Lady of Fortune (24 page)

Dougal held both her shoulders, and pressed his lips to her forehead, breathing in the smell of her hair again. Outside, on the black window-panes, sleet began to clatter again, and then subside, and then clatter louder.

‘I'd better be getting back to Eaton Square,' said Dougal.

‘I'll see you again, though?' asked Prudence.

‘Charging elephants couldn't keep me away.'

‘And you
will
be nice to Jack, and to Mr Snetterton, and Mr Plant? I know they're honest, and I know how dedicated they are. You mustn't let your sister discourage you.'

Dougal slipped his hand inside Prudence's robe. ‘I won't,' he promised, with his eyes closed.

The following evening, Tuesday, Dougal came back from the office to find Effie in the library, in a soft cream blouse with mutton-chop sleeves and a long brown skirt, reading
Principles of Finance
by Thomas Jethroe. He closed the doors behind him and stood watching her quietly; the way the lamplight fell across her face; the way her hair shone. There was no doubt about it, Effie had grown up since she had come to London.

She looked up, and said,
with
pleasure, ‘Dougal.'

‘What are you reading?' he asked her.

She held the book up. ‘Jethroe on foreign investment. I don't particularly agree with him, but I suppose I'm going to have to understand what's wrong before I can say what's right.'

Dougal sat down on the tall leather library chair opposite her, and crossed his arms. ‘I'll give you one thing, Effie, you've got plenty of gall.'

‘Gall?'

‘Well, nerve, if you want to put it that way. You even had
me
worried yesterday. Poor old Snetterton was throwing a fit.'

Effie's expression didn't change, but she felt a cold tingle run down her back, as if someone had outlined her vertebrae, one after the other, with a single wintry finger. She said, ‘You haven't committed yourself yet? You haven't signed anything?'

Dougal said, evasively, There was no earthly reason why we shouldn't.'

‘You've done it, then?'

‘Aye, we've done it. We signed the papers this afternoon, at Lothbury.'

Effie stood up, her face as white as the pages of her open book. ‘Dougal, what have you done?'

‘Done? What do you think I've done? Signed a loan agreement for a profitable railway line, that's what I've done. What else?'

‘But what about Lord Rethesdale?'

‘What about Lord Rethesdale? He's in Florence, yes, I'll grant you. But we have his written guarantee. You're not still trying to tell me that yon crouchie fellow you met in the park on Saturday was Lord Rethesdale?'

Effie raised a hand to touch the bronze statue of David which stood on the lacquered console table beside her. She said, in a voice that was little more than a hoarse whisper, ‘You don't even understand how completely you've burned your boats, do you?'

Dougal said, ‘You're blethering.' He was cross now, although he didn't want to hurt her feelings. She was still his sister, and his closest friend, whatever Prudence had said, and however densely the visions of what had happened with Prudence last night crowded in to his mind. He looked down at his hand, resting on the arm of the chair, and thought, that was the very hand which cradled itself round Prudence's breasts, and touched the sleekit inside of her thighs.

Effie said, ‘You cannot call it back? The agreement? You cannot tell Mr Snetterton that you've made a mistake?'

‘Effie – I'm growing quickly tired of this! There's no mistake. This is where I get my particular revenge on father, and this is where my banking career begins.'

Effie lowered her head. She knew that it was no use. She had hoped that Dougal might have changed his mind about Snetterton and Plant (not to mention the invisible Beest) if he had given himself a day or two to think about their proposal at greater length. There were so many questionable things about the Lake Victoria railway spur, things that Dougal would usually have challenged. Did the land along the proposed route actually belong to Snetterton and Plant? If it didn't, and it was leased, then who did own it? Where was their rolling-stock, and where were their engineers? Who was their railway architect? Who would build their bridges
and their cuts? What experience did either of them have in building or running a railway?

She could guess the answers to all of those questions; and the answer in every case was what her arithmetic tutor used to call ‘a guid few fewer than a twa three', which meant nothing at all.

‘Dougal,' she said.

He shook his head, the way a horse shakes away a persistent fly. ‘I've made my decision, Effie. I've made it on my own good experience. It's a chance that I have to take, and I'm taking it. I know your fears; you've no need to remind me what they are. But that's enough of them. I have to do this thing on my own.'

