House of All Nations

by Christina Stead

  ‘The only other idea I had was—sell short,’ continued Jules. ‘The American market is creaking upwards but it’s only getting up to the springboard for a tumble. That’s when I’m counting on the final cash-in. Oh, it may go on till October, November. Say the pound goes off by then. Confidence will droop.’

  ‘Indeed! Within two days of the pound going off, if it does, everyone will be patting England on the back and keeping up confidence, and the American market, as usual, will go a point higher, its usual reaction to news of earthquakes, floods, death-dealing, and economic crash. I’m always a fool, and I’ve taught you to be too straight-thinking, Jules. It should go down, but nowadays it gets a hypodermic every time it begins to wilt. That is the mistake we have made. I am too clever. I am right on policy but wrong on time.’

  ‘Jules told me last night how he first made any money,’ murmured William, when they had read the mail.

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Yes. He says he was in Berlin in 1921—he was, of course—and he peddled American telephone books—New York, Chicago, St. Paul, Lansing, Madison, and so on. He got them over for two dollars or less and they paid five dollars for them on the boulevards of Berlin. That was the time you paid a million marks for a piece of steak and a quarter of a million for a glass of beer, remember? Even for old ones he got four dollars.’

  ‘The mystery?’

  ‘All the Schwarzes, all the Finkelsteins, all the Grumbachers, all the Schmidts, all the Epsteins, all the Müllers, wrote to their namesakes in America and begged them to send them a couple of dollars: it was nothing to them, and it meant millions of marks to the Berlin cousin-by-necessity. They did good business. America was rich then and the Americans thought it a hell of a joke to succor starving Europe for a couple of dollars. Others were really impressed. What Schmidt really has all his cousin Schmidts tabulated? Well, the telephone books with all those Schmidts in them were worth five dollars and more to Schmidt, and Jules was the first one to think up the racket and he soon controlled twenty peddlers who worked for him. He stood out on the street himself: he doesn’t care.’

  ‘How much could he make out of that? A few hundred dollars?’ William looked carefully through some lists of bonds, ‘Oh, there were other schemes. He doesn’t have to scratch his head.’

  Alphendéry smiled dryly, wearily. ‘Koffer insists on having a complete list of the numbers of these bonds. They’re bearer bonds.’

  ‘He’s a mind reader.’

  ‘He invited me down to his hotel in Cairo the other day.’

  ‘That’s nothing: didn’t Achitophelous give you two free tickets to his house of rendezvous? And tell you you’d get champagne free? These lavish gents will give you everything you don’t want and couldn’t ever use. It seems Raccamond thinks Baron Koffer is his client, because Fetterling knows his wife.’

  ‘Let him. What do we care?’

  ‘The big mug,’ William was almost fond, ‘snooping, poking, struggling, persuading himself already that he’s on the outside of the inside. Trying to oust you.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Or enlist you in his great service,’ giggled William. ‘He’s as secret as a Hollywood bathing beauty. His card, Raccamond attached to the direction. One of these days you’ll find on your desk a little bundle of cards, Alphendéry attached to Raccamond.’

  ‘He’s not a bad fellow. He got me a photograph of Yvonne Printemps for Henrietta.’

  ‘Charming. And boasted to Printemps, doubtless, that he knew Mr. and Mme. Theus of Brussels.’

  ‘You don’t do him justice.’

  ‘I hope we won’t have to.’

  * * *

  Scene Forty-eight: A Ghostly Gathering

  Jules and Claire-Josèphe went to the wedding, at St. Clothilde, of Toots Legris and Duc-Adam Lhermite, a handsome young fellow descended from a long line of cognac manufacturers, but of a junior branch and therefore very grateful for the million francs that he received from Toots on his marriage to her. His family had a villa in Alpes-Maritimes like anyone who is anybody, and a hôtel at Paris in the Avenue Pierre de Serbie and, to even things up a bit, after marrying he was to be allowed to use the family château in Saône-et-Loire. A distant relative of his connected the Franco-Argentine Mortgage Bank to the Haute Banque and so he was, money apart, highly satisfactory.

