Sons of Fortune

by Malcolm Macdonald

  “No news of Caspar,” Boy said. All through lunch he had been dying to raise the topic but, having no idea how his father would respond, did not want to risk the awkwardness. Here, walking around in the open air, it would not be so sticky.

  “No,” John said.

  Boy sighed. “I miss him, you know. He was always good company.”

  John grunted. He did not want to confess it, but he was missing Caspar, too. There was a hole in his landscape where that stubborn, self-possessed, ruthless face should have been.

  Boy decided to risk a bit more. “I’ve often wondered, since—you know—whether the army would have been absolutely the thing for him.” He was encouraged by his father’s mildly interested expression. “I mean to say, guvnor, when a chap runs off like that, giving up everything, don’t you know, rather than join the colours, it’s bound to make one think a bit.”

  “He should have tried it at least,” John said. “He could have purchased out after a year if it didn’t suit. I’m not unreasonable. I wouldn’t have jibbed at that.”

  “Oh, quite, sir. One hesitates to say this, not just because he’s one’s own brother, but about any man behind his back—but there’s something not quite up-and-down about Caspar. Don’t you feel it?”

  “In what way?”

  “One always feels he’s holding something back from one. Never giving the full account—only the necessary account. And one feels he wouldn’t be above picking and choosing his truths, and…and helping them to fit his case. That wouldn’t really do in the army, would it.”

  “The army is very big, my boy. And in the upper…”

  “But it’s founded on honour, pater. It is honour alone that distinguishes the soldier from the slaughterer.”

  “True. Yes. But there are times and places…and, ah, circumstances…where different kinds of honour, different levels of honour might conflict.”

  “Are there, pater?”

  “For instance, where the honour of your country might require you to sacrifice your own honour.”

  “I find that hard to imagine. What sort of honour would feed upon dishonour? I would not own that country. Anyway, what I was going on to say—about Caspar—was that, if he had been in charge of this railway of mine, I believe he might not have reported that wretched Ericson to the police.”

  “Ah! Now…”

  “I don’t say he’d have any dealings with the scoundrel. Of course, that would be unthinkable. But he wouldn’t have pursued the matter. That’s what I’m getting at, you see.”

  “Let’s sit down,” John said.

  Boy sighed with contentment. He had dreaded today and now he could not imagine why. It was perfect. “I think heaven will be very like Regent’s Park,” he said.

  John was silent a while. “D’you ever wonder why heaven is perfect, Young John?” he asked.

  His son laughed in embarrassment. The answer was so obvious.

  “I mean,” John said, “with all eternity before them, they can afford to be perfect and stay perfect, can’t they! They would be fools not to.”

  Boy began to feel worried. That was not the answer which seemed so obvious to him.

  “But look at this city. Look at this country. Think of the few who have power and money, and the millions who have neither—who are consumed from dawn to dusk merely with the problems of keeping body and soul together. And look how short life is, even for the man who lives a century! It’s never long enough. It’s nearer to hell than to heaven, what?”

  “I suppose so, guvnor. Are you talking about Original Sin or something?”

  John cleared his throat. “I’m trying to say that you’ve led a very privileged and sheltered life. I’d just like you for a minute to imagine you had nothing. A little test, if you like. Let’s say we exchange your clothes with that verminous heap of a man lying under that tree there. Now! There’s London. Here’s you. No money. No food. No home to go to. No friends to call upon. What d’you do?” He laughed. “It’s a bit like what Caspar’s doing, I suppose.”

  “Except that he has money.”

  “Has he? But your mother assures me she is not…”

  “He has his own money. I thought you knew.”

  “What d’you mean—his own money?”

  “Oh. Well, a couple of years ago, when he was always going on and on about wanting to be in business. I don’t know much about it. Mama lent him a hundred pounds as a sort of test and he doubled it in a few months—paid her back and kept the rest.”

  “The devil he did!” John tried to sound annoyed but his pride was uppermost.

  “Of course, I didn’t hear a word of it from him. Winnie told me. Anyway, Caspar isn’t in poverty—wherever else he may he. And as to your test, I’m afraid I don’t quite grasp it, pater.”

  John sighed. “No. It’s too roundabout, isn’t it. What I’m saying is that your mother and I both began life very much in the sort of situation I was asking you to assume.”

  “I know,” Boy said, and, lowering his voice, he added: “She said they used to steal! They took a turnip from a field once. I was so ashamed for her.”

  “Even though it was their only way of staying alive?”

  “But it wasn’t. There were workhouses then, surely? Anyway, I’d sooner die than steal.”

  “Of course you would. Yes, of course you would. And great credit it does you. But the world, you see, is not so simple. And Stevenson’s—the firm, I mean, as distinct from us as people—Stevenson’s is of this world. Very much so.”

  Boy drew breath to speak but John spoke on, a little louder, and silenced him. “The firm has to do things, sometimes, that you and I, as people, would shrink from doing—would ‘die rather than do,’ d’ye see? Just as with countries, you know. People in charge of countries have to do things on behalf of those countries they would never do on their own behalf.”

  Boy was rigid with tension. “What sort of things, sir?”

