Sons of Fortune

by Malcolm Macdonald

  They went into the drawing room then. John, who had just arrived at the other door with the general, saw at once in Young John’s face that the evening had not gone well for him either.

  Caroline went up to her aunt, made some excuse about how fatiguing the harpsichord was, and retired from the company.

  On her way upstairs she met Caspar coming down.

  “Miss Sherringham,” he said. “You look as if you’d lost a friend and found her foot.”

  The image was so unexpected it forced her to laugh, much against her true mood.

  Caspar guessed at once that Boy had, in their mother’s phrase, “surprised” Linny Sherringham. She wasn’t pretty, he thought, but somehow he didn’t mind. She was pleasant to be near. You felt she was a very straight, honest sort of a girl. No tricks. Nothing devious.

  “May I come by?” she said, smiling as if she thought his blocking the stairhead were a game.

  Until that moment it hadn’t been, but he decided to make it so. He smiled, too, and shook his head. “House rule thirty-seven,” he said. “Christmas Day, young girl unattached, young man unattached, stairhead, forfeit to pass.”

  She giggled. She put her hands behind her back and swirled, turning left, turning right. “What forfeit, stern sir?”

  Her breasts were made very obvious by her movement; he thought of her taking Nick’s hand like that and putting it there. “A leeetle, leeetle kiss,” he said.

  “No mistletoe?”

  “House rule thirty-eight. Not needed.”

  Smiling would-be wickedly, she rose one step nearer him. She raised her lips. “I like your house rules.”

  “Of course you do,” he whispered. “House rule thirty-nine requires you to like all the others.”

  “They get better as they go on.”

  Their lips met. She intended the kiss to be brief and humorous. But Caspar, suddenly realizing how long it had been since he had kissed a girl, put his arms about her and lifted her the one remaining step. His kiss was long and passionate.

  At first she resisted. Then she stood passively and let him feel he was not stirring her. He broke.

  “Don’t,” she said. She was not annoyed or frightened or disgusted. Her tone plainly meant Don’t spoil it.

  He let go of her, ostentatiously. “I believe it may thaw tomorrow,” he said.

  She laughed—and did not move impossibly far away either. “I’m dying to hear rule forty.”

  “There has to be a thaw before rule forty applies,” he said. He licked his lips slowly.

  She came near him and touched his face. “Don’t be serious,” she said.

  He still smiled. “I imagine you’ve had quite enough seriousness for one evening?”

  She blew a draught of air up over her face, as people do when they wish to mime heat or embarrassment.

  “Now house rule forty-one…” he began.

  “Yes?”

  “Says you are free to go.” He turned his palms to face her.

  “In that case…” She came back to him and kissed him lightly and briefly on the lips. The effect on him was far more powerful than the crusher he had stolen. “What about rule forty?” she wheedled.

  “You’re getting warmer,” he said.

  “You’re very different from your brother.”

  “Oh, there could be only one Boy!”

  “I’m glad you’re not like that,” she said.

  He nodded and smiled, unable for once to say anything.

  She went along the passage to her room, which was also Winifred’s. He ran after her but stopped short.

  “Er…about house rule thirty-seven.”

  “Yes?”

  “It applies, as I said, only to unattached females.”

  A slow smile spread over her face. “I’m so glad we didn’t break it,” she said. And when she reached her door, she turned, and added, “I don’t like breaking the rules.”

  “Good night, Miss Sherringham.”

  “Good night, Mr. Stevenson.”

  He almost danced back downstairs. When he had told Winnie that Nick had had no respect for Linny Sherringham, he had got the boot on the wrong foot: She had no respect for Nick.

  ***

  Later, on his way to bed, Caspar passed his father. He could not resist saying, “I think I understood most of what the general said, pater. But what was that ’n-turls word he kept using?”

  John stared at him long and hard. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I’m afraid I just don’t know.”

  When Caspar got back to his own room he found Abigail sitting on his bed.

