"Sell it. Like we sold it last time."
"You wouldn't!" If he had hit her, the shock could not have been more violent.
"What alternative do you give me?"
"I think it will not be necessary. None of this whole ridiculous conversation is necessary. We have enough cash. You'll see. They'll suspend the Bank Act this week. Then the Bank can issue more money. The drought will end."
"You have it direct from the governor, I suppose, or the prime minister, perhaps."
"John!"
"All the same I'd be obliged for a list of the properties and their present rents."
"You're bullying me. You've never bullied me in your life."
"I'm doing what I can to protect Stevenson's. Someone in this house has to."
She watched him walk from the room and wondered why she felt not the slightest inclination to burst into tears or run after him or plead or win him back to her. He slept that night in his dressing room—which he often did when he had to leave home very early. But that was not his reason now. He had made too big a rift for a few moments of sexual indulgence to bridge.
She did not furnish him with any list of their property, because the very next day the government suspended the Bank Act and the Bank began to discount bills beyond the limit of its own reserves—but for a monstrous eight per cent on even the best and shortest bills. Money was available once more—but at what a price!
Fortunately Stevenson's could stay out of the market while the most desperate firms took advantage of the issue; and within a month, it was possible to reimpose the Bank Act and bring the rate down. From then on, trade picked up steadily. In December, there were only twenty-six new bankruptcies (only! people said when they passed on the news) and by the end of the month, the rate was down to five per cent. In January 1848, it fell to four and even the worst pessimists began to breathe easy.
The Exchequer bills, which she had bought at 37 discount, now went to 39 premium and she was tempted to take her very big profit. The size of it made her feel weak, for it showed what a colossal gamble it had been. However, she took only half of it that month, in the nailbiting hope they might go even higher in February. As, indeed, they did—to 42 premium on the day she sold. She had turned Wolffs' £180,000 into £326,314 5s. 2½d. after all deductions.
"I think we now have enough for what I want to do," she said calmly to Chambers—much more calmly than she felt. "And I'll never try anything of that sort again!"
"You were…more than lucky," he said.
"Well—with everybody losing, somebody had to benefit. It just happened to be me!"
But she remembered too how she had once said to Tom and Sarah Cornelius that currency speculation was something "you and me should never meddle in." She could not find the smallest measure of self-congratulation within—only relief and a heartfelt resolve never to risk so much again. She wanted to rush at once to John and tell him of her folly and the lesson it had taught her. But he was not at home. He had gone to make arrangements for the start of work on the Great Northern line from London to York, of which they had been awarded the first 78 ¾ miles—from the temporary terminus at Maiden Lane to Werrington Junction, north of Peterborough.
He had never apologized for his bullying threat to her but behaved as if it had either never been made or had not really been intended seriously. Their general relief over the Bank's tardy but, in the end, well-judged management made it possible to overlook the affair. It lingered though, in uneasy memory. And Nora could never contemplate "her" land and property now without remembering the threat that had hung over them and might easily do so again. Those few rash words of his marked a permanent new note in their relationship.
He returned, nonetheless, in good time for her confinement at the end of that February, when, on leap year's day, as she had hoped, she was delivered without trouble of a healthy baby girl. They called her Hester, child of starlight.
Outwardly, then, nothing of their discord showed. Certainly Sarah noticed no difference, and the few signs of disagreement she had observed the previous October she put down to the extreme worry of that very fraught period. She told Mr. Thornton when she and he met for their by now well-established weekly session together. "Oh, yes," he said. "I've been reading in the papers that traders have been having a thin time of it. I wouldn't have thought it would touch old John Stevenson though. Railway receipts are down."
The only thing that astonished her now about Mr. Thornton was that she did not tire of him. Every idea he was willing to impart to her he had already imparted—on the progress of steam (which concerned, in fact, the niche now being carved in some future hall of fame and reserved for one W. Thornton Esq.), on the drainage of Bristol (which was a small scrapbook of letters to the Bristol papers by one "Salubritas," alias W. Thornton Esq.), and the need for a rational money system based on fixed values rather than fluctuating market prices. (Sarah had tried some of these notions out on Nora, as if they were her own spontaneous thoughts; Nora had advised her to go and "wash her mouth out with some Harriet Martineau.")
Sarah sometimes tried to get him to talk about Arabella, but he would not be drawn very far. He said that the notion of enjoying sexual traffic with one's wife was grotesque; how could they face each other at breakfast and sit beside one another at the theatre and go through all the motions of their public life if the very sight and touch of one another would conjure up their craving? Life was wonderfully arranged in this age so that a man could find comforts and security at home, where all was serene and tranquil, and carnal pleasures abroad, where they could not harm his loved ones. And because this usually involved the passage of money from wealthy men to the otherwise unemployable girls of the surplus classes, it also contributed to the levelling down of inequality and to the pacification of the dangerous and deprived masses.