  And Toots had enough money for the whole world. The Legris family had only newly come to the ranks of the multimillionaires, and this was the first alliance in high society, so naturally there were very great rejoicings on this occasion. Besides Jules and Claire-Josèphe, there were present in the princely throng at the elegant Basilica, from whose grand-inquisitor towers César Franck’s ghostly music had flowed into the sky, the following representatives of all that makes France great: four persons representing the great insurance companies, the Paternal, the Patrimony, the Phoenix, and the Providence; six persons connected in some more or less casual fashion with the financial societies, Raoul de Lubersac and Company, Mirabaud, De Neuflize and Company, De Rothschild Brothers, Odier Bungener and Company, A. J. Stern and Company; two directors of the Suez Company, three members of the Bloodstock Association, one relative of a director of the leading metallurgical company, forty persons representing diverse commercial companies, eight exchange brokers of Paris, four governors or regents of the Banque de France, eighty-nine individual shareholders of the Banque de France, including leading board-room princes and landed proprietors who represented the interests of the peasants in finance and saw that the proletariat of the cities did not get away with it, fifty-one members of the Jockey Club, thirteen counts, three persons with the title of marquis, seventeen countesses, nineteen princes, foreign and domestic, fourteen American millionairesses married to blue blood abroad, several ambassadors, three hundred and forty-one impoverished nobles and younger sons, intimately known to their friends as lunch detectives and sandwich snatchers, seven unlucky suitors for the Legris millions, five priests, one archbishop, one ex-king, one hundred and two bankers, and three pickpockets not of noble extraction. It was a garland of youthful vanity and superannuated cunning, hoary rank and young money, famous beggars, notorious debtors, unsuccessful rakes, lordly borrowers, impenitent usurers, princely automobile salesmen and brokers’ runners of Bourbon blood, shady viscounts, distinguished pillars of cafés, illustrious readers of the Journal des Débats, people who trusted to the Council of State in an emergency, people who trusted to the Republican Guard, to Mr. Chiappe, and to General Pétain. All of them were news items, and a certain number had money themselves.

  After the solemn service the Archbishop in white and gold sent a priest round to the apartment of François Legris asking for the money for the service, and when he was not to be found there, the priest flew round in a taxi to the house of the Princesse Delisle-Delbe where the reception was being held. But François was not there, either.

  François, Anthony Legris, Maîtres Vanderallee (for Toots Legris), Nanti, and Olympe, Jules, William, and Michel Alphendéry were in Jules’s room at the bank quietly celebrating and avoiding the elegant crush at the Princesse’s. The dear old friends were rather gay and found everything excessively funny. Maîtres Vanderallee and Nanti were most particularly gay and were even suspected of being drunk.

  Jules was in a delightfully intimate and trustful frame of mind. They all sat gossiping beside the three or four hundred books on economics from Adam Smith to Mr. Keynes, carefully selected by Michel Alphendéry, like lifelong comrades who after forty years of labor take a day off and resuscitate adolescent memories. What pleasant, carefree, ingenuous hours such old friends pass! How cheerful is the occasion of a wedding, for forgetting commerce, finance, mutual robbery, and for indulging in that frivolous chitchat which puts old friends and new at ease!

  ‘Willem,’ said Jules to Vanderallee, ‘I can’t understand you chaps playing such a dirty game. Listen, François, you know very w
ell that when I went to Anthony and asked him to get the Scheldt en Dogger to advance me fifty thousand guilders to play the market, he did so on the understanding that it was never to be called, that, in fact, it was a sort of advance from yourselves and was only advanced from the Scheldt en Dogger (on your recommendation) so that it would look better on the books. Now I find Anthony has warned the Scheldt en Dogger Bank to call in the loan and I get a notice of it yesterday. What are you going to do about it? Didn’t I arrange the marriage contract for you free of charge?’

  ‘Yes, I know, Jules, old fellow, but suppose you go wild and go bankrupt, where would we be, owing the Scheldt en Dogger fifty thousand guilders?’ laughed François, all as a joke.

