The haunted house
had two reasons. First, a lord was a lord, and lords more lordly are
not easily lured to such houses as Rackham. Next, Lord Hambourne had
lineage—of a sort—and the other lords would be impressed.
And who was Lord Mere de Beaurivage? John Maple, in the ignorance and
folly of youth, had jumped—as youth in its ignorance and folly does
jump—to absurd conclusions. He had got his distorted picture from the
conversations of others almost as young as himself. How different
it was from the truth my reader shall soon learn. John had a vulgar
foolish caricature in his mind of innumerable new peers shamelessly
forcing themselves into their rank by bribery during the end of
the war. There are none such. It is an illusion. John saw, in that
imaginary host of vulgarians one vulgarian in no way distinguished from
the rest called “Old Bruvvish.” He was wildly wrong. George, First
Baron Mere de Beaurivage (pronounced “Bruvvish”) was unique.
John had heard just enough gossip to have told you that remarkable
man’s family name before his elevation to the peerage, or barony—if you
will. It was, as we have heard, Huggins. No doubt John Maple, proud of
his three or four generations of declining squire’s wealth (himself,
remember, sprung from the cattle-dealer) would have sneered at the
origins of George Adolphus Huggins, First Baron Mere de Beaurivage—and
that, I think, is a very good example of how little men know themselves
and their antecedents. For George Adolphus Huggins, as my reader will
learn in a moment, well merited the great position which he had taken
step by step with a few hundreds of others in the social leadership of
Britain.
From first feeling of Rackham as an ideal Lady de Beaurivage had come
to dwell on it as it was in real bricks and timber. She heard rumours
that Hilda might conceivably sell—but Hilda had seen that those rumours
should be mixed with accounts of her passionate attachments to the
place and her reluctance to leave it. And Hilda had heard rumours
that Amathea was in the market. She had not laboured in vain—but time
pressed.
Anyhow, John was in for it. He was to go down to Rackham that week-end,
and he was to meet with what I suppose I may call, for the purposes of
my narrative, The Three Peers.
(They were all Barons, by the way. Since the American invasion even
English gentlemen have begun to distinguish between Barons, Earls,
Viscounts and Marquesses. They always did distinguish Dukes: but to
return to my black sheep.)
The Three Peers ... Lord Hellup was, after all, Bo’s father, and
what’s more, he had snap. John both admired and got on with him—in
spite of too much quotation from Motley’s _Dutch Republic_, which that
well-read man perpetually carried in his pocket in a cheap edition, now
one volume, now another, feasting his mind upon the heroic conduct of
commercial men in their resistance to mere soldiers.
Lord Hambourne he knew all about at secondhand. Lord Mere de
Beaurivage, as I have said, he misjudged. But after all, the boy was
less to blame than those who had taught him this disrespectful way of
regarding so great a man.
Well, he would play up to them all.
But it is time that I dissipated in my reader’s mind John’s
misapprehension of Lord Mere de Beaurivage, and, if she will excuse me,
I will now proceed to give her a true estimate of that considerable
English peer.
CHAPTER VI
George Adolphus Huggins was born in a small street off the Old Kent
Road early in the 60’s of the last century. His first introduction
to commercial life was made at the age of twelve as assistant to his
father Jack, or, as one tradition has it, Jim Huggins, who sold fruit
and vegetables from a barrow in that neighbourhood.
Upon the early demise of both his parents young Mr. Huggins took over
the business, which remained undeveloped to close upon his fortieth
year. Long before that he had married Matilda, or, as she was later
called, Amathea, the daughter of another gentleman and lady in the same
branch of commerce: a strong, full-bodied, upstanding young woman of
whom he was very proud, and whose advice in all matters not connected
with barter and exchange he was ready to follow. They were contented
enough with their lot, suffered no more than the average number of
conflicts with their neighbours, and but rarely allowed these to
develop into physical violence.
So late, therefore, as the beginning of King Edward’s reign there was
nothing to distinguish the genius of George Adolphus Huggins. He seemed
to be but one costermonger among so many in the great business life
of London. But shortly after the end of the Boer War and King Edward’s
Coronation appeared those manifestations of the exceptional power which
is latent in every great man, and is bound to express itself at last,
however tardily.
Mr. Huggins, having been chosen for unpaid secretary of a Goose Club
which enjoyed a large membership, found himself in the decline of the
year 1902 possessed of a very considerable capital in trust. Indeed,
it was far more than all his own stock-in-trade was worth, and it is
a great tribute to his sterling qualities that he should have been
entrusted thus by his neighbours with so responsible a task.
Rightly judging that it was imprudent to keep so much money loose, he
took the advice of a friend somewhat superior in social position, a
pawnbroker from Kipling Street (late Nelson Street), and through his
introduction deposited the money in a bank until that expenditure or
division among the members of the club—known in the Old Kent Road as
“shareout”—should fall due at Christmas.
At this point took place an episode on which I have found it very
difficult to get exact information, for there are contradictory
versions.
