Sons of Fortune (58 page)

“I know it isn’t. But Yorkshire’s bigger than Canada, all the same.”

She smiled. “I see. Go on.”

He liked her; she caught his jokes quickly. The officer came out of the saloon while he went on speaking to her. Despite all that followed he did not once pause in his narrative nor betray his horror in his tone as he told her of the Old Manor, and Maran Hill, and Hamilton Place.

The officer was halfway back to his horse—sword in one hand, drawn pistol in the other—when a great thug of a man came running from the saloon brandishing a rifle above his head. He held it by the barrel, turning it into a club. He brought it down full force on the officer’s neck and shoulder, dropping him at once. Immediately the whole crowd fell upon him, kicking him and thrashing him with clubs.

“Are you a ‘sir’?” she asked.

“No, I’m not. I’m a commoner. But I have the courtesy title of Honourable. I met some people the other night—I mean last night—who said I should use it here. It would be good for business: The Honourable Caspar Stevenson. What do you think? I don’t know your name, by the way.”

“Dee Lane,” she said.

Someone put a couple of twists of rope about the officer’s ankles and groups of laughing men took turns dragging him up and down over the cobbles. He was still conscious and at one point he even attempted to rise.

“I think you surely should, Honourable,” the girl said (pronouncing it “on-a-bull”). “It’s cunning.”

“Cunning?”

“Well—cute. Why do you have that title?”

“Because my father’s an earl, actually.”

A priest came into the street. The men paused in their game.

“You always say ‘actually’,” she said. “You said, ‘We have several houses, actually’ and ‘My father’s an earl, actually’.”

“Do I?” He laughed.

The priest bent over and administered the last rites to the officer.

“Will you be an earl one day, Hon’able?”

“Only if my older brother dies before me. Or if I make a fortune and go back and give a lot of it away, I might be made an earl in my own right. Then”—he laughed—“I’d be
Right
Hon’able.”

She closed her eyes and grinned knowingly. “Just like here,” she said. “You mean pay the politicians.”

The priest stood up and walked back among the throng to Pearl Street. Here and there he exchanged friendly words and greetings with the rioters. As soon as he had gone they began dragging the officer around again at the end of the rope. By now he appeared unconscious.

“No,” Caspar said. “It’s not as blatant as that. One founds libraries, alms houses, schools for mechanics, one endows colleges—that sort of thing.”

“For heaven’s sake!” She had spoken too violently; she winced and paused until the pain subsided. “You mean you do all that in your own name, and the pols, who’ve gotten nothing out of it for themselves, give you more honours? That doesn’t line up.”

“I suppose not. I’ve never thought of it, actually.”

“Actually!”

Some women came with knives and began to slash at the officer’s flesh. He was, beyond doubt, unconscious now. The women laughed a great deal and encouraged children to come and drop stones on the man. Some of the stones were very big and needed two or three children to lift them. He must have had several bones broken by it.

“Actually, Hon’able, what line of business are you going to make this fortune in, actually?”

“I don’t know, act…—no, I mustn’t say it!” He laughed. “I had thought of small arms and ammunition manufacture. But…oh, I don’t know. With all this burning and destruction, and all those green acres up beyond Forty-fifth…perhaps building would be more sensible.”

“Who do you know here?”

“Only people I’ve met. People at my lodgings, Mr. Fox, and…”

“No, no. I mean who do you—you know—
know.
Who will get you the work? Who’ll protect you? That sort of ‘know’.”

The men came back out of the saloon and began dragging the body around again; the women ran whooping and shrieking after it with their knives until one, in her excitement, cut a lump off one of the others. Then they fought among themselves and the men had to come and separate them. They all went back into the saloon, leaving the body in the gutter. To his horror, Caspar saw the man was still moving.

If it weren’t for the girl he’d risk going out and helping the poor fellow.

“I think I can protect myself, Miss Lane,” he said. “And as for getting work, if the price is low enough and the quality is…”

She whistled—not in amazement. She whistled a tune.

“No?” he said.

“No,” she confirmed.

“It’s the land of opportunity, isn’t it?”