  John paused. “For instance, we have to seek help from people—help, information, influence, a good word in the right ear—that sort of thing. And, of course, we have to pay for it.”

  “People?” Boy was shivering. “You mean people like Councillor Ericson.”

  “Many people like Councillor Ericson. Many, many people.”

  There was a long silence. “I see,” Boy said at last.

  “We have been doing it for so long—from the beginning, in fact. I had to pay over a thousand pounds on our very first contract to a man who is now a bishop! We forget, you see. And then you come along and—with different standards.”

  Boy stood up, anguish in every line of his face. His hands took independent life. He walked away, but not far. John did not follow. He watched his son struggling to come to terms with these new ideas.

  Boy kicked at a pebble in the grass and missed. He stooped and picked it up, weighing it. He clenched his fist around it and, at last, dashed it back to the ground. He came back to his father. “Different standards?” he said, his voice barely under his control. “But I thought they were your standards. Your motto for your earldom: Sit sine labe decus—Let honour be spotless. I believed that of you!”

  “They are my standards,” John said quietly.

  Boy looked puzzled. “But how…I mean, how can that be?”

  “My personal standards. They are the standards, the very highest, by which I would regulate my personal life. But, as you must have learned even in these last few months, any man in charge of the fortunes of others has responsibilities, duties, obligations that make it impossible for him to apply those personal standards as rigorously as he would like.”

  “No, pater. I can honestly say I haven’t learned that.”

  “Then you’re a fool, Young John! The whole contract exists only because of Councillor Ericson’s help and our payment for it.”

  Boy stood ri
gid; his voice was back under control—very icy control. “I’d rather be a fool than a scoundrel, sir.” He expected his father to become angry, but John was most placatory.

  “Please try to distinguish between personal and business morality. Business has its rules. Everyone knows it ways. Everyone plays by them. You cannot come into the business world and apply the rules of some Utopia—some far-off, future, heavenly state. Believe me, Stevenson’s has a deserved reputation for being among the most honest and straight-dealing firms. And so we are—where it matters. We never do shoddy or dangerous work. We don’t pad out our costs. We don’t let people down on dates and deliveries. We shoulder responsibility honestly for our few mistakes and put them right at our expense. We pay our people on time and in coin of the realm. We give pensions…injury compensation. We don’t seek legal ways out of responsibilities that are morally ours. I could go on and on like this. Believe me, a list like that puts us amoung a very small and select group of employers in this country. In the world.”

  “But…” Boy began.

  “But,” John cut in, “if we turned ourselves into Utopia and Co., we very soon wouldn’t be in existence. D’you understand that? We would not be here to extend these very considerable benefits to our customers and servants.”

  Boy sighed.

  “D’you see?” John pressed.

  “I do. I do see. It’s very hard to swallow though.”

  John stood and gripped him by the shoulders. “I know, my boy. I’m sure it is. But remember: I am not talking about personal, individual behaviour, only company behaviour. In our personal lives Sit sine labe decus is always the motto.”

  Boy nodded glumly, but John knew it was now only a matter of time before he grew up and joined the world at large. “Tell you what, my boy,” he said. “You stay out here and think about it. Walk around for an hour or so. Get used to these ideas—they’ve come as a bit of a shock, I can see. Let them rattle around a bit. Then come back to the office and see me.”

  ***

  Boy took more than an hour to come to terms with the new morality, but he was just about reconciled to it as he went back across the Marylebone Road and into Nottingham Place. He was on the doorstep of the office, still deep in worried thought, when a messenger boy came up to him with a letter.

  “Lord Stevenson?” he asked. “Would he live here, sir?”

  “Yes?” Boy said. “I am Lord Stevenson.”

  “Ah.” The lad still clutched the letter. “That would be the name of John Stevenson? I was to put it particular into his hands.”

  “Yes, yes.” Boy was excited now for of course this was the promised message from Caspar. He felt it in his bones. He gave the lad a sixpence and took the letter. “Lord Stevenson, Nottingham Place,” was all the directions it bore.

  It never crossed his mind that the letter was for his father. In that case, Caspar—or anyone—would have put “The Rt. Hon. the Earl of Wharfedale” on the envelope. With trembling fingers he opened it.

  “Hamilton Place,” it was headed. But not Caspar’s hand at all. An illiterate hand, in fact. Who was writing to him from his mother’s house?

  “My darling darling…”

  He gulped. A hoax?

  “Little Ormerod is coughing very bad and the doctor dispairs of him. I know I am not to write or communicate with you like this but seeing as he is your flesh too I…”

  Boy froze. It was a letter to his father! He wondered again if it was a hoax. Who was little Ormerod? There were no babies at Hamilton Place.

  “Any reply, sir?” the lad asked.

  “Was one expected?”

  “No, sir. The lady said as you’d probably go straight out there.”

  “Out there?”

  “Yes, sir.” The lad was surprised that he was surprised.

  “I’ll go at once,” Boy said. On impulse he thrust the letter back into the lad’s hand and said, “Take this inside. Go to the second floor and say Lord Stevenson said the earl was to read this, too.” He made the fellow repeat the message before he let him go.