  “Have you been at my diaries again?” he asked at once. Abigail was utterly amoral and had always helped herself to anything she wanted, on the faintest whim. In mitigation it had to be said that she was equally careless of her own belongings and didn’t at all mind if everyone borrowed everything of hers. Indeed, her brothers and sisters had proved as much by concertedly stripping her room of every personal possession one evening. She hadn’t even noticed.

  “No use,” Abbie said. “It’s all in code. Besides, now I’m sixteen I’ve given up all that sort of childishness.”

  “What are you doing here, then?”

  “Bearding the lion in his den and other fearfully brave things, I suppose.”

  Caspar relaxed enough to smile. Abbie had lately taken to saying “clever” and “funny” things, some of which (on the principle that if you only throw enough darts, a few are bound to score high) actually were quite funny or clever.

  “I know something about our father that you don’t know,” she said.

  “I very much doubt that,” Caspar answered, hoping to taunt her into an early revelation instead of suffering her usual cat-and-mouse dribble of fact and provocation.

  “I followed him one day when he thought I was gone to Madame Tussaud’s.”

  “Which way?” Caspar asked. The other Hamilton Place was not too far north of Madame Tussaud’s.

  She knew at once from his tenseness that she had struck gold. “Ah!” she said.

  He cursed his impatience and resolved to box a bit more clever. “I see!” he sneered. “This is the usual pottage of trivia all tricked out à la Abbie to resemble a substantial meal—which it ain’t!”

  “Ah, but it is.”

  “Go to bed, Abbie. I’m tired.”

  “I followed him out to St. John’s Wood.”

  Caspar let the light of far-off reminiscence flood his eyes. “You know,” he said, “when I was your age I followed him to Dalmatia. The firm was doubling a single-track railway, as I remember, which we had first…”

  “I followed him to Hamilton Place.”

  “The mater’s house? What’s so extraordinary about…”

  “No! Another Hamilton Place.”

  “There isn’t another Hamilton Place!” Caspar felt sick at these revelations; the last person to be entrusted with this kind of knowledge was Abigail. In one of her blind yet oh-so-calculating furies she would blurt it out in the most damaging possible way.

  “There is, there is, there is,” she crowed, bouncing all the while on his bed.

  He sprang upon her and pinned her down with his hands around her throat. For a moment he experienced a genuine intention to strangle her; but it quickly passed.

  Abbie, however, had sensed it, and the knowledge of where she had driven Caspar both delighted and awed her. It was real power.

  “Listen,” he told her, speaking vehemently. “You’ve stumbled on a grown-up secret and you’ve got to treat it like a grown-up.”

  “Don’t pretend you know!” she said although she could tell that he did.

  “I’ve known for three or four years and not even told Winnie or Boy. You’re the only other one who knows.” He let go of her and sat on the bedside.

/>   “Who is she?” Abigail abandoned her now futile attempt to establish a superiority.

  “Did you see her?”

  “Yes—not to talk to. Just walking.”

  “I’ve never actually seen her. What’s she like?” Now he could afford to let her have a superior moment.

  “Pretty, I suppose. Who is she?”

  “Her name’s Charity. She’s the girl who used to work at Aunt Arabella’s and Aunt Sarah’s.”

  “They’ve got children, you know—Papa and her.”

  “I know.” He also knew that he must now try to get her to take an adult view of this business. “It is the main reason for this schism between him and the mater. She is very hurt by it—especially, I imagine, because he lets her call herself Charity Stevenson and so their bastard children are also called Stevenson.”

  “Have you talked to the mater about it?” Abigail desperately hoped he had; it was precisely the sort of secret she would love to share with her mother.

  “Never!” Caspar said with all the urgency he could muster. “Even when I’ve seen her in tears and known it was that. Even though she knows I know. I’ve never…”

  “How does she know you know?”

  “Because the person who told me also told her.”

