Virtue’s Reward (A Poor Man at the Gate Series, Book 11)

by Andrew Wareham

  Sir Matthew agreed that one must be seen to be appreciated, and that one must strike while the iron was hot. The man who delivered nine members was of great significance this month, while their allegiance was new, but could rapidly become old hat when they were safely ensconced on the back benches and unable to change party again.

  "Exactly so, sir! I must go a-knocking on Melbourne and Grey's doors in the very near future!"

  Quarrington spent his days with Joseph and then directed his post-chaise to London and his future as a political patron. He had the distinction to be one of the very last to succumb to the epidemic of that year.

  Young Mr Clapperley paid his weekly visit to Mr George Star at his new estate, his face showing his public grief and a discreet mourning band on his sleeve.

  "My father, Sir Erasmus, is much upset, Mr Star, that his mentor in the chapel will not be returning to our bosom. Mr Ainslie has been martyred for his faith, dying to the Cholera in the company of two of the three divines who accompanied him. The report is that he was assiduous in his works, so much so that he deprived himself of sleep and often gave his food to those he ministered to, thus weakening his constitution to a fatal extent; when the plague took him he had no strength to resist its ravages, poor man!"

  George bowed his head - he was in sight of his new butler.

  "Poor man! An example to us all, Mr Clapperley."

  "True indeed, Mr Star. Had he slept in his bed at night and eaten his dinner like a sensible man he could have remained alive for many more years to work and serve his people. Now he is dead in his enthusiasm and none remain to take his place!"

  "Of course, Mr Clapperley, but we must not say so in public. He is a martyr, sir, and as such may not be castigated as a damned fool!"

  "Of course, sir!"

  George thought a few moments, decided that it was not good enough simply to wash his hands of the silly man. Something must be done.

  "The Ainslie almshouses, Mr Clapperley. Four of them in a row opposite to his chapel. Indigent widows, that nonsense that the do-gooders so dearly love, you know the sort of thing. Two hundred to build them and as much again each year to pension them and ourselves to be the benefactors. No need to make a great puff of ourselves - simply make sure that they all know whose money it is that built them."

  "My esteemed Papa to be the Trustee - that will make clear who it is they must be grateful to without having to vulgarly beat the drum and announce the fact. I will acquaint him with the good news when he comes home from Manchester."

  George raised an eyebrow; Clapperley nodded and proceeded to offer some vulgar reflections upon his father's resurgence of vigour.

  "An advantage of living on the coast, Mr Star - oysters are readily available."

  A letter arrived from Lord St Helens, suggesting to Mr George Star that he had some knowledge of the East India Company and that he would be pleased to share it if Mr Star would pay him a visit.

  "I made contact with them when they finally expanded their wharves at Rotherhithe and found that I owned the land they required. An investment that I had expected to bear fruit within eighteen months but that took ten years in the end. The return amounted to more than twenty per cent per annum when it was finally realised, so one cannot complain! The negotiations brought me to the attention of the Board of Directors and I came to know one or two of them and could introduce you to them, no doubt."

  George explained that his mine was producing values of silver and that John Company needed much of the metal in its China trade, and exported some bulk of ingots annually, paying a premium to obtain the quantity they wanted.

  "In England, as you know, my lord, one Pound Sterling is equated to four ounces of silver. In India the weight for weight equivalent as measured in gold rupees gives some twenty-three shillings for the four ounces of silver."

  "Three twentieths in excess, a premium of some fifteen per cent, Mr Star!"

  "A fraction more, generally speaking, a matter of a few pennies."

  "And are you expecting to produce in large quantities, Mr Star?"

  "Some thousands of ounces, my lord."

  "My word! I shall seek a meeting as soon as may be, Mr Star!"

  Book Eleven: A Poor Man

  at the Gate Series

  Chapter Six

  Eustace Hood handed his wife up into the post-chaise and sat beside her for the last stage to Grafham House, tired from the day’s hard journeying. They had left Kent on the previous morning, using two horses and taking easy stages to Hertford where they had put up overnight. The run had been comfortable enough, except for the miles through London, the cobbled or brick-paved streets hard and jolting the poorly-sprung carriage. This morning it had come on to rain.

  They had changed to four horses – a pair would barely raise a walk through the mud and run-off water on the roads. Even so they had averaged no more than six or seven miles an hour, making hard work of the last forty miles.

  “The roads are still poor in too many places. Our hope must be for the railways to come to our rescue – and that will not be for another twenty years in all probabilities. The major cities first, small country towns much later. We must put up with the post-chaise for a while yet.”

  She agreed, mournfully – she would have rather liked the prospect of a fast, smooth-running railway train before she was an old woman.

  They were relieved to walk into the warmth of the House, to stand in front of a log-fire, lit despite it only being autumn.

  “The hollies are full of berries; blackthorn the same. Signs of a hard winter to come, I fear.”

  The Marquis signed to the footman to build the fire a little higher, noticing his mother sitting huddled into the warmth; the old lady was in her seventies now and becoming disinclined to move about in the cold.

  Lord Frederick walked into the room, having heard the guests arrive, a warm welcome for both. He dearly loved his sister and knew that he owed thanks for his life to Captain Hood.