‘You've let your anger against father cloud your sense,' said Effie.

‘I'm not angry!' shouted Dougal. ‘Will you not see that I'm a man in my own right now! I have to do whatever I think is judicious, and whatever I believe is best!'

Effie was silent for a long while. Then she came over, and took Dougal's hand, and kissed his forehead. ‘You're a dear brother,' she said. ‘I'm sorry for what I said, and I'm sorry for doubting you.'

Dougal clutched at her skirt. He said nothing, but she could guess what was going on in his mind. He must know, just as clearly as she did, that Snetterton and Plant were suspicious characters, and that Jack's enthusiasm had a little too much gloss on it. He must know that the security put up by Lord Rethesdale – whoever Lord Rethesdale might be – was deeply in question. Yet he needed so much to show his father that he was right. He needed so much to prove himself to Robert.

Effie left him in the library, with the door ajar, and went into the living-room. There, she pulled the bell-rope for Jerome.

When the butler appeared, she said calmly, ‘Jerome – I want you to find a messenger for me – to take a letter to Mr Henry Baeklander, on board the
Excelsior
, at Hungerford Bridge.'

‘Mr Baeklander, miss?'

Effie nodded. ‘As quickly as you can, please.'

Then she sat at the small eighteenth-century secrétaire which stood in the very corner of the room, beneath three
framed dioramas of British butterflies in the September wheat, took out her Waverley Cameron pen, and began to write.

She thought, as she sealed the envelope, of the advertising signs in Blair Street, in Edinburgh, They come as a Boon and a Blessing to men/The Pickwick, the Owl, and the Waverley pen.'

This letter to Henry Baeklander would not be a boon, nor a blessing. But Effie saw it as the only possible way out of a crisis that was already pressing her closer and closer into accepting the responsibility of her own imminent womanhood, and her own fierce ambitions.

She had never thought to ask herself
why
she wanted wealth and independence so passionately, or how the daydream that had started off as a nursery fantasy of castles and princesses had grown into such a clear and particular vision of what she needed out of her life. She had never thought of herself as complicated, or extraordinary. But now, as she sat in front of her dressing-table mirror and brushed up her hair in readiness for going out, she kept trying to think what it was that drove her so. She felt like a small chess-piece in the game of her own destiny, as if the swirling course of her life were more important than she was herself. What she couldn't yet see was that the fearsome persistence of her father and the uncompromising femininity of her mother had come together, awkwardly and explosively in her, and created between them a personality both strong and humane, calculating and yet sensitive. As a small girl, she had adored the fairy-tale pictures of queens in bejewelled gowns, and of coaches drawn by plumed horses; but at the same time she had been thoroughly irritated by princes and adventurers who were so witless that they didn't realise they were being trapped by trolls, or seduced by witches, or beckoned by loonies to the brinks of fearful chasms. She was romantic, but also sharply pragmatic.

Henry Baeklander arrived, in person, at eight o'clock. It looked as if he had shaved hurriedly, for he had nicked his cheek. He wore full evening dress, with white tie, and he carried a silver-topped cane fashioned in the shape of a snarling lion. He smelled of Floris Special No. 127, one of the most exotic and fashionable colognes of the year. Jerome made him wait in the hall while Logan went upstairs to tell Effie that her ‘gentleman caller' had appeared. Henry gave his hat and his gloves to Jerome, and smoothed back his wiry hair with both hands.

Down the wide flight of stairs, in a soft rustle of silk petticoats, Effie descended to the hallway. Her brown hair shone from brushing, and in the light of the crystal gasolier halfway down the stairs, the curls around her forehead revealed their light reddish tints. She wore an evening dress of pale cream silk, with triangular panels of overlaid lace, edged with tiny pearls. Around her neck she wore a choker of lace and pearls, and there were pearls sewn in spiderweb patterns along the backs of her gloves. She had bought the dress with Vera Cockburn, from Mme Estraud, in Bond Street, and tonight she was glad of it.

