The Lorimer Line (22 page)

‘There is a price to be paid for everything.' He hesitated briefly. ‘I have told you, Mr Gregson, that I am anxious for my father's sake. But it is also true, as my sister has reminded me, that I am indirectly indebted to you for the fact that my own property is not at risk. One day I intend to be as wealthy and as highly respected in this city as any of my forefathers, so that this unhappy incident in our family history will be forgotten and the name of Lorimer will once again be recognized as a symbol of worth and prosperity. I should have achieved this ambition in any case, but I am ready to own that it will come more easily to the owner of a great shipping line whose future is widening before it than to a bankrupt. I trust that with this I shall pay off my debt to you.'

It was the most convincing argument he had used. David was prepared to believe that the offer was made by a man who did not care to be beholden to his inferiors.

‘You mentioned your sister,' he said, not answering the proposal directly. ‘Does she know of your plan?'

‘No. It is a matter best not revealed to anyone. If it became known that you planned to depart, you would of course be re-arrested.'

‘But I cannot leave England without speaking to her.' David looked down at the paper. ‘You offer but a single passage.'

William showed signs of impatience.

‘You could hardly expect my sister to accompany you to a destination where you have as yet no home and no means of support. Tell her by all means, if you wish, that you will send for her to join you when you are in a position to do so. I will gladly take a letter for you now if you wish. Margaret has not been brought up to face the rigours of colonial life. I can provide her with a comfortable home here until you are ready to replace it with another in Australia, or wherever else you choose to go. The debt I owe to her for my son's life is even larger than that to yourself. You will believe me, I am sure, when I tell you that I am determined to do everything possible to ensure her happiness. And she is not likely to be happy if you are in prison.'

For the second time a more personal argument made it easier for David to believe that William was sincerely trying to help him. The antagonism between them was one of temperament, but the fact that at bottom they disliked each other did not prevent their interests from running together. David allowed himself to be distracted for a moment by the memory of what had been happening during his last visits to The Ivies.

‘Your wife and the baby are in good health, I hope?' he said.

‘Both of them, by the grace of God,' said William. ‘Arthur is still very small, but my sister has made herself responsible for his care. His strength increases daily.'

He stood up, his business at an end. David looked down at the paper which he was still holding.

‘I need time to consider my predicament,' he said. ‘May I keep this while I do so?' He looked up at his visitor and forced himself to speak the words which were owing, although they stuck in his throat. ‘I am greatly obliged to you, Mr Lorimer.'

William nodded, using the same movement that David
had so often seen from his father. Each of them recognized that David would in fact use the passage he had been offered.

After his visitor had left, David tried to persuade himself that he still had a choice, but deep in his heart he knew that his position in Bristol was hopeless. He could not maintain his own innocence of fraud except by claiming that he had always acted on the direct instructions of the chairman. If the chairman chose to deny this, as clearly he intended, no jury would prefer David's word. Ever since the meeting with the lawyer he had been wondering how he could escape. Now the means had been put into his hands. There was nothing to stop him except the knowledge that his flight would be taken as a confession of guilt. Early next morning, knowing that every step brought him nearer to a decision, he walked down to the floating harbour.

Two of William's ships were moored in the basin, and another lay careened against the bank of the river. If a Lorimer steamship happened to be in England, it would be berthed at Portishead, in the estuary, for the Avon channel was not deep enough to take it. But until the new dock area was complete, the sailing ships still came into Bristol itself, as they had always done.

David did not need to enquire about the destination of any steamship, for it would have been built especially to challenge the Cunard interest in the Atlantic crossing to New England. But the three vessels in the harbour would go wherever the promise of a cargo sent them. Although it was still dark, the day's work had already begun. A squad of sailors was crawling over the hull of the careened ship, the
Rosa,
scraping it clear of barnacles. David found someone on the shore to tell him that she would be sailing for Australia in two weeks' time. Of the two ships afloat in the harbour, the
Diana
was bound for Jamaica, the
Flora
for California.

The
Flora
was being loaded at that moment. Standing
on the wharf, the supercargo checked off on his bill of lading the goods that were being carried out of a warehouse by the light of a lantern. David went to speak to him.

‘What trade do you do?' he asked.

‘We'll fill our holds on the West Coast with hides for leather, sir,' the man replied in a Somerset accent made even broader by his years at sea. ‘That's to say, if we can keep the crew from the goldfields when they get there. This is one run that we've no need to shanghai for. A free passage to fortune, some of these scum seem to think it. We take none but married men, if we can find them, but even those will throw off a wife for the sake of an ounce of gold or silver, it seems.'

‘I thought those days were over,' said David wonderingly.

‘Ay, the days of scraping and washing are done. It's a mining job now, I'm told. But there's enough still there to make a millionaire of a man who starts with nought but muscle.'

‘You haven't been tempted yourself?'

‘There are other ways of making a fortune, sir.' The man gave a contented smile. ‘The men who've made their millions come to live in the cities when they leave the mines. Rough types they are, some of them. But their wives, sir, that's summat else again. The ladies of San Francisco live in palaces you'd not believe. And they're not content with the furniture which their husband once made to fill a log cabin, I can tell you that. They want the best that Europe can send them. That's what we're loading now. Mr Lorimer's had his agents out buying for the past six months to fill these holds. Half of it's on special order, so there's not even any risk. There's a clock in the warehouse now, sir, come from Paris. If I were to tell you the price of it, you wouldn't believe me, just to tell the hour of day. But some rich lady's set her heart on it, and four days from now it'll be on its way.'

‘You won't grow rich by supervising Mr Lorimer's business,' suggested David.