“It was, Hon’able. It surely was. ‘Land of opportunists’ is more like it now.”

“Get me work from where?” he asked. “And protect me from what?”

“Whom,” she said. “Work from
whom.
Protect from
whom.
You need someone to talk to people who can put work your way.” She crinkled imaginary money in her fingers as she said “talk.” “And you need someone to protect you”—again the imaginary money—“from the gangs.”

“I see.” He looked at her. “How do you know all this, Miss Lane?”

“Family business, you could say.” She clenched her eyes and tried to raise a hand to her forehead.

“Is anything the matter?” he asked.

“My head. Is it cut open—on top there?”

There was blood on her bonnet; he had thought it came from the dead man. “Shall I take it off and see?” he asked, being careful to keep any alarm out of his voice and face. He undid the strings and gently peeled off the material. The blood was fresh. “It looks as if you’ve grazed the skin. Does it hurt?”

“It’s a terrible itch.”

“But no headache?” He tried to sound very knowing.

“No.”

“Even so, I think I’d better try and get a doctor to you. I’ll risk going out.”

Swift as a cat she grabbed his arm. “No! They’d kill you, Hon’able.”

“They would not!” He laughed at the very notion—even though he was looking straight at the body of the police officer, not four yards from the window.

“They would. Believe me—I know. I’m all right. It’s just a graze, as you say.” She smiled. “Just wait. It’ll cool off and then you can get word to my father.” She held out a limp hand for him to grasp. “Tell me about your father, your people.”

***

Three hours later Caspar realized he had said a great deal more than he would have believed himself capable of saying. It was not only that Miss Lane was such an encouraging listener, who smiled, who frowned, who melted in sympathy, who radiated understanding; it was not just that. His narrative had turned into a voyage of self-discovery, too. Never, not even to himself, had he been forced to connect all the different hopes of his father and mother and Boy and Winifred, and all the pressures of Society and convention into one single narrative. (Of course, he said nothing of Mary Coen—that was both private and irrelevant.) It helped, too, to explain it to a foreigner, who could not possibly be expected to understand the ins and outs of English Society. And while he was explaining them to her, his hair—though it had not literally stood on end—actually bristled on his scalp. For he realized he was coming to see his father’s point of view. Not to share it, of course. But to see it as a plausible, even rational, alternative to his own: The demands of Society were the single most powerful force in England; Society was the source of all patronage; its members had access to all kinds of privileged information—much of it trivial gossip, to be sure, but not all of it; there was nothing Society could not arrange, conceal, promote, or kill, if it were so minded. To choose to be outside it was to suffer a kind of amputation; to flout it, even in some minor degree, was to risk that same cutting off; so to go against its demands and dictates you needed very good reasons. From his father’s point of view were Boy, Winifred, and himself “good reasons”?

How odd, he thought, that he should have to come all this way and sit with this unknown, wounded girl in this filthy room, and all the bizarre circumstances outside, before he could even frame that question, let alone face it honestly.

The girl was quick to sense that he was not relating a string of history and stale conclusions; instead he was—not only
in
her presence but
because of
her presence—undergoing a private odyssey. She shared all of its excitement. The revelations of English Society as a holder and dispenser of power (a very different picture from the one promoted in the ladies’ journals) caused her no difficulty. She seemed very familiar with all the mechanisms he outlined. But Caspar’s revelation of himself kept the shine in her eyes, the smile on her lips, and on her tongue all those sympathetic little interrogatory words that help a narrative to flow and to flow.

So, three hours later, Caspar knew far more about his present situation. But he understood all the less why his response to his father had been so extreme. Did he regret having laid bare so much? He looked down at Miss Lane and found he regretted none of it. He knew how artfully she had probed and winkled to hear more, more, more, and he begrudged her not one word of it. He hardly dared admit the comparison yet, but he believed he could tell her all those things he had once promised himself he would tell Mary Coen.
Could
tell her? He had already told her, or begun to.

It bound him to her, he realized, in a unique way. If those ruffians broke in here now he would give his life to protect her—not, as it would have been in Wall Street, out of the general demands of chivalry, but out of…not love. Surely not? Out of something unique. Some uniquely great liking that was not quite love.

