The Last of Mitchell
There is a great deal of difference between being expelled and “invited to find another sphere for your activities.” In fact, as my father said, if Dr. Dunston had expelled me, he would certainly have made a row about it, and very likely have written to the newspapers.
But old Dunston was a jolly sight too wily for that. He wrote to my father when the event happened, and said that circumstances had come to his ears which made him think, etc., etc., that I had better leave Merivale.
I am Mitchell, and my father is a financier, and I may say that this profession embraces a great many branches.
Sometimes, after dinner in holidays, he has allowed me to stop and smoke a cigarette while he talked to friends, and so I have got a gradual inkling of what it means to be a financier; and, in a way, this inkling was my downfall. Not that I felt it a downfall really to be hoofed out of Merivale; for it was rather a potty sort of show, and I should have gone to a far more swagger place if my father had been flusher just at the time when I had to go somewhere, owing to a trifling bother at another school.
But I went to Merivale, and just because I tried to take advantage of what my father had said about finance and apply it to school life, the difficulties arose.
I gathered off and on from my father, when he was in a talkative frame of mind, that one of the great arts of a financier is to do deals between other people.
For instance, you have something to sell, and my father knows it. And he routs about and leaves no stone unturned, as they say, until he finds somebody who wants to buy just what you want to sell. Then, having found you a customer, my father arranges all the details of the business, and everybody is satisfied, and my father, for all his time and trouble, gets richly rewarded.
Then, again, another fine branch of the financier’s art is the floating of public companies. To float a company requires great skill and nerve.
The first thing is to find a place a long way off, far beyond the reach of intending shareholders, in fact. Then you discover this far-off country is extraordinarily rich in minerals, or india-rubber, or manure, or some other useful material which everybody wants. You send out a mineral or manure expert to the far-off country, and he is delighted to find these things in enormous quantities, and sees at a glance that, if properly managed, they will produce dividends of very likely a hundred per cent. for the first year, and much more afterwards.
Then my father, or whoever it might be, is glad, and he goes about to other skilful men who understand companies, and they collect together and make a board. The more famous financiers there are upon this board the better the public likes it; and so the company is floated, and the public is invited to put in money.
This the public is only too thankful to do, because, of course, the thing promises so well; and then the shares are quoted on the Stock Exchange, and the papers are suddenly full of the company some morning, and the board sits and has a champagne luncheon and arranges its salaries and so on.
Of course, the people who have found that happy, far-away land, flowing with minerals and manure and such like, are richly rewarded, as they deserve to be; and sometimes they take it in money and sometimes in shares, and sometimes in both.
And all may or may not go well; but the financier, whose business it is to do these things and float the company, takes care to come out of it all right in any case—otherwise it is no good being a financier.
There was once a very fine company floated by my father and several of his scientific friends, for extracting gold from salt water.
It was based on thoroughly sound principles; because science has proved that there is so much gold in every ton of salt water; and, of course, if it is there, it can be extracted by modern inventions. So my father and others of even greater renown were filled with the idea of promoting a company to do this.
It was a brilliant and successful company in a way, but did not last long for some reason.
They started at a place near Margate, I think, with pumps and tubes to draw in the water, and machinery and professional chemists to get the gold out of it, and a staff of twenty skilled men, who understood the complicated mechanism. And they easily got enough gold from somewhere to make the prospectus, and also enough to make a brooch for the manager’s wife; and no doubt they would have got much more in course of time, but something failed—the water in the English Channel was a bit off, or some other natural cause—and my father said it would have been far better for everybody concerned if the works had been put up in the Isle of Skye, or perhaps in Norway, or in the West Indies, or the Fiji Islands, where conditions might have been better suited to success.
But gold was none the less made for my father and one or two others, “though not from the sea,” as my father said thoughtfully when discussing the winding up of the affair.
There is another and even higher branch of the financier’s art—the loftiest of all in fact. This consists in floating loans for hard-up monarchs, and it is absolutely the biggest thing the financier does. It wants great skill and delicacy.
You can also float loans for hard-up nations if you understand how to do it, but there are hundreds of financiers who never reach these dizzy heights of the profession, just as there are hundreds—you may say millions—of soldiers who never get above being colonels, and thousands of clergymen who fall short of becoming bishops.