She was, in general, relieved that he was not very interested in her opinions on anything—and that he rarely wanted to communicate more to or with her than his all-consuming passion in his own sexuality. And because his fascination was so genuine and so childlike, it became absorbing to her as well. He was by no means the prodigy of virility he had at first seemed. He did not want to lead her on to greater and ever more desperate feats of performance. But he was minutely obsessed with his and her sensations and reactions, and experimented endlessly to find ways of intensifying their pleasure. "What was that like…was it better, was it…tell me about that…what do you remember best from last week…when you imagine us here, what are we doing…what's the most exciting way we ever did it?" He made the apartment resound with those questions.
At first she had found it irritating to be constantly talking and thinking while acting, but he was so insistent and his joy in it was so infectious that, to her surprise, she began to share his strange combination of an almost detached curiosity and an obsessive love of his and her own carnality. And in a reverse, feminine way, she even understood how he felt about marriage on the one hand and the act of congress on the other. She could not now imagine finding carnal pleasure half so intense with any other man; when she and Mr. Thornton were naked together, whatever they did, she knew it was supreme. But the merest thought of being married to him would make her feel sick in her stomach.
Part Five
Chapter 45
That February, the promised revolution struck France. A week before Hester was born, a strange alliance of the bourgeoisie, bent on political reform, and the Red republican leaders of the working class, bent on social revolution, began the insurrection that was to lead, three days later, to the abdication of King Louis Philippe and the formation of a provisional republican government in his place. In its own Gallic way, it was a repeat of the English revolution of 1832—that is to say, the English revolution was ruthless, quiet, and nasty; its French counterpart was ruthless, raucous, and very bloody—though the bloodshed was still to come. The English middle classes, as soon as they attained the political power for which they had struggled, severed all connection wi
th the working-class allies they had made during the fight. The French bourgeoisie took until June to consolidate their power; only then did they find the confidence to deliver the real downward kick in the teeth.
It was in early July that Nora chose to go to Normandy—not for pleasure— there was little pleasure anywhere in Europe that year—but to see Ferrand and console him for the further, inevitable postponement of any plans for Deauville, and to visit the Auberge Clément and see Gaston.
The line from Dieppe to Rouen was now open so that she could go direct to France from Newhaven. She went over with John, who was keen to show her the new line, and George Acton, a new manservant. She was determined to come back with a French maid, though it was useless asking Rodie to help her there—she dismissed them all so quickly.
The mood at La Gracieuse was very sombre. France was now going through the commercial crisis that had shaken London last year—the same toll of bankruptcies, the same shortage of money, the same crippling interest rates. The ironworks were almost idle and Rodet was very depressed.
"He's all right, really," Rodie explained. "He has been clever and we are secure. But it's not good for a man to walk in empty sheds and see only ten men working and one furnace hot."
There was a mood of economy about the house. No parties this year. And very little riding out. Almost every meal was held in the breakfast room, en famille.
"These economies, I don't mind them," Rodie said. "I am from a not so rich family. But Rodet has paid off his mistress and sold his apartment in Rouen." Her tone showed it was the ultimate economy.
"Things must be very bad then," Nora said.
"For me! Oh, it's terrible! But I am firm. I say him no."
Nora laughed then and hugged her. "Oh, Rodie! We are so different really."
"Oh, you! You have a dynasty to make. But we are never more than a small patron. It's enough."
Another time she asked Nora if they had communists in England.
"Of course," Nora told her. "They issued a 'manifesto' this last January."
"You have read it?"
"The first line—A hobgoblin is walking across Europe…It's rubbish. They are no threat to anyone. Enthusiasts and dreamers. One of their leaders in London is called Karl Marx—an impractical Jewish refugee, a dreamer. He looks forward to a world composed entirely of ladies and gentlemen standing around in green fields, wearing morning dress, and writing and reading poetry. I can't understand that he is taken seriously."
"Rodet says they are all very dangerous and must be shot."
"Give them time and they will do it to each other. Look what happened here in May. You actually had a communist government—which fell apart in mutual hatred within three days. The history of all previous revolutions is the history of personal ratfights. Why on earth are you worried?"
"It's not May that worries us. It is June. Cavaignac killed thousands of workers in June and closed the national workshops everywhere. Already now in our soup kitchen we have many hundreds more apply for food. There is no work for the poor anywhere, now the workshops are shut."
"In times of hardship the poor must look to private charity. It was quite wrong of your government to offer work to everyone who wanted it. We learned that lesson bitterly in Ireland. Now you are learning it too."
Rodie shook her head admiringly. "To be so—like a judge. You are a strong woman. I cannot. I see the children and the women and I say economic law tomorrow; today—charity. Work."
