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Authors: D.J. Taylor

Tags: #Fiction, #Horse Racing, #Sports & Recreation, #Historical, #General Fiction

Derby Day (6 page)

BOOK: Derby Day
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Now Mr Gresham, still seated in his chair, knew that there was something in this. He still disliked Mr Happerton – dislike was hardly a strong enough word – but he feared that a man with an income and the regard of the lady he proposed to marry was perfectly entitled to make that request. But did Mr Happerton really possess his daughter’s regard? Then again, he knew – and he was honest enough to admit this – that there might be certain advantages in seeing his daughter married and gone from his house. Her presence reminded him of his disappointment. If the person could be removed, then might not the disappointment follow? Seeing something of his perplexity, Mr Happerton went on:

‘But we are neglecting what ought to be the main point of a conversation such as this. What has Miss Gresham to say about it?’

Mr Gresham thought this was intolerable. ‘I don’t think that is a question I have to answer.’

‘Oh, but I think it is. That is, with the greatest respect, Mr Gresham, what has Miss Gresham said about me?’

And here Mr Gresham simply gasped. Anything in the world would have been preferable to him than the sight of Mr Happerton in his chambers, reading his legal invitations and eyeing up his curtains like a draper’s assistant. Even the marrying of his daughter, he thought, would be preferable to this. But he did not know what to say. He could have Mr Happerton pitched out into the street, but that would not stop the man paying court to his daughter. And so he sat there, resolving that he would say something sharp and inflexible – something unyielding and adamantine – but somehow not saying it. Whereupon Mr Happerton said, almost casually:

‘I think, Mr Gresham, that we won’t get much further with this. We won’t indeed. It may be that you entertain some personal dislike for me. If that’s the case then I’m very sorry – truly. But if you doubt my – my ability to provide for your daughter, then I think you ought to consult someone who could tell you more about myself than you are prepared to hear from my own mouth.’

‘Who is there?’ Mr Gresham did not know why he said this.

‘There is Mr Rivington, perhaps.’

And rather to his surprise Mr Gresham found himself agreeing to consult Mr Rivington about the
bona fides
of his daughter’s suitor. The old clerk, sitting in the ante-room beyond with Mr Happerton’s sovereign in his fist, wondered at the time that had gone by.

‘You’ll write, then?’ Mr Happerton enquired.

‘Well – perhaps I shall.’

‘And you will give my compliments to Miss Gresham?’

To this Mr Gresham merely inclined his head. Whereupon the two men shook hands, Mr Happerton with great affability, the man whom he hoped to call his father-in-law with an expression of the gravest regret.

 

*

 

Mr Gresham, who had had some slight professional dealings with Mr Rivington, hastened to renew his acquaintance with that gentleman. Not much more than twenty-four hours later he could be found in Messrs Rivington & Co.’s offices in Gutter Lane – rather cramped, if truth be known, and next door to a tanner’s yard – asking their principal: what did he think of Mr Happerton?

‘Mr Happerton?’ Mr Rivington was a cautious, hawk-like and rather austere man of sixty who looked as if he might have been the founding partner of a society got up to suppress light nonsense. ‘You won’t mind if I close that winder, Mr Gresham? It’s uncommon strong this morning. Mr Happerton’s a very useful man, I should say. At any rate we have found him so on a number of occasions.’

‘He was a partner in the firm I think?’

‘Well no – he did not find it convenient. And besides, I don’t think his capital was always at his disposal.’

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘There was talk of his dealing in foreign loans. My partner, Mr Scrimgeour, could certainly tell you.’

‘No, no, I should not trouble Mr Scrimgeour for the world. The thing is, Mr Rivington …’ And with a certain amount of hesitation that might have been taken for shame, choosing his words with great care and not liking to catch Mr Rivington’s eye, Mr Gresham told his tale. Mr Rivington, for his part, grew steadily less austere. Now that the subject was not financial expertise but the question of somebody’s daughter, he became almost worldly in his attitudes.

‘So that is how it is,’ he pronounced. In fact, Mr Rivington knew exactly how it was, Mr Happerton having called upon him a couple of days before. ‘Well, he is a wide-awake young fellow enough.’

‘I thought him – clever.’

‘Yes, he is that, certainly. I don’t think he is what you might call – a gentleman.’