‘You look like a
dream
,' Henry complimented her, holding out his hands as she reached the foot of the stairs. ‘Do you know what Thomas Otway wrote? “O woman, lovely woman! Nature made thee to temper man: we had been brutes without you; angels are painted fair, to look like you.”'

‘You're very poetic,' said Effie. ‘And you're very flattering, too.'

‘I couldn't flatter you if I tried,' Henry told her, in a warm voice.

Vera Cockburn appeared from the living-room, in a low-cut black evening-dress, and a glittering array of diamonds. ‘Hello, Mr Baeklander,' she said, with a smile that was as taut as a tuned viola string. ‘You won't keep Miss Watson out too late tonight, will you? She has to come shopping with me tomorrow, and for shopping a girl needs
all
her concentration.'

‘I'll bring her back by twelve,' Henry assured her. ‘I have several lady guests on the
Excelsior
this evening, so you can be quite certain that Miss Watson will be safe.'

Jerome brought Effie's fur-lined cloak. It was dark blue German brocade lined with silver fox. It had once been
Vera's, but Vera had grown ‘irritated' with it, and given it to Effie, along with a beautifully-cut broad-cloth suit, and several feathery hats. Effie fastened the clasp, put on the large fur-trimmed hat that had been made by Mrs Cockburn's milliner to match, and said, ‘I'm ready, Henry.'

Henry had a motor-car waiting for them outside, a 4 hp Alldays and Onions Traveller. There were two seats, one at the front for Effie, with a footboard, and a slightly higher one behind, for Henry. Henry helped Effie to step up into her seat, and covered her knees with a heavy woollen blanket. Then he went to the back of the motor-car, cranked the engine, and it started up, with four or five loud pops and a reverberation that made it shudder and jink on its leaf-springs. Three small urchins who had been standing under a street-light across the road, bothering passers-by for cigarette cards, hurried across to watch the sport.

‘Watch you don't drop ‘er aht when you go rahnd a corner!' one of them shouted to Henry.

‘Give us frippence, mister, and we'll give yer a push!'

Effie had never travelled in a motor-car before; let alone in London, and at night, with a rich and ugly American financier. What made the experience even more unnerving was that she was sitting in front, unable to see Henry at all, and that the chugging and popping of the engine made talking impossible. Two oil-lamps flickered at the side of the motorcar, but they gave out very little illumination and a very pungent odour. She covered her face with the furry collar of her cape, and huddled in her seat, one hand clinging tightly to the arm-rest. The speed at which they were travelling, bumping and shaking over the cobbled surface of Victoria Street, was terrifying, and the gaslamps seemed to rush past them like a hundred torches hurled one by one down a dark well.

‘Eleven miles an hour!' Henry cried, in her right ear. ‘Isn't that something!'

It took them no time at all to reach the end of Victoria Street, and pass the ghostly white Gothic towers of Westminster Abbey. They puttered rapidly around Parliament Square, beneath the pale cream-coloured moon of Big Ben; and as they reached Westminster Embankment, the clock begin to strike eight-fifteen.

The river Thames was black; but the lights from the far
side of the river were reflected in the water, dipping in the tidal swell like drowned planets. Effie's breath smoked in the cold air as Henry piloted them with great speed towards Charing Cross, and there were haloes around the plane trees which lined the embankment. It was London in winter: foggy, damp, and sharp, with that particular submarine gloom which somehow made it seem all the more mysterious and romantic. Even the pie-stalls along the embankment seemed like stray wagons from some enchanted circus, their pressure-lamps blurring the night, their counters stacked high with Cornish pasties and beef pies and clusters of thick white cups.

Henry drew in the Alldays and Onions by Hungerford Bridge, and applied the brass-handled brake. Then he stepped down, and offered Effie his hand, to help her alight. ‘You weren't frightened?' he asked her. ‘This is quite a nifty little machine!'

‘No,' she said, quietly. ‘I wasn't frightened.'

They crossed the pavement to the stone steps which led down to the river. It was then that Effie had her first sight of the
Excelsior
.

‘What do you think of her?' asked Henry, with undisguised enthusiasm. He looked at Effie closely, to see how she really felt about it. ‘She's all ready to sail. Polished, trimmed, and perfect! Just like you.'