3 Great Historical Novels (78 page)

Mr Baum murmured that it would be wiser if the conversation they were about to have were conducted in private, but they did not even deign to respond. They were unworried by the maid’s presence. He had spoken out of turn, he realized, the servants being as of little interest to these people as the furniture.

‘Lord Dilberne,’ said Mr Baum, ‘news has come that Ladysmith is besieged by Boer troops. It was thought they would be already fully stretched at Mafeking but apparently not. They are well organized and have men and equipment to spare.’

Arthur filled in the ensuing silence by remarking that in his opinion, whatever anyone said, the Boers were an undisciplined rabble of farmers, that Kruger was no leader but a bible-thumper who believed the Earth was flat, and that he, Arthur, had it on good authority from army friends that the garrison in Ladysmith numbered at least five thousand disciplined and trained troops and was well prepared to withstand any attack. They would give the enemy a good thrashing into the bargain.

‘Ha,’ said his father, eventually. ‘Hum. I admire your patriotism and spirit, Arthur, but it is a mistake to underrate an enemy just because you don’t like him. This is hardly good
news. Having no concept of the rules of war might turn out to be to the Boers’ advantage.’ He pointed out to his son that though Ladysmith was probably safe enough, five thousand troops trained in tight formation fighting and armed only with single-shot rifles might do well enough to repel savages and their spears, but the Boers would no doubt have Mauser magazine rifles and Krupp field guns. It was certainly an unsporting way of fighting – simply mowing down an enemy – but highly effective when it came to it. Lord Lansdowne at the War Office had assured the House that Lee-Metford bolt action rifles would soon be on the way to Natal, but ‘soon’, when it came to army procurement, could drag on for a long, long time.

Lady Isobel looked at her husband admiringly. He spoke fluently and so well; he was turning into a politician. Even his brothers would come to think well of him.

‘You describe it as “unsporting”, Father,’ said Rosina. ‘How can you describe it in such a way? It is savage; it is barbarous. Is it not bad enough to kill young men one at a time – but ten at a time! Though I daresay young women will get along well enough without them, if that is what they have to do. Men have only themselves to blame.’

‘Rosina,’ said her mother, somewhat acidly, ‘please leave such sentiments for your parrot to preach.’ Cook had left bones in the haddock. That was shockingly careless, but the kind of thing that happened if normal household timetables were disturbed.

‘Well, Mr Baum,’ said her husband, putting down his napkin and preparing to leave the table. ‘I am sure this is all very interesting, but as things stand there is very little we can do about the situation in Ladysmith. We’ll just have to leave it to the man on the spot to deal with – Sir George White, I
believe. But thank you for coming in such haste to bring up the dire news. No need to panic – and the signing of documents can surely wait.’

‘The report is that Sir George is trapped inside the town with his forces, sir,’ said Baum, still smiling. ‘And that not only Ladysmith, but the area for thirty miles around is in enemy hands. That area includes the Modder Kloof mine.’ His Lordship returned to the table and sat down. Elsie sighed. Now she ought to replace his napkin with a clean one, but had come to the end of the pile. Perhaps his Lordship would not notice. He was speaking genially.

‘Why didn’t you say so at once? But White is a most reliable fellow. Won the Victoria Cross in Afghanistan. He is smart and a brave fellow: I have no doubt but that he’ll fight his way out and clear the area. It won’t hold up production at Modder Kloof for more than a week or so at worst. He’ll be looking out for Syndicate interests. And if White does fail, and I don’t see that he can, I believe General Buller is waiting in the wings. Remember Redvers Buller, Isobel? Came to dinner once. Much appreciative of the grouse. Got a mouthful of shot. Tall chap? Went shooting with him once or twice. Bit of a ditherer, true. Managed to shoot his own dog. That went the rounds. But nothing wrong with him as a soldier. He has a VC.’

