Of course there was a general outcry of dissatisfaction—one section had too much, another too little, and some sections, it was contended, had no right to any. The meeting then resolved that each section should visit the spaces marked out for its claim, and should report to the central committee upon its value. Away went the sections, and there might have been seen five or six gentlemen in one street, and ten or twelve round the corner, with maps and pencils, talking eagerly, and curiously scanning the shops and houses—poking their noses into back courts and alleys—measuring the frontage of clubhouses and theatres. The result was an uproar, for each section declared that the other had had a more valuable portion of the city given to it; and one utterly rejected its section, for it had got the Wolf’s Glow district—the lowest den in Stirmingham!
After a long discussion, it was at last arranged that each section should retain, pro tem, its claim as marked out, and that when the property was realised, any excess of one section over the other should be equally divided. These people actually contemplated the possibility of putting the city up to auction! To such lengths will the desire of wealth drive the astutest of men, blinding their eyes to their own absurdity.
After these preliminary points were settled, the meeting at last resolved itself into a committee of the whole house, and proceeded to business. The first business was to verify the evidence. This necessitated visits to the churches, and public record office to make extracts, etc., and two days were set apart for that purpose. It was a rich harvest for the parish clerks of Stirmingham, and especially for the fortunate clerk at Wolf’s Glow. After this the meeting, beginning to be alarmed at the enormous expense it had incurred, resolved on action, and with that object it decided to hold a secret session, and to exclude all persons not strictly claimants.
This relieved Aymer from his wearisome task of chronicling the proceedings; but he could not leave or get a day to visit Violet. As he left the hall he stopped a moment to look at the stock-in-trade of an itinerant bookseller, who had established his track in front of the building since the family congress began. His stock was principally genealogical, antiquarian, and topographical—mostly old rubbish, that no one would imagine to be worth a sixpence, and yet which, among a certain class, commands a good sale.
The title of a more modern-looking volume caught Aymer’s eye. It was “A Fortune for a Shilling,” and consisted of a list of unclaimed estates, next of kin, persons advertised for, etc. He weighed it in his hand—it tempted him; yet he despised himself for his weakness. But Violet? He should serve her best by saving his shilling. He put it down, and went his way.
XV
Their mouths watered for the great city, yet it seemed no nearer to them than when three thousand miles away on the other side of the Atlantic. They talked loudly of their rights, but there was the little difficulty of possession, which is sometimes a trifle more than nine points of the law. I have conversed with unreasonable members of a certain Church, which claims to be universal, who considered that half England—half the vast domains owned by lords and ladies, by the two hundred and fifty proprietors of Great Britain—was really the property of the Church, if she had her rights.
There are those who consider that Algeria ought to belong to the Arabs, that Africa belongs to the blacks, and India to the Hindus. But there comes this awkward item of possession. You have to buy the man in possession out, or else pitch him out; and the difficulty in this case was that there were so many in possession. Eight companies and a Corporation are not easily ejected.
The fact was, the grand family council was a farce, and fell through. Even as a demonstration it completely failed. The members of it might just as well have stayed at home, and sent a monster petition to the House of Lords, several hundred yards long (as per the usual custom nowadays), and their progress would have been about as great.
The Stirmingham Daily News, which had published the life of Sternhold Baskette, and defended his legitimate line, poured bitter satire upon it, and held the whole business up to ridicule—as well it might. The News was now Conservative. The intense self-conceit of the Yankees—to imagine that they were going to quietly take possession of a great English city, and hoist the Stars and Stripes on Saint George’s Cathedral at Stirmingham!
The American gentlemen fumed and fussed, and uttered threats of making the Stirmingham claim a feature in the next Presidential election—it should “leave the low sphere of personal contention, and enter the arena of political discussion;” so they said. It should be a new Alabama case; and if they could not have Stirmingham, they would have—the Dollars!
Meantime the dollars disappeared rather rapidly, and, after a month or six weeks of these endless wranglings in the Sternhold Hall, there began to be symptoms of an early breakup. First, three or four, then ten, then a dozen, crept off, and quietly sailed for New York, lighter in pocket, and looking rather foolish. The body, however, of the claimants could not break up in that ignominious manner. It was necessary for them to do something to mark the fact that they had been there, at all events.
The final result was that they appointed a committee of solicitors—one
