But Wolff was looking at her with frank and breathless admiration. "Du liebe Zeit!" he said. "You must be certain of your power. It's outrageous! Highway robbery!"
She smiled with relief, thinking he was at last calling off his proposal. "Good! I'm glad that's agreed." She forgot to return the bill though.
"Oh, no! No, no!" he chided playfully, snatching the bill from her. "I still must talk to my brother. I tell you tomorrow. Adieu, Gnädigste!" He kissed her hand and was gone.
Only then did the amazing truth dawn. He had not been cancelling his offer! He really intended it. All this "I must consult my brother" was nonsense. He was going to say yes tomorrow. Could she think of any other fees she might impose? No sooner had she asked herself the question than she realized the folly of it—and of the fees she had already demanded. She had simply, and thoughtlessly, intended to kill what she had in any case thought of as an insincere proposal. Now, clearly, it had all along been sincere. And how close she had come to stultifying it! She trembled at the memory.
In the small hours of the next morning, when they were back at La Gracieuse, after dancing her feet raw with Sam, with Rodet, and with half of Normandy, she told John what had happened and how it had come about. He parodied a huge chagrin. "You say you trembled!" He laughed despairingly. "You drift into these situations all your life. And how you come out unscathed—let alone with gold in your palm— I'll never understand. You're like the drunken smoker in the gunpowder works."
"What do you mean?" She laughed.
"The day I met you, that very first day, you were running away. Running for your life. Why?"
She smirked.
"Because you found your gaffer had his fingers in his employers' till—and you told him you wanted a quarter of whatever he was getting."
She bit her lip and grinned.
"And when you intercepted those letters of Chambers's, and you tried to blackmail him…"
"I did blackmail him."
"Very well. But, in fact, as I pointed out the minute you told me what the letters said, there wasn't one line there to connect them with Chambers. Your 'blackmail' was pure bluff."
She squirmed with delight.
"And with Wyatt. There was more bluff than real threat in what you did."
"He didn't think so. And it's my opinion we both ought to be glad for that."
It was a rebuke and John knew it. She often did that sort of thing these days—repulsing him just when she seemed to be warming again. For the first time in this long climb back to their fortune, he began to feel a sort of panic. He and Nora were growing apart, and he could not understand why. In so many little ways she was shutting him out, building a complete life of her own. He wondered whether she was even aware of it. There seemed to be a permanent but suppressed hostility there, cooling everything that had once been so warm. What did she want?
He reached a hand across the bed and caressed her. "Come on," he said. "You've got me going now."
She kissed him, affectionately enough, but refused the offer. "I have a lot to do tomorrow." She threw away the explanation, as if she knew he didn't really need it. "I must have a talk with Ferrand before I see Wolff again."
He chuckled, pretending to a lightness he did not feel. "That's my lass! The priorities are right."
She laughed good-naturedly too.
Chapter 33
Ferrand was very pleased with himself. He had, of course, kept Nora posted on his acquisitions over the year, so she knew he already had more than half the land they were after. But only yesterday he had pulled off the best purchase yet—not the biggest, but a vital strip of land running along the foreshore. He was rubbing a red crayon over this latest addition to his map when Nora arrived.
"Voila!" he said proudly, dusting his hands and standing back. "Four more hectares."
"Well done," she said. "That strip of seafront was beginning to worry me."
"It has emptied our account, but I got it for twelve hundred and fifty francs. It was worth five…ten times that to us."
Nora made that about five pounds an acre for the ten acres. "Very good. Its value to us was incalculable. I'll fill our account again. Another…what? Hundred and thirty thousand francs?"
"Excellent." Ferrand smiled and took out a bottle of brandy.
She accepted a thimbleful reluctantly; today had to be clear-head day. "What would my esteemed partner say must be on that land before it can become a resort?" she asked.
"Ah!" He flexed his hands like a conjuror and dived into a lower drawer in his desk. "See!"
He spread an artist's folio before her, untied the ribbons with delicate fingers, and invited her to lay it open.
It contained perhaps half a dozen large water-colour sketches of a seaside resort; because of the context, she knew it had to be Deauville—his imagined Deauville. Only the distant headland was recognizable. The rest was obliterated by buildings and private and public gardens. Her heart quickened to see it; she had imagined the resort often, of course, but without actually picturing it. Her mind did not run to pictures, only to labels—salt-water spa, theatre, library, gaming club, racecourse, houses, and so on. And here, beautifully realized, were the images to match all those labels.
"It is perfect, Monsieur Ferrand. What a shame it must one day become reality— it will never match these views for charm and elegance. Who is your artist?"
"Myself."
She looked back at the painting with redoubled surprise. "But you have a great talent."
And, with Gallic frankness, he agreed. "I was to have been an architect."
