"It's true," he said. His voice acquired a measured solemnity. "My little son Lionel, you remember, the three-year-old. Last Thursday, while we were here, he died." There was no sound from her. He sat down to pull his stockings on. His back was to her. "It was cholera," he added. "It's been raging in Bristol this summer." Still there was no sound. "Not that I could have done anything if I had been there. He was never a well child. I felt more sorry for Arabella than anyone."
He stopped then, feeling the bed shake. Could she be laughing? At him? He turned and looked closely at her. She was crying, sobbing in silence. He shouldn't have told her. "Come," he said. "It's past now. We're all learning to get over it. It was a merciful release."
Whatever he said and whichever way he tried to turn her, she would not stop her crying nor show him her face. He tried to tickle her while he laughed, he tried to caress her sexually while he made lascivious promises for next week, but nothing would shake her out of it. In the end, he grew quite worried. But the time for his train was drawing on, so he had to go. When he left her she was still lying naked on the bed, face hidden, sobbing and sobbing. He wondered then if he would ever see her again in that room and state of nature.
But when he came next week, so did she.
Chapter 49
There was no holiday for anyone connected with Stevenson's the summer of
1849. The firm had never worked so hard. It now had between twenty-five and thirty thousand men, engaged on fifty-nine contracts in England and Europe. Just to service them all with the cash that each needed routinely was a doubletide nightmare for a staff of fifteen clerks and a treasurer, quite apart from Nora. She alone had the "extraordinary" demands to cope with too: the unforeseen expenses that could overturn all their careful budgeting. She alone knew how close to disaster they stood—the disaster of having to sell all her properties.
Yet that moment never quite came. She anticipated it by midsummer at the latest; but autumn arrived and with it the expectation of their seventh child and still, by the skin of its teeth, the business roared ahead. John had more to do with its salvation than Nora. He developed a special knack at bringing a line to completion and fetching home its profit, just in time to stave off catastrophe. "See?" he would crow. "I knew it would be all right!"
He developed an image for those times; it grew out of a trivial incident that occurred to him on the North Wales line, late that autumn. After work, a number of his men were larking around on a two-wheel velocipede one of them had bought. As he passed the group one of the lads dared him to have a try on it.
The night was dark but there was a good moon and he decided to free-wheel down the hill, leaving the machine at the bottom for the men to collect. He had set off in a chorus of cheers and good-natured barracking. But halfway down he had come to a hollow, full of cattle—of fierce-horned cattle—all walking purposefully and silently down the hill under the moon. He was among them, doing a good thirty miles an hour before he realized it. And then there was absolutely nothing he could do but try to steer the best course he could among them, making decisions about a thousand times faster than normal and praying that none of the beasts ahead would turn toward him. If he hit one of those horns sideways, he would be skewered easier than fillet beef. Somehow he steered among them, suffering not the slightest touch. He was through so quickly he did not even begin to sweat and tremble until he had skidded to a halt beyond them and got down off the machine. He counted the cattle as they passed: fifty-four. One of the last among them swung her tail across his face, leaving it well shitten and reeking. "I deserve better than that!" he shouted after the herd, laughing. When the men caught up and heard his story, they said it was just one more example of "Lord John's luck."
"Aye," he agreed. "I'm doing it all the time."
The whole year, he thought, had developed that same madcap quality of an existence charmed to survive: "Lord John's luck."
He was away in Italy when the luck finally ran out. It was the Monday of the week before Christmas. Nora was going through the summary of the previous week's credits, wondering why they were so meagre, when she noticed that an expected credit from the Austrian government was missing from the list. It was for over seventy thousand pounds so she remembered it well—an impressive bit of coloured paper festooned with eagles crushing neat bundles of firewood in their talons. The sum had been drawn on a bank in Prague, and there had, as usual, been four signatures. The Hapsburg empire was, as John said, "a paradise for clerks."
At once she sent around to Chambers to inquire why it had not been credited. Back came a terse note: "Cannot leave here. Please see me as soon as possible. N.C." She went around at once.
He was not seated at his desk; indeed, he could hardly stand still. She had never seen him so solemn. "Terrible!" he said. He pointed to a note on his desk. "It came five minutes before your inquiry."
Nora touched it and raised her eyebrows at him. He nodded.
It was from the firm of Collins & Wilcox, the London agent of the bank in Prague. Briefly it said: "Herr Schapka is no longer entitled to sign drafts. Please re-present with the signature of Herr Adolf Bauer. The remaining three signatures are in order."
Mystified, Nora let the note fall back on the desk. "But I have seen Schapka's signature on several drafts," she said.
"It seems he has been promoted—my clerk has just run back from Collins with the story. Schapka has been promoted out of the department that authenticates drafts."
Nora laughed tendentiously. "That can't invalidate a draft duly signed before his promotion, surely."
