Sons of Fortune (46 page)

“And I,” Caspar said, “will personally select two that match in every particular. Being as it’s a handmade, artistic product, there is naturally some slight variation between one and another, taken haphazard. The artist’s ‘handwriting,’ we call it.”

Mrs. Trumpington thought she was being very clever. “No!” she commanded. “Make sure there is some slight difference—but not apparent to the casual glance. I’m sure I should like to point out this ‘handwriting’ to people.”

When she had gone, Vane looked at Caspar a long while in silence. Caspar was determined not to speak first. “Well,” Vane said, “since I know who you are, I’m sure you know who she is.”

Caspar shrugged a gesture of ignorance; in fact, he truly did not know.

“A great friend of the Ruskins, that’s who.”

“Ah! And if the first seven of three hundred are snapped up by Lady Stevenson and one of the Ruskin circle, can you still think you have no market? Even at three pounds?”

“Two pounds to you,” Vane said firmly.

Caspar was going to argue but he saw from Vane’s face that he had nudged his luck as far as it would go.

They went back outside to carry in the remaining four beds. “There’s ninety more finished,” Caspar said. “And with what you’re going to pay me tomorra, I can get the other two hundred done.”

Vane grinned. “And the other hundred?”

“I’ll sell them for scrap.”

Vane shook his head. “You’ll sell them to us, Yorky my lad.
We’ll
sell them for scrap. I never trusted the old aristocracy much. But if you’re the new kind, I’d trust you as far as I could throw that horse.”

“Two shillings apiece,” Caspar said. It was double their value but he had no other way of clawing back some of Avian’s monstrous fifty percent profit. (His own two-hundred-percent profit, by contrast, struck him as most reasonable, considering the work and the risk.)

Vane conceded with a laugh.

“And Avian’s can get those certificates printed, of course,” Caspar concluded. “I shan’t bother with them now.”

***

Next morning he paid into a new account in a new bank seven hundred and ten pounds—which was a hundred pounds more than he had expected. Mr. Avian himself had asked, in purely conversational tones, if The Patent Hygienic & Artistic Bed Company had plans for other part-handmade, part-industrial products. Caspar was on the point of telling the truth (that he never wanted to see another bed outside a bedroom in his life) when it struck him that the man’s tone was just too conversational.

Hastily he changed his mind and said he had many ideas for future productions, which naturally he could not divulge, but he could say that the next bed Avian’s would sell would be a most handsome affair in cast iron and
marble.
And, he added (being quite used by now to thinking a split second ahead of his galloping Yorkshire tongue), what’s more—the marble would not only be hand carved, but hand chased in brass.

Ten minutes later, he had signed a document parting him forever from The Patent Hygienic & Artistic Bed Company and binding him to do that which he fervently longed to do—forget beds (as vehicles for anything but sleep or dalliance) for the next five years. For this Mr. Avian had reluctantly coughed up the extra hundred.

Caspar paid off his debt of £165. 4
s
. 7
d
. to Chambers’s bank; he drew out £14. 15
s.
5
d.
to have something to rattle; and he left £460 to earn interest at two percent. The remaining £70 he mentally discounted—that would have to go to the joinery that supplied the corner posts for converting two hundred more beds. Young Thomas Ingilby could return to school this coming term.

***

Yet he felt oddly deflated as he walked along Seymour Street to see Mary at the Night Refuge. Business had consumed his morning and he had had to go home to change back into Honourable clothing. It was past two o’clock before he reached the Marble Arch.

He ought to feel excited. His mother would have been satisfied with fifty pounds, profit. Bassett would have been astonished at any profit at all. And here he was with a net profit of over four hundred pounds and yet feeling rather damp and dispirited. He almost wished he hadn’t sold all the beds. He’d rather like to be going into another furniture shop now and doing the whole thing all over again. Then he thought he knew why he was feeling like this: He ought to be going to see his mother and making his peace with her. He ought not to be chasing after Mary. Why, then, did he not turn at once and go to King’s Cross?