‘I don’t know that I care so very much about that,’ Mr Gresham said, who on the contrary cared very much.

‘Let me tell you how I see it, Mr Gresham. You must understand that we have not been so very intimate as that, but he has dined at my house and the women – that is to say, my wife – liked him.’

Mr Gresham nodded his head.

‘He is one of those thrusting young men that we hear about. He mayn’t make a very great fortune, but I don’t suppose he’ll lose one either. The money will always be there, and I don’t believe you’ll have them turn up on your doorstep with a pair of carriage trunks and a nursemaid, as happened to poor old Jones who married his daughter to Lord Plinlimmon’s son.’

‘But what about his’ – again Mr Gresham did not quite know how to frame the words – ‘personal conduct?’

‘As to that, young men will be young men I take it. You won’t care for those boots of his, I daresay. The people here thought him rather loud, but I don’t think I ever heard anything disreputable of him.’

‘The world has changed very much since you and I were young, Mr Rivington.’

‘No doubt it has,’ said Mr Rivington, who did not quite see why he should be bracketed with a man fifteen years his senior. ‘No doubt it has. As I say, the money will be there and I don’t suppose you’ll have much to complain of.’

 

*

 

‘Well, I have done my best,’ Mr Rivington said, meeting Mr Happerton later that night at a West End club of which they were both members, ‘although I don’t know what good it will do you.’

‘I’m awfully obliged to you. How did he seem to take it?’

‘Heaven knows how he took it. I take it he don’t approve of you.’ Mr Rivington’s glance, as he said this, declared a rather greater intimacy than he had proposed to Mr Gresham. ‘Now, one good turn deserves another you know.’

‘Ah well, if you mean Tiberius, I am working at that. But let us say the thing is conditional.’

‘Conditional on what?’ said Mr Rivington, who had a cigar in his mouth and the air of one who is enjoying the fruit of his labours, and whose slowness of uptake could in these circumstances perhaps be forgiven him.

 

*

 

Whatever Mr Gresham may have written to Mr Happerton, and however Mr Happerton may have received it, a further letter was sent by messenger two days later to Miss Gresham at the house in Belgrave Square.

Papa is a great deal less cross. I shall call in the morning. Your own G.H
.

 

*

 

‘So it is to come off then, is it?’ Captain Raff said to his friend over luncheon. They were sitting once more in the library of the Blue Riband Club, which looked more forlorn and melancholy than ever, and where a stone, flung from the street below, had cracked up one of the window panes. ‘And I suppose I’m to be best man?’

‘Well – as a matter of fact you aren’t,’ Mr Happerton told him.

‘Not to be groomsman?’ Captain Raff’s look as he said this was quite piteous. ‘What, a fellow that has stood by you all this time? That has done – done all kinds of things, you know. Why, I never was so insulted.’

‘That’s all gammon, Raff, and you know it. The fact is, this is a respectable affair, and has to be done right. I ain’t saying you would shame us –’

‘I suppose you’ll have one of those West End fellows that act as though they were at a public meeting?’

‘That’s about the ticket. It is horses for courses, you understand.’

‘You must stick by me,’ Captain Raff said, very seriously. ‘You must stick by me, do you hear? I haven’t come this far with you, Happerton, to see it all flung away from me.’

‘Oh I’ll stick by you all right,’ Mr Happerton said, not seeing the look on Captain Raff’s face. He was thinking of what Miss Gresham had said to him that morning, and what Mr Gresham had written to him in his letter. ‘Only I’ll not have you hanging on my arm on my wedding day. Now, when shall we send Lythgoe to Boulogne and what shall we tell him to say?’

And so Captain Raff advised him as to when they might send Lythgoe to Boulogne, and what he might say, and nothing else was said about the question of Mr Happerton’s best man.

 

*

 

All this happened around the end of November. Mr Happerton’s marriage to Miss Gresham took place in the early part of February. If it was not the most fashionable wedding party ever to have set off from Belgrave Square, then it was generally agreed to have done Mr Gresham and his daughter the greatest credit. There were half a dozen bridesmaids – rather cold in their light dresses – a marquis’s daughter to receive the bride’s bouquet as she stood at the altar, and the Honourable Mr Caraway to act as groomsman. Captain Raff skulked at the back of the church. It was thought that the morning coat he was wearing had been bought for him by Mr Happerton.

