"So why, this front end, does he go out of his way, early one cold morning, to see if Stevenson's has gone into ironfounding?"
He watched her closely. This time there was no confusion; her astonishment was genuine. "He never did!"
"Four miles. And rode on with me to Burythorpe, near enough."
"What did he say?"
He snorted. "You know Hudson. His mind clicks like a compound engine. He'd get three bites at any cherry."
"But his exact words?"
John turned and went back to the fire, speaking as he went. "He just said he'd wager I wished I had my ironworks already."
"Already!" Nora said, falling into the selfsame trap.
John spun around, pointing at her and grinning. He did not need to tell her that was just what he had said. "Did he mention ironworks to you?" he asked. "In December. He says it was December, not November."
She stood up then, very firm and erect, and she looked at him steadily. "I first mentioned ironworks to you last August. Because it was during the Reverend Woods' sermon for Saint Bartholomew that the notion came to me. You talked to Brassey about it in September. And to Rodet. And again to Rodet in November. There's a dozen ways it could have gotten to Hudson."
John nodded, still restless. "Rodet!" he said. "The little frog is never there—yet never too far away."
"I don't honestly know about Rodet. But this meeting with Hudson means nothing," she assured him, truly believing it. "He sniffs about him like a champion hound. He's forgotten it already. George Hudson can take pound shares and sell them at twenty-pound premium any day of the week. So why should he want to get into anything so dull and safe as simple ironfounding?"
At last John seemed reassured, and her mention of Hudson's freelance stockjobbing prompted the memory of the GNE shares and the promise of fifty thousand clear. "Beats me," he said, when he had told her that bit of good news, "where the money all comes from."
She had to peer at him in the firelight and the glimmer of her distant oil lamp to see if he was serious. "D'you really not know?" she asked.
"Obviously some of it comes from fools—like Beador if he's applying for shares at big premiums—but that can't be the whole of it." He had not meant to use Beador as an example; the name had slipped out. But now he was glad. Now perhaps they could talk about it.
She appeared not to hear him, her eyes fixed on the dancing flames. And then she continued: "There was a thing you said to me once. It must have been right back early on when we first got married. You said we'd got gold 'not buried in a bloody tropic island, but gold buried in the future. Waiting while we grow toward it.' I've never forgotten that."
"I said that to you the very first night we met. The twenty-sixth of August, 1839." His eye was on her, but his mind's eye was back there, relishing the precision of his memory. "On the banks over the south portal of Summit Tunnel. That's when I said that."
"Well, George Hudson's gone one better than you. He's found a way of digging a tunnel to the future. And he's bringing that gold back here by the Troy ton!"
He laughed, delighted at the thought. But Nora was adamant. "It's the shareholders of the eighteen fifties and sixties—and beyond—who are paying that profit to us. What! Capitalize at fourteen million and call up four. Amalgamate with three others and keep the cash switching around so fast that half of it melts and everyone's blinded! I tell you, George Hudson may be the wax on the colonel's moustache for this generation of shareholders, but their sons will curse him—and their grandsons too—if he continues much longer."
Her vehemence made him smile. "A tunnel in time!" he said, and then fell silent.
"Is that your worry about Beador?" she asked suddenly. "Did he say he's been speculating in shares?"
"As good as," John admitted.
"Is he badly stretched?"
"He wouldn't say. I told him we would need to know the full extent of his liability before we made any further move together."
"Not that we'd trust him," she said.
"Of course not. We must make our own inquiry."
"Yes."
"Or perhaps not. I'm coming round to your view. Let's drop Sir George and look for land elsewhere."
"No!" She was emphatic. John's admission excited her. The air carried upon it the distant smell of blood. "No. We can find out. Let's not be hasty. I imagine, then, you didn't ask Hudson about Beador?"
He shook his head. "Certainly not."
"Did you think we might ask Reverend Prendergast? Time we put him to work again."
The Reverend Doctor Prendergast had once tried to blackmail John and Nora. But since they had turned the tables on him, he had earned himself a respectable and far from trifling commission for help rendered; he had the back door password to most of the railway boardrooms in Britain—certainly to all in the north of the country. If Beador was on any applicants' list, the Reverend Doctor Prendergast could soon find out.
"Fancy not thinking of him," John said.
"You live hand-to-mouth, love," she told him. "You only thought of Hudson because he lives so close by."
He smiled grudgingly at the truth of it.
But Nora did not smile back. A memory had just come to her. The day she met George Hudson on York station was, in fact, the day she had seen John off to Stockton, to inspect the proposed site for the foundry. At the time, she had dismissed it as coincidence. But now it had to be something more than that.
What was behind it? Hudson was obviously saying, "I know your game." But why? Was he also saying, "Don't think you can do anything in this world without my getting to hear of it"? In other words, was he just gently joking with them? Or was he laying the ground to walk off with their prize and then turn around and say, "I did my best to warn you; fair's fair and all's fair in business."