‘He's a good master,' said the supercargo. ‘Or maybe it's just that he's got his wits about him. I wouldn't like to say. He pays the lowest rate in Bristol for this run, and still he can make up a crew. Because every man may take one case of his own purchasings to sell at whatever profit he can. With a larger allowance for myself. Three crates of table silver I shall have stowed below there: thirty years old and the fanciest style I can find. My first voyage out, I borrowed more for my stock than I thought I'd ever be able to repay. But by now …' He broke off to admonish a group of men who were staggering with a heavy load towards the edge of the wharf. ‘Go steady with that table, will you? That's best Italian marble you're carrying.'

‘I mustn't hinder you,' said David. ‘She sails in four days, you said?'

‘On the morning tide, sir.'

David was thoughtful as he walked away. He turned his back on the ships and by the dawn light looked up at the terraces of the city which crossed the steep hills in tiers. He could disregard the slums which surrounded the harbour itself and appreciate the elegant houses of the elevated squares and crescents built in the previous century. This was a merchant city, grown rich by trading across the seven seas. The poorest member of William Lorimer's crew, filthy and illiterate though he well might be, was carrying on a tradition which was already centuries old. As a bank official David could never have achieved more than a respectable competence. To marry the daughter of a rich man had been one way, certainly, of putting himself in line for wealth, but it was a way now closed to him. If he was to raise himself in the world, he must be prepared to take a risk. William had offered him a passage as a means of escape. Its attraction to David was as the means of entry into a new life.

Of America he knew little. In his short period with Lorimer's he had done some business with New York, but not enough to give him any claim on that city's hospitality. What he did know was that the Americans themselves were going west, at first in a thin stream across the forbidding natural barriers of the continent and now in a flood carried by the railways. A city like San Francisco might well prove to be a place where a man could start again from the beginning, with not too many questions asked, and yet at the same time a place large and civilized enough for David to practise his urban skills. The empty acres of Australia held nothing to tempt him, but in a city of newly rich men he could surely find employment and the means of advancing himself.

The change of viewpoint excited him as he walked back to his lodgings. By now the decision which had been reached unconsciously on the previous evening was ready to be openly acknowledged in his mind. He would not think of himself as a fugitive, but as a pioneer.

The feeling of adventure raised his spirits from the depression which had leadened them for so long. It was necessary to remind himself that he had no capital which he could invest in even a sailor's modest case of goods. No one in Bristol would lend money to David Gregson, and even a whisper that he was seeking it would be enough to have him seized and returned to jail. He would begin a new life with no assets but his head for figures and the skills of his fingers.

They would be enough, he told himself, refusing to let his new excitement slip away. That expensive clock from Paris was not likely to take kindly to months of tossing through storms in a damp hold, and there would be others like it in need of attention. Light though his baggage might be, he would come to a new shore no worse equipped than many others before him. By the time he returned to his room, all doubt had vanished into the darkness. In four
days' time he would leave Bristol on the morning tide to make his fortune in America.

Few people can close the door on the past without some regret, however unhappy their memories of it may be. Back in his room after his decision had been made, David sat in front of the empty grate and thought about Margaret.

Nothing in his feelings for her had been changed by the fact that she was no longer a rich man's daughter. His body ached to hold her in his arms again: he longed to possess her wholly. He was confident that her nature was a loyal one. If he asked her to wait for him, she would wait. But was it a demand which he could honourably make? Although he had no liking for her brother, he recognized that one of William's talents was the ability to analyse a situation dispassionately and express his opinions with clarity. He had been right to point out that Margaret should not be expected to remain faithful to a man serving a prison sentence, and equally right that she could not be carried off into a strange country by someone who would hardly have the price of the first night's lodging in his pocket. Slowly David came to accept the fact that he would have to let her go. His disgrace and impending trial had brought him many hours of sleeplessness and anxiety and even fear, but only at the prospect of losing Margaret did he come close to weeping.

If he were to see her again, he was sure that he could never leave. Instead, he wrote to her on the day before the
Flora
was due to sail. It was the letter, he hoped, of a gentleman - releasing her from her engagement for her own sake, so that she could look for a happy future elsewhere. But even as he sealed it, the hope was in his
mind that perhaps a small miracle would happen and that she would refuse the freedom he offered her.

Late that evening the miracle occurred. He heard a knocking on the door and the sound of his landlady expostulating. Margaret had come - and come unchap-eroned. Although Mrs Lambert knew well enough who she was, the name of Lorimer was no longer one to command respect. David cut the protests short and hurried Margaret into his sitting room.

She had made the journey on foot, he realized, for her clothes were soaked, and the crape which trimmed her mourning mantle was ruined by the rain. This meant that she had not dared to tell William what her errand was. David stared at her, not daring to embrace or even touch her, in case the encouragement of hope should make a final parting even harder to bear. Margaret was also staring, but at the condition of a room which revealed so unmistakably that its occupant was packing for a final departure.

‘You told me I was free to go, so I hoped I was also free to come. But you are leaving. Your letter did not tell me that.'

‘I have no choice,' said David. ‘Or rather, only the choice between a rapid disappearance and a prison cell.'

‘Will you not take me with you?' she asked.

‘Oh, if only I could! But what have I to offer? We could live on a very little, but I have nothing at all. Absolutely nothing.'

‘I have something,' she said. ‘I could sell Lower Croft.'

For a moment he stared at her in astonishment. In the strain of the past weeks he had completely forgotten the existence of the house which John Junius had given to his daughter. Margaret must have misunderstood the puzzled expression on his face.

‘I had thought at first that Lower Croft must be sold together with Brinsley House and all my father's other possessions,' she said. ‘Then William explained to me that
the property was my own and that the officers of the court have no right to touch it. My second thought was that I ought to sell it in any case, and use the money to relieve some of the suffering which has been caused by the failure of Lorimer's. But your need of the money is just as great. I would be happiest of all to put it in your hands.'