The train made its way cautiously over the fog-ridden plain, and Cornish shivered as he looked out of the window. “Schiedam,” the porters called. This, Schiedam? A mere village, and yet the name was so familiar. The world seemed suddenly to have grown small and sordid. A few other stations with historic names, and then The Hague.
Cornish quitted his carriage, and found himself shaking hands with Roden, who was awaiting him on the platform, clad in a heavy fur coat. Roden looked clever and capable--cleverer and more capable than Cornish had even suspected--and the organization seemed perfect. The reserved carriages had been in readiness at the Hook. The officials were prepared.
“I have omnibuses and carts for them and their luggage,” were the first words that Roden spoke.
Cornish instinctively placed himself under Roden's orders. The man had risen immensely in his estimation since the arrival in London of the first malgamite maker. The grim reality of the one had enhanced the importance of the other. Cornish had been engaged in so many charities _pour rire_ that the seriousness of this undertaking was apt to exaggerate itself in his mind--if, indeed, the seriousness of anything dwelt there at all.
“I counted them all over at the Hook,” he said. “One hundred and twenty--pretty average scoundrels.”
“Yes; they are not much to look at,” answered Roden.
And the two men stood side by side watching the malgamite workers, who now quitted the train and stood huddled together in a dull apathy on the roomy platform.
“But you will soon get them into shape, no doubt,” said Cornish, with characteristic optimism. He was essentially of a class that has always some one at hand to whom to relegate tasks which it could do more effectually and more quickly for itself. The secret of human happiness is to be dependent upon as few human beings as possible.
“Oh yes! We shall soon get them into shape--the sea air and all that, you know.”
Roden looked at his _protégés_ with large, sad eyes, in which there was alike no enthusiasm and no spark of human kindness. Cornish wondered vaguely what he was thinking about. The thoughts were certainly tinged with pessimism, and lacked entirely the blindness of an enthusiasm by which men are urged to endeavour great things for the good of the masses, and to make, as far as a practical human perception may discern, huge and hideous mistakes.