"He was promoted last month. The draft was signed ten days ago."
"Very well." She shrugged. "I can't see it's anything so terrible. The other three signatures are authentic. Surely Collins will advance something on it?"
He breathed in deeply before he said, "Not a penny."
"But they must!"
"There's no must in it, Nora. They won't, and nothing can make them."
Chambers seemed just a little too earnest, as if he were covering up some pleasure in what he had to say.
"We'll see about that!" She walked to the door.
"Careful," he warned. "It would be a pity if they saw how close-hauled the firm is."
Half an hour later she was back, in a towering rage. "They will not discuss a husband's business with his wife, they said. I told them I had power of attorney. In that case, they said, they would consider dealing with me by letter. Never in person. Ooooooh!" She shivered her body in impotent fury.
"Exactly how does this leave the firm?" Chambers asked, now back at his desk.
Nora grew slightly calmer as she thought. "We can meet all the bills due except the big one for the Welwyn viaduct bricks."
He looked up, intensely interested. "How big?"
"Twenty thousand. This Thursday." Her voice grew more hopeful. "Of course, you can advance us that much, on the strength of this Austrian draft."
He was shaking his head before she was halfway. "How can I? If their own agent won't?"
"Not a penny? Nothing?"
He was very unhappy. "Sixteen thousand's the highest I dare go."
"Marvellous!" she sneered. "Here we are, drowning twenty yards from the canal bank, and you go and throw us your best-quality sixteen-yard lifeline!"
"I'm already in far deeper than a prudent banker should go."
"We'll give you ten per cent on the loan."
"That isn't the…"
"Twelve per cent then. There must be a point where greed beats risk. That's what banking is: greed versus risk. Cupiditas periculum qua—what about that for a motto! The only words of Latin I've learned."
"It won't do, Nora." He was not to be distracted from his solemnity. "I've supported Stevenson's far beyond the point where mere commercial judgement would have said stop. If you go down, it would be touch-and-go with me now. If I advance twenty thousand, on top of it all, and you still go down…"
"But we won't."
"I've hear
d that sentence all this year, and it doesn't get quieter—only more frequent and more insistent."
"Very well then. Prague isn't the other side of the globe. What if I went there with a letter from Collins?"
"We've done better than that. I've already sent a courier to Calais. He's sent a message over the electric telegraph to Paris for relaying on to Munich and Vienna."
"Oh—to think of our whole future in the hands of telegraphists and postmen! Still, we can now be sure of an answer before the month is out."
"You know the Hapsburg empire."
"In Scotland the banks let you overdraw your current account. You don't think?"
"Nora!" At least his laugh was sympathetic. "We have done the same thing here by a different route. I know you've got to try everything, but believe me, you've had more from this bank than you would have got from—"
"What about the Prague bank? If I went out there—surely they would advance us what we need, on the strength of their own guarantee? They could hardly question…" His face was already saying no. "What's wrong? Why not?"
"I don't think it would help," he said reluctantly.
"Nathaniel," she said quietly, "shall I tell you the very first thought that went through my mind when you mentioned about the signatures? I thought, 'How very nice and convenient for our friends in Prague—who keep their hands on our seven hundred and fifty thousand gulden for a further month. It'll earn them at least four thousand gulden more in that time.' I dismissed the thought as unworthy."
"There are lots of unworthy people in banking. It's a great deal dirtier than railways, believe me."
She stood up abruptly, unable to sit still any longer. Her whole body was tense with frustration and rage. She walked to the window, having a fantasy of smashing it with her gloved fists; it was the City beyond the panes that invited the attack—Cannon Street, Lombard Street, Cornhill, the Bank of England… and Collins & Wilcox.
"I swear," she said gently, "that when we have come through this period and are rich again, I will spend half our fortune to ruin that bank in Prague."
"When a bank is ruined, it is the innocents who suffer. You can't disentangle them."
"Oh, Nathaniel!" Her breath clouded the pane for an instant. "What a cobweb world!"
There was a long silence before Chambers said, "Well, which of us is going to broach the subject?"
Something in his tone, a slight edge, a nuance, told Nora that Chambers had been waiting all morning for this moment. No! All year—all this decade even. She felt suddenly tense with fear and excitement; but she forced herself to appear morose as she said, "My properties?"
Chambers looked away. "You've done wonders to avoid selling them so far. But…" He let the rest of the sentence hang.
Now she was certain of it. He was secretly relishing all this. It made her feel easier about putting her plan into effect. Until now, the same latent honesty that had prevented her from using the Wolff fund to bail out John had also stopped her from operating her save-the-property plan. But Chambers's eagerness to wrest it from her removed that doubt. Lots of unworthy people in banking, were there? A great deal dirtier than railways? Well, watch me, Mr. Chambers!
