The Lorimer Line (23 page)

He should have been grateful, both for the trust that she showed in him and, more practically, for the offer of money which could be invested in a new life for the two of them. Instead he was overcome by fury against the man who had done so much to wrong him.

‘I ought to have understood it earlier,' he said. ‘As soon as your father saw the crash coming he removed what he could beyond the reach of his creditors. He could not act in such a way without good excuse. What could be more plausible than the coming-of-age of his only daughter. Mr Lorimer will never allow you to sell Lower Croft. It is intended to provide him with a roof over his own head when everything else has gone.'

‘I don't understand what you are saying,' she replied. ‘My father could have had no knowledge in advance of what has happened.'

‘He has known for months,' said David. ‘That is why tomorrow I shall be a fugitive from a prison sentence.'

‘Are you so sure that you will be found guilty?'

David had not intended to say anything to Margaret against her father, but anger at the mention of Lower Croft made him forget himself. It hurt his pride to think that after he had left, Margaret would hear nothing but ill of him, and there would be no one to speak in his defence.

‘You know the mood in the city,' he said. ‘Someone must be judged responsible for all the suffering that has been caused. Someone must be found guilty. Your father has decided that I, and not himself, should be the scapegoat.'

‘You surely misjudge him. He would not do that when I love you and you are to be his son-in-law!'

‘Did it not surprise you, Margaret, when he accepted me as your suitor? A man without either fortune or family to recommend him. When your father had already made it clear that he wished to use you to ally himself with one of the other wealthy families of the city.' His first use of her Christian name, though it was a sign that he was no longer prepared to bow to the conventions of her society, passed unnoticed by them both.

‘I must confess to some surprise,' she said honestly. ‘But I knew that his own marriage had been an alliance of this sort, and that it had not proved to be a happy one. I thought that this had determined him to allow me my own choice as a sign of affection for me. Besides, he knows as well as I do that I am not beautiful, and what it meant to me that I should have bestowed my affection on someone who seemed to return it.'

David leant a little towards her, longing to step forward and tell her that she was indeed beautiful in his eyes and that she had not been wrong in thinking her love returned. But instinct told him that this was a discussion which must be kept to the path of reason and not of emotion. He did not realize, even as he controlled his feelings of love, that he was already dominated by a deeper feeling of hatred.

‘I think you may have been mistaken,' he said. ‘In the same way I deluded myself when I believed that your father gave me promotion because he recognized my business ability. We both, I am afraid, allowed our hearts to overrule our heads. Your father is not a sentimental man. He had a purpose in arranging this engagement: he needed someone to take the blame.'

‘The blame for what?' asked Margaret. ‘For the slipping of a dock wall? For the burning of a ship? For the collapse of a bank in another city?'

David shook his head.

‘The trouble was much more deep-seated than that,' he said. ‘Those were only the windows which allowed the rottenness within to be seen. I'm not trying to say that your father was a wicked man where the affairs of the bank were concerned. But he made mistakes, and his pride forced him to cover them up.'

‘How can you say that you are not accusing him of wickedness when you would have me believe that he intends to put all the blame on you?'

‘I think that is the case,' said David. ‘I think it was his intention from the start. That is why I am going. After I am gone he can say what he wants and there will be no one to contradict him. It will assist him greatly, I imagine, in the trial and when sentence is passed. But although the whole of Bristol will think of me as a villain or a fool, I trust that you …'

‘You said that my father arranged this engagement,' interrupted Margaret. The colour was high in her cheeks for a reason that David failed to understand. ‘He did not do so. He
permitted
it, certainly, but only at my most earnest insistence. Because I wanted it so very much and because I thought - I thought that you …'

The tears were in her eyes, ready to fall. David tried to keep his voice gentle as he answered.

‘You were right to think that I loved you. I loved you then and I love you now. And it was necessary for your father's intentions that the wish should seem to come from you. But who was it who first threw us together, Margaret? Who made sure that we should see far more of each other than our stations in life would in the usual way have made possible? You are as well aware as I how little power of choice devolves on a daughter in the house of a wealthy man. You were allowed to choose only when your father had made sure that you would choose what he wished.'

‘You speak of me as though I had no mind of my own!' cried Margaret, and David realized too late that the flush
he had observed was one of anger. ‘As though I were a decoy, the bait placed in a trap to catch you by the foot. My father learned early enough that where marriage was concerned I claimed the right to determine my own fate. It was at my insistence that the alliance he planned with Walter Crankshaw was abandoned. And it was at my insistence again that you were accepted in Walter's place. It was not easy for me to face my father's displeasure, and I will not be told now that I was dancing all the time to his tune like an organ-grinder's monkey. I understand now that you were playing a tune of your own. You had a mind to marry the daughter of a rich man who would advance your career. But now the alliance is of no use to you, you give me back my freedom so that you may take your own, and you revile my father to ensure that I shall not try to hold you back.'

‘Marry me, Margaret,' said David. It was only a few hours since he had written the letter which told her that they must part, but now he was overcome by a feeling of panic lest she should take him at his word. ‘Marry me tomorrow and come with me to make a new life. If you made over Lower Croft to William he would advance you money for a passage and the price of a home.' He thought quickly. The
Flora,
on which he had planned to sail to San Francisco, would leave the city harbour in only eight hours - too short a time for Margaret to make the necessary arrangements. But that destination had been chosen at random. Any other would do as well. ‘The
Diana
leaves for Jamaica in six days' time. Marry me, and we will sail on her together.'

He had chosen the worst possible time to renew his proposal. Margaret's eyes were still brimming with the tears which revealed how much she had been hurt by his accusations, and her voice as she answered was cold.

