The Stoic / Стоик. Теодор ДрайзерЧитать онлайн книгу.
and title. In consequence, he intuitively attuned his actions to the ambitions and welfare of the members of that class.
He was small, pompous, wiry, authoritative. His father, a bibulous carpenter of Southwark, had wretchedly maintained a family of seven. Young Johnson was apprenticed to a baker, for whom he delivered bread. His diligence attracted the attention of a customer who was a printer, and by him he was taken on as a “devil” and encouraged to read and fix his mind on some practical line of work which would lift him out of the drab and miserable state in which he then moved. And Johnson was an eager pupil. Delivering printed matter to all manner of merchants and tradesmen, he finally came in contact with a young solicitor, Luther Fletcher by name, who, campaigning to represent one of the Southwark divisions in the London County Council, found in young Johnson, then not more than twenty years old, one who interested him as a legal possibility. His inquisitiveness and industry so fascinated Fletcher that he sent him to night school for the study of law.
From that point on, Johnson’s affairs prospered. The firm to which he was ultimately articled was not long in being impressed with his intuitive legal sense, and he was soon undertaking most of the detail work of the phases of law in which this firm was interested: contracts, property rights, wills, and the organization of companies. At the age of twenty-two, he passed the necessary examinations and was admitted solicitor. At twenty-three he encountered Mr. Byron Chance, of Bullock & Chance, solicitors, who offered him a partnership in that firm.
Bullock, a man of standing with the barristers of the Inns of Court, had for a friend one Wellington Rider, a solicitor of even more influential connections than himself. Rider managed the affairs of a number of large estates, among them that of the Earl of Stane, as well as the legal business of the District Railway. Also becoming interested in Johnson, he was seriously moved to persuade him to leave Bullock and join up with him. However, both self-interest and friendship dictated that he seek some other way of obtaining Johnson’s services. A talk with Bullock finally brought about the present legal union, which had now lasted for ten years.
With Rider came Gordon Roderick, Lord Stane, eldest son of the Earl of Stane. At that time Stane was fresh from Cambridge and, his father thought, properly equipped to succeed to the paternal dignities. Actually, however, because of certain quirks and idiosyncrasies of temperament, the young man was more concerned with the practical and decidedly unhistoric phases of the world about him. He had come into the world just when the luster and supremacy of mere title were not only being questioned but, in many instances, overshadowed by financial genius. At Cambridge he was an interested student of economics, politics, sociology, and inclined to give ear to the socialists of the Fabian school, without by any means losing consciousness of his prospective inheritance. Encountering Rider, himself interested almost solely in the immense companies which he was constantly being called upon to represent, Stane was easily converted to Rider’s view that the real lords of the future would be financiers. What the world needed was advanced material equipment, and the financier who devoted himself to supplying that need would be the greatest factor in society’s progression.
It was with such thoughts in his mind that Stane pursued the study of English company law in the office of Rider, Bullock, Johnson & Chance. And one of his chief intimacies was with Elverson Johnson. In Johnson he saw a shrewd commoner with a determination to rise to high places, while in Stane, Johnson recognized an inheritor of social and financial privilege who yet chose to inform and bestir himself in practical pursuits.
Both Johnson and Stane had from the first recognized the enormous possibilities of the London underground traction field, and their interest was by no means confined to the formation of the Traffic Electrical Company, of which, in its origin, they formed the nucleus. When the City and South London, with its up-to-date construction, was first proposed, they and their friends put money into it, with the understanding that a combination of the two old lines then threading the heart of London—the Metropolitan and the District—was to be considered. Like Demosthenes addressing the Athenians, Johnson persisted in his belief that whoever could find the money to pick up enough of the ordinary stock of these two lines to provide a 51 per cent control, could calmly announce himself in charge and thereafter do as he pleased with them.
After his father’s death, Stane and some of his friends, together with Johnson, sought to buy a control of the ordinary stock of the District, hoping in this way to gain control of both roads, but it had all proven too much for them. There was too much stock outstanding, and they could not get together enough money. Therefore, since the management was unprogressive and the stock did not pay well, they had resold a large part of what they had acquired.
And as for the still unconstructed Charing Cross line, to promote which they had formed the Traffic Electrical Company, they had never been able to raise enough money or resell enough of the printed shares to provide the £1,660,000 needed to build it. At last, through Greaves and Henshaw, they had been seeking to find a financier, or group of financiers, who would either take this Charing Cross line off their hands or unite with them in their dream to take over the Metropolitan and the District.
But so far, nothing had come of this. Johnson by this time was forty-seven and Lord Stane forty, and both had become a little weary and more than slightly dubious of this great task.
Chapter 19
Into this situation, and into the office of Elverson Johnson, enter Mr. Jarkins and Mr. Kloorfain, desiring to confer with Mr. Johnson on a highly important matter. It related to the Messrs. Greaves and Henshaw, who had recently gone to New York, as Mr. Johnson probably knew, to confer with their client, Mr. Frank Cowperwood, whom Mr. Johnson knew, of course.
Mr. Johnson admitted that he had heard of him. And what could he do for these gentlemen?
It was one of London’s best spring mornings. Sunshine poured down on the cobbled Roman pavement below. Johnson, when they entered, had been stirring in a basket of briefs relating to a certain damage suit against the City and South London. And he was in a cheerful mood because the day was warm and bright; there had been a slight rise in the shares of the District; and a very earnest speech which he had delivered the day before to the International Epworth League had been favorably mentioned by not less than two of the morning papers.
“I’ll be as brief as possible,” began Jarkins, who, arrayed in a gray suit, a gray silk shirt, a brilliant blue and white tie, a derby and a cane in his hand, was surveying Johnson with an inquiring eye, and deciding that his task would not be easy. Johnson was plainly a canny individual.
“You must understand, of course, Mr. Johnson,” went on Jarkins, smiling his best smile, “this visit of ours is unauthorized as far as Mr. Cowperwood is concerned. But I believe you will grant the importance of it, just the same. As you know, Greaves and Henshaw have been dealing with Traffic Electrical, for which I believe you act as solicitor.”
“One of the solicitors,” said Mr. Johnson, cautiously. “But it has been some time since I’ve been consulted by them.”
“Quite so, quite so,” returned Jarkins, “but I think you will be interested, nevertheless. You see, ours was the firm that brought Greaves and Henshaw and Mr. Cowperwood together. As you know, Mr. Cowperwood is an extremely wealthy man. He has been active in all kinds of traction matters in America. And he is rumored to be closing out his Chicago holdings for not less than twenty millions.”
At the mention of this sum, Mr. Johnson pricked up his ears. Traffic was traffic—Chicago, London, or elsewhere—and a man who knew enough about it to have extracted twenty million dollars out of it must have some definite knowledge of what he was about. His interest was immediately apparent to Jarkins.
“That may be true,” bluffed Mr. Johnson, a little testily, and seemingly unimpressed,