The maid who answered the door asked him to wait for the Reverend Mother. He stood in the lobby, twitching his kneecaps alternately in a growing excitement: Mary was here! He would take her out for a walk in the frosty sunshine in the park, and slowly—teasingly—he would tell her everything. And then they’d go and find a room for her to rent and he’d pay three months down and give her enough for the half year in advance, and then what stupendous joys they would discover all afternoon, all evening, all night. He could see his mother tomorrow.

The folded letter was in his hands before he realized the Reverend Mother had placed it there. Not one to waste words, she turned and walked back up the passage.
The Hon. Caspar Stevenson
, was all it said. He opened it.

“If you don’t mind, sir,” the maid prompted, holding open the door.

He floated into the street.

My darling,

I fear for love it is such a pain. I love Boy (God between him and all harm). And you love me and do not see it. And no good can come out of it. So I must go, which I do not easily or lightly but terrible weary of suffring. Do not fret for me. I know where to go now to find that land where I would be beautyfull. I fret for you and pray the hurt will heal which it must and one day you will love who loves you back. And will be lucky to have you as careful of her as you were of me. I never liked man more than you. I could love you and fear for that. Thank you for the pound which helps me on my misery way. — Mary

PS—God love you.

One reading left him hollow. A second filled that emptiness with an ache of such intensity that any real pain, however severe, would have relieved it. A third brought anger: at the beds, at his mother, at business—at the world, for filling his days with trivia while this fuse had been sizzling—at Mary for misunderstanding, for not waiting to hear—at himself for giving her the money that let her escape, for not telling her more.

But that she should imagine he was in love with her! It was monstrous. Preposterous. Outrageous. Little Mary Coen. He in love with her? Hah! He marched across Oxford Street (almost stampeding a herd of long-horned cows being driven in toward Smithfield market) and set off into Hyde Park.

A fog was building in the slow, cold air. Already you could look directly at the sun, a pink disc hanging in the frozen grey sheets that swirled sluggishly among the bare black branches of the trees. He felt drab to his very soul.

All he’d wanted to do was keep her as his mistress. To sleep with her. Was that love!

He fumed at her presumption and stupidity all the way through the park. He walked straight past Hamilton Place, feeling too upset to go in.

Down through Green Park he went. Above was an arch of clouds as black as a catafalque.

“That land where I would be beautyfull!” Hadn’t he told her she was beautiful? What more did she want? What land, anyway? He wanted to talk with her too. He wanted to go to bed with her and talk with her. But was that love?

On into St. James’s Park he stamped, and, though it was the narrowest of the three parks, the fog was by now so thick he almost lost his way. He had intended to go down to the Thames. It smelled only faintly on cold days like this, and the sight of water was always, somehow, soothing. But he realized that even if he reached the river walls, he would hardly be able to see his own feet, let alone the water, so he turned around and—more slowly—began to creep home. The dark of the cloud was a premature night.

That big, empty house. With that hateful woman, Jarrett. If he lived a century, he’d never forgive her.

It was a lot of fuss to be making over a girl, when all he wanted was to be in bed with her. And hold her. And caress her. And kiss that sweet…that sweet…He broke down then. Yes, damn her—he loved her! Why hadn’t she told him that before!

He was leaning against a damp tree, weeping into the crevices of its bark, frightening himself with the discovery of love. He was tortured by vivid pictures of the little room he hadn’t rented, the warm oil lamps that had never shone on him and her, the hot muffins and tea she had not prepared, the glowing firelight that had not gilded her glorious nakedness, that tender and ultimate joy they had never consummated, and, above and beyond all, the millions of marvellous thoughts and words and secrets they had not shared, the billion warm smiles that time now denied him.

These he thought of while the cold reached into his bones, while the snow and the dark fell all around him, while he stared into the infinite crow-blacked tree an inch from his eye. Where was she? he asked the blackness. He’d give all his money to have her here, now, and tell her of these stupendous revelations that had him racked and skewered. Money was nothing.

That was the term he lost interest in school. Whatever he did, he did it perfunctorily, with sufficient effort to scrape by. His teachers noticed it and told Brockman. His fellows noticed it, too, and, in passing, carried the gossip to the House pharaohs, to Boy, to Enderby, the new housemaster, and so—again—to Brockman.