There is no doubt that the account at the bank had been opened in the
joint names of Mr. Huggins himself and his friend, Mr. Lawson, the
pawnbroker of the neighbourhood. Mr. Lawson for many years complained
in his own circle that he had been defrauded, nor did the complaints
cease until some arrangement was made by the lawyers of Sir George
Huggins (as he had then become) long after the date of the transaction
I am about to describe. We have Mr. Lawson’s own vigorous and repeated
statement that it was by his advice the speculation was made, as how
could that poor fellow Huggins have known anything about it? While he,
Lawson, had had the tip straight from his cousin, who was clerk in a
broker’s office and had obtained early inside information upon the
approaching amalgamation of Paley’s Brewery with Gatton’s.
Lord Mere de Beaurivage never spoke of the incident, to my knowledge,
save, of course, in privacy to his solicitors; so I have no opportunity
for testing Mr. Lawson’s version of the affair; but his friends assure
me _he_ originated the investment, acting upon the very honourable
motive of adding to the sum he held in trust, and not letting the money
of his neighbours lie idle.
At any rate, the order to purchase Paley’s Ordinary must have been
given out in both names. What probably happened was that, in the
absence of Mr. Lawson, Mr. Huggins’ order to sell was taken by the
bank; at any rate, the very considerable profit was, I am again assured
by Lord Mere de Beaurivage’s friends, equitably divided; and probably
Mr. Lawson’s grievance lay in the fact that further transactions, in
which he had no share, were undertaken in Mr. Huggins’ own name.
These further transactions were of a very simple sort. Indeed,
high financial talent is often best seen in the simplicity of its
operations. Mr. Huggins began by repaying in full to the account the
original money due to the members of the Goose Club, which sum was
therefore duly divided and accounted for at the Sacred Season of Peace
and Goodwill to everybody’s satisfaction.
Meanwhile the remaining profit of £150 Mr. Huggins drew out in cash,
closing his account with the bank, which had indeed always troubled him
a little, as being something mysterious, and at the same time putting
himself a little too much into the power of the other man.
The surplus cash thus available he put upon a winner called Winsome
Winnie. Not that he had received any information about the powers of
the animal, but because that very phrase had been attached as a pet
name to his only child, a little daughter who had died some years
before. That the odds were 50 to 1 did not alarm this daring spirit.
He divided the proceeds; keeping two-thirds of them, and losing the
remaining third upon yet another horse, the name of which I have not
been able to trace. Disgusted with the turf by this reverse of fortune,
Mr. Huggins, after some hesitation, simply kept the sum of money now at
his disposal. It was just under five thousand pounds, and he kept it in
the large banknotes of the bookie, under the lid of a rather battered
little japanned box, carefully locked, though inspected with his own
eyes from three to five times every day.
It was impossible that some rumour of his good fortune should not
have spread. He was privately visited by more than one neighbour with
pressing requests for a loan, even at considerable interest; and as he
had every opportunity for judging the prospects of the barrows in his
row, he could, and did, lend with judgment. The loans were at short
term, usually of a week, at the most of a fortnight, and calculated
at a penny in the shilling for each seven days; or, as a special
accommodation for larger customers, a shilling in the pound.
He extended his operations. He became the Providence of Barrow-men in
South-East London, and soon extended his activities to shopkeepers.
Mr. Huggins had the supreme gift of discretion. Each operator was left
under the impression that the loan had been made to him as a special
favour, though it was certainly remarked that the lender’s circle of
acquaintance was rapidly extending, and that he had many callers at
his house after business hours, especially of a Saturday. He was wise
enough to make no display, as his wealth increased, and it was greatly
to the credit of his wife Matilda (or Amathea, as she was soon to be)
that she added little to her _parure_, though she could not resist
one particularly fine ostrich feather which she had seen in the shop
of a neighbour, Mrs. Carey, who took in, mended, cleaned, turned, and
otherwise served, the ladies of her neighbourhood. The transaction was
the more tempting, as Mrs. Huggins had kindly helped Mrs. Carey upon
more than one occasion and could, therefore, demand a special price.
The profession of private banking upon which George Huggins was now
fairly launched is a lucrative one so long as it is confined to a
certain scale. After that, it not only needs a particular _clientéle_,
with offices in the West End and a considerable organisation,
but involves grave risks and a special knowledge of the wealthy
world—especially its younger members. It further requires a public
licence, and is hardly ever conducted without occasional appearances
in court. The financier was wise, therefore, to abandon those direct
methods. He spent a few weeks in settling his affairs, concluding every
transaction with great tenacity and vigour, still maintaining his own
barrow as though nothing were to happen.
Feigning illness (a legitimate ruse), he put in a caretaker, and
finally sold the humble barrow-stall which had been the foundation of
his fortune and the good-will of a still sufficient trade in vegetables
and fruit. Shortly afterwards his wife and he took a small villa in
the northern suburbs, where he would be free from interruption by any
former friends. There, dressed in the style required by the new state
of life to which it had pleased God to call them, George and Matilda