“I have had considerable experience in such matters, and I think I may say that the new financial scheme worked out by Mr. Roden and myself is a sound one,” Lord Ferriby was saying in his best manner.
He was addressing Major White, Tony Cornish, Von Holzen, and Percy Roden, convened to a meeting in the private _salon_ occupied by the Ferribys at the Hotel of the Old Shooting Gallery, at The Hague.
The _salon_ in question was at the front of the house on the first floor, and therefore looked out upon the Toornoifeld, where the trees were beginning to show a tender green, under the encouragement of a treacherous April sun. Major White, seated bolt upright in his chair, looked with a gentle surprise out of the window. He had so small an opinion of his understanding that he usually begged explanatory persons to excuse him. “No doubt you're quite right, but it's no use trying to explain it to _me_, don't you know,” he was in the habit of saying, and his attitude said no less at the present moment.
Von Holzen, with his chin in the palm of his hand, watched Lord Ferriby's face with a greater attention than that transparent physiognomy required. Roden's attention was fully occupied by the papers on the table in front of him. He was seated by Lord Ferriby's side, ready to prompt or assist, as behoved a merely mechanical subordinate. Lord Ferriby, dimly conscious of this mental attitude, had spoken Roden's name with considerable patronage, and with the evident desire to give every man his due. Cornish, in his quick and superficial way, glanced from one face to the other, taking in _en passant_ any object in the room that happened to call for a momentary attention. He noted the passive and somewhat bovine surprise on White's face, and wondered whether it owed its presence thereto astonishment at finding himself taking part in a committee meeting or amazement at the suggestion that Lord Ferriby should be capable of evolving any scheme, financial or otherwise, out of his own brain. The committee thus summoned was a fair sample of its kind. Here were a number of men dividing a sense of responsibility among them so impartially that there was not nearly enough of it to go round. In a multitude of councilors there may be safety, but it is assuredly the councillors only who are safe.