‘I must confess to some surprise,’ she said honestly. ‘But I knew that his own marriage had been an alliance of this sort, and that it had not proved to be a happy one. I thought that this had determined him to allow me my own choice as a sign of affection for me. Besides, he knows as well as I do that I am not beautiful, and what it meant to me that I should have bestowed my affection on someone who seemed to return it.’
David leant a little towards her, longing to step forward and tell her that she was indeed beautiful in his eyes and that she had not been wrong in thinking her love returned. But instinct told him that this was a discussion which must be kept to the path of reason and not of emotion. He did not realize, even as he controlled his feelings of love, that he was already dominated by a deeper feeling of hatred.
‘I think you may have been mistaken,’ he said. ‘In the same way I deluded myself when I believed that your father gave me promotion because he recognized my business ability. We both, I am afraid, allowed our hearts to overrule our heads. Your father is not a sentimental man. He had a purpose in arranging this engagement: he needed someone to take the blame.’
‘The blame for what?’ asked Margaret. ‘For the slipping of a dock wall? For the burning of a ship? For the collapse of a bank in another city?’
David shook his head.
‘The trouble was much more deep-seated than that,’ he said. ‘Those were only the windows which allowed the rottenness within to be seen. I’m not trying to say that your father was a wicked man where the affairs of the bank were concerned. But he made mistakes, and his pride forced him to cover them up.’
‘How can you say that you are not accusing him of wickedness when you would have me believe that he intends to put all the blame on you?’
‘I think that is the case,’ said David. ‘I think it was his intention from the start. That is why I am going. After I am gone he can say what he wants and there will be no one to contradict him. It will assist him greatly, I imagine, in the trial and when sentence is passed. But although the whole of Bristol will think of me as a villain or a fool, I trust that you …’
‘You said that my father arranged this engagement,’ interrupted Margaret. The colour was high in her cheeks for a reason that David failed to understand. ‘He did not do so. He permitted it, certainly, but only at my most earnest insistence. Because I wanted it so very much and because I thought - I thought that you …’
The tears were in her eyes, ready to fall. David tried to keep his voice gentle as he answered.
‘You were right to think that I loved you. I loved you then and I love you now. And it was necessary for your father’s intentions that the wish should seem to come from you. But who was it who first threw us together, Margaret? Who made sure that we should see far more of each other than our stations in life would in the usual way have made possible? You are as well aware as I how little power of choice devolves on a daughter in the house of a wealthy man. You were allowed to choose only when your father had made sure that you would choose what he wished.’
‘You speak of me as though I had no mind of my own!’ cried Margaret, and David realized too late that the flush he had observed was one of anger. ‘As though I were a decoy, the bait placed in a trap to catch you by the foot. My father learned early enough that where marriage was concerned I claimed the right to determine my own fate. It was at my insistence that the alliance he planned with Walter Crankshaw was abandoned. And it was at my insistence again that you were accepted in Walter’s place. It was not easy for me to face my father’s displeasure, and I will not be told now that I was dancing all the time to his tune like an organ-grinder’s monkey. I understand now that you were playing a tune of your own. You had a mind to marry the daughter of a rich man who would advance your career. But now the alliance is of no use to you, you give me back my freedom so that you may take your own, and you revile my father to ensure that I shall not try to hold you back.’
‘Marry me, Margaret,’ said David. It was only a few hours since he had written the letter which told her that they must part, but now he was overcome by a feeling of panic lest she should take him at his word. ‘Marry me tomorrow and come with me to make a new life. If you made over Lower Croft to William he would advance you money for a passage and the price of a home.’ He thought quickly. The Flora, on which he had planned to sail to San Francisco, would leave the city harbour in only eight hours - too short a time for Margaret to make the necessary arrangements. But that destination had been chosen at random. Any other would do as well. ‘The Diana leaves for Jamaica in six days’ time. Marry me, and we will sail on her together.’
He had chosen the worst possible time to renew his proposal. Margaret’s eyes were still brimming with the tears which revealed how much she had been hurt by his accusations, and her voice as she answered was cold.
‘So you are willing after all to use the money which you claim my father had no right to set aside.’
‘I am willing to do anything which will make for your happiness.’
‘And you think I could be happy with a man who believes that my father is wicked and myself weak? You must think again. You wrote this morning to offer me my freedom from my engagement to you. I accept the offer with gratitude, and pray that you may make good use of your own freedom in finding happiness in your new life. Goodnight, Mr Gregson.’
He put out a hand to hold her back, but she tugged her arm sharply away and swept out of the house as he called her name with one last cry of anguish. He heard her footsteps running down the wooden stairs and, a moment later, along the empty street outside. He could have run faster and caught her again, but it would have done no good. Nothing in his own situation had changed. He was still a man with nothing to offer. And about John Junius he had said only what he believed to be the truth. It would have been wiser and kinder not to have spoken the words, but he could not in honesty now withdraw them and make a hollow apology to heal the rift which had caused her anger.
