In his leisure hours the memory of the old days with the vicar returned. He resolved to test the vicar’s theory. He purchased a small piece of land in Wolf’s Glow parish, sank a shaft, and sure enough came upon coal.
This discovery revivified the whole man. He cast off sloth, forgot all about retirement, and plunged into business again. Another search, conducted by practical hands, proved the existence of iron.
There was a furore. Collieries were started; iron furnaces set going. It was just at the dawn of the great iron and coal trade. The railways had been started, and the demand was greater than the supply. Romy Baskette and Company soon employed two thousand hands coal-digging and iron-smelting. The man, in fact, wore himself out at the trade of moneymaking. He could not rest. Night and day his brain was at work: An accidental conversation with one of his workmen suggested to him a new idea. The smiths of the time could not make nails fast enough for all the building that was going on. This workman had been a sailor in his day, and had seen nails abroad which were made in batches by machinery, instead of slowly and laboriously, one by one, by hand.
Baskette caught at the idea. He studied and learnt what he could. He made a voyage himself abroad, and soon mastered the secret. He erected machinery, and cut nails were first made. The consumption was enormous. The business of this Baskette and Company became so large that it almost passed out of control. Meantime other firms had come and settled, bought land, dug up coal, and set up smelting furnaces. In ten years the population from being absolutely nil rose to thirty-five thousand people. By this time Romy had killed himself. But that mattered little, for he had left a son, and a son who inherited all his genius, and was—if anything still “harder in the mouth.” He was named, from his mother’s family, Sternhold Baskette.
Sternhold picked up the plough-handle which had dropped from his father’s grasp, and continued the good work, never once looking back. But although equally clever, the bent of his genius was different from that of old Romy. Romy was at heart a speculator, and believed in personal property. Sternhold was a Conservative, and put his faith in real property, houses, and land. He kept up the old forges and collieries, but he started no new ones. He invested the money in land and houses, particularly the latter. His life may be summed up in two strokes of genius—the first was bringing the iron horse to Stirmingham, as the new town was called; the second was the building lease investment.
It is hard to give the preeminence to either. They were both profound schemes—neither would have been complete without the other. He did not originate the idea of the railway—that was done for him—but he put it on its legs, and he brought it to the centre of the town.
The original scheme almost omitted Stirmingham. Railways were not then fully understood; their projectors had such vast ideas in their heads, they aimed at long trunk lines, and so this railroad was to connect London, the sea, and a certain large town—larger than Stirmingham then, but now nothing beside the modern city.
Sternhold, as the largest shareholder, and as finding the capital to get through Parliament, prevailed to have the course altered so as to sweep by Stirmingham. He knew that this would improve his property there at least fifty percent. But he had other ideas in his head. The line could not be finished under three years, and in those three years it was his intention to become possessed of the whole ground upon which the town of Stirmingham stood. He foresaw that it would become a mighty centre. He braced up his nerves, and prepared to spend his darling hoards like water.
One by one the fields, the plots, the houses, became his; and the greed growing on him, he cast longing eyes on the adjacent marsh, now called Glow’s Lea.
The solicitors he employed tried to restrain his infatuation. They represented to him that even his vast wealth could not sustain this more than kingly expenditure, and as to the marsh, it was sheer madness to purchase it. In vain. Perhaps a tinge of pride had something to do with it. He would buy up the rotten old Swamp where his progenitor had dwelt, drain it, and cover it with mansions.
But now came a difficulty—the title to the ground was not all that could be wished. James had been dead some years, but it was well-known that had Arthur returned—if Arthur still lived, or his heirs—that James had no right. He had enjoyed the farm and the land, such as it was, unmolested, all his life. He had married, and had eight sons. Six of these had married since, and most of them had children.
As none could claim the property, they all found a miserable livelihood upon it, somehow or other. They had degenerated into a condition little better than that of the squatters in the Swamp.
Three families lived in the farmhouse, constantly quarrelling; two made their dwelling in the cowsheds, slightly improved; one boiled the pot in the great carthouse, and the two single men slept in the barn.