‘Robert,’ said her Ladyship, ‘I have a very busy day ahead of me. We have a dinner tonight. Mr Baum brings us serious news, though I rather think it could well have waited until later in the day. Indeed, I daresay we will read it in tomorrow’s
Times
. But is this the news you have been trying to tell us with such urgency, Mr Baum? Or is there more? Is it possible that our gold mine has been compromised in some way and you are reluctant to tell us?’

‘That is indeed the case, Lady Isobel,’ said Mr Baum. ‘I too am to have a busy day. The Modder Kloof mine, a considerable part of your family investment in the Midas Gold Syndicate, in which I too I may say have a significant interest, has been sabotaged, looted and I believe flooded by criminal gangs of natives egged on no doubt by the Dutch rebels. All production has ceased and the native workforce has fled.’

The delectable Lady Isobel, removing the silver fork carefully from her delicate lips, had paled slightly at the news, but otherwise let no emotion show on her face. Mr Baum was sorry for her sake that this had happened, but he had warned the Earl of the risks, though with hindsight perhaps not strongly enough. The Earl had been in a hurry to raise funds. Initially he had been lucky, as his Lordship so often was, and a promising seam of gold was struck at Modder Kloof almost immediately the mine was opened. The financial danger – at the time simply that a mine could be opened where no gold was, and the investment lost – had been averted. The geologists had been proved right; the sandstone and shale layers had opened up and revealed their glitter. The future had seemed assured. The Dilberne fortune safe. Now this.

Well, he had done his best. He was just the money man. What did he know of war and politics? Dilberne, with his close connections at both the Colonial and War Offices, should surely have anticipated what would happen next. True, the Transvaal bristled with troops protecting the interests of British investment in diamonds and gold, following Cecil Rhodes and de Beers wherever they led, but perhaps their Empire was not after all as invincible as they assumed? As for my loan, thought Mr Baum, that will be the last of their considerations. They will think only of themselves.

‘I have to tell you that the dividends expected yesterday by
telegraphic transfer did not arrive in the bank,’ said Mr Baum. ‘I hoped it was some technical error but after today’s communications I fear it is more than that. Gold has been stolen rather than shipped, and production had been halted.’

If Mr Baum had hoped for cries of alarm and despair he was disappointed. All that happened was that the whole family stared at him with slightly raised eyebrows, as if he were in some way out of order, had committed some grievous lapse in taste. Then his Lordship stood once again, smiled and spoke gently but firmly.

‘As I say, thank you for bringing us this news, Mr Baum. And now you must have a very busy day in front of you.’ He remained standing, giving Mr Baum no option but to get to his feet and leave. His Lordship’s napkin fell to the floor as he stood. It was unused and Elsie thought she could get away with folding and smoothing it and putting it back.

Baum reached the door and then turned back.

‘Good breakfast, what!’ said the Earl, still smiling.

‘It may be necessary for me to call in your debt to me,’ said Mr Baum, still smiling. He was learning fast. ‘Because I too am of course affected by the news.’

The Earl’s smile remained unaffected. Mr Baum left.

Elsie went with him and showed him out. By rights she should have fetched Reginald but the circumstances seemed to be such that a quick exit seemed appropriate.

‘
Goyim
,’ Mr Baum muttered. ‘All insane!’ and actually spat on the steps. Elsie ran downstairs and gave the servants’ hall the news of the Dilberne’s downfall. William the groom, a London man, newly employed, was fetched from the stables to wash down the front steps. The Dilberne servants saw no reason to expose themselves to unpleasantness when Londoners were available. Smithers went back up to the
drawing room to help Elsie clear away and find out what was going on.

‘Smithers,’ said the Countess of Dilberne, ‘kindly ask Mrs Neville to deduct sixpence from Elsie’s wages. His Lordship should have been handed a fresh napkin when he returned to the table.’

‘Yes my Lady,’ said Smithers. She would of course do no such thing. Her Ladyship would soon enough forget all about it when she returned to her usual sunny mood, and Elsie was tried enough by circumstance as it was.

The Dilbernes remained sitting at table in silence after Baum had left.

