The haunted house
Huggins acquired a solid circle of new acquaintances, including the
Reverend Percy Hay, the local clergyman. For they were now members of
the Established Church and regular in their attendance.
George Huggins took the train for the City every week-day morning,
returning rather earlier in the evening than most of his colleagues. He
had at first no office. Later, after many discreet inquiries, he joined
his name to that of a Mr. Jeffreys, General Agent, on a second floor in
Austin Friars: an address which was useful for the receipt and despatch
of correspondence, for telephone orders, and for following the markets
upon the spot.
It is no derogation of a man who so splendidly made good later on
to admit that during the first two years the total of his capital
slightly diminished. He was disappointed in the Paolo Mine venture,
and deservedly annoyed when the friend who had told him they would
rise came out with a new Rolls Royce, himself having sold the stock
in question. He was also quite wrong upon the fate of the Electricity
Bill, having as yet no acquaintance among politicians. Shortly after,
however, he successfully staged the Roumanian Loan. It was a matter of
only a few thousands, but they were enough to put him well forward of
what he had been when he first took to the City. And then came the
great stroke of his life, of which he is deservedly proud. As it may
not be common knowledge, I will describe it.
It was the eve of the Great War. Mr. Jeffreys was out at lunch. The
private telephone was rung up, and a Voice asked that, without delay,
a very large bull account should be opened on margin in the stocks
of three named armament firms, a bear ditto in two named foreign
government loans and a solid investment in a controlling company
which had hitherto been under a German directorship. The Voice went
on to explain without reserve, and as to a full confidant, the nature
of his information, introducing two important political names, and
before ceasing confirmed the usual proportion of the proceeds to its
correspondent. Only after all this had been said (and it took a good
two minutes to say it, for the Voice was very eager and even excited),
did the Voice, intrigued by Mr. Huggins’ silence, ask anxiously whether
it had the right number? Mr. Huggins saw no cause to inform It that It
had not. He replaced the receiver on its hook without a word.
There has grown up a silly modern habit of decrying the genius of our
great commercial men, especially when their fortunes have been rapidly
acquired. Their success is set down to chance, and is besmirched with
imputations of dishonesty.
I say this modern habit is a vile one, born not only of envy but of
ignorance. For had the calumniators any real knowledge of the men they
run down they would be unable to deny them the same sort of genius as
distinguishes the great Captains of History.
What George Huggins did on this memorable occasion is an example.
During the few moments when he was holding the receiver to his ear with
his left hand George Huggins was rapidly noting down the name of the
stocks, the prices, the margins, the dates, with a pencil in his right.
He immediately left the office. Within a week, all Europe being then
at war, that dreadful calamity had within the mysterious designs of
Providence launched the very moderate fortune of George Huggins into
its advance towards becoming one of the largest of our time.
For once the great man was bewildered. The first huge sum had come so
simply, so rapidly and so naturally, and in such overwhelming figures,
that he hardly felt himself to be himself. And not a few wild projects
cantered through his brain when, after the settlement, he was racing
northward to Palmers Green in a first-class carriage—which projects,
had he indulged in them, might, I admit, have led to disaster. It was
the strong sense of his wife which saved him, and he was ever grateful
to her. He found her eating tripe and onions, a favourite dish of hers
when she could prepare it after her own fashion (for she had given the
servant a night out), and drinking from a tankard a very excellent
brand of stout laced with gin.
He shared the meal, and when it was over and she had heard the full
news, she made him his plan of campaign.
And see how wise she was! The whole thing was simply to be put into
secure Government Stock. She trusted England. Indeed, she was confident
that the war would be over in a few weeks, and of course in our favour.
Meanwhile until things had settled down, and when he had come to know
(as he soon would with such a fortune) those who pull the strings of
our affairs, he might cautiously distribute his investment, and if he
so willed, increase his now great possessions. But the principal thing
was safety. They were made, he and she. That was the point. But both
remembered in silence that there was no heir.
The rest came easily enough. George Huggins was talked of. The
simplicity of his manner and the kindness of his heart were remarked.
No foolish hesitation was shown by families whose wealth happened to
be of older growth in inviting him and his wife to their tables. His
spontaneous generosity in the matter of the Belle Vue Hospital gave
him, not a mere knighthood, as the Secretary had suggested, but a
baronetcy. It was as Sir George and Lady Huggins that they entertained
and did what lay in them for their country during the great life and
death struggle of those four years. Before the end of them, Sir George
had occupied during a few fateful weeks one of the more important
ministries, succeeding to a large wholesale grocer, and succeeded in
turn by one of our shrewdest speculators in rising seaside resorts.
He left office through no other cause than the strain which its cares
put upon a man of his years, and, of course, accepted a peerage upon
retiring from the more active duties of public life.