It was cat-and-mouse, but was the cat just playful—or hungry?
She hid these thoughts and fears from John until they had settled in her mind. Much later that night, when they lay in bed reading, she told him why she was sure that Hudson knew.
He took it as calmly as he always did, not pausing long for thought. "So," he said, "let's assume the worst. Hudson is going to Beador and will magnetize and mesmerize the arrangements out of him and will then offer Beador something better—which is only too easy for Hudson. His signature on a soap bubble would seem worth more to Beador than anything we're justified in offering."
Nora let the silence, and the worry, grow until she judged it right to suggest: "If he's not going to snatch Beador from us, we risk nothing. If he is, then only a desperate remedy will cure him."
"Aye?" John asked, doubting. He trusted only her financial judgement.
"If you told him straight out about Beador, about what we fear he's done with his share applications, and why we need to know…"
"If I did that," John interrupted, impatient and disappointed, "he'd snatch the lot. We've already gone over…"
"Aye!" Nora said with redoubled conviction. "If you did that. But what if I did it? All simple and trusting? Ladylike, you know?"
At least John considered the idea.
"You have to remember," she pressed on, "Hudson's carrying two hundred years of gentility on his back."
He still said nothing.
"It'd go against his grain to use intelligence given him by a gentlewoman asking for his help."
John smiled at that. Nora's whole claim to gentility derived from the fact that her great-grandfather had been squire of Normanton. His neglect of that small estate in favour of hunting had been the first step in the family's long slide into poverty and, finally, with the death of Nora's father, to destitution. Paradoxically, the squire-ancestor in the background enabled her to confess frankly to everyone the degree of poverty she had known. She was not the jumped-up servant she might seem, but a true gentlewoman reduced by the folly of others and rescued by her own innate qualities; not an interloper, but a heroine.
"You have a certain instinct in these matters," John conceded.
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"Aye." She settled complacently and blew out her candle.
"And it's nearly always wrong," he said with no change of tone. He blew out his candle.
In the dark she smiled. "Never fret, dearest. You'll find a way, I'm sure."
But he did not; and next morning after breakfast, he reluctantly agreed to try her suggestion.
Chapter 5
The snow began to fall when they were halfway to York. It was a light flurry that looked like a shower; but the land was cold and the flakes stuck to the ground from the very start. By the time they reached the station, there was no doubt that the fall was going to be prolonged and no melt was in prospect.
"I hope you get through to Darlington," she said as their carriage halted. "If it's like this here, it's bound to be worse at Northallerton."
"I'm thinking of you," he said. "Forget Hudson and get straight home. At this rate there could be four foot on the tops by evening."
"Aye," she said. "I sh'll just see you off, then head for home."
He knew she was lying, but, as there were no means to insist on his way, he tacitly let her have hers.
When he was in the director's carriage, he opened the window and leaned out. She reached up and squeezed his hand, the greatest intimacy they dared in public. He squeezed back and smiled, looking at her grey-brown eyes, eager in her smiling face, framed in dark ringlets that strayed from the edge of her bonnet; he had to remember that face over the next fortnight. "Throw away any bad pennies," he said.
She smiled and blinked.
The train backed out of the station, switched to the down rails, and set off northward. As the last carriage slid from view beyond the broad arch, she turned and made at once for Hudson's office.
Hudson had two styles of greeting. The one for insiders was warm and almost conspiratorial; the one for strangers, outsiders, gulls, sheep for shearing, was majestic. It struck at the pit of the stomach; it awed important stockholders and silenced querulous directors. His greeting to Nora was an odd mixture of the two. "Hide the books!" he said in a stage whisper to Noakes, his clerk, while he came around to help Nora into her seat. "Give us a conundrum, lad," he added just before Noakes left.
"Uh…eleven per cent of one thousand two hundred and forty-seven pounds," Noakes said as he closed the door; it was a long-established ritual.
Nora and Hudson faced each other, smiling grimly, cat-and-cat. It was Nora's day to be Distressed Lady Seeks Help so she let Hudson say, "One three seven pounds three and fivepence," a little ahead of her. Then lamely, with all the pedantry of a born loser, she added, "Three shillings and four and four-fifths pence, if you want a base figure."
He laughed magnanimously, pretending to accept second place. Good. He was slipping into the right mood.
"It was pleasant to see Mr. Stevenson again," Hudson began.
Nora displayed confusion. "This morning?" she asked, unbelieving. Hudson frowned. "No, no. Yesterday." His grey eyes watched her. "We met near Leavening. I out for a trot. He on his way to repair my great blunder." He pulled a sudden wry, naughty-boy face.