  “Who?” Abbie was turning belligerent again.

  “A scullery maid we used to have. You wouldn’t remember her. The point is, despite all this, I’ve never discussed it with her or tried to sympathize. It’s her private…”

  “I can’t see why she worries.” Abbie pouted. “They’re not real Stevensons—only Stevensons by charity.” Her wide eyes waited for him to laugh—as, of course, he had to. It was the sort of remark that he, after a term at Cambridge, longed to have the wit to invent. Then she laughed, too, in an entirely innocent delight, as if some barely conscious part of her brain had said it—as much to her surprise as his.

  “Very good, Abbie,” he said, growing serious again. “I hope you will one day be able to say it to the mater; it will cheer her up no end. I give my solemn promise I won’t say it. But I also hope you will be grown-up enough about it to know when the time will be ripe—even if it means waiting for years and years. You will wait, won’t you?”

  She smiled and nodded with such sincerity that for once, despite all those years of shattered promises behind them, he found it possible to believe her.

  “Oh, Abbie,” he sighed. “What are you going to do in life, eh? That tongue of yours will unmarry you a thousand times before you’ve even one ring on your finger.”

  “Oh, I won’t marry,” she said with such a simple lack of drama that—coming from her—it rang like revealed truth.

  “No,” he said, catching her solemnity. “I imagine you won’t.”

  “I’ll be an artist,” she said, “or a writer, and I’ll lead a delicious life.”

  He sat cross-legged on the bed and took her hands in his, relishing a sibling intimacy they had never before gained. “Isn’t it nice,” he said, “to know exactly what you want to do!”

  “Godlike!” she said.

  Later, when she had gone back to her own room, he thought over this conversation. The events of this Christmas—despite all the horse rides and snowball fights and feasting and all the other family fun—were moving with a sort of doomed inevitability toward a grand, not to say lifeshaking argument between their father and Winifred and himself. Yet this little encounter with Abbie hinted at an endless succession of such battles as each child grew toward his or her majority. What would their father make of Abbie’s wish to be a painter or writer!

  Had his parents any inkling of what was coming along? He’d been so absorbed in his own problem—with an occasional glance at Winnie’s—that he simply hadn’t noticed Abbie. It was odd, too, that despite all the hateful, hurtful, odious things she had said and done to him—and to others, to be sure—ever since she had first drawn breath, it was hard not to love her and want to help and protect her. This hard shell she affected was a mask to a rather lost, rather frightened, eternal child. Of all his brothers and sisters she was the one to whom he felt most in bondage; and tonight, he thought, she had sensed it. What would she now make of it? He knew that if he won his own personal battle, and if she needed his help to win hers, he could never refuse it to her.

  Chapter 41

  For form’s sake it was still Boy who squired Linny Sherringham over most of her jumps that Boxing Day meet; but when his hunter went lame on him it was natural enough for him to retire and ask Caspar to take over his duties—Linny had spent most of the checks talking with Caspar, anyway. When Boy got home the general asked him—or told him—to make a two for billiards.

  Twelve hours’ absence from the port bottle had made a great improvement in the old man’s intelligibility, to the extent that Boy was able to grasp about two words in three.

  “Sign a hiss-spent youth, they say.” The general guffawed as he took his break past the thirty mark. “Played a horfu’ lot. Know that. ’N turls.”

  Boy played miserably.

  “Turn ye down, hnuh huagh?” the general asked.

  “It would seem so, sir.” Boy rallied and smiled. After all, they were men together. It wouldn’t do to make the whims of a woman so important.

  “Lot o’ that on the Frontier, ’n turls. Yes.” His fifth break went to forty-five. “What what what!” he chirrupped.

  “I didn’t know we had womenfolk up there,” Boy said.

  “Hnuh? No Onona. Here! Womenfolk are here. Broken hearts are there.” Down went the red with a smack. “Damn nuisance, ’n turls.”