‘Should you not be off to the House, my dear?' enquired Isobel eventually. ‘You mustn't let your day's work be unravelled by that appalling little man.'

‘Not worth going. Fitzmaurice is speaking. He'll use the opportunity to gloat over the Ladysmith news, and blame the ghost of Gladstone for everything. There's the first reading of the Exportation of Arms Bill but Salisbury will have it thrown out. The majority will be narrow but it will be enough; I am not needed today.'

Rosina enquired as to what murderous end this particular Bill had been devised and her father replied it was the first reading of a bill to restrict the export of arms and materials that might damage the interests of her Majesty's forces abroad. If Salisbury had it thrown out it would be in the nation's interests: its terms of reference were too wide; it could for example interfere with the sale of coal abroad, coal being used to fuel enemy warships. Rosina should not look for bad intentions where they were absent.

Rosina remarked she did not care at all for the dealers of death and destruction and the sooner the bill was passed, the better.

Arthur said it was just as well women didn't have the vote: if Rosina did she'd only vote Liberal, just to annoy. Women were so emotional: they let nice feelings get in the way of practicality.

Her Ladyship then said Rosina should put loyalty to her family before loyalty to the variety of eccentric causes she espoused. She asked Robert what the Prince's view on the Arms Bill was, and her husband replied, with unusual asperity, that he didn't see what that had to do with anything.

Isobel remarked, lightly, that she would not want her husband's friendship with the Prince to influence his political judgement in any way. Nor would she want that friendship to have anything at all to do with her husband's ability, at a time of coalition, to veer the House's decision one way or another. It seemed to her that the voting might be rather marginal.

‘My dear,' said her husband, ‘leave politics and financial matters to me, and concern yourself with the arrangements for tonight's dinner, will you?'

It was as near as his parents had ever come, at least in Arthur's presence, to having what the lower orders – or so Grace had once told him – called ‘a row'. He had been thinking of his breakfast more than the consequences of the news the lawyer bought and had switched off as soon as he realised his own debts were not the subject of any particular upset. Something about the gold mine outside Ladysmith? Looted, flooded? But it was abroad; obviously things would not go smoothly there. His father was always indulging in mad, impractical schemes, and always oddly out of date. The diamond boom was over; gold was a flash in the pan. The future was in mechanisation, but the older generation found it hard to understand change. When his father died and he
came into the title he would probably get rid of yet more estate acres, they being no source of income at all in the face of food imports from abroad, a trend he could see steadily increasing. Though he could see a future in setting up an off-road circuit for auto racing and using the surplus acres for a track. Road racing had already been banned in France – too many fatalities, over which people made a dreadful fuss – but would eventually overtake horse racing in popularity.

He would keep Dilberne Court, of course, whatever happened: he had that much sensibility of family in him, whatever his father thought. Pater saw him as a frivolous idiot, and for some rather perverse reason of his own, he, Arthur, had enjoyed playing up to the role. Now that it seemed his father was the idiot, investing the family money in some harebrained scheme, he might need to present his serious side. Why on earth had Mr Baum been chosen as an advisor? Was his father so influenced by his new friend the Prince that he must take his advice in everything? Baum was good enough when it came to trivial matters like tailors' bills and gambling debts, but mightier matters should surely be left in the hands of experienced Christians. Cunning was no match for wisdom. And his mother, she was the one with her head screwed on properly, not his father. He marvelled at her diplomacy: now she just smiled equably and ‘the row' dissipated.

The brief burst of animation over, all fell silent. Elsie returned to the room and started clearing the remaining dishes from the sideboard with the kind of clatter that suggested everyone should vacate the room and get on with their lives. Nor, to Arthur's surprise, did his mother reproach her or mention the matter of the missing fresh napkin. Maids had been fired for less.

‘Very good, Elsie,' said her Ladyship. ‘There is a very great deal to be done today. Please ask Mrs Neville and Cook to see me later in the morning room, and send for Grace.' Elsie went. Again silence fell.