"They're heavily mortgaged," she warned as she returned to her seat. All the while she played utter dejection.
"It doesn't matter in this case. They're worth at least another eighty thousand. If you agree to sell, I'll certainly lend against it."
Damn! she thought. That would scotch her plans. She would have to outplay him on that offer. "Wonderful!" she said bleakly.
She left, telling him that she would think it over.
After lunch she was back, nervous, angry, and bitter. "Very well," she said brusquely. "We'll offer them for sale." She flung the schedules that listed her properties onto his desk. "How you must have longed for this moment, Nathan!"
"Nora!" He really did seem hurt at the accusation. "You cannot know how deeply I wish there were another way."
She sniffed. "And here, just so that you know what's coming up next week, are our expected payments and our anticipated receipts."
"Good-good," he said mechanically, pushing the two lists to one side. "All's well now."
Nora's heart missed a beat. If Chambers did not look at the lists, the whole thing would fall apart. "You're suddenly very taciturn," she said in a slightly more conciliatory tone.
"Why?" His bewilderment, at least, was genuine.
"This morning you could lend us no more than sixteen thousand. Yet now…" She pointed at the two lists and let the gesture finish her sentence.
Uneasily he glanced at them, then—unbelievably—relaxed again. "You'll be sixty thousand to the good." As he spoke he grew puzzled once more. "But in that case, why have you consented to sell your properties?"
God, would he do nothing right? she thought. "It's the other way, Nathan," she said slowly. "We need to borrow sixty thou'."
"Impossible!" he spluttered. He looked back at the lists and saw that she was right. "But I can't do that!"
"You said you could. This very morning." She was outraged.
"I meant I could lend twenty, the twenty you wanted, for these…bricks. The Welwyn viaduct bill. Not…" He waved the list of next week's debts like a pennant. "You know I didn't mean all this."
"You promised!" she spat at him. She stood up. He cowered for a moment as if he feared she might strike him.
"I did not. You know I did not. You know enough about banking to understand I couldn't possibly have meant to lend you so much."
She looked at him as if she thought of a hundred things to say; then she let the futility of it all show in her face. Her shoulders slumped. "Then we must try and sell the property as quickly as possible," she said.
He gnawed his lips. "We'd never do it in time. It's out of the question."
She walked to the window. Sleet was falling in the twilight outside. The City looked filthy. There was a dead mongrel dog in the gutter opposite; as Nora watched, waiting for the worry to grow and engulf Chambers, a ragged woman stooped and caught up the corpse. She carried it off in triumph. Meat for Christmas somewhere. Steadily, Nora beat her gloved right fist into her gloved left palm, stretching the purple silk at the base of each finger.
"Oh God!" she heard Chambers say behind her. She searched for his reflection in the glass that covered the framed map of London; in it, she saw him raise his fist and bring it down to smash the desk. Then, as if he remembered how much the desk had cost, he pulled the punch at the last minute. "Oh God!" he said again.
She spun angrily around, trembling with cornered fury. "Why can't you lend that much? D'you think the land is worthless?"
He fended off her words with his hands. "Of course not, my dear. Why, they're as good as Treasury stock, these properties—even better in the long term, I'd say." He smiled. He really was trying to be very nice now.
The wonderful man! she thought. She wanted to hug him. After going so wrong earlier, he could not now have gone more right. But none of this delight showed in her face. Instead, she looked at him in a sort of hesitant admiration. "Nathan! You genius! You thoroughbred genius!" She spoke very slowly, as if an idea were just at that moment occurring to her.
"What?"
"Well, what did you say? As sound as…?"
"Trea-su-ry stock." He tested each syllable for poison.
She waited, hoping he would see the connection for himself. When he did not, she said, "The Stevenson trust fund. How blind we've been! That's practically all in Treasury stock." He was already shaking his head. But she went on, now even daring to give a light laugh. "I used to sneer at you, remember? 'Who wants all that negotiable stock?' I used to say. Now I know: Stevenson's wants it!"
He almost shook his head off. "No, Nora. No, no, no. It will not do."
"What? You yourself said it's as sound as…"
"No! That's an end now."
"Give me one good reason."
"Stevenson."
She paused and then smil
ed lightly as she asked, "The man? Or the firm?" But she could see the refusal forming yet again behind his eyes—a refusal even to consider the idea.
She stood quickly, giving him no chance to utter it. "Very well, Chambers." She swiftly gathered her things and moved to the door. "You had better take due notice. I shall go home now. Tomorrow I shall start to prepare our accounts for a hearing in bankruptcy. I tell you this so that you may take what protective action you can." She reached the door. "At least we do not desert you."
Later, she wondered whether she ought to have added that when all the accounts were in they would have enough surplus to settle their debts a hundred times over—and how would that make him look as their banker? But no, she thought; he could work that out for himself.
The Rich Are with You Always Page 52