Now the desolation which he had faced earlier and thought to have conquered returned again to drain away his courage. He stood for a long time with his head pressed against the door, knowing that he had lost her for ever. He tried to banish from his mind the picture of her appearance at this last meeting: a proud, indignant figure dressed in the unflattering deadness of black paramatta and crape. Instead he remembered the happy girl, her face framed in fur, who had looked so lovingly into his eyes in the snow-swept garden of Lower Croft, claiming his own heart with spirit and courage. He remembered too the radiant young woman, beautiful in her ball dress, with a long ringlet of red hair lying softly on her smooth white shoulders, who had danced with him at the ball for the Prince of Wales. As his love ached in silent despair, so his anger grew against the man who had promised him this treasure but had never intended that the promise should be kept. With his lips tightened in a manner reminiscent of John Junius himself, David crossed over to the table and began to write.
He worked without stopping for three hours, using the notes which he had made earlier to refresh his memory of dates and figures. Dawn was already lightening the sky as he signed and sealed the statement. As soon as he heard his landlady stirring, he put it into her hands. She was to keep it, he told her, until the day before the trial of John Junius Lorimer began. Then she should take it to the police station. David had marked on the outside the instruction that it should be handed to the chief prosecuting counsel, but he could not expect Mrs Lambert herself to discover who that would be. He gave her a little money for her trouble, and settled the rent with the last of his savings. Then he whistled for a boy from the street to help him with his baggage.
Three hours later the Flora moved towards the estuary along the narrow and tortuous channel of the Avon. She was pulled by a steam tug and noisy with commands as the crew made her ready to catch the wind which would be waiting in the open water. David looked up from her deck towards the gardens of Brinsley House. The mansion itself, lying back from the gorge
, could not be seen - except for the tower in which John Junius himself might at this moment be sitting. David stared for a moment, reflecting on the ruthlessness of the rich towards intruders in their midst. Then, as Brunel’s miraculous bridge seemed to glide through the air far above, he averted his gaze from the tumbling woods and sheer cliffs and in a gesture of final rejection went down to his berth, turning his back on England and the Lorimers for ever.
16
Insolvency is infectious. In the weeks which followed the collapse of Lorimer’s Bank the commercial life of Bristol came nearly to a standstill. The bank’s larger shareholders were in many cases the owners of manufacturing or trading companies. As they came to be stripped of their assets they were forced to close their warehouses and factories and turn their workmen out into a community which had no new employment to offer. The depositors, although they might hope for the return of some of their money eventually, had for the time being no ready cash, so that tradesmen’s bills went unpaid and new spending was restricted to the barest necessities of life. Drapers and tobacconists, milliners and dressmakers, horse-dealers and wine merchants, all found themselves with debts which might never be settled and stocks which could not be sold. They too reduced their staffs and this added to the poverty which every day settled more and more inexorably on the city. The ragged children whose profession it was to hire themselves out as the pitiable dependants of beggars joined the ranks of the unemployed, for there were enough truly destitute and starving families to absorb all available charity without the necessity to pretend despair.
The property market was as badly affected as any other form of trade. So many shops and houses were offered through forced sale at the same time - and so few buyers were to be found - that prices dropped almost to nothing, making removal impossible even for those who were not directly affected by the crisis but wished merely to escape from it. Stung by David’s taunt, Margaret put Lower Croft on to the market. She was not prepared to believe that her father had made the gift deliberately in order that something might be salvaged from the wreck of his own estate, but her conscience told her that when so many people had been ruined through entrusting their money to the Lorimers, no member of the family should be immune from the penalties of failure. A charitable fund had been opened in the city for the relief of distress caused by the bank’s collapse, and she intended to donate the proceeds of the sale to this. She was careful not to tell William of her plan, for she guessed that he would dismiss it as sentimental.
No buyer could be found. Quite apart from the general shortage of capital, the position of Lower Croft in the grounds of a hospital made it unattractive to anyone wanting a family home. After only a short time, the agents informed her that there was little chance of a sale, and advised her to let the property. Instead, she lent it rent free to a family whose own house had been taken from them by the bank’s Receiver. On the first night of their stay, she cried herself to sleep. This was to have been her home as David Gregson’s bride. In giving the key of the door to a stranger, she was acknowledging that they would never live there together.
The winter of 1878 was as bleak as the life of the city. Snow fell early, and the boys of the College, on the way from their houses to Big School, hurried past William’s windows with blue fingers and shoulders hunched against the cold. November would normally have seen the opening of the social season, but this year there were no balls and no grand dinners. Even those who were still in a position to entertain could not be sure that their friends any longer kept a carriage in which to travel, or enough servants to make a return invitation possible. In the whole depressed city only the poor - those to whom debts had always come more naturally than savings - found their situation unchanged. The poor, and William Lorimer.