  Then he went back up to the Marylebone Road and hailed a cab.

  “Are there two Hamilton Places in London?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. One up west, one out in the briars.”

  “Take me to the second one.”

  All the way out he searched desperately for some innocent explanation of those few words he had read, but none occurred to him. Honour forbade him to read further, once he had realized his mistake, but it did not prevent him from finding out things for himself.

  He got down at the corner of Hamilton Place. A maidservant ran up to him. “Oh, sir—are you the doctor, sir?”

  Boy hid his annoyance at being taken for a tradesman. “Young Ormerod, is it?”

  Relief flooded the girl’s face. “Oh, yes, sir—do hurry, sir.”

  She ran ahead of him to the house. When they reached the gate, he said, “I am not the doctor, you understand. Not in person. But he must be here soon. Go back and wait for him.”

  “But, then—who are you, sir?” the girl asked.

  He pushed past her, past the sign that read Hamilton Cottage. “My name is Stevenson,” he said. He did not knock but walked straight indoors.

  Charity came running downstairs, filled with relief, for only the doctor or John would come in unannounced like that. Boy held up a hand before she could speak. “I am Lord Stevenson,” he said. And when the bewilderment showed, he added, “I am the earl’s eldest son. I’m afraid your letter was delivered to me in error.”

  She sank to the stairs, buried her face into her hands, and began to weep bitterly, as if a long, hard struggle had ended against her.

  At that moment John came bursting indoors. He took in the scene at once, hardly pausing. He came straight to Boy and grabbed his shoulder, so hard that Boy cried out in pain. John was shivering with rage. “You…you shit!” he spat into Boy’s face. “You sanctimonious little piece of shit! Get out of this house!”

  He thrust Boy back along the hall with such force that he went full smack into the stained-glass doorway. The light grip of the lead gaskets barely slowed his progress, but, by the same token, neither did the glass and metal damage him much beyond a few scratches to his fists. He ended up on the gravel footpath surrounded by little sherds of coloured glass and twisted fingers of lead. The doctor picked his way over him without pause or word.

  Boy rose slowly to his feet, dusted himself down, picked up his hat, dusted that down, and limped out to find a cab and go to his club.

  From there, after a good hot bath, he wrote to his father’s club:

  Dear Lord Stevenson, I realize it was perhaps a little unfeeling of me to go to Hamilton Cottage at such a time, but I regard your behaviour to me there as unspeakable and unforgivable. After all your fine words on personal honour this afternoon, to accuse me of being sanctimonious is, sir, an outrage on truth and on honour itself. But I say no more of that. It is not to me that you will one day have to account for your behaviour, but to One infinitely more qualified to judge how well you can reconcile it to your own choice of motto. When that day comes, I trust I shall have been spared and will be spared further, long enough to remove the tarnish on our name and that motto at least.

  There can now be no question of my undertaking the career you chose for me. By your behaviour and your words you have released me from all filial obligations to please. I now feel free to follow my own preference, which, out of duty to you, I confessed to no one, and barely dared to own even to myself. Tomorrow I shall attend upon General Sir Charles Redvers and ask him to use his good offices to secure me a captaincy in an Indian regiment. It may surprise you to learn that I shall not offer him payment for this help; nor will he expect it.

  I shall pass my life among men for whom “honour” is not a mere counter to be exchanged for commodities, services, and pl
easures at whim. I will, you may be sure, breathe no word of the whore and the bastard for whom you have bartered yours.

  I renounce what claim I may legally have to the firm and to my inheritance of it; but I look to you to support me in the army in the only style to which you have let me grow accustomed. You know it is impossible for an officer to live honourably without an income.

  I have the honour to remain, sir,

  Yours sincerely,

  John Stevenson.

  Chapter 46

  It was past midnight before John arrived at the other Hamilton Place—Nora’s house. At least she did not refuse to see him; she must realize how serious it was to bring him here at such an hour.

  She did not, of course, know that he had waited to be sure little Ormerod was past the crisis before he had come.

  “Young John has gone,” he said as soon as he was in her bedroom.

  “Gone?” She sat up and pulled a shawl around her. She could think of nothing to say beyond this repetition of his words. Earlier that night she had given an important dinner—one of the most important of her life, for it had been graced by a royal duke. John had not been invited. The dinner had been a success, but as always she now felt drained and deflated. “What d’you mean—gone?”

  “He’s left the firm. He won’t work for us. I mean, he won’t have anything to do with the firm. He wants no part of it, he says.”

  “But why?”

  “Because of the ‘oil of angels.’ Because he cannot reconcile it with notions of honour he learned—at Fiennes, I suppose. He certainly never learned them from us. There’s an irony for you, if you want to gloat!”

  “John! It’s far too serious for anything so petty-minded.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t blame you. You never wanted them to go to Fiennes. I was the one who insisted, wasn’t I!” He sat heavily beside her on the bed. “Not a blunder but a boomerang!” He lowered his face into his hands and she suddenly realized that he was weeping. Not violently or ostentatiously. More like a man who was exhausted.