Part 2 (1/2)

”Ah!” said Gorman. ”I rather respect those Mexicans. It's pleasant to hear of wealthy men like you being hit sometimes.”

”It's not exactly that,” said Ascher. ”As a firm we don't lose directly whatever happens in Mexico. What we have to consider is the interest of our customers, the people, some of them quite small people, who went into Mexican railways on our advice. Banking houses don't put their money into investments. That's not our business. But banking is a very dull subject. Let's talk of something else.”

He turned to me as he spoke.

”You were speaking just now,” he said, ”about the necessity of putting up money for the support of theatres. If we are to have any real dramatic art in England----”

Banking is a fascinatingly interesting subject compared to art; but Ascher does not think so, and Ascher had taken hold of the conversation.

He appealed to Gorman as a man whose services to literature and drama had never been properly recognised. He appealed to me as a member of a cultured cla.s.s. Neither of us was sympathetic or responsive. Gorman knows that he has never rendered any service to literature at all, that he wrote novels because he wanted money in the days before a grateful country paid him 400 a year for walking round the lobbies of the House of Commons, that he tumbled into his play by accident and made money out of it because a very charming lady was more charming than usual in the part he wrote for her.

Gorman--this is one of the advantages of being an Irishman--has no illusions about himself. I have none about my cla.s.s. It is not cultured and does not want to be.

When Ascher had smoked his half cigarette we left the dining saloon and went to our special corner in the lounge. Ascher talked on till nearly ten o'clock about art and drama and music as if they were the only things of any interest or importance in the world. Then he went to bed. Gorman and I agreed that art, drama, and music are of very little importance and less interesting than anything else. Gorman's weekly articles, quite the best things of their kind then being published, are all about art, so he has a perfect right to express his opinion. What we wanted to hear Ascher talk about was money.

”I've always wanted to know what high finance really is,” I said.

”It seems a pity not to be able to find out now we've got a man who understands it.”

”I'll take him in hand to-morrow,” said Gorman. ”There's no use our having him to dine with us and looking after him all the way cross if we don't get anything out of him.”

Gorman's words were cryptic. I wanted to get knowledge--the sort of knowledge which would satisfy my curiosity--out of Ascher; chiefly knowledge though I would not have refused a little inside information about Canadian affairs. Gorman might very well want something more. He might want a subscription to the funds of his party. I hoped he would not get it; either out of Ascher or out of the man at Detroit of whom he spoke. I am not a member of any political party but I hate that to which Gorman belongs. If I were attached to a party and if Gorman's friends joined it in a body, I should leave it at once. My opinion, so far as I have any opinion, is that what Ireland wants is to be let alone. But if the Irish Nationalist Party were to adopt a policy of deliberately doing nothing and preventing other people from doing anything I should not support it. I should then search about for something revolutionary and try to insist on carrying it out. Nothing would induce me to be on the same side as Gorman and his friends. Such is the nature of an Irish gentleman.

I lay awake for a long time that night, smoking cigarettes in my berth and meditating on the fact that, of the three of us I was the one who was going to America for purely selfish purposes. Gorman was trying to get money for his party, for his own ultimate advantage no doubt, but in the first instance the money was not for himself but for a cause.

And Gorman is a politician, a member of a notoriously corrupt and unscrupulous professional cla.s.s. Ascher was taking a long journey in order to devise some means of rescuing his clients' property from the clutches of a people which had carried the principles of democracy rather further than is usual. And Ascher is a financier. No one expects anything but enlightened greed from financiers. I belong by birth and education to an aristocracy, a cla.s.s which is supposed to justify its existence by its altruism. There was no doubt a valuable lesson to be learned from these considerations. I fell asleep before I found out exactly what it was.

Gorman did as he promised. He took Ascher in hand next day. He made the poor man walk up and down the deck with him. There is nothing on s.h.i.+pboard more detestable than that tramp along the deck. Only the strongest minded man can avoid counting his steps, making an estimate of yards, and falling into the bondage of trying to walk a fixed number of miles. Conversation and even coherent thought become impossible when the mind is set on the effort to keep count of the turns made at the end of the deck. I am sure that Ascher did not enjoy himself; but Gorman kept him at it for more than an hour. I watched them from the deck chair in which I sat, rolled up very comfortably in my rug. At one o'clock, when we ought to have gone down to lunch, Gorman stopped opposite my chair.

He proclaimed his success jubilantly.

”We've been talking about finance,” he said, ”high finance. Pity you wouldn't join us.”

Ascher bowed towards me. Gorman described Ascher's manners as foreign.

I daresay they are. There is a certain flavour of formal courtesy about them which Englishmen rarely practise, of which Irishmen of my generation, partly anglicised by their education, have lost the trick.

”Sir James would only have been bored,” said Ascher.

”Not he,” said Gorman, ”he's just as keen as I am to know what bankers do with money.”

”It's a dull trade,” said Ascher, ”very dull. Some day I shall give it up and devote the rest of my time to----”

”Don't say art,” said Gorman.

Ascher opened his eyes and looked at Gorman with a mild kind of wonder.

”Of course,” he said, ”I can never be an artist. I haven't got the temperament, the soul, the capacity for abandon. But I might find enjoyment, the highest pleasure, in understanding, in appreciating, perhaps even in encouraging----”

”Sort of Mecenas,” said Gorman. ”I wonder if Mecenas was a banker. He seems to have been a rich man.”

”He was a descendant of kings,” I said, ”but that's no reason why he shouldn't have made money.”