His sister, devoting her days to the care of baby Arthur and her nights to tears for her lost lover, did not appreciate how unusual William’s position was. The requirements of mourning demanded that she should avoid all society after her mother’s death, so she was exposed neither to the ostracism which might have faced her from unkind acquaintances nor to the facts and rumours of bankruptcies which she would have heard from her remaining friends. She noticed, naturally, that William was not as low in spirits as might have been expected. If she had been more knowledgeable about financial matters she might have connected this with a casual remark of his one day that Lloyd’s had been creditably prompt in paying the insurance claim for the loss of the Georgiana and that this was no bad time to have a little liquid capital. What she did know was that he spent a good deal of his time with lawyers and accountants, and she was prepared to believe that he had inherited the financial acumen which had deserted John Junius only in the years of his old age. But she was too miserable on her own account to think very much about her brother’s affairs. Every night as she went to bed she assured herself that she could never have been happy with a man who regarded her father as a criminal; and every night the hot tears cooled on her cheeks as she fell asleep knowing that she would never be happy with anyone else.
John Junius, all this time, remained alone at Brinsley House. Almost all the servants had been sent away, though a cook and a manservant remained to attend to him. The house became chill and damp, for only in the library was a fire ever lit. All the other rooms, except for his bedroom and the kitchens, were closed and shuttered, waiting for the furniture to be carried away and sold. He spent his time preparing explanations and justifications of the balance sheets which would be presented at his trial, and received no visitors except his solicitor and the members of his family.
The jade collection, and the Indian and Persian screens, were the first to go. Margaret and Ralph arrived at Brinsley House one morning to find a carter waiting outside, while a squad of men filled packing cases with the precious carvings. They were to be sent to London for auction, John Junius told them as he supervised the work. There was no money in Bristol to spare for such luxuries, and the Receiver who was handling the bank’s affairs had arranged that they should be sold where the highest prices were likely to be obtained for the creditors. John Junius spoke in his usual brusque manner, as though the silent despair to which the death of his wife and the fall of his bank had reduced him was already a thing of the past, and the future something to be faced with confidence. He even turned on Ralph with an accusing air to demand why he was not at Oxford.
‘There is surely no money to pay the fees,’ answered Ralph in surprise.
‘The money will be found. Your college will recognize that our difficulties are purely temporary.’
‘But the fees are only a small part of the expense, Father. In such a place one must be able to live like a gentleman. I have accepted the fact that this way of life is no longer possible for me.’
‘Then what, may I ask, do you propose to do with yourself?’
‘I must look for employment.’
‘With what qualifications? You are of no use to society in your present state.’
‘That’s hardly my fault, Father. Perhaps William will employ me as a clerk in his office.’
John Junius turned away, his fists clenched with anger. The door of the library slammed behind him. Margaret looked reproachfully at her younger brother.
‘Oh Ralph, it is unkind of you to remind Papa that he is no longer able to give you the kind of life he would wish for you.’
‘He has always believed that he has some kind of claim on society, that he must always be well treated,’ said Ralph. ‘I make no such claim for myself. I have deserved nothing of anybody. And it seems to me that our family has lived for too long on the sufferings of others. If I am the one who must pay for this, it is a situation I accept.’
They began to walk together back to The Ivies.
‘If William were to offer …’ began Margaret; but Ralph shrugged his shoulders.
‘He has not done so, though he knows my circumstances. I don’t wish to sponge on him. Although he has not lost his capital, like so many of our friends, he har
dly gives the impression of having more income than he needs.’
It was difficult for Margaret to make any comment. William had inherited from his father a dislike of any kind of ostentation. Although Sophie had brought him money, it might all have been invested in the shipping line for the sake of future profits. Margaret had no better idea than Ralph whether it would be easy for their brother to be generous.
‘If you had the choice,’ she said. ‘If there were no problem of money, what would you do with your life?’
‘That’s something I’ve thought about over and over again. Before leaving school I discussed my feelings with Dr Percival and was told by him that if I prayed every night I would be guided to learn whether my wishes were in accordance with God’s plan. So I have prayed, and now I am sure that it is my duty to atone for my own guilt and that of our family over the centuries. We have never deserved our wealth. It is not enough to do without it now. We should try to recompense in some way those we have wronged.’
Margaret looked at her eighteen-year-old brother with new eyes. After Claudine’s announcement of her pregnancy and hurried departure for France, Ralph had changed with surprising speed from an idle schoolboy interested mainly in cricket to a serious young man dividing his time between his books and his devotions. The change had become most noticeable at the time of their mother’s death and the unhappy events which followed, so she had not thought of it as needing any further explanation.
‘Recompense them by earning a fortune and giving it away, do you mean? You are hardly likely to become rich as a clerk of the Lorimer Line.’
Ralph shook his head.
‘You asked me what I would choose if I were free to do so. I would study to be ordained. And then, when I had taken Holy Orders, I would go as a missionary and minister to those poor wretches whose ancestors were transported by ours from their homes.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘But my choice is not free. Without money I cannot study. At least, not at once. So William is my best hope. If he will employ me for a little, no matter how humbly, I can perhaps work hard enough to earn promotion and begin to save. I shall ask him today.’
The Lorimer Line Page 18