My father, of course, understood these high branches of his profession, and once even went so far as to be interested in a loan for a South American Republic; but before the thing was matured, one side of the Republic was destroyed by a volcano and the other side by insurgents, who shot the President and all his best friends; and these events so shook investors in general that they would not subscribe to that loan, though the Republic, in its financial extremities, offered fabulous rates of interest.
I mention my father at such great length just to show the man he was and to explain my own bent of mind, which lay in the same direction. He said once, in a genial mood, that no man had ever made more bricks without straw than he had. It seemed to me a very dignified and original profession, because you are on your own, so to say, and you go out into the world single-handed, and by simple force of a brilliant imagination and hard work, win to yourself an honourable position. You may even get knighted or baroneted, if your financial genius is crowned with sufficient success to give away a few tons of money to a hospital, or the “party chest,” whatever that is.
So, understanding all these things fairly well, it was natural that I took the line I did in the affair of Protheroe minimus and young Mayne. And, whatever the Doctor thought, my father didn’t see any objection to the operation; and, of course, his opinion was the only one I cared about.
It was like this.
Young Mayne, though very poor, had a most amazing knack of prize-winning. He was in a class where all the chaps were a year older than him, and yet he always beat them with the greatest ease. He was good all round, and thought nothing of raking in prizes term after term.
In fact, it seemed a thousand pities, seeing that he was very poor and the only son of a lawyer’s clerk, that his great prize-winning powers were not yielding a better return. For, not to put too fine a point upon it, as they say, the prizes at Merivale were piffle of the deepest dye, and of no money value worth mentioning. Dr. Dunston went on getting the same books term after term, and simply unreadable slush was all you could call them.
The few things that were good were all back numbers, like “Robinson Crusoe”—all right in themselves, but nobody wants to read them twice; and then there were school stories that would have made angels weep, especially one called “St. Winifred’s,” in which boys behaved like girls and blushed if anybody said something dashing. Then there were books about birds and animals and insects, and for the Lower School the Doctor used to sink to “Peter Parley” and the “Peep of Day,” and such-like absolute mess of a bygone age.
These things were all bound in blue leather and had a gold owl stamped upon them, which was the badge of Merivale.
I believe the owl was supposed to be the bird of Athena, and stood for wisdom, or some such rot. Anyhow, it wasn’t a bad idea in its way, for a more owlish sort of school than Merivale I never was at.
And young Mayne got more of these books than anybody; but to him they were as grass, and he thought nothing of them. Whereas Protheroe minimus had never won a prize in his life, and wanted one fearfully—not for itself, but for the valuable effect it would have on his mother.
She was a widow and loved Protheroe minimus best of her three sons. The others had taken prizes and were fair fliers at school; but Protheroe min. was useless except at running. So, woman-like, just because he couldn’t get a prize anyhow, his mother was set on his doing so, and promised him rare rewards if he would only work extra hard, or be extra good, or extra something, and so scare up a blue book with a gold owl at any cost.
Well, if you have a financial mind, you will see at a glance that here was a possible opportunity. At least, so it looked to me. Because on the one hand was young Mayne, always fearfully hard up and always getting prizes at the end of each term as a matter of course; while on the other hand was Protheroe min., never hard up but never a scholastic success, so to say, from the beginning of the term to the end—and, of course, never even within sight of a prize of any sort.
Here it seemed to me was the whole problem of supply and demand in a nutshell; and the financier instinct cried out in me, as it were, that I ought to be up and doing.
So I went to young Mayne and said that I thought it was a frightful pity all his great skill was being chucked away, and bringing no return more important than the mournful things that he won as prizes. And he said:
“A time will come, Mitchell.”
And then I told him that a time had come.
“I know you sell your prizes for a few bob at home, and that you think nothing of them,” I said. “But I had a bit of a yarn with that kid Protheroe yesterday, and it seems that what is nothing to you would be a perfect godsend to him. You may not believe it, but his mother, who is a bit dotty on him, has promised him five pounds if he will bring home a prize.”
“Five pounds!” said Mayne. “The best prize old Dun ever gave wasn’t worth five bob.”