His mother had been delighted at his success with the beds, though he told her he had made only a hundred pounds’ profit. He would not tell her where he banked; and she knew it was not with Chambers. She would never find it, either, however many spies she sent out, for she did not even know of the existence of “Aloysius Abercrombie.”

She had wondered aloud what had happened to Mary and thought it a pity Mrs. Jarrett had acted so hastily. Caspar said nothing. He did not show her the letter nor mention the mysterious “land where I would be beautyfull” nor the fat fella Mary had told him about last summer. Had he been less of a secrets-keeper he would have told his mother these things, and she would have explained them, and he might have saved Mary as Arabella had done the previous summer.

But he did not mope and weep. He was too young and vital for that. And the hurt lay too deep. So, to his fellows, he was just “Steamer”—very much as before, except for being a little quieter, tamer…less fun.

To him, school was much worse; “less fun” wouldn’t cover the tenth of it. Greaves had gone and, with him, all stimulus to mathematics. The new fellow, Enderby, was competent enough. But he didn’t inspire them nor stretch their minds; nor did he constantly tie maths in with science and the natural world nor with philosophy and the world of the mind. With Greaves you always felt that maths was the source of all physical and intellectual discovery—its source, its sinew, and its bone. That joy was gone, too; and the world was drab.

Every night he thought of Mary—and anything from a dozen to a hundred times a day. It was like picking the scab off a wound; the hurt would never heal. By day it was usually her scarred face, so appealing, so gentle-eyed, so
beautyfull
, that rose before him, making him curl up and wince. At night it was her sinuous body, her soft warmth, that enveloped him. He repeated endlessly in his mind everything he could remember of their times together—the music that had overwhelmed her, the roasting chestnuts and wine, the spicy warmth of her, the feel of her damp hands next day, her hair tumbling down as she leaned above him—the curtains of cinnamon-coloured hair that enveloped him, her kiss as soft as gossamer, and—what had she said?—” I weep my heart out my eyes till it puts a nail in my throat”…something like that. He knew exactly what she had meant.

And yet the wound did, inexorably, heal. By the Easter holidays people around him were saying he was his old self again. His masters were quite harsh in their end-of-term reports, though. All spoke of his slackness and lack of effort. Only Brockman, surprisingly to Caspar, was mild. “Your son,” he wrote, “has such a nimble mind and such intellectual gifts that I feel sure this term has marked a mere pause in a development that has always delighted his masters. Some minds may forge, or plod, steadily forward. Others, more mercurial, go in sprints, from which they must, perforce, occasionally rest. I hope it is so with him. He must prove it so next term.”

Nora took up these points with him late one afternoon when he was returning to Thorpe Old Manor after a day out with Lord Middleton’s hunt (which, after thirteen years’ resistance, had finally admitted the Stevensons in ’55). It had been a glorious day. The Yorkshire wolds provided one of the best countries in foxhunting England, especially when the sun was bright as summer and the air still crisp with a memory of winter. Today had been such a day. They had found at three draws and enjoyed two marvellous chases, the last one of full twelve miles to a death in midfield. Caspar had stayed on terms to the end. Now he was hacking his spare mount homeward, leading the day’s two exhausted warriors behind him.

The way led over a high, tree-lined ridge, the crest of the wold between Leavening and Thorpe. The trunks laid purple bars of shadow over the sun-rich grass and mud. Caspar thought, ritually,
Mary would love this
, and the idea hardly twitched within him. He was even able to feel glad of it and to vow that he would be much more careful next time he fell in love—if ever. He wanted to return to his former notion that falling in love was optional.

Coming down off the ridge, he saw his mother waiting for him at the manor gate. Now that her baby was due she never went more than half a mile from the house. Lord Stevenson had wanted her to stay in London, near the best medical men; but she had insisted that the child should be Yorkshire born and so had disregarded him. To Caspar, his father’s failure to be here was just one more cause for contempt of the man; he’d be in London with that mistress Mary had found out. It was now fairly clear that his parents could preserve only the thinnest cordiality between them. He thought his mother had taken it all very nobly. He kept a special smile for her these days.

