HERE is more than one sort of millionaire. There is the millionaire who is quite anxious that the world shall know that he is a millionaire, and there is the millionaire who is quite as anxious that the general public shall not know that or anything else about him. There is the millionaire who has social ambitions, and the millionaire who has none. There is the man of pleasure who has fluked into fortune and wants to employ his million to get himself more pleasure, and there is the man who has worked into affluence and can see no use for a million except to make another million.
James Tablett was the latter kind of millionaire. He had started down low and worked up high. And he had accomplished everything single-handed; he was unmarried and had never had a partner in his business; he had never slapped anybody on the shoulder; he had never asked anybody to take a drink; he played his own game, and he played it for money and for nothing else but money; he never wanted to live in a better house, or to belong to a smart club, or to even wear a better coat—and he was worse dressed than his junior clerk; he never attended a theatre; he did not care about yachting, and he thought racing immoral. By the time he had made his million people might have accused him of several things—and such is human nature that they did accuse him of a good many—but no one suggested that James Tablett was suffering from swelled head. He did not spend a thousandth part of his income, would not be photographed, told the journalists to go to hell, and kept himself to himself.
The consequence was that many people never knew that James Tablett was a millionaire at all. For instance, on one occasion, when he was engaged in some particularly delicate financial operation, he felt himself rather run down, a most unusual feeling with him. He remembered that somebody had spoken to him about the fine air of Margate. It was a Saturday night, and rather late, but he managed to catch the last 'bus to Victoria. He inquired for the next train to Margate, and was told that there would be quite a nice train on the following morning.
James Tablett seldom wanted anything, but when he did want something he had to have it. He turned on the porter, who was smiling at his discomfiture, and said: "If there ain't a train, you'll have to make one. Where do you go to settle these things?" He went to Margate by a special, walked to the principal hotel in the small hours, with a brown paper parcel containing his pajamas and a tooth brush under his arm, and asked the night porter for a cheap bedroom. The night porter shirked the responsibility; he put a question or two. "Very natural," said James Tablett, who was not unreasonable. He put down half a sovereign, chiefly in sixpences, borrowed a pair of slippers and went off to his room. And when he went away one of the few hotel servants that he tipped was that night porter.
In London he lived at a hotel. He had no money to spare, so he said, and with him time was money. He could not be bothered with the details of housekeeping, and it suited him better to let the hotel look after all such matters. It was a private hotel in a back street, where they knew nothing of him except that his money was good, and they had found that out only by practical experience. Had the proprietress of that hotel been told that No. 6 was a millionaire she would have smiled incredulously; millionaires did not come her way.
But the truth is, as I have said, there is more than one sort of millionaire. When James Tablett bought a halfpenny paper—which was not often, because he could see the papers at his club—and paid for it with a penny, he took good care that he had his halfpenny change. He was not a miser; when he really wanted anything he had to have it, whatever it might cost. But he rarely wanted anything, and he never paid for anything that he did not want.
He had a certain number of more or less distant relatives. When he was a poor struggler they did nothing for him, and seemed unaware of his existence; when he became wealthy they came round and attempted civility. But they soon realized the impossibility of being civil to a man who always treated them with calculated rudeness and plain-spoken contempt. "Go away," said James to his cousin, a canon of the Church. "I don't want you to send me any pheasants. I don't want you to write to me and I don't want you to talk to me. I shall never give any of you anything while I am alive, and I shall never leave any of you anything when I am dead. Tell 'em so. I don't want anything to do with you. Go away."