  “I had hoped you would come, sister – and brother! I am off to the Americas within days, as no doubt you know, to take up my life planting cotton. A far cry from my first ambition to be agent here, sir!”

  His father smiled, though in a fashion that suggested he saw little that was funny in the comment.

  “There is a fortune to be made in that weed, my son, though I cannot like the mechanics of its growing.”

  “Slavery, sir? I have little love for the Institution, but I doubt not that one will discover it to be less black than it is painted when one sees the reality.”

  “Quite.” Captain Hood thought the expression more than a little infelicitous, but courtesy demanded that he must not comment.

  “You must travel to the States and visit me in a year or two, Margaret, and you, of course, Captain Hood.”

  “That will depend upon the family, of course, Frederick. Children make their demands.”

  “But you have no children, Meg… Oh! I presume that is a condition soon to change! Congratulations, my dear!”

  The Dowager raised a tired eyebrow, added her thin voice to say that she would love a great grandchild, she had no doubt, and theirs probably more than anything Rothwell might produce with his unfortunate wife.

  “And, Meg, not unimportantly, I believe we shall have very few doubts about the father’s identity.”

  “An absolute certainty, I assure you, ma’am!”

  “That will be more than she will be able to say when it comes to the second and any others, my dear. Bad blood, the Massinghams – as far as one knows, of course, for the younger children could be anyone’s. Who is to guess who her father might not be? What is this written to me of both Massingham and his son locked away in the madhouse?”

  The Hoods had not heard, turned as one to the Marquis.

  “Quite correct, Mother. Rothwell tells me that both have had to be put away – the old man suffering from the… excesses, shall we say, of his career, while the younger’s congenital idiocy has crept too far upon h
im. The daughter seems unaffected so far, but, of course, as you say, we know no more of her than that she is her mother’s child!”

  They laughed with him, but were as much shocked as entertained; Captain Hood particularly came from a different order of society, one less used to casual bastardy.

  “Financially, that must not be too unfortunate a problem for Rothwell to face, sir?”

  “He is effectively sole trustee to the lands that will come to his wife and thus to him, Eustace. There is no entail! The title goes to a removed cousin but the fortune is his alone. He must travel the length and breadth of England these next years while he brings all into order, for Massingham has been a bad landlord and a fool to himself who has permitted fraud and outright theft to be the order of the day in his estates. But I believe he will be looking at fifteen thousands this year and perhaps forty within ten, if he applies himself. That, of course, is something he has never done in the past, being a lazy, dilettante sort of chap; but now he has no choice, or so he believes. He may well come to you for assistance, Eustace, you having experience in the thief-taking line – or chasing out traitors, which is much the same sort of thing!”

  Captain Hood expressed his willingness to do all he could, little though he relished being referred to as some sort of policeman.

  “When do you sail, Frederick?”

  “From Liverpool on Monday next, Eustace. A new steam and sailing ship that is to take no more than seventeen days to reach New York. Then a coastal steamer to a place called Norfolk and inland to the outskirts of Petersburg where I shall find my new life. A month shall see me sat in the comfort of my home in the cotton fields, or so Colonel Miller writes to me.”

  Hood wondered if he would ever bring himself to leave that home, or whether he would make himself a little nest there and hide away from the world. The disfiguration on his face was not perhaps as severe as might have been feared, but that he was marked, none could deny.

  “Have you ridden much of late, Frederick?”

  He had, was still an enthusiast in the saddle, Captain Hood was relieved to hear. He had feared that he might have become unnerved by the impairment to his sight.

  “I am told that Virginia is horse-racing country, Frederick, the planters often very keen horsemen.”

  “I had not heard that, Eustace. It will give me another interest. I have decided to take my paints with me, to attempt portraits of the birds and still-lifes of the flowers that will be new to me. I have bought books, as well.”

  There might be hope for him yet, Hood decided, murmuring words of encouragement and turning to his own affairs.

  “The new fields are added to our estate, sir,” he said to the Marquis. “Hedged and ditched and hands put on for them.”

  “Mostly rough pasture, I fear, Eustace.”

  “Some will go down to dairy cattle, sir, and a good few acres will grow the hop vine, we discover. The London brewers are anxious to purchase and there promises to be a respectable income in that line. For the rest, we are to establish cider apple trees – the Kent product well-known locally – and set the higher ground to sheepwalk. Not a huge estate perhaps, but very respectable for small squires of our nature. Our thanks for your generosity bear repeating, I believe!”

  “Not at all, Eustace. Our debt to you is substantial!”

  They waved Frederick off in his post-chaise to Liverpool, not glad to see the back of him, perhaps, but certainly relieved that he was on his way to safe obscurity.

  “He will find himself much in demand in Virginia, or so I would imagine, sir. Lord Frederick Masters will be a name for the pedigree-hunting Mamas of the plantations to drool over!”

  “I had not considered that, Eustace, but I suspect you may be right.”