“You obviously had a good chase,” she said.

He leaped down and gave the horses to Willett, the groom, who had come up the lane with Nora and now left her to Caspar’s care.

“Nanette?” Caspar asked, looking around.

“I sent her back to make some tea.”

He folded her arm around his. “You shouldn’t drink tea, you know.”

“I won’t. I wanted to talk with you.”

“Ah!”

They began to walk back down the drive.

“Willett didn’t rake this before breakfast. I meant to speak to him,” Caspar said.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Oh, I wasn’t aware we had a subject.”

“Well, we have: you. And your school report.”

Caspar laughed. “I must say you’ve been marvellous about it until now. Don’t spoil it.”

“I kept your father from your throat only by promising to speak to you myself. What went wrong last term?”

“What went wrong was that Greaves went. And since maths is all that really interests me—at least, in the Fiennes menu—I’m beginning to feel that school is pretty shent.”

“Your father is a great believer in Fiennes.”

“Yes! My father is a great”—he bit off the sentence—“many things,” he pretended he was going to say. It deceived neither of them.

“What would you prefer to do?” she asked, pausing.

He pressed her arm. “Come on. Must keep moving or you’ll get cold.”

She loved the way he was so protective of her—much more so than Young John, who seemed embarrassed more than pleased at her pregnancy.

“D’you really want to know?” he asked.

“Of course, darling.”

“I’ll tell you, first. Then I’ll tell you where they teach it.” And he rattled off for her all the things they taught at Sheffield Wesley College, from land surveying and navigation, through French and German, to chemistry and metallurgy—and, of course, mathematics.

To Nora, as to Caspar, it sounded quite splendid.

“I’ll tell you another splendid thing,” he said. “I quote: ‘Discipline is enforced by uniting firmness and kindness. Should anyone be refractory, he is taken apart and reasoned with.’ What about that, eh!”

“Is there still so much thrashing at Fiennes?” she asked. “You boys never talk about it nowadays.”

“No. Very much less than it was. I suppose each boy gets an average of twenty a term, cane or slipper.”

“Still,” Nora said, “with four hundred boys and three terms that’s twenty-four thousand lashes. It does seem excessive.”

“I got more than twenty last term. Boy gave me ten of them. He’s very hard.”

Nora sighed. There were some things about the male animal she would never understand. “Where is this other paragon of a college?” she asked.

“Not too far south of here,” he said.

She thumped his arm in her frustration. “Can you never answer a question! Secrets—always secrets!”

He laughed. “Sheffield Wesley College. I’ll tell you another thing—it’s an extension of London University. I could go and take a degree from there. I was thinking of paying my own fees if the guvnor didn’t agree.”

“You mean move there? Now?”

“Yes.”

“Your hundred pounds won’t last too long.”

Caspar cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact, it’s four hundred. Over.”

And then he told her the full story of The Patent Hygienic & Artistic Bed Company. They reached the house before he had finished.

“Do you remember Tip and Puck?” she interrupted him. “I still expect them to come dashing out to meet me, barking away. D’you remember? Dear old things!”

He saw a tear trembling in her eye and patted her arm comfortingly.

She made him come into her business room, on the ground floor, where she had had a bed made up to save the fatigue of the stairs. There he finished the full tale of last December’s commercial triumph.

She thought a long time and then looked at him, almost in fear. “You have the money, then. You also have a head for business—well I always thought as much. But you probably have a better head than anybody in this family.”

His smile almost split his cheeks.

“I’m not telling you that in order to swell it,” she said, still solemn. “But to get you to see why it might be a disaster for you to go to this Sheffield College. I can see the short-term attractions, of course. And I don’t belittle them. But you would be doing your father’s work for him. You would be cutting yourself off without a penny.”

He drew breath to speak; then the thought got home to him.