It is very often said that a man who is to be married spends the time before his wedding day sloughing off some of the affiliations of his bachelor life, and certainly Mr Happerton had made one or two gestures in this direction. In particular, a day or so before the ceremony he had taken a cab to a notably obscure part of the City to the rear of Shoreditch railway station and spent a few minutes in a dingy little office squeezed in between a ship-chandler’s and a defunct watchmaker’s. The man he came to see was called Mr Pilkington and there was no clue at all as to what business the office transacted, whether it lent money or speculated in guano or bought up land in Putney and built villas on it, but Mr Pilkington, who despite his name was a foreign-looking gentleman, welcomed him onto his premises and poured him a glass of sherry.

‘So,’ he said, when Mr Happerton had settled himself in his chair, ‘you’re to be married, I hear? Is it that Miss Casket, the brewer’s girl?’

‘No it is not,’ Mr Happerton said. He was very polite with Mr Pilkington. ‘It is Miss Gresham.’

‘Well I congratulate you,’ Mr Pilkington said, in what might have been a sardonic tone. ‘Fifty thousand there if there’s a penny. And so it’s goodbye to the old shop, is it?’

‘The capital’s paid up, I believe?’ Mr Happerton said. ‘There’s nothing to complain of, is there?’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all. I did hear that Lord Maulever had a bill for two thou he was desperate to accommodate. Would take seven for it, or even six.’

‘That’s all finished,’ Mr Happerton said.

‘Old Gresham don’t want a bill-discounter for a son-in-law. Is that it?’

Mr Happerton gave a little shake of his head. He was not very talkative with Mr Pilkington.

‘Ah well, you had better take yourself off to Belgrave Square,’ Mr Pilkington said. ‘And I’ll see what can be done about Lord Maulever.’ After which Mr Happerton drank another glass of sherry and the two men shook hands. ‘And yet he may find he wants me again sooner than he thinks,’ Mr Pilkington said to himself as Mr Happerton’s top-boots went tapping off across the yard.

There were some errands that were too private even for Mr Happerton. And so Captain Raff found himself instructed to take a £10 note in an envelope to the little back bedroom of a dilapidated house near the back parts of the Drury Lane Theatre. Captain Raff was not much shocked by the task – he had executed one or two commisions of this kind for Mr Happerton before – but he thought, as he made his way to the dusty staircase and looked out of the smeary windows at the unkempt yards beyond, that his good nature was being abused. The woman who opened the door knew why he had come, stared furiously at him and would have declined the gift. ‘You’ll have to give it up, you know,’ Captain Raff told her, standing in the doorway in what he imagined to be a masterful manner – the room was done up in the French style, but the paper was coming off the wall and there were a couple of cabbages on the dressing table next to the pots of rouge – ‘that is – there is no way of proving it’, and in the end the note was accepted, and the door shut and he went back down the staircase thinking that Mr Happerton could have managed the visit himself.

‘A bad business,’ Captain Raff said to himself as he came out into Drury Lane. It was not that he sympathised with the woman in the room, with her cabbages and her rouge pots and her theatrical costumes hung up on the dresser with the saucepans – Captain Raff knew better than that – merely that he thought the commission horribly symbolic of the relation in which he now stood to Mr Happerton. There had been a time two or three years ago when Mr Happerton had deferred to him, he thought, and sought his advice. Now he kept things secret from him and sent him with £10 notes to shabby-genteel back bedrooms in Drury Lane.

There was a short interval between the wedding breakfast and the departure of the bride and groom, and Mr Gresham thought that he ought to occupy the time by addressing at least some words to his daughter. The house at Belgrave Square was in chaos, with servants hastening along the corridors and luggage piled up in the hall – and at first he did not know where to look. In the end, though, he found her in her bedroom, changed out of her wedding finery into a travelling dress, very cool and composed and examining the set of her bonnet with the aid of a looking glass. Mr Gresham saw himself in the mirror as he came towards her and thought that he looked old and worn and dissatisfied. There had been speeches at the wedding breakfast. Mr Caraway had spoken, and been gracious in his compliments. Mr Happerton had spoken, and said that he had been made happy. Mr Gresham had been conscious that his heart was not in it. But he was a conscientious man, and the sight of the mirror and the memory of the speech did not deter him.

BOOK: Derby Day
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