  Willem Vanderallee, lawyer of the great gambling stock-exchange firm of which François and Anthony Legris were partners, lolled back in a deep chair, one leg tossed over the arm, blowing rings from a powerful cigar (donated by Richard Plowman), his white waistcoat, tie, shiny forehead, spectacles, and diamond ring flashing as he wallowed in his deep inebriation. He scarcely followed the conversation at all, laughed at everything that Jules and François said; his eyes closed from minute to minute. He now said thickly, ‘Jules, darling, I can’t speak a word. Why is the world turning, round and round and round? I say, François, your daughter serves strong liquor: she forgets we haven’t all had her experience. God bless her! May she be—ever—happy.’ His eyes closed. François giggled and proffered obscenities.

  ‘I say,’ said Vanderallee, opening his eyes again, ‘she’s a lovely-looking girl; she looked like one of those sixteenth-century paintings—absolutely cinquecento—not the same, doesn’t matter—where the Madonna is a queen, on a throne, with a diamond—diadem, that is to say. She looks lovely in that tiara: how much they soak you for it, François? She’s lovely woman, your daughter.’

  ‘Yes, she’s an attractive bitch,’ bubbled François, ‘should think she would be—she’s spent a million guilders a year on her looks since she was ten. She ought to look good. She doesn’t give her old father much. She’s kindhearted though: very kindhearted. She always appeals for funds for the orphans. Every year. She’s kindhearted. But she’s not as soft as she looks. Not as—as hard as nails.’

  ‘I didn’t say she looked soft,’ amended Willem.

  François went in for even worse obscenities. Jules, never obscene, said, ‘Hey, François, she’s your daughter: it’s her wedding day—give her a break for once, as a wedding present.’

  François giggled, ‘Oh, the little devil understands me: we have nothing to thank each other for. You’re right though, Jules, you’ve got nice instincts. Always had the right instincts. Perfect gentleman. Yes, it’s my little girl’s wedding day. When Duc-Adam asked me, I said, “Take her, my boy, you been sleeping with her two years anyhow. The sooner she marries you the sooner she’ll get tired of you.” He looked sick. She’s not my daughter: what rot you talking Jules? She’s the daughter of seventy million guilders. That’s not the same thing at all as being the daughter of Mr. François Legris, perpetual soak, plain citizen. She hasn’t got my tastes—she’s got the tastes of seventy million guilders. She’s too good for me. Not my daughter. I don’t care what I say about her.’

  ‘I’m glad she hasn’t got your tastes,’ murmured Nanti, from his armchair.

  François winked, ‘She gave me her loose change; she’ll give Duc-Adam her loose change. Let’s have a drink.’

  ‘I say,’ Jules recollected suddenly, ‘you nearly did a lunatic thing, Willem. That marriage contract. You made a contract under Dutch law giving Duc-Adam a million guilders plus living expenses. You ought to know that in a French marriage a French contract for separation of estate has to be made. You nearly landed Lhermite with the whole fortune. Say, François, why don’t you fire him? He’s a freak lawyer. First, he lets the Scheldt en Dogger Bank know what I’m doing, and they call in my loan and—don’t you realize I could sue you and Anthony for breach of contract?’

  ‘Sue us, sue us,’ François waved his hand cheerfully.

  About a quarter of an hour later, Willem Vanderallee, rolling, flushed, drunk, spoke boisterously, ‘We’re going to put it across, William. Jules is going to give us a letter appointing us his agents.’

  The letter gave Messrs. Legris and Maîtres Nanti and Vanderallee power to act for Jules Bertillon in bringing to a satisfactory finality the claim of the Scheldt en Dogger Bank for fifty thousand guilders loaned to Jules Bertillon at the request of Messrs. Legris and Company, Amsterdam.

