A Dangerous Fortune (27 page)

He went by train to Folkestone, not pausing in London. The partners of Pilasters Bank might have felt he should call on them before going to see his mother but he thought otherwise: he had given them the last six years of his life and he owed his mother at least a day.

He found her more serenely beautiful than ever but still wearing black in memory of his father. His sister Dotty, now twelve, hardly remembered him and was shy until he sat her on his knee and reminded her how badly she had folded his shirts.

He begged his mother to move to a bigger house: he could easily afford to pay the rent. She refused, and told him to save his money and build up his capital. However, he persuaded her to take on another servant to help Mrs. Builth, her aging housekeeper.

Next day he took the London, Chatham and Dover Railway and arrived in London at Holborn Viaduct Station. A vast new hotel had been built at the station by people who thought Holborn was going to become a busy stopover for Englishmen on their way to Nice or St. Petersburg. Hugh would not have put money into it: he guessed the station would be used mostly by City workers who lived in the expanding suburbs of southeast London.

It was a bright spring morning. He walked to Pilasters Bank. He had forgotten the smoky taste of London’s air, much worse than Boston or New York. He paused for
a moment outside the bank, looking at its grandiose facade.

He had told the partners that he wanted to come home on furlough, to see his mother and sister and the old country. But he had another reason for returning to London.

He was about to drop a bombshell.

He had arrived with a proposal to merge Pilasters’ North American operation with the New York bank of Madler and Bell, forming a new partnership that would be called Madler, Bell and Pilaster. It would make a lot of money for the bank; it would crown his achievements in the United States; and it would allow him to return to London and graduate from scout to decision maker. It would mean the end of his period of exile.

He straightened his tie nervously and went in.

The banking hall, which years ago had so impressed him with its marble floors and ponderous walkers, now seemed merely staid. As he started up the stairs he met Jonas Mulberry, his former supervisor. Mulberry was startled and pleased to see him. “Mr. Hugh!” he said, shaking hands vigorously. “Are you back permanently?”

“I hope so. How is Mrs. Mulberry?”

“Very well, thank you.”

“Give her my regards. And the three little ones?”

“Five, now. All in fine health, God be thanked.”

It occurred to Hugh that the Principal Clerk might know the answer to a question on Hugh’s mind. “Mulberry, were you here when Mr. Joseph was made a partner?”

“I was a new junior. That was twenty-five years ago come June.”

“So Mr. Joseph would have been …”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Thank you.”

Hugh went on up to the Partners’ Room, knocked
on the door and went in. The four partners were there: Uncle Joseph, sitting at the Senior Partner’s desk, looking older and balder and more like old Seth; Aunt Madeleine’s husband, Major Hartshorn, his nose turning red to match the scar on his forehead, reading
The Times
beside the fire; Uncle Samuel, beautifully dressed as ever in a charcoal-gray double-breasted cutaway jacket with a pearl-gray waistcoat, frowning over a contract; and the newest partner, Young William, now thirty-one, sitting at his desk and writing in a notebook.

Samuel was the first to greet Hugh. “My dear boy!” he said, getting up and shaking hands. “How well you look!”

Hugh shook hands with all of them and accepted a glass of sherry. He looked around at the portraits of previous Senior Partners on the walls. “Six years ago in this room I sold Sir John Cammel a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of Russian government bonds,” he remembered.

“So you did,” said Samuel.

“Pilasters’ commission on that sale, at five percent, still amounts to more than I’ve been paid in the entire eight years I’ve worked for the bank,” he said with a smile.

Joseph said tetchily: “I hope you’re not asking for a rise in salary. You’re already the highest-paid employee in the entire firm.”

“Except the partners,” said Hugh.

“Naturally,” Joseph snapped.

Hugh perceived that he had got off to a bad start. Too eager, as always, he told himself. Slow down. “I’m not asking for a rise,” he said. “However, I do have a proposition to put to the partners.”

Samuel said: “You’d better sit down and tell us about it.”

Hugh put his drink down untasted and gathered his
thoughts. He desperately wanted them to agree to his proposition. It was both the culmination and the proof of his triumph over adversity. It would bring more business to the bank at one stroke than most partners could attract in a year. And if they agreed they would be more or less obliged to make him a partner.