"If this becomes reality, you may yet live to become one."
He shook his head and shrugged. "If it becomes reality, I shall be too busy."
"You must, in that case, have some idea of the cost."
He shrugged again. "Thirteen million francs. Say, half a million pounds."
Nora pursed her lips, breathed slowly in, and nodded. "People will not lay that out all at once." She tapped the drawings. "So what is the first stage? We must make it very select." She watched his reaction carefully. "It must be where a few people, of the very highest quality, come to stay." She could see he had not thought of it this way. "Or what do you say?"
"I say we assemble first the land. Then we seek capital, in Paris, in London… and bonjour Deauville! You are beautiful!"
Nora laughed. "I agree. Entirely. Yet I think you underestimate the difficulties of raising such capital. If you say Deauville now, people will say 'where?' and pull their beards and make long faces. But if we could say, 'You know—where lord so-and-so and the marquess of such-and-such and the dowager duchess of elsewhere have their places.'" She could see he was assimilating the idea. She let it soak while she searched again among the water colours. She quickly found the view she was looking for; in the foreground was a perfect French seafront villa— elegant, sumptuously decorated, a bit overripe, yet full of charm and suggesting an informal but entirely proper gaiety.
"Can you sketch several like this?" she asked. "All different yet all with this character, which is perfect."
He could not resist such a challenge. "Very easily," he said.
"You see! You will be Deauville's first architect after all."
And she went on to explain to him how they would now have to hasten what had previously been a very leisurely, long-term affair, at least in her mind. The longer they had in order to establish this bit of coast as an aristocratic retreat, the easier it would be to turn it into a fashionable resort when time and money offered. She was determined now to do as much of it out of their own resources as possible. And, in the short term, she wanted to put the Wolffs' money to immediate use.
"I think," she went on, "now that we have more than half the land—and most of the best part—you must come out into the open. It cannot remain a secret much longer, in any case."
He nodded glumly. "The price will go up."
"I have always been prepared for that. When I do this sort of thing in Engl
and, I tell my agent to go out and say, 'I have been instructed to buy all this land by a woman who is completely mad. Believe it or not, she is prepared to pay'—and then he mentions what is no more than the market value of the land, but he makes it sound like a king's ransom—'per acre. She is very old and a bit soft in the head, you know; my advice is to take this offer before she dies!' And most of them do. For the stubborn ones we go no more than ten per cent over the value and say the offer stands one month only. Very, very few resist it. Of course, in France you may be more clever."
He conceded that possibility. "But I'll try," he said.
She refused a further brandy and hastened back to La Gracieuse.
The britzka overhauled Sam and Sarah halfway up the hill from Trouville; Nora made the coachman pull in and let Sarah climb up; he and Sam walked beside the horses to the top.
"I'm neglecting you this year, Sam. I'm sorry," she called to him.
But Sarah said that Nora's loss was her gain. "I've had ever such an interesting walk down on the beach with Mr. Telling. And such beautiful shells as we have collected! We could make a grotto if we had a sack to carry them in." She was fishing in her reticule as she spoke, and from it, she produced a handkerchief tied in a loose bundle. It fell open, spilling out a mass of shells on her lap. She turned them this way and that, selecting four perfect specimens, which she put on the seat between herself and Nora.
"Name them!" Sam said, climbing in. "I'll wager you've forgotten."
Sarah smiled a challenge back at him. "Patella nimbosa," she said of a plain limpet shell. Then, of another limpet with a starburst pattern of ribs and a spiny edge: "Patella granatina. Right?"
Sam nodded.
Then came a scallop. "Ostraea jacoboea." The last was a spotted cowrielike shell. "Cypraea tigris!" She got her tongue triumphantly round the syllables.
"Well done, Mrs. Cornelius. You are a star learner."
"Mr. Telling knows so much about shellfish. And about how the tides are caused," Sarah said.
Sam laughed, a little shamefacedly. "I do about those shellfish, for I picked up their cousins last year and learned all about them from Rees's Cyclopedia in Mr. Nelson's library."
"Where could we make a grotto, Nora?" Sarah asked.
"Ask Rodie."
"Ah." Sarah and Sam exchanged glances.
"What?" Nora asked.
"There's something else we want to ask Rodie," Sarah said.
"Yes. I want to come and see the Auberge Clement with you and Mrs. Cornelius."
"But we had arranged not to go until next week. After you go back."
"I know. Would Madame Rodet be upset if you changed?"
"I should think she would. She's arranged so much this time."
They said no more then, for the coach had pulled up at the main door.
That afternoon, Rodie had arranged a grand outdoor tea in honour of the English guests. It was almost exclusively a Protestant gathering—sober, energetic, hardworking, careful people who spoke endlessly of business, land, and alliances. Nora enjoyed the undercurrents and tensions she felt in the light-seeming chatter all around. Even when they bent to sip tea, their sharp eyes, like those of wary creatures at a water hole, flickered this way and that above the teacup rims.