  “He will be wedded to the eldest daughter of the owner of a thousand field-hands before the year is out, I doubt not, sir. Probably with fifty thousand dollars in his hand and the freehold of another plantation as well. They will pay for the son of an English Marquis, no question of that – a daughter to have the name ‘Lady Frederick’, no less! Colonel Miller, of whom I have heard a little, will be middle man, you may expect, and will chaffer out a deal to the advantage of the Andrews interest, as represented by his son.”

  “I never did get the rights of that story, Eustace…”

  Captain Hood was happy to enlighten his father-in-law.

  “What a man he was! I never had a great love for him, you know, Eustace, but he did so much for the family that I could not but respect him. He was a loss to us all. Particularly to his sons, who might benefit from his restraining influence now.”

  Lord St Helens was wholly unaware that he needed any restraint, being convinced that all was for the best in his world.

  “Fourteen families, you say, Mr Thynne? All put on the carrier’s cart and on their way to the coal mines?”

  “All gone, my lord, and their cottages razed. There will be less of an excess of labour now, my lord.”

  “Very good! I must write a letter to Ireland to Major Patrick Plunkett, to beg his assistance in the matter of gang labour for the harvest weeks.”

  “Lord Plunkett, if I may make so bold as to correct you, my lord. In the peerage of England, my lord, and with access to the House of Lords, therefore. Gazetted this very week, my lord.”

  “I must write my congratulations to him, Thynne. Following so soon after the birth of his son, too – some ten years after his wife presented him with his only daughter and he must have given up hope. I am very glad for him! Lord Nash will be less happy, one must imagine; a seat in the House of Lords and him only in the Irish peerage!”

  Thynne, who had ears and was well aware of his master’s dislike of the Northern Irish peer, judged it tactful to say nothing.

  “Many of the villagers are displeased, my lord, that relatives have been displaced, particularly to the mines, which have a bad name locally.”

  “Their state of emotion is their own affair, Mr Thynne. I would not be delighted if they were to dare to address me on the issue, however.”

  Mr Thynne thought it unlikely that they would attempt to hold converse with my lord.

  The letter informing my lord of the sad death of his relative, Mr Jonathan Quarrington, arrived next day.

  “There’s a pity, Mr Thynne – he was a powerful man in the making, one who was a good friend to us as well. I must attend his funeral rites, I believe. I must speak to my lady.”

  Miriam shook her head.

  “To be interred in the backwoods of the West Country, my lord? I would much prefer not to make the journey, if I may be excused.”

  “Oh, Lord! When, my dear?”

  “Perhaps five months hence, my lord. Late spring, one might imagine.”

  “That will bring us to the round dozen, will it not?”

  “Well, assuming twins again, yes, my lord.”

  “You know, my dear, that even allowing a modest marriage portion of some twenty thousand pounds, I am going to be very hard stretched if all of our girls come to wed!”

  She had not thought of that, began to worry that perhaps her delight in her children was a fraction misplaced.

  "What of the boys, husband? Are we able to provide for them?"

  "The Army for one at least - not the Brigade of Guards, that is not for us! The commission and outfitting to set us back some fifteen hundreds, and then an allowance of four or five hundred a year and purchase of the boy's steps over ten years to lieutenant-colonel. Not inexpensive, particularly if he should wish to be a cavalryman. Navy for another perhaps - far less expensive and to be encouraged! For the rest? John Company - an initial two thousands to buy a place, I have discovered, and then very little more - the same for any of the great companies, and again to be encouraged! We have no interest in Canada so a boy to eventually become a director of the Hudson’s Bay Company would be sensible. The same applies to the West Africa and Gold Coast Companies.”

  Robert had not considered the African Companies before, rather liked
the idea now that it had come to mind.

  “Less of direct value to the family but still eligible there would be a place as a barrister – the University and then four years I think of keeping Terms at the Inns of Court, and then another five before he is earning an income sufficient to live on, but independent as a junior by age thirty-five and rich as a Silk at fifty. Should any wish to join the Church then we would have to purchase a Living - he must be a rector, not a curate, and thus eligible for promotion within the Church. Four thousand pounds will purchase a five hundred a year place with a respectable parsonage and glebe to be rented out in addition. With our name behind him he should become Bishop in short order. But I still would not encourage either Church or Law, my dear – they smack more of the County than of our sort."

  "What if one of them should wish a political career, my lord?"

  "Easy to find a seat, but damned difficult to make him an income. There are a few sinecures to hand and it might be possible to organise a place at Court, but essentially it means guaranteeing an income for life, as we have done for James. I trust that they will not turn that way - James has another thirty years in him and we do not need another member for the family."

  She had not considered the mechanics of ensuring a future for the children - coming from a background of great wealth she had never been interested in money.

  "Should we encourage one or more to think of the bank, sir? There would be a place in Mostyns, I doubt not."

  "If one of the boys should be both very clever and interested in making money, then certainly, my dear. There are other possibilities than those I have outlined. A place in an embassy to become a diplomat, for example, or to go overseas as an adventurer and planter - both would be unexceptional. One of them might find life in his university so attractive as to wish to become a don. It is feasible that one of the youngest, and less visible, might join the family firm, going to sit at Mr Joseph Andrews' feet. Only Thomas is fixed in his course, with no choice of occupation; he is the heir and he must learn the estates and then follow after me in the Lords."