“Boston is no longer the financial center of the United States,” he began. “New York’s the place now. We really ought to move our office. But there’s a snag. A good deal of the business I’ve done in the last six years has been undertaken jointly with the New York house of Madler and Bell. Sidney Madler rather took me under his wing when I was green. If we moved to New York we’d be in competition with them.”

“Nothing wrong with competition, where appropriate,” Major Hartshorn asserted. He rarely had anything of value to contribute to a discussion, but rather than stay silent he would state the obvious in a dogmatic way.

“Perhaps. But I’ve got a better idea. Why not merge our North American operation with Madler and Bell?”

“Merge?” said Hartshorn. “What do you mean?”

“Set up a joint venture. Call it Madler, Bell and Pilaster. It would have an office in New York and one in Boston.”

“How would it work?”

“The new house would deal with all the import-export financing currently done by both separate houses, and the profits would be shared. Pilasters would have the chance to participate in all new issues of bonds and stocks marketed by Madler and Bell. I would handle that business from London.”

“I don’t like it,” said Joseph. “It’s just handing over our business to someone else’s control.”

“But you haven’t heard the best part,” Hugh said. “All of Madler and Bell’s European business, currently distributed among several agents in London, would be handed over to Pilasters.”

Joseph grunted in surprise. “That must amount to …”

“More than fifty thousand pounds a year in commissions.”

Hartshorn said: “Good Lord!”

They were all startled. They had never set up a joint venture before and they did not expect such an innovative proposition from someone who was not even a partner. But the prospect of fifty thousand a year in commissions was irresistible.

Samuel said: “You’ve obviously talked this over with them.”

“Yes. Madler is very keen, and so is his partner, John James Bell.”

Young William said: “And you would supervise the joint venture from London.”

Hugh saw that William regarded him as a rival who was much less dangerous three thousand miles away. “Why not?” he said. “After all, London is where the money is raised.”

“And what would your status be?”

It was a question Hugh would have preferred not to answer so soon. William had shrewdly raised it to embarrass him. Now he had to bite the bullet. “I think Mr. Madler and Mr. Bell would expect to deal with a partner.”

“You’re too young to be a partner,” Joseph said immediately.

“I’m twenty-six, Uncle,” Hugh said. “You were made a partner when you were twenty-nine.”

“Three years is a long time.”

“And fifty thousand pounds is a lot of money.” Hugh realized he was sounding cocky—a fault he was prone to—and he backed off quickly. He knew that if he pushed them into a corner they would turn him down just out of conservatism. “But there is much to be weighed up. I
know you’ll want to talk it over. Perhaps I should leave you?” Samuel nodded discreetly and Hugh went to the door.

Samuel said: “Whether this works out or not, Hugh, you’re to be congratulated on a jolly enterprising proposition—I’m sure we all agree on that.”

He looked inquiringly at his partners and they all nodded assent. Uncle Joseph murmured: “Quite so, quite so.”

Hugh did not know whether to be frustrated, because they had not agreed to his plan, or pleased that they had not turned it down flat. He had a dispiriting sense of anticlimax. But there was no more he could do. “Thank you,” he said, and he went out.

At four o’clock that afternoon he stood outside Augusta’s enormous, elaborate house in Kensington Gore.

Six years of London soot had darkened the red brick and smudged the white stone, but it still had the statues of birds and beasts on the stepped gable, with the ship in full sail at the apex of the roof. And they say Americans are ostentatious! thought Hugh.

He knew from his mother’s letters that Joseph and Augusta had spent some of their ever-growing wealth on two other homes, a castle in Scotland and a country mansion in Buckinghamshire. Augusta had wanted to sell the Kensington house and buy a mansion in Mayfair, but Joseph had put his foot down: he liked it here.

The place had been relatively new when Hugh left, but still it was a house full of memories for him. Here he had suffered Augusta’s persecution, courted Florence Stalworthy, punched Edward’s nose, and made love to Maisie Robinson. The recollection of Maisie was the most poignant. It was not the humiliation and disgrace he recalled so much as the passion and the thrill. He had not seen or heard anything of Maisie since that night but he still thought about her every day of his life.