Nora had smiled at and nodded to Wolff several times but the affair was almost over before they found occasion to be casually alone together. They wandered into an elegant little classical temple, with a statue of Hygeia—somewhat marred with birdlime—in the middle. Before he could speak of their business, she pulled out of her pocketbook some sheets of notepaper on which, just after lunch, she had dashed down what, if accepted, would become the heads of agreement between them.
In essence, it was simpler than what she had suggested the previous night; but the details were far more involved. Basically, it provided that they would be investing in her rather than letting her buy this or that security for them. Whatever capital they put into her hands was secured by a mortgage debenture on her property at large. Their income from that capital was a proportionate share of her total net income (and here there was a long schedule of allowable deductions)…and so it went on, carefully balancing her interests and theirs.
Wolff was impressed by it, even at a quick read-through. "In some ways it's even better," he said.
"Not necessarily. You might make more profit with your proposal but the security is less."
"Of course," he said. "I like the security. And income, for sure. But this has a
good balance. We write to you from Hamburg."
"Herr Wolff," she said as he started to leave her, "I hope you and your brother understand that, though I am grateful for your trust, I do not admire your judgement. The risk you are taking is madness."
"Risk?" It worried him.
"Well—what do you really know of me?"
"Nathan has told us much already. Also Rodet."
"Rodet! What does he know?"
Now Wolff looked at her with sardonic amusement. "He knows how you have discovered his manufacturing costs."
Nora stared at him, stony-faced. Her stomach sank. She thought of trying to brazen it out but realized how futile that would be. "He told you?" she asked.
Wolff nodded. "We work it out together, yes."
"But how dreadful! I am a guest here. I would never have come if…Is he very angry?"
"He says he is amused." Wolff shrugged. "But we say, if the oats are stolen, one must thrash the hay instead. Rodet says Stevenson's is an intelligent firm. You will not starve him. You will look after him. I think so too."
Of course, Rodet was using Wolff as a messenger.
"It's your idea, yes, Gnädige Frau?"
Nora, unable to keep an entirely straight face, nodded.
"We take no risk I think, my brother and I." He kissed her hand and left.
She walked back to the house, thinking over Rodet's strange reaction. She could not imagine any English capitalist taking kindly to the idea that someone out there in the jungle was "looking after" him. Yet that was the situation Rodet was accepting; and Wolff had not sneered at him for it. How different these Continental capitalists were. They all liked the cosy life. Could one call it decadent or effete? Or were they really older and wiser? It was, in any case, a difference to bear in mind if Stevenson's worked more extensively in Europe, as now appeared quite likely.
When she returned to the house, she found Sam skipping on the terrace like a child. "We can go Friday," he said gleefully. "Friday first thing."
"But I thought on Saturday, Rodie had arranged for…"
"She doesn't mind. In fact, between you and me, I think she's relieved. I think she's fallen out with this friend of hers we were going to visit."
And it was true that Rodie was very abstracted throughout dinner. Nora later asked her if anything was the matter.
"I am fearful," she said, not smiling, "of the future."
"Your future? The business—is anything wrong? Could we help?"
At last Rodie smiled. She patted Nora's arm. "It's so generous. No, thank you. Our future, thank Providence—and thank Rodet—is secure. But for France…" She pulled a glum face. "And the poor people." She shook her head sadly.
"You've been talking to Wolff!" Nora said.
She nodded. "But also Rodet. He says Wolff is right. He says we must find some way of coming closer with the poor. I think I must begin some charity. Do you? In England?"
Nora shook her head. "I have so little time. We give to certain proper charities, of course—the Invalid Asylum, which is for respectable females, and the Female Refuge, which is for penitent fallen women—and the Yorkshire Boys' School in London and the Railway Servant Orphanage. And, of course, the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity. That's a wonderful thing; do you have one here?" And she took out one of the society's cards. She kept several always about her. "You see, if a beggar comes up to you in the street, you give him or her this card. They can then go to the society's offices, at the address
on the card, see? And the society investigates them, and if they are deserving, either refers them to some appropriate charity or grants them relief or refers them back to us with a note of recommendation."
Nora did not say it, but she and John gave between three and four thousand pounds a year to these various causes.
Rodie was delighted with her description of the way the Mendicity Society worked. "That's good," she said. "I can do that here, in Rouen."
"It's a lot of work, Rodie. Why not something simpler? Supply coals and soup and good used clothing. You could do that here in Trouville."
She nodded, glum again. "It will be necessary. The harvest is very bad, they say. The worst in memory."
The Rich Are with You Always Page 35