Benjamin Farjeon - Toilers of Babylon - A Novel

Mr. Manners smiled good-humoredly, and nodded his head in pleasant approval.

"Go on, Kingsley."

"For instance, the matter of Russia's nearer approach to India being facilitated by an Englishman. Is not that anomalous?"

"No more anomalous than selling Russia a few millions of our best rifles and a few hundred millions of our best bullets."

"Would you do that?"

"I should like to get the contract."

Kingsley shifted uneasily in his chair.

"It is either right or wrong," he said.

"Being at peace with Russia, Kingsley, it is right. Of course, it would be wrong if we were at war with the country."

"But we provide it with rifles and bullets and railways beforehand."

"Quite so-in the way of business. I like a conversation such as this, Kingsley, in which there is no need for anything to be settled. As to the future before you, it doesn't matter to me which side you take, so long as you become what I hope you will be. Men like myself, sprung from the ranks and making such fortunes as I have made, generally become Conservatives. I am neither one thing nor another, and shall not attempt to dictate to you. But into this question of bullets and rifles and railways let us import a little common-sense. If that sort of trading is wrong in times of peace, every country would have to cut itself aloof from every other country, and to live as if it were shut up in a box. I can't express myself as well as you, but I dare say you understand me."

"You can always make people understand you, father," said Kingsley.

"Yes, I have always been able to do that. They respect you all the more for it." Here he laughed quite gayly. "Even in Russia, where I did not know one word of the language, I made myself understood. I saw some great people there, Kingsley, and had interviews with them. Of course, I had a man to interpret for me, but I think I could have managed even without him. Some of the great men spoke English, but not a laborer I employed did. It was no more necessary for them to know our language, than for me to know theirs. The point was that there was work to do, and that it must be done within the stipulated time. With a stern master over him the Russian is a good workman, and values his life less than an Englishman. Take the pestilential ground we had to work over. No English workman would remain there a day; the Russian shrugged his shoulders and took the risk. Now, Kingsley, we will proceed to matters more immediately concerning ourselves."

"With pleasure, father."

"As between father and son there should be as few secrets as possible. You have some knowledge of my career; it is one I have no need to be ashamed of, and I propose to commence with the story of my life, and to make you fully acquainted with the secret of my rise in the world."

Upon that Mr. Manners entered unreservedly upon his relation, and spoke of matters in respect of his successful struggles with which the reader is already familiar. It was not all new to Kingsley, but he listened patiently and admiringly.

"I think I have made it plain to you, Kingsley," said Mr. Manners, when he had finished the recital, "that I owe everything to myself. I make no boast of it, and I have no doubt there are numbers of men as capable and clever as I am, only they have either not had the courage to launch out or have missed their opportunities. Now, my lad, I am sensible of my own deficiencies; I do not deceive myself by saying that I am as good as others with whom my money places me on an equality; I am a contractor, nothing more, and every shoemaker to his last. I shall stick to mine, and make more money. If I entered Parliament, which I could do without difficulty, I should have to sit mumchance, and play a silent part, unless something in my own particular line started up; and that would be once in a blue moon. Now taking a back seat in anything in which I am engaged would not suit me; I am accustomed to be master, and master I intend to continue to be. If I were a good speaker the matter would be different; I could carry all before me, though I am ignorant of Greek and Latin. When I was a lad I did not have what you call ambition; I took a pride in making sensible contracts which would bring me in a profit, and I crept along steadily, never dreaming that I should ever reach my present position. But the case is altered now, and I have a real ambition-not directly for myself, but for you. I have no expectation that you will disappoint me."

"I will endeavor not to do so, father."

"That is a good lad. You will be one of the richest men in the country, but I want you to be something more; I want you to be one of the most influential. I want people to say as I walk along; 'There goes the father of the prime-minister.'"

"That is looking a long way ahead," said Kingsley, considerably startled by this flight.

"Not a bit too far; it can be worked up to, and with your gifts it shall be. I have already told you that it matters little to me whether you are a Conservative, or a Liberal, or a Radical; that is your affair. If you are prime-minister and a Radical it will show that Radicalism is popular. I stop short of Socialism, mind you."

"So do I."

"Good. There is nothing nowadays that a man with a good education and a long purse cannot accomplish. I have the long purse, but not the education. I can talk sensibly enough to you here in a room, and in fairly good English, thanks to your mother and to my perseverance, but put me in the House of Commons and ask me to make a long speech upon large matters of state, and I should make a fool of myself. Therefore it is impossible I could ever become prime-minister."

"It is not every man who would speak so plainly and disparagingly of himself."

"Perhaps not, but I happen to know the length of my tether; I happen to know what I am fitted for and what I am not. I don't want you to suppose that I am making a sacrifice; nothing of the kind. I keep my place; you work up to yours; then I shall be perfectly satisfied. I have had this in my mind for years, and instead of making you a contractor I have made you a gentleman. That is what other fathers have done, whose beginnings have been as humble as mine. New families are springing up, my boy, to take the place of the old; you, Kingsley, shall found a family which shall become illustrious, and I shall be content to look on and say: 'This is my doing; this is my work.' We shall show these old lords what new blood can do."

"Why, father," said Kingsley, laughing despite the uneasy feeling that was creeping over him, "you are a Radical."

"Perhaps I am, but we will keep it to ourselves. Now, Kingsley, it is my method when I am going in for a big contract to master beforehand everything in connection with it. I study it again and again; I verify my figures and calculations a dozen times before I set my name to it. That is what I have done in this affair. I have mastered the whole of the details, and I know exactly what is necessary. The first thing to make sure of when a great house is to be built, a house that is to last through sunshine and storm, a house that is to stand for centuries, is the foundation. That is out of sight, but it must be firm, and strong, and substantial. I am the foundation of this house I wish to build, and I am out of sight. Good. What is fine and beautiful to the eye you will supply-that is, you and your connections, in which, for convenience, we will say your mother and I do not count."

"My connections!" exclaimed Kingsley. "Apart from you and my mother!"

"Quite so. There are families of the highest rank who would not shrink from admitting you, upon the closest terms, into their circle. Some are tottering, and fear the fall. Old estates are mortgaged up to their value, and every year makes their position worse. We, with our full purses, step in and set them right, and bury the ghosts which haunt them. There is nothing low and common about you, my boy. You are, in appearance, manners, and education, as good as the best of them, and lady mothers will only be too glad to welcome you. The first thing you must do is to marry."