The family would remember the scandal as retailed by Augusta: how Tobias Pilaster’s depraved son had brought a whore into the house and then, on being caught, had viciously attacked poor blameless Edward. So be it. They could think what they liked, but they had to acknowledge him as a Pilaster and a banker, and soon, with luck, they would have to make him a partner.

He wondered how much the family had changed in six years. Hugh’s mother had kept him abreast of domestic events in monthly letters. His cousin Clementine was engaged to be married; Edward was not, despite Augusta’s efforts; Young William and Beatrice had a baby girl. But Mother had not told him the underlying changes. Did Uncle Samuel still live with his “secretary”? Was Augusta as ruthless as ever, or had she mellowed with age? Had Edward sobered up and settled down? Had Micky Miranda finally married one of the flock of girls who fell in love with him every season?

It was time to face them all. He crossed the street and knocked on the door.

It was opened by Hastead, Augusta’s oily butler. He did not appear to have changed: his eyes still looked in different directions. “Good afternoon, Mr. Hugh,” he said, but his Welsh voice was frosty, which indicated that Hugh was still out of favor in this house. Hastead’s welcome could always be relied upon to reflect what Augusta was feeling.

He passed through the entrance lobby and into the hall. There like a reception committee stood the three harridans of the Pilaster family: Augusta, her sister-in-law Madeleine, and her daughter Clementine. Augusta at forty-seven was as striking-looking as ever: she still had a classic face with dark eyebrows and a proud look, and if she was a little heavier than six years ago she had the height to carry it. Clementine was a slimmer edition of the same book, but she did not have the indomitable air
of her mother and she missed being beautiful. Aunt Madeleine was every inch a Pilaster, from the curved nose down the thin, angular figure to the expensive lace trim around the hem of her ice-blue dress.

Hugh gritted his teeth and kissed them all.

Augusta said: “Well, Hugh, I trust your foreign experiences have made you a wiser young man than you were?”

She was not going to let anyone forget that he had left under a cloud. Hugh replied: “I trust we all grow wiser as we age, dear Aunt,” and he had the satisfaction of seeing her face darken with anger.

“Indeed!” she said frostily.

Clementine said: “Hugh, allow me to present my fiance, Sir Harry Tonks.”

Hugh shook hands. Harry was too young to have a knighthood, so the “sir” must mean he was a baronet, a kind of second-class aristocrat. Hugh did not envy him marriage to Clementine. She was not as bad as her mother, but she had always had a mean streak.

Harry asked Hugh: “How was your crossing?”

“Very quick,” said Hugh. “I came in one of the new screw steamers. It only took seven days.”

“By Jove! Marvelous, marvelous.”

“What part of England are you from, Sir Harry?” Hugh asked, probing into the man’s background.

“I’ve a place in Dorsetshire. Most of my tenants grow hops.”

Landed gentry, Hugh concluded; if he has any sense he will sell his farms and put the money into Pilasters Bank. In fact Harry did not seem very bright, but he might be biddable. The Pilaster women liked to marry men who would do as they were told, and Harry was a younger version of Madeleine’s husband George. As they grew older they became grumpy and resentful but they rarely rebelled.

“Come into the drawing room,” Augusta commanded. “Everyone’s waiting to see you.”

He followed her in, but stopped short in the doorway. The familiar wide room, with its big fireplaces at either end and the French windows leading to the long garden, had been quite transformed. All the Japanese furniture and fabrics had gone, and the room had been redecorated in a profusion of bold, richly colored patterns. Looking more closely, Hugh saw that they were all flowers: big yellow daisies in the carpet, red roses climbing a trellis in the wallpaper, poppies in the curtains, and pink chrysanthemums in the silk that draped chair legs, mirrors, occasional tables and the piano. “You’ve changed this room, Aunt,” he said superfluously.

Clementine said: “It all comes from William Morris’s new shop in Oxford Street—it’s the latest thing.”

Augusta said: “The carpet has to be changed, though. It’s not the right color.”

She was never satisfied, Hugh recalled.

Most of the Pilaster family were here. They were all curious about Hugh, naturally. He had gone away in disgrace and they may have thought they would never see him again—but they had underestimated him, and he had returned a conquering hero. Now they were all keen to take a second look.