“She doesn’t want to sell it—she wants to keep it for the honour and glory of Protheroe min.,” I explained. “And the idea in my mind in bringing you chaps together for your mutual advantage was, firstly, that you should let Protheroe have one of your prizes to take home in triumph to his mother; and, secondly, that he should give you a document swearing to let you have two pounds of his five pounds at the beginning of next term.”
Mayne was much interested at this suggestion, and, knowing that he must be a snip for at least two prizes, if not three, at the end of the summer term, he had no difficulty whatever in falling in with my scheme.
We were allowed to walk in the playing-fields on Sunday after chapel before dinner, and then Mayne and Protheroe minimus and myself discussed the details.
Funnily enough, they were so full of it between themselves that they did not exactly realize where I came in; so I had to remind Protheroe that it was I who had arranged the supply when I heard about his demand; and I had also to remind him he had certainly said that if anybody could put him in the way of a prize, he would give that person a clear pound at the beginning of next term.
I also had to remind Mayne that he had promised me ten shillings on delivery of his two pounds.
In fact, before the day was done I got them both to sign documents; because, as I say, when they once got together over it, they seemed rather to forget me. So I explained to them that my part was simply that of a financier, and that many men made their whole living in that way, arranging supplies for demands and bringing capitalists together in a friendly spirit. But not for nothing.
They quite saw it, but thought I asked too much. However, I was older than they were, and speedily convinced them that I had not.
There was only one difficulty in the way after this, and Protheroe came to me about it, and I helped him over it free of charge. He said:
“When I take home the prize, what shall I say it’s for? You know what my school reports are like. There’s never a loophole for a prize of any kind.”
“You might say good conduct,” I suggested; but Protheroe min. scorned the thought.
“That would give away the whole show at once,” he said. “Because even my mother wouldn’t be deceived. It’s no good taking back a prize for good conduct when the report will be sure to read as usual—‘No attempt at any improvement,’ which is how it always goes.”
Everything I suggested, Protheroe scoffed at in the same way, so I could see the prize would have to be for something not mentioned at all in the school report.
Of course, you don’t get book prizes for cricket, or footer, or running, which—especially the latter—were the only things that Protheroe min. could have hoped honestly to get a prize for. But I stuck to the problem, and had a very happy idea three nights before the end of the term. I then advised Protheroe to say the prize was for “calisthenics.”
There are no prizes for calisthenics at Merivale; but it sounded rather a likely subject, especially as he was a dab at it. And, anyway, he thought it would satisfy his mother and be all right.
So that was settled, and it only remained for Mayne to get his lawful prizes and hand over the least important to Protheroe min.
It all went exceedingly well—at the start—and young Mayne got the prizes and gave Protheroe the second, which was for literature.
The thing was composed entirely of poems—Longfellow, or Southey, or some such blighter—and Protheroe said that his mother would fairly revel to think that he had won it. He packed it in his box after “breaking up,” and we exchanged our agreements; and it came out, when all was over, that young Mayne was to have two pounds out of Protheroe’s five, and I was to have ten bob from Mayne and a pound from Protheroe—thirty shillings in all; and Protheroe would have the prize and two pounds, not to mention other pickings, which would doubtless be given to him by his proud and grateful mother.
You might have thought that nothing could go wrong with a sound financial scheme of that sort. I put any amount of time and thought into the transaction, and as it was my first introduction into the world of business, so to speak, and I stood to net a clear thirty shillings, naturally I left no stone unturned, as they say, to make it a brilliant and successful affair.
And yet it all went to utter and hopeless smash, though it was no fault of mine.
And you certainly couldn’t blame Protheroe min. or Mayne either. In fact, Protheroe must have carried it off very well when he got home, and the calisthenics went down all right; and Mayne, when his people asked how it was that he hadn’t got more than one prize, was ingenious enough to say that he’d suffered from hay fever all the term and been too off colour to make his usual haul.
So everything would have been perfection but for the idiotic and footling behaviour of Protheroe min.’s mother.