‘So you are willing after all to use the money which you claim my father had no right to set aside.'

‘I am willing to do anything which will make for your happiness.'

‘And you think I could be happy with a man who believes that my father is wicked and myself weak? You must think again. You wrote this morning to offer me my freedom from my engagement to you. I accept the offer with gratitude, and pray that you may make good use of your own freedom in finding happiness in your new life. Goodnight, Mr Gregson.'

He put out a hand to hold her back, but she tugged her arm sharply away and swept out of the house as he called her name with one last cry of anguish. He heard her footsteps running down the wooden stairs and, a moment later, along the empty street outside. He could have run faster and caught her again, but it would have done no good. Nothing in his own situation had changed. He was still a man with nothing to offer. And about John Junius he had said only what he believed to be the truth. It would have been wiser and kinder not to have spoken the words, but he could not in honesty now withdraw them and make a hollow apology to heal the rift which had caused her anger.

Now the desolation which he had faced earlier and thought to have conquered returned again to drain away his courage. He stood for a long time with his head pressed against the door, knowing that he had lost her for ever. He tried to banish from his mind the picture of her appearance at this last meeting: a proud, indignant figure dressed in the unflattering deadness of black paramatta and crape. Instead he remembered the happy girl, her face framed in fur, who had looked so lovingly into his eyes in the snow-swept garden of Lower Croft, claiming his own heart with spirit and courage. He remembered too the radiant young woman, beautiful in her ball dress, with a long ringlet of red hair lying softly on her smooth white shoulders, who had danced with him at the ball for the Prince of Wales.
As his love ached in silent despair, so his anger grew against the man who had promised him this treasure but had never intended that the promise should be kept. With his lips tightened in a manner reminiscent of John Junius himself, David crossed over to the table and began to write.

He worked without stopping for three hours, using the notes which he had made earlier to refresh his memory of dates and figures. Dawn was already lightening the sky as he signed and sealed the statement. As soon as he heard his landlady stirring, he put it into her hands. She was to keep it, he told her, until the day before the trial of John Junius Lorimer began. Then she should take it to the police station. David had marked on the outside the instruction that it should be handed to the chief prosecuting counsel, but he could not expect Mrs Lambert herself to discover who that would be. He gave her a little money for her trouble, and settled the rent with the last of his savings. Then he whistled for a boy from the street to help him with his baggage.

Three hours later the
Flora
moved towards the estuary along the narrow and tortuous channel of the Avon. She was pulled by a steam tug and noisy with commands as the crew made her ready to catch the wind which would be waiting in the open water. David looked up from her deck towards the gardens of Brinsley House. The mansion itself, lying back from the gorge, could not be seen - except for the tower in which John Junius himself might at this moment be sitting. David stared for a moment, reflecting on the ruthlessness of the rich towards intruders in their midst. Then, as Brunel's miraculous bridge seemed to glide through the air far above, he averted his gaze from the tumbling woods and sheer cliffs and in a gesture of final rejection went down to his berth, turning his back on England and the Lorimers for ever.

Insolvency is infectious. In the weeks which followed the collapse of Lorimer's Bank the commercial life of Bristol came nearly to a standstill. The bank's larger shareholders were in many cases the owners of manufacturing or trading companies. As they came to be stripped of their assets they were forced to close their warehouses and factories and turn their workmen out into a community which had no new employment to offer. The depositors, although they might hope for the return of some of their money eventually, had for the time being no ready cash, so that tradesmen's bills went unpaid and new spending was restricted to the barest necessities of life. Drapers and tobacconists, milliners and dressmakers, horse-dealers and wine merchants, all found themselves with debts which might never be settled and stocks which could not be sold. They too reduced their staffs and this added to the poverty which every day settled more and more inexorably on the city. The ragged children whose profession it was to hire themselves out as the pitiable dependants of beggars joined the ranks of the unemployed, for there were enough truly destitute and starving families to absorb all available charity without the necessity to pretend despair.

The property market was as badly affected as any other form of trade. So many shops and houses were offered through forced sale at the same time - and so few buyers were to be found - that prices dropped almost to nothing, making removal impossible even for those who were not directly affected by the crisis but wished merely to escape from it. Stung by David's taunt, Margaret put Lower Croft on to the market. She was not prepared to believe that her
father had made the gift deliberately in order that something might be salvaged from the wreck of his own estate, but her conscience told her that when so many people had been ruined through entrusting their money to the Lorimers, no member of the family should be immune from the penalties of failure. A charitable fund had been opened in the city for the relief of distress caused by the bank's collapse, and she intended to donate the proceeds of the sale to this. She was careful not to tell William of her plan, for she guessed that he would dismiss it as sentimental.

No buyer could be found. Quite apart from the general shortage of capital, the position of Lower Croft in the grounds of a hospital made it unattractive to anyone wanting a family home. After only a short time, the agents informed her that there was little chance of a sale, and advised her to let the property. Instead, she lent it rent free to a family whose own house had been taken from them by the bank's Receiver. On the first night of their stay, she cried herself to sleep. This was to have been her home as David Gregson's bride. In giving the key of the door to a stranger, she was acknowledging that they would never live there together.

The winter of 1878 was as bleak as the life of the city. Snow fell early, and the boys of the College, on the way from their houses to Big School, hurried past William's windows with blue fingers and shoulders hunched against the cold. November would normally have seen the opening of the social season, but this year there were no balls and no grand dinners. Even those who were still in a position to entertain could not be sure that their friends any longer kept a carriage in which to travel, or enough servants to make a return invitation possible. In the whole depressed city only the poor - those to whom debts had always come more naturally than savings - found their situation unchanged. The poor, and William Lorimer.