  Boy laughed uncomfortably. “I don’t think it’s that bad in my case, sir. Faith, you know, is a great comfort.”

  The general put down his cue and looked at Boy in a mixture of astonishment and delight.

  “I mean,” Boy said, “I don’t think I shall suddenly be appearing on the Frontier.”

  The general’s delight faded. “Pity. Mmmmnh.” He chewed his lips. “What we need. Men of faith. Men of vision. Not your brother—trade! Pshwah! Fortin hundrun, ’n turls.” The sentence dissolved in a trembling whistle that subsided into normal, if somewhat loud, breathing.

  “My brother, sir? Caspar?”

  “’S fella. Trade! Hmh money.” He pierced Boy with his eye “Faith!” he barked. “A Christian mission of sword, fire, and Bible, sir! Trade? Pshwaah!”

  “What’s it like out there, sir?” Boy asked. “I mean, what’s it really like?”

  The general took the cue from Boy’s hand and laid it parallel with his own upon the table. “Khyber Pass,” he said.

  He picked the red from a pocket and put it at one end. “General Pollock,” he said.

  And while his eyes looted the room for troops, rocks, Khyberees, the Fort of Au Musjid, and a yet unbroken Jellalabad, he said, “Fifth of April, eighteen forty-two, you worn em?”

  “Almost, sir,” Boy said. “Just one month later.”

  “That’s me boy.” The general beamed. “Speak my language—wha! Yes, ’n turls.”

  ***

  Caspar did not love Linny Sherringham. At least, if what he had felt for Mary Coen had been love (and it had certainly been powerful enough to make him do many things contrary to his real nature), he was not in love with Linny. But they got on splendidly together, like people who had known each other a long time. He remembered Mary’s words, about wishing to marry someone she liked rather than someone she loved—“Why do we fret over love when liking’s so pleasant?” As his friendship with Linny ripened, he came to understand more and more what Mary meant.

  Also—he could not ignore it—a marriage between himself and the eldest Sherringham girl would immeasurably strengthen his claim to part of the Stevenson business; especially his claim to the only part he really wanted—the iron and steel works. If he could control such works in Wales and th
e northeast, at Stevenstown, sheer geography would do half his selling for him.

  But, and here was the core of his dilemma, he could not honourably court Miss Sherringham until he had at least a nod and a wink that the Stevenstown steelworks would come his way; and he could not—dared not—approach Lord Stevenson until he could be quite sure of bringing in the prize of Miss Sherringham. In a way he wished he did love her; then he would have no qualms about courting her, and to hell with the consequences.

  If he had been just a little more adept at reading the social signs, he would have been that necessary bit bolder. For Aunt Lascelles was bending all the rules of chaperonage as far as they would go without actually breaking to ensure that her linnet came back with at least one Stevenson head in her trophy bag. If he had been less secretive, he would have told all to Winifred or his mother, either of whom would have assured him at once that he could count on at least one prong of his pincer attack on Stevenson’s. But whenever they approached the subject with him, he was so evasive and casual that they would not risk the disloyalty such assurances entailed.

  He did not even tell Linny enough to settle her mind. All he could say was that he was having problems reconciling his father’s wishes and his own. “If I might go into Stevenson’s,” he said, “instead of the army, I would be able to make so many other firm arrangements.” With that one enigmatic sentence, and a discreet squeeze of the arm as he spoke the word “firm,” she had to be content.

  “I think I never shall get to hear rule forty, Mr. Stevenson,” she said with a sigh.

  “But I promise you, Miss Sherringham, the very day—the very hour—I hear that my future and Stevenson’s are to be linked, you shall hear rule forty. I shall shout it to you from the top of Sherringham’s tallest chimney.”

  She laughed. “You promise?”

  “My most solemn promise.”

  These hints seemed clear and satisfactory at the time. But when she retailed them to her parents—without the firm sincerity of his eyes to buoy them up—they seemed much thinner and more obscure.