This excitable and weak-minded woman was not content with just quietly taking the prize and putting it in a glass case with the prizes won in the past by Protheroe’s brothers. She must go fluttering about telling his wretched relations what he’d done; and, as if that was not enough, she got altogether above herself and wrote to Dr. Dunston about it. She said how glad and happy it had made her, and that success in the gymnasium was something to begin with, and that she hoped and prayed that it would lead to better things, and that they would live to be proud of Protheroe minimus yet, and such-like truck!
Well, the result was a knock-down blow to us all, as you may imagine, and the Doctor showed himself both wily and beastly, as usual. For he merely asked Protheroe’s mother to send back the prize at the beginning of the term, as he fancied there might have been some mistake; but he begged her not to mention the matter to Protheroe minimus.
So when Protheroe and Mayne and myself all arrived again for the arduous toil of the winter term, and Mayne and I were eager for the financial disimbursements to begin, we heard the shattering news that, at the last moment, Protheroe hadn’t got his fiver.
It was to have been given to him on the day that he came back to school; but instead his mother had merely told him that she feared there was a little mistake somewhere, and that she couldn’t give him his hard-earned cash till Dr. Dunston had cleared the matter up.
Needless to say that Dunston did clear it up with all the brutality of which he was capable.
As for myself, when the crash came, I hoped it would happen to me as it often does to professional financiers in real life, and that I should escape, as it were. Not, of course, that I had done anything that in fairness made it necessary for me to escape, because to take advantage of supply and demand is a natural law of self-preservation, and everybody does it as a matter of course, not only financiers.
But, much to my annoyance, the common-sense view of the thing was not taken, and I found myself “in the cart,” as they say, with young Mayne and Protheroe minimus.
The Doctor, on examining Protheroe’s prize for calisthenics, instantly perceived that it was in reality young Mayne’s prize for literature. But evidently anything like strategy of this kind was very distasteful to the Doctor. In fact, he took a prejudiced view from the first, and as young Mayne was only eleven and Protheroe min. merely ten and a half, it instantly jumped to Dunston’s hateful and suspicious mind that somebody must have helped them in what he called a “nefarious project.” And, by dint of some very unmanly cross-questioning, he got my name out of Mayne.
I never blamed Mayne; in fact, I quite believed him when he swore that it only slipped out under the treacherous questions of the Doctor; but the result was, of course, unsatisfactory in every way for me.
I was immediately sent for, and had no course open to me but to explain the whole nature of financial operations to Dr. Dunston, and try to make him see that I had simply fallen in with the iron laws of supply and demand.
Needless to say, I failed, for he was in one of his fiery and snorting conditions and above all appeal to reason.
“It was an ordinary sort of transaction, sir,” I said, “and I don’t see that anybody was hurt by it. In fact, everybody was pleased, including Mrs. Protheroe.”
This made him simply foam at the mouth.
I had never been what you may call a great success with him, and now to hear sound business views from one still at the early age of sixteen, fairly shook him up.
He ordered me to go back to my class, and when I had gone, he flogged young Mayne and Protheroe minimus. He then forgave them and told them to go and sin no more; and the same day, doubtless after the old fool had cooled down a bit, he wrote to my father and put the case before him—though not quite fairly—and said that, apparently, I had no moral sense, and a lot of other insulting and vulgar things. In conclusion, he asked my father to remove me, that I might find another sphere for my activities.
And my father did.
He never took my view of the matter exactly; but he certainly did not take Dr. Dunston’s view either. He seemed to be more amused than anything, and was by no means in such a wax with Dr. Dunston as I should have expected.
He said that the scholastic point of view was rather stuffy and lacked humour; and then he explained that I had certainly not acted quite on the straight, but had been a “deceitful and cunning little bounder.”
I was a good deal hurt at this view, and when he found a billet for me in the firm of Messrs. Martin & Moss, Stock Brokers, I felt very glad indeed to go into it and shake off the dust of school from my feet, as they say.
It is a good and a busy firm, and I have been here a fortnight now. Ten days ago, happening to pass Mr. Martin’s door, and catching my name, I naturally stood and listened and heard an old clerk tell Mr. Martin that I was taking to the work like a duck takes to water.
I am writing this account of the business at Merivale on sheets of the best correspondence paper of Messrs. Martin & Moss!
They would not like it if they knew.
But they won’t know.
The End