Nora went on, hoping she was saying what he had been about to say. “You may not mind. You could probably start from nothing and build something even bigger than Stevenson’s now is. You might not—because everyone in business needs luck. We’ve seen some very astute people ruined and no fault of their own. But, given luck, I’m sure you’d do well. Yet just think, Caspar—Stevenson’s has a book value of four million. As a going concern, goodwill included, it must be worth all of six. Think what you could do with that! You would start as the richest man in England.”

Caspar giggled almost in terror—these were seditious thoughts he had never dared embrace so openly. “I wouldn’t own it, surely?” he asked.

“Who cares!” she said. “I don’t own the Wolff Fund, but I control it, absolutely. I don’t care if the man in the moon owns it as long as I have unfettered control. Don’t you see!”

He saw. His heart raced. “What about Boy, though?”

She looked away. “Why d’you think I’m saying all this to you? It’s for Young John’s sake, too, you know. I’m very worried. In my view he would be one unholy tragedy for the firm—and for himself, if he took charge.” She seemed about to say more, but no words came.

“Convince the guv’nor!” he said.

“You and I will never do that. Your father is hourly expecting to turn into Julius Caesar—or the North Star.” She studied his reaction and smiled as if his calm response had confirmed something for her. “But you might persuade Young John.”

He tried to sound as if the idea was just occurring to him. “I think Boy should not go up to University, you know. I think he should be given one contract to manage from start to finish. I believe he would then persuade himself.”

Nora, smiling, shook her head. “He must be over twenty-one, or Stevenson will find every excuse under the sun for him. So he must go to Cambridge. And then he must be allowed to persuade himself. And above all, you must be there to pick up the pieces. If you have meanwhile shunted yourself onto the Sheffield branch line…no hope.”

He nodded, too grateful to her for words.

“You know why I am doing this for you, I hope,” she said. “It is not because I love you or admire you more than I do Young John. Never let yourself think that. I do this for his sake, too, as I said. He has a far stronger sense of duty than you have—in fact. I don’t believe you have any. But he would quite literally kill himself before he’d admit defeat. So don’t think I’m your ally and his enemy. Ever.”

She saw him biting his lip, hating himself for having thought it. Touched, she added: “I’m also doing this because I believe you have something even your father and I don’t have. The ability to think ahead. Your father can think two months ahead if he’s forced to it. I can think two years, with difficulty. I believe (and it may be no more than a mother’s touching faith in her son) but I believe that anyone who can keep secrets the way you can must be able to think very far ahead. I hope so, anyway—because that’s half of what all this is about.”

He rose to go then, saying he hoped it was true. He didn’t want to hear any more.

“Oh, you can prove it,” she said, springing the trap. “You can go back to school and leave it in two years’ time with every honour and prize and exhibition going. You can please your father in every way. You can turn into the golden boy of the family. Because, Caspar, five years from now—or whenever it may be—you will need all that goodwill capital in his bank. You will need to draw it all.”

He laughed, thinking he could surely go now, but she pressed on: “Have you told me everything about your poor performance last term? There was no other reason?”

He faced her uncertainly. “If you were speaking Latin, mater, I’m sure that would be what they call a ‘question expecting the answer no.’ ” He knew she had been far too offhand when she had discussed Mary’s dismissal with him that time.

“And you would be right,” Nora said.

“Mrs. Jarrett told you, then? I mean, told you more than you said she did?”

“Oh, Caspar! You have this trick of saying and not—saying. What ‘more’ did Mrs. Jarrett tell me?”

“About Mary Coen.”

“And…? And…? I’ll strangle you one day!”

“And me.”

Nora sighed out a vast relief. “At last!” she said. And she waited.

Caspar told her, then. Everything. It hurt much less than he had feared. He even showed his mother Mary’s letter. He could see she was close to tears by the time he had finished. “You aren’t angry?” he asked in surprise.

“I am,” she said, without sounding it. “Of course I am. But I’m glad she meant so much to you. A lot of young men of your class simply forget that servant girls are people. They use them quite shamelessly. I would be—I would be more than angry, I would be heartbroken if any son of mine behaved like that. Never forget, even if they are not servants of ours or of the company, they are all people. Your father never forgets it. I try not to. And so must you.”