriby is working hard at it in London. You do not know her, I suppose?"

"I was at school with Joan," replied Miss Roden, with her soft laugh.

"And we took a school-girl oath to write to each other every week when we parted. We kept it up--for a fortnight."

Cornish's smooth face betrayed no surprise; although he had concluded that Miss Roden was years older than Joan.

"Perhaps," he said, with ready tact, "you do not take an interest in the same things as Joan. In what may be called new things--not clothes, I mean. In factory girls' feather clubs, for instance, or haberdashers'

a.s.sistants, or women's rights, or anything like that."

"No; I am not clever enough for anything like that. I am profoundly ignorant about women's rights, and do not even know what I want, or ought to want."

Roden, who had approached the table, laughed, and taking his tea, went and sat down near the fire. He, at all events, was tired and looked worn--as if his responsibilities were already beginning to weigh upon him. Cornish, too, had come forward, and, cup in hand, stood looking down at Miss Roden with a doubtful air.

"I always distrust women who say that," he said. "One naturally suspects them of having got what they want by some underhand means--and of having abandoned the rest of their s.e.x. This is an age of amalgamation; is not that so, Roden?"

He turned and sat down near to Dorothy. Roden thus appealed to, made some necessary remark, and then lapsed into a thoughtful silence. It seemed that Cornish was quite capable, however, of carrying on the conversation by himself.

"Do you know nothing about your wrongs, either?" he asked Dorothy.

"Nothing," she replied. "I have not even the wit to know that I have any."

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed. "No wonder Joan ceased writing to you.

You are a most suspicious case, Miss Roden. Of course you have righted your wrongs--_sub rosa_--and leave other women to manage their own affairs. That is what is called a blackleg. You are untrue to the Union. In these days we all belong to some cause or another. We cannot help it, and recent legislation adds daily to the difficulty. We must either be rich or poor. At present the only way to live at peace with one's poorer neighbours is to submit to a certain amount of robbery.

But some day the cla.s.ses must combine to make a stand against the ma.s.ses. The ma.s.ses are already combined. We must either be a man or a woman. Some day the men must combine against the women, who are already united behind a vociferous vanguard. May I have some more tea?"

"I am afraid I have been left behind in the general advance," said Miss Roden, taking his cup.

"I am afraid so. Of course I don't know where we are advancing to----"

He paused and drank the tea slowly. "No one knows that," he added.

"Probably to a point where we shall all suddenly begin fighting for ourselves again."

"That is possible," he said gravely, setting down his cup. "And now I must find my way back to The Hague. Good night."

"He is clever," said Dorothy, when Roden returned after having shown Cornish the way.

"Yes," answered Roden, without enthusiasm.

"You do not seem to be pleased at the thought," she said carelessly.

"Oh--it will be all right! If his cleverness runs in the right direction."

CHAPTER VII

OFFICIAL.

"One may be so much a man of the world as to be nothing in the world."

Political Economy will some day have to recognize Philanthropy as a possible--nay, a certain stumbling-block in the world's progress towards that millennium when Supply and Demand shall sit down together in peace. Charity is certainly sowing seed into the ridges of time which will bear startling fruit in the future. For Charity does not hesitate to close up an industry or interfere with a trade that supplies thousands with their daily bread. Thus the Malgamite scheme so glibly inaugurated by Lord Ferriby in his drawing-room bore fruit within a week in a quarter to which probably few concerned had ever thought of casting an eye. The price of a high-cla.s.s tinted paper fell in all the markets of the world. This paper could only be manufactured with a large addition of malgamite to its other components. In what may be called the prospectus of the Malgamite scheme it was stated that this great charity was inaugurated for the purpose of relieving the distress of the malgamiters--one of the industrial scandals of the day--by enabling these afflicted men to make their deadly product at a cheaper rate and without danger to themselves. This prospectus naturally came to the hands of those most concerned, namely, the manufacturers of coloured papers and the brokers who supply those manufacturers with their raw material.

Thus Lord Ferriby, beaming benignantly from a bower of chrysanthemums on a certain evening one winter not so many years ago, set rolling a small stone upon a steep hill. So, in fact, wags the world; and none of us may know when the echo of a careless word will cease vibrating in the hearts of some that hear.

The malgamite trade was what is called a _close_ one--that is to say that this product pa.s.sed out into the world through the hands of a few brokers and these brokers were powerless, in face of Lord Ferriby's announcement, to prevent the price of malgamite from falling. As this fell so fell the prices of the many kinds of paper which could not be manufactured without it. Thus indirectly, Lord Ferriby, with that obtuseness which very often finds itself in company with a highly developed philanthropy, touched the daily lives of thousands and thousands of people. And he did not know it. And Tony Cornish knew it not. And Joan and the subscribers never dreamt or thought of such a thing.

The paper market became what is called sensitive--that is to say, prices rose and fell suddenly without apparent reason. Some men made money and others lost it. Presently, however--that is to say, in the month of March--two months after Tony Cornish had safely conveyed his malgamite makers to their new home on the sand dunes of Scheveningen--the paper markets of the world began to settle down again, and steadier prices ruled. This could be traced--as all commercial changes may be traced--to the original flow at one of the fountain-heads of supply and demand. It arose from the simple fact that a broker in London had bought some of the new malgamite--the Scheveningen malgamite--and had issued it to his clients, who said that it was good. He had, moreover, bought it cheaper. In a couple of days all the world--all the world concerned in the matter--knew of it. Such is commerce at the end of the century.

And Cornish, casually looking in at the little office of the Malgamite Charity, where a German clerk recommended by Herr von Holzen kept the books of the scheme, found his table littered with telegrams. Tony Cornish had a reputation for being clever. He was, as a matter of fact, intelligent. The world nearly always mistakes intelligence for cleverness, just as it nearly always mistakes laughter for happiness.

He was, however, clever enough to have found out during the last two months that the Malgamite scheme was a bigger thing than either he or his uncle had ever imagined.

Many questions had arisen during those two months of Cornish's honorary secretary s.h.i.+p of the charity which he had been unable to answer, and which he had been obliged to refer to Roden and Von Holzen. These had replied readily, and the matter as solved by them seemed simple enough.

But each question seemed to have side issues--indeed, the whole scheme appeared suddenly to bristle with side issues, and Tony Cornish began to find himself getting really interested in something at last.

The telegrams were not alone upon his office table. There were letters as well. It was a nice little office, furnished by Joan with a certain originality which certainly made it different from any other office in Westminster. It had, moreover, the great recommendation of being above a Ladies' Tea a.s.sociation, so that afternoon tea could be easily procured. The German clerk quite counted on receiving three half-holidays a week and Joan brought her friends to tea, and her mother to chaperon. These little tea-parties became quite notorious, and there was a question of a cottage piano, which was finally abandoned in favour of a banjo. It happened to be a wire-puzzle winter, and Cornish had the best collection of rings on impossible wire mazes, and gla.s.s beads strung upon intertwisted hooks, in Westminster, if not, indeed, in the whole of London. Then, of course, there were the committee meetings--that is to say, the meeting of the lady committees of the bazaar and ball sub-committees. The wire puzzles and the a.s.sociation tea were an immense feature of these.

Cornish was quite accustomed to finding a number of letters awaiting him, and had been compelled to buy a waste-paper basket of abnormal dimensions--so many moribund charities cast envious eyes upon the Malgamite scheme, and wondered how it was done, and, on the chance of it, offered Cornish honourable honorary posts. But the telegrams had been few, and nearly all from Roden. There was a letter from Roden this morning.

"DEAR CORNISH" (he wrote),--