Nora smiled, not really seeking an argument, but thinking it too important to turn aside with a soft answer. "I've starved, Rodie. I've struggled to keep Sam and two small children, my brother and sister, on ten shillings a week—in a filthy little hovel without roof or door. And when the mill was slack, we had nothing. And we starved. I've heard them cry, my own little ones, crying all night with the hunger. Going out and begging for cabbage stalks."
Rodie was looking at her in amazement. "Stevie"—it was almost a whisper—"I did not know it. How terrible."
"You ask Sam, when he comes next. All it did for me was to give me the ambition to get up from there and get out. But I wanted to do it by my own effort. I didn't want some jack-in-office coming and telling me what to do and giving me money I'd no right to. The sad fact is that a lot of people aren't like that. When they get kicked to the bottom, they give up and settle to stay there. They are the people who—even Christ said it: For ye have the poor always with you—Matthew, Mark, and John. And that means, if you have the poor, you also have the rich. To try to make it otherwise, except by natural economic law and free trade, is against nature and against God."
"Oooh!" Rodie took refuge in the pretence that it was all beyond her, buzzing her fingertips around her head.
This was hardly a holiday for Nora. So when she had spent a week or so at La Gracieuse and exchanged all their news, gloomy though much of it was, she left to go to Coutances and to see the maid Gaston had looked out for her. George Acton had gone back with John. She went to the inn with old Honorine and one of the grooms from La Gracieuse.
The Clément had done much better this year. Word of its comfort, food, and cleanliness had spread among the English; and there had been a goodly exodus of the Parisian bourgeoisie to Normandy—conveniently close to England's safer shores—ever since the brief communist government of May. In the two weeks after the "June days," they had been able to treble their usual prices.
She heard all this from a happy Gaston within minutes of her arrival, but she did not then begin to look at the books—though she itched to open them, for she needed some good news. It was then late afternoon but, like Sarah, she made it her first duty to go up to Tom's grave. After a brief, silent prayer, she told him aloud how well the inn was doing and what a fine woman Sarah had become— what splendid work she was doing at the Female Rescue Society and how it had made her blossom out. Knowing that the spirits of the dead could read thoughts, she avoided all thoughts of Sarah and John.
All next day she went through the books, finding them flawless. Gaston had been a real discovery of Tom's. She showed him her own private colour code of red ink for debits and blue for credits. "It just makes it easier for me to follow if everyone who works for me uses it," she explained. He agreed to use it in future. The new maid, Nanette Clébert, would come for her interview that evening. She was a very dependable girl, the daughter of the housekeeper to the bishop, so she understood all the arrangements for a grand establishment. They were, of course, most respectable people and she had a good and strict upbringing. She was just beginning to learn English but had only three or four words as yet. Nora thought she sounded admirably suited. "Tell her to come wearing clothes she has made for herself," she said. "Dressmaking's an important part of her work."
The girl was due that evening after the Angelus. About fifteen minutes before that time, one of the maids came to Nora's room to tell her that a gentleman had come to see her. He would not give his name but said to tell her he'd "come to judgement in the hope of mercy." Daniel, she thought. The maid's description fitted, as did the fact that he would not come indoors but waited in the stable. Nora went down at once.
There was no doubting this time it was Daniel. The disguised stance and the flamboyant clothes were gone. It was martyr Daniel, last seen in an epic role, Transportation from Manchester, who stood with his back to the door and turned only slowly to face her. He was dressed in the borrowed clothes of a French gentilhomme, not well fitted; the fact that he had not washed before donning them made them look even more borrowed.
"Nora," he said uneasily when she did not speak. The horses stirred at his voice.
"I suppose that's the dust of the Place de la Bastille on you still," she said.
He wiped a bit of grime from his cheek and looked at it. "Aye," he said proudly.
"It earns you no welcome here," she said. "You'd best be on your way."
"There's no price on my head now, love. That went with Louis Philippe. I'm a free man."
"
Then behave like one. Come inside. Register. Take a room. Twenty-five francs."
He laughed, not believing her. "I've no money."
"Then you must pawn something. There's a mont-de-piété just up the street."
"No-o-o-ra!" he wheedled, drawing her name out, not knowing what to say.
"I told you everything I ever wanted to tell you last time, two years back. The day you left me with Sam and Wilfrid and Dorrie you stopped being flesh of mine."
"But I was struggling for you—and Sam and the bairns. It was to make a better world for folk like us."
"We didn't want a better world, Daniel. A better hovel would have suited us. A door would have done for a start. A door would have kept back the boar that ate your brother Wilfrid. Do you know what it was like, Daniel, to come back that evening and find no Wilfrid—just his arm flung up among the branches that served for our roof? Think how that boar must have shook and shook that poor little lad to shake an arm up into the roof!" She felt herself beginning to choke at the remembered outrage, so she fell silent; she was not going to offer him the spectacle of herself in tears.
The Rich Are with You Always Page 47