  According to promise, Jules notified his Amsterdam lawyer, Michel’s friend, Maître Friesz, to cease his countersuit against the Scheldt en Dogger, because he had fixed the affair in Paris himself with the help of Maître Olympe. The Amsterdam lawyer, in high dudgeon, sent Jules a stiff account at once. He had maneuvered and negotiated for six weeks and considered he had the Scheldt en Dogger in a deep hole and he had argument enough if necessary to sue Legris Brothers also. The next mail brought all the related papers flying back and an insulted and injured letter from the lawyer. This friend of Alphendéry had considered the brilliant double suit which he had prepared a good debut in the interesting and always actively litigating firm of Jules Bertillon. He was more than mortified to have to scrap it all for some chicane on the part of Vanderallee. He wrote a severe letter to Alphendéry saying that Vanderallee would certainly ditch the Bertillons, as he was hand-in-glove with the Legris firm. ‘He’s just jealous,’ said Jules. ‘Trust a lawyer to prefer to fight a case to settling it.’

  Three days later they were notified, by the usual channels, in a brief style, that the Scheldt en Dogger Bank had drawn on Legris and Company, Amsterdam, for fifty thousand guilders for the account of Jules Bertillon, and had been paid; with a letter from Legris and Company, asking for a draft to pay fifty thousand guilders in Bertillon’s Amsterdam account, to replace the money legitimately drawn by the Scheldt en Dogger in settlement of their claim settled by François Legris acting for Jules Bertillon. William Bertillon and Alphendéry were too polite to make any comment to Jules.

  * * *

  Scene Forty-nine: Various Matters

  The affair of the marriage contract being noised around, people began to consider that Jules was most intimately related to Legris Brothers of Amsterdam and Jules himself for the time being thrust far into the background his idea that business was a mistake and that he ought to fold up the bank before its bright picture was tarnished.

  Jules, much entertained, in his empty, amoral life, by some speculations of Alphendéry about Carrière’s immorality, said, ‘Ah, Alphendéry, I’m glad to hear you say that about Carrière but I too will be out of the public eye in ten years: I don’t care to stay in it as long and then if your argument applies to Carrière, it applies to me, too. I sleep with my own wife, true; but I sleep with other people’s money. And raped money gets people much wilder than raped wives.’

  He felt much closer to Carrière than to Alphendéry; he admired his rascality while detesting his opposition: Alphendéry was a mystery to Jules. He knew that Michel knew that the business they were all in was (as he put it) ‘pure theft,’ and Michel had many a time proved to him that private banking of any sort was a ‘titanic pickpocketing.’ But Michel went on working for him at a mediocre salary and did not even filch a few thousand francs each month, which was what Jules fully expected him to do. If Jules had found out that Michel was putting away a little each month in a secret account in another bank, for himself and accounting for it somehow or other, or if Michel had even run up a sizable overdraft, or taken the money and put in I.O.U.’s, or even if Alphendéry had taken a big house and expected Jules to pay for it, or bought a car he couldn’t afford and charged it to the bank, or if he had gone (as Jules had requested him to do) to Jules’s princely tailors and got himself a wardrobe on Jules’s account, or anything of that sort, Jules would have understood it, considered it his right, and thought the better of him.
But Michel worked for the agreed stipend like any clerk and Jules quite openly thought it was something petty, limited, and clerkly in his nature which prevented him from providing for himself.

  ‘Why,’ said Jules to William once, in private, ‘we’ve given him enough warning. He knows we’re going to shut up shop one day. Why doesn’t he take notice? For a bright man, he’s subnormal.’

  ‘He’s honest: there is such a thing,’ remarked William. ‘You and I don’t know about it.’

  Jules mused, ‘The Comtesse said the other day, “The day I found out there were men in France who couldn’t be bought, I sent my gold abroad.” Smart girl. She’s right. It makes me feel queer. It’s a sort of fanaticism.’ He felt so queer that when he next saw Alphendéry, he said only half jocularly, ‘I say, Michel, why don’t you put your name to a few checks: it’s your right. Your signature is good here!’

  Michel said, ‘If you don’t mind, I was thinking next month I’d ask you for twenty thousand francs overdraft to send to Estelle. I want to give her a hint that she may as well get another husband. I’m not much good to her, and the way to grease these things is with a present, to show there’s no ill will. You can put it down on my account. I’ll pay you back when I make some money in the market.’