He was indifferent as to what his title should be. But having recently
constructed (in spite of the building difficulties during the war) a
charming little Jacobean thing at Mere Bruvvish, in Berkshire, the
heralds pointed out to him that the spelling of the name in some early
documents would seem to indicate an original French form, Beaurivage.
George, First Baron Mere de Beaurivage, therefore became the style
and title of this very eminent, and (I think I may say) very typical
British man of business.
It was remarked that his simplicity remained conspicuous in spite of
his elevation. Thus he insisted on the plain pronunciation Mere de
Bruvvish—or even Bruvvish alone—attaching to his new title, as it had
to the village where he retired for the week-ends; and it was with
difficulty that he could be persuaded to sign his name with a little
“d” for the “de,” or to separate that particle from the main term of
Beaurivage. He made no efforts to speak an English other than that to
which he had been trained in childhood, and no one acquainted with
the pride of our gentry will doubt me when I say that it was ready to
receive him in his plain and rugged honesty as it would have been had
he spoken in the most exquisite accents of the stage.
In the now wide circle of their society the Mere de Beaurivages had
been glad to discover a really intimate friend in Hilda Maple. There
was a warm and affectionate sincerity in her relation towards Lady Mere
de Beaurivage which Matilda—Amathea as she now was—sometimes missed in
her grander acquaintances. She felt the atmosphere of Rackham Catchings
to be homely. She admired the close admixture of every modern comfort
with every ancient tradition in these honourable walls—the Ancestor
had got there a little before her—and she often said to herself and to
her husband that when they should build themselves a proper place they
would keep that model in mind.
Moreover, she had an odd attachment to Sussex; perhaps because she had
once been taken to the Downs behind Brighton for a Board School treat
in her early youth, perhaps because an uncle of hers had been ostler in
the then large stables of the Monarch at Byfield.
One way and another, Rackham Catchings was half a home in her mind
already. She was glad to feel that Hilda and she were like sisters. Yet
John Maple had never as yet met her during any one of the four or five
times on which she had passed a week-end in the place; and in the rich
houses of London he had only seen the couple once (and even then it was
from some way off) in a crush at Bakeham House. The poor old gentleman
had seemed terribly hot and out of breath after squeezing up those
stairs.
CHAPTER VII
So John Maple came down to Aunt Hilda’s, for that week-end. Once more
did he put his foot down firmly on Spegel, refusing to do a turn after
the Thursday night, but promising by way of compensation to go into the
Provinces on Tuesday.
It was on the Friday as he had promised that he went down. He was
offended, as he always was, by the motor-car and the French driver at
the station; he wanted the old coachman (who was dead), and the old
horse (who was worse than dead). He was offended, as he always was, by
the new sham timber front of Rackham Catchings as he came up the drive.
He was in a nasty mood.
But as for that determination in his heart, on the twenty thousand
pounds, it had turned into cold iron. It was the hardest thing in him.
But it was no longer in the air. Isabeau had done the trick. Upon
my soul, as the too quick, too expensive car shot vulgarly through
those dignified old trees up the new sweep of new drive to the new
unfortunate great door in the devastated front of what had once been
his home, he felt as though the twenty thousand pounds were there in a
purse, to be thrown at his aunt when he should meet her.
But when he got in he did not meet her. The atheist Gaul who had
driven him smiled cheerfully enough, though in a fashion a little too
manly for his servile position, and handed him his bag from the front
of the car almost as though they were equals—a thing intolerable. It
was at once a worry and a relief to hear that his aunt was out and
would not be back for an hour or two. It was more like home, however,
to be met by Corton and to talk to that old friend. Then he spent the
time remaining wandering through the rooms, noting for the twentieth
time what had been left the same as in his own days of childhood, and
what had been changed.
Most had been changed, but not all. The schoolroom was just the same,
except that they had put the boxes into it, as though it were derelict.
What had once been the hall with its simple little eighteenth-century
porch of wooden pillars and wooden Pediment had been degraded into a
sort of back entrance, and where the old drive had gone on to it there
was now moss and grass, though it was still hard with the old gravel.
What had been the main stairs of the house—how he loved the old carved
banisters!—were now the back way to the bedrooms and passages above;
the main staircase was a wicked new oaken thing, chemically stained to
look old, leading up from the new hall.
That hall itself was a piece of stage scenery. He called up what had
been torn down to make space for all that new big room. He smiled to
remember that it was nothing but the big empty, spare, plastered
cavern where all manner of household wreckage piled up; where also the
beer casks used to be kept in his father’s time. He remembered how he
had kept his bicycle there, and how proud he had been of it when he had
been first allowed to ride it. He remembered having asked leave to keep
his rabbits in there during the cold weather.
So all that was gone. And in its place was this sham old oak with the
huge great beam—Baltic, not English, and the ridiculous sham date