Grace, thought Arthur. She was his mother's favourite and rightly so. She was intelligent, useful and loyal. He did not think he had behaved badly to her. She had more or less offered herself: he had not seduced her; she had been more experienced than he was: he was fourteen and just discovering the joys of sex: she was fifteen, and in the silly, daring patch girls could go through, of whatever class. One thing had led to another, over a summer. He'd gone off to Eton, she had been promoted – or so he supposed: now she wore a starched and fluted cap and opened the front door instead of a plain floppy one in which she made the beds and emptied the pots – and had become stiff, formal and unwelcoming. The event was never referred to after that by word or glance. Perhaps she had realised, as he had, what she had to lose. She had certainly seemed to stop giggling over the years. He stopped thinking about Grace. He would rather think about combustion engines; they were less puzzling than women. He couldn't wait to get back down to the garage.

Robert's hand stretched out to take Isobel's. She closed hers on his. The children looked in wonder at such a rare demonstration of love and trust.

‘One assumed,' said their father, after a little thought, ‘that the area was well defended. We should have bought arms in from Krupps and Mauser when we could. I told them.
Lee-Metford
bullets are too soft: they stop no one. As well hit the enemy with bags of flour. Armstrong-Whitworth would have done better and we could have re-armed sooner. But one saw an advantage in buying arms from British sources only. Free
trade when it comes to arms, is well known to have most malign consequences.'

‘Old Willie Armstrong is hardly concerned with consequences other than for himself,' said his wife. ‘He supplied both sides in the American Civil War.'

‘Mere rumour,' said her husband. ‘And that was a different time, a different world. I think we are beyond such niceties. Let trade follow the flag.'

Another silence.

‘A pity you did not at least consult me,' said Isobel. ‘Working with servants as I do, I understand the concept of sabotage. How dinners get spoiled and mines get flooded, when least expected. But men work from theory and women from experience. I daresay that is the case.'

It was the only word of reproach on the matter her children heard her utter.

‘And I take it that what remained of my, and the children's trust funds is lost as well? All that was left of my father's wealth?'

‘The Prince has money in the syndicate as well,' was all her husband said.

‘Had,' said his wife; and then brightly: ‘So. We are ruined. What is to be done?'

His Lordship turned to Arthur and said, ‘You are the son and heir. You answer your mother. What is to be done?'

Arthur, taken aback at so direct an approach, said that if his father sold off the Mews and got rid of the horses, he could start a garage specialising in steam cars. He would make a fortune. Isobel explained that the Mews were leased not owned, there was no question of money from a sale. Arthur shrugged this off, with the replacement suggestion of selling off some more of the farms. His father said the
automobile would never replace the horse. Rosina, though not asked for her opinion, said steam engines might amuse schoolboys, but were always frightening horses. She personally, she added, was going to train as a doctor and support herself. She wanted no part of the old world. Ignorance, illness and poverty were the source of all human ills. Abolish these and humanity would be reborn. So perhaps, on second thoughts, not a doctor but a reformer. She would start with the condition of many of the farm cottages on the Dilberne estate. They were damp, run down, crowded and unsanitary. Tuberculosis and any number of fevers were rife. It was a disgrace. She would build a model village and people would come from far and wide to see and admire, and the profits could be ploughed back into the estate.

The Earl protested and said he had spent unconscionable sums improving the land over the last five years. If the tenants could stir themselves out of their idleness and torpor to pay their rents on time they might find themselves better off. Rosina said that torpor was largely caused by poor nutrition and if the political classes could stir themselves to abolish free trade the poor might at least be able to afford something to eat. Robert pointed out to Rosina that the problem was holding on to Dilberne Court and the estate at all. Arthur said he would be sorry to see the old place go – tradition and all that – but he personally had no appetite for rural living, any more than his mother had. Robert looked pained that three centuries of hard work, dedication and
noblesse oblige
might be dismissed as ‘tradition and all that', and Arthur felt suitably chastened but at a loss to offer any further solution.