His thirst was by now raging, and so, he felt sure, was hers. “I’ll go upstairs,” he said. “See if anyone up there can spare us some water.”

He knocked on several doors and, though he was certain there were people within, he got no reply. He came back downstairs. Outside they were pouring oil over the officer’s corpse; one of the men had just made sure it was a corpse. Clearly they were going to hang him to the lamppost and torch him. Caspar was just wondering what to do for the best when one of the men climbed the lamppost. He was two-thirds of the way up, and on a level with their window, when he happened to glance inside and see Caspar looking out. He dropped like a flag and called several other louts urgently to him. They had a shouted consultation, with many glances up at the window.

As soon as it was clear they intended to come in, Caspar told Miss Lane. She smiled. “Don’t fret yourself,” she said. “There’s no harm in them.”

He gave one snort of derision, threw a blanket over her, told her at all costs to stay still, and, over her feeble protests, went to the door. He had only just shut it behind him when the first of the thugs burst open the front door. Caspar didn’t wait to argue or bluff it out but hurled himself at the fellow, leaping into the air and kicking out with both feet. He sent the man backward down the steps and projected himself, in reaction, halfway back up the passage.

“Hon’able!” he heard her cry.

“Be quiet, you stupid woman!” he shouted back.

He reached the door just before the second assault. There was no key. He had to try to hold it shut. It was soon clear he was not going to be able to keep them at bay for very long. They were battering at it with some sort of implement, a bench or a pole of some kind.

He would have to lead them away from this house, away from Miss Lane. He would open the door just in advance of one of their batterings and hope to take advantage of their confusion to leap out and get away. He counted the shuddering knocks to get the rhythm: one…two…three!

On the three he jerked open the door and stood aside. A shaft from a demolished cart just grazed his thigh. But the men at the other end fell sprawling up the steps. His yelp of agony added to the shock as he limped-jumped over them and on them, down the steps, and limped-ran toward Pearl Street. As he went he shouted, “Fetch the priest! Fetch the priest!” in the hope of adding to the confusion.

He made it into Pearl Street and almost reached John Street before he was brought down—not by any man, but by a stray dog as terrified as himself. Before he could rise again he was firmly in the grip of four of the rioters.

He gave no struggle, pretending to be only semi-conscious. If he was to make another run for it, they should be lulled into lowering their guard. The people, seeing his state, offered no immediate violence. Surrounded by skipping, chattering children—the same who had stoned the officer—he was carried feet first back toward Platt Street.

As they passed the house where he and the girl had taken refuge, the window he had used for a lookout was thrown up and a rioter poked his head out. “Go steady with him now, boys. He’s all right, that one, so he is.”

Their attitude changed at once. Their grip on him became gentler and more supportive. As they neared the front step he gave up his pretence of semi-consciousness and struggled to be allowed to stand. They did not resist.

“What is it?” one of his erstwhile captors asked a man at the top of the stairs.

“Isn’t he with Joe Delaney’s girl!” the man answered.

“If you’ve harmed her…!” Caspar shouted and ran at him up the steps.

The man, much bigger than Caspar, caught and held him easily. “If we’ve harmed
her!” he laughed. “Boys, that’s a good ’un. If
we’ve
harmed her! What about dem bastards wit’ the guns?”

Further argument was cut short by the sudden appearance of Miss Lane herself at the doorway of the room. One man supported each arm.

“Miss Lane!” Caspar broke free from the giant and ran to her.

She levered herself out of the men’s support and almost fell on him. “It’s all right,” she whispered through her pain. “These are friends.”

“We’ll see, shall we!” he said grimly. “Get a cart,” he told the two men who had held her. “Horse cart, handcart, anything she can lie on.” The two men looked for confirmation to the giant. “Damn your sides—move!” Caspar barked.

They ran past him and down the steps.

“And you—big fella—get the mattress from in there, or a clean one if you can find it, to cushion her.” He heard the man go. “Are you…could you get more comfortable?” he asked her gently. “Do you want to sit down? Or lie down.”