"Great blunder!" Nora rose to his challenge. "Indeed. A chain's-length of wet ground, Stevenson says." Then, as an unimportant afterthought, she added: "Odd he never told me you met."
Hudson wet his lips, uncertain of her.
"But then," she added brightly, burying the topic, "I fancy you spoke nothing of moment."
He's uncertain whether to believe me, she thought. It would take an indiscretion to prick his ears and drop that guard. "Stevenson and I were a little out of sorts," she confided, laughing to show it wasn't important. "I want a hand in the management of my trust fund. He and Chambers are that cautious. It saddens me to think of so many tens of thousands…" She halted, made herself blush, and stammered. "Well…thousands anyway—all lying as good as dead in Treasury stock."
Hudson smiled, a touch greedily. "I don't know how he resists the idea," he said.
She composed herself again. "Oh, I shall win," she told him. "I shall have the control of part of it at least."
And that's a notion, she thought, that will come back to him over the months. And no harm to me.
"It won't please your banker, that," Hudson said, pretending this was all idle chatter.
"I'm out of concert with him and all," she answered glumly, and then, as if appealing to his judgement, added, "I feel as we've a right to a great deal more intelligence than he ferrets out for us. We've put contracts for over two million pounds through him these five years past. I think we're very poorly served in that department."
Oblique though the appeal was, she made it plain enough to be irresistible to Hudson. "If it's railway intelligence, and ye think I could help…"
Nora showed the right mixture of dwindling caution and mounting relief. "You're quick, Mr. Hudson. Quick and kindly. For you know full well I came here of express purpose to ask. But I wanted to avoid a direct request you might have been embarrassed to refuse and loath to grant." She smiled her gratitude. "I'd not have pressed it."
"I'm certain you'd ask nothing dishonourable," Hudson warned.
"Indeed," she said. "I'm very sensible of your honour, which I know would prevent you from taking advantage of anything you might hear from me."
For the first time he saw where he had been manoeuvred. He looked steadily at her until, apparently struck by a sudden thought, he smiled. "Oh, I can't promise that," he said.
She pressed her lips together and waited.
"The day after you get control of that fund I shall be knocking at your door!"
She joined his laughter. "Better come the day before," she warned. "Day after may be too late."
His laughter quickly died. "I believe that," he said.
The time for chatting and joking was over. She gathered herself together and, sitting upright, said, "We are turning over the idea of going into foundry work on our own account." He showed only a polite and casual interest. "Nothing as yet is settled, but Rodet, whom I'm sure you know?" Hudson nodded. "Rodet has put a friend of his, Sir George Beador, in touch with us. There's a possible partnership in the venture. The interests are mutual."
"Stockton!" Hudson interrupted. "Of course. That Beador." A satisfied look came over him. "Stockton, eh?"
"Aye." Nora confirmed his pleasure. "Every scrap of iron we send inland will go over your metals. North out or south out." He rubbed his hands in pantomime. "So you've a further reason to wish us well."
He pouted at that. "My own friendship would ensure my every assistance."
Nora placated him. "I'm sure, Mr. Hudson, but a sound business reason always helps."
He smiled again. "Why iron?" he asked.
There were a dozen and one reasons for going into ironworks, but the one
closest to Nora's heart was one that only another financial adept would understand. She had often wanted to put it to John, but he would have known at once that she was showing off, giving the most abstruse reason of all when the dozen simpler ones were compelling enough. Chambers, too, would understand, but he would also find some way to turn it against her. Now was her chance. Hudson would surely see it at once and admire her shrewdness.
Casually, as if it were really too obvious, she said: "If we can hold our present stocks as a liability, balanced against such assets as unpaid debt on invoiced goods, we're in a much better position than if we just hold the same stock as a depreciating asset."
He coughed and cleared his throat. "Yes," he said. "How true."
To Nora it was barely credible that he did not grasp the point; yet he clearly did not. She pressed on at once, pushing this extraordinary discovery deeper. "Manufacturer's stock-in-trade does not automatically depreciate," she added.
"That's clever," he said at length. His admiration was so quietly genuine that she knew beyond certainty this was the first time in his life the point had struck him.
For her, it was a discovery of cardinal importance. On several occasions recently, she had been on the
point of taking shares in a number of Hudson's lines; soon her mere intuitive distrust of him would have been unable to withstand the strong commercial arguments for investing in such huge success as Hudson had shown. But now it was clear that he was no genius at all. Just a clever lad who had found a tin whistle and had taught himself to play four or five tunes to perfection. He did not understand accounts; he merely knew a handful of impressive tricks. God be praised she had discovered the fact in time.
Quickly, to prevent his becoming embarrassed, she said: "Stevenson tells me not to talk such French. He says if we take up foundry work, it'll be for the profit, not for tricks with the ledgers." She chuckled. "I daresay he's right. He usually is."
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