Rosina said, with a rare show of self-interest rather than principle, that perhaps they had been foolish in not showing themselves more civil to Mr Baum, who presumably held their
future in his hands. ‘If Pater has gambled our patrimony away, and got himself in debt to this moneylender – the least he should have done was to be agreeable to him. Moreover, Mother, I do not think you should refer to Mr Baum as an appalling little man, even in his absence. He does not know how to behave, it is true, but very many perfectly worthwhile people do not. He is only making a living, as people must.'

‘Rosina,' said her mother, ‘the sooner you get married and stop telling other people how to behave the better.'

‘I don't see at all why one would be a consequence of the other,' said Rosina. Still Isobel kept her temper. Arthur thought how important it must be to marry someone of equable temperament. He wondered if it was possible to ensure that his future wife gave birth only to sons, but he supposed it was not.

‘Rosina is right,' said her father, who often took a more kindly view of his daughter than did the mother, or indeed the brother. ‘It might have been wiser for all of us to have shown more civility to Mr Baum. Arthur, you should not have been witty at his expense.'

‘Sorry and all that, Pater,' said Arthur, ‘but sometimes the tongue outruns the mind. I really must be off. I'll leave you to sort this out. I'm needed in the garage. I don't trust William with the boiler of the Jehu. The man's a good mechanic but does not quite understand the power of steam.'

‘I would prefer that you stayed, Arthur,' said his father. ‘You are to inherit the title, the trust fund is empty and you are perfectly old enough to give the matter some attention. The future of the steam car is neither here nor there. It is an absurd contraption, and dangerous as well. As for you, Rosina, you yourself scarcely acknowledged Mr Baum's presence.'

‘All I did was ignore him,' said Rosina snappily, ‘I didn't
make fun of him. So all of a sudden I am the one expected to be nice to someone Mama dismisses as a dreadful little man. I'm glad there is a Mrs Baum, or next thing you would be asking me to marry him.'

Both parents looked at her speculatively. Isobel said, ‘Well, my dear, it is a great luxury for a girl not to marry, one you may not be able to afford. The younger she marries the better her prospects in the world. With every year her charms wane. So I suggest you get on with it, for you have no dowry other than your looks to offer.'

‘Plainly spoken, Mother,' said Rosina, bitterly. ‘I am sorry to be such a disappointment to you. Let me just say that I am surprised that so much of the family fortunes was trusted to a hole in the ground.'

‘Mines can be drained,' said Isobel. ‘We must see this as a setback, not a disaster.'

‘What, drained, with hostile forces in the area?' asked her husband. ‘After a mere two weeks wooden pit props rot under water. Iron fixtures corrode and rust. The Boers resent all mining, whether gold or diamond, in what they fancifully see as their territory.'

‘I think I should have been consulted,' said Rosina. ‘You mentioned investing in South Africa, Pater, but no one said anything about
mining
. The conditions down the mines are shameful. It is no better than slave labour. Workers
die
.'

‘Rosina, please do try not be so disagreeable,' said her mother. ‘It is hardly surprising if your father keeps some things to himself.'

‘A gold mine?' It was Arthur's turn. ‘We have interests in a gold mine? Why? Diamonds I can understand, you can use them in machines to cut other things with, but gold? It's so soft. What can you make out of it, other than ladies' jewellery 
and spare teeth? If there was money to spare, it should have gone into automobiles.'

‘Paper money will lose its value,' said their father. ‘It is an invention, an abstraction, numbers on a piece of paper, a concept. Gold is real; it is not smoke and mirrors: you can see it and touch it. It is in scarce supply in the world and so can be used as a base from which to value other things. Gold is a wonder.'

‘You are such a romantic, dear Robert,' said their mother. ‘You see only the glister, you forget about rotting pit props, strikes and sabotage. As for you children, when you gave your father power of attorney it was so that you, Rosina, could devote your valuable time and energy to improving the world, and you, Arthur, to the workings of the steam automobile as opposed to the petrol engine. You chose to do so and are in no position to complain.'