Drop of the Dice (26 page)

I suppose any other man but Lance would have been furious with me. Not so Lance. He looked at me in astonishment for a moment and then laughed. There was no doubting the admiration in his eyes.

‘Clarissa,’ he said, ‘my splendid Clarissa. I am forgiven, am I not?’

I could not resist him, so I said I supposed he was.

‘It was arrogant of me. It was wrong. It was foolish. But, believe me, I was only thinking of the pleasure I should have in confronting you with the fact that you had become a richer woman.’

‘I am quite content with what I have.’

‘The world’s phenomenon,’ he said. ‘A contented woman!’

‘Oh Lance,’ I pleaded, ‘give up all this gambling. What is the purpose of it? We have enough. Why take risks in the hope of getting more?’

‘It’s not exactly money,’ he said seriously. ‘It’s the fun of it… the excitement. I’ll never get you to understand. However, my sweet Clarissa, you have taught me a lesson. I promise I will never be so foolish again. But I am forgiven my sins now. That’s so, isn’t it?’

‘Of course, and I know you were trying to do what you thought was best for me.’

We were lovers again.

It was the following day when Mr Grendall sent a messenger to me. He had sold my shares in the South Sea Company. They had been bought at a hundred pounds and sold for a thousand. Thus my five thousand had become fifty thousand.

I had become a very rich woman overnight.

I shall never forget the months that followed. There was tension and excitement in the streets of London as the price of South Sea stock rose. Lance never exactly said, I told you so, but he did point out how wealthy I might have been if I had not sold out.

He himself had put all the money he could raise into the company; sometimes he was on the verge of selling but he could never bring himself to do so. He always felt there would be another rise the following day.

Everyone was talking about the South Sea wonder. Sir Robert Walpole condemned the scheme from the start and warned the public about over-investing. It turned out, however, that he himself had bought a number of shares but, as I had, had sold out at a big profit. The Prince of Wales had also invested and sold advantageously. There was euphoria throughout the country and everyone who could scrape together a few pounds was clamouring for shares.

‘Think how much you would have to pay for those shares which you bought at a hundred,’ Lance reminded me.

‘I don’t need to think as I have no intention of buying more.’

‘You’re throwing away a fortune.’

‘On the contrary, I have made one.’

‘But, my dear Clarissa, think how much richer you would have been if you had left the shares in.’

‘On paper,’ I reminded him. ‘I have really done very well.’

‘Thanks to what you thought of as my wickedness in the first place.’

I agreed that this was so. ‘But,’ I said firmly, ‘my money remains where it is.’

‘Is that final?’ asked Lance pleadingly. He himself had nothing left with which to gamble and was itching to get his hands on my money, I knew.

‘Final,’ I replied with emphasis.

He would take me to the coffee houses, which were full of people talking of the wonder of the South Sea Company; they discussed their plans for spending their newly acquired wealth. Even the sellers of spiced gingerbread and watercress talked of the wonders of the times to come when everybody would be rich.

All through the summer the fervour persisted, and always I refused to be drawn into it.

Then, as suddenly as dreams of prosperity had come, they began to disappear. It was a hot August, I remember. We should have been in the country, but Lance could not tear himself away from the excitement of London. Each day he studied the prices and calculated how rich his shares in the South Sea Company had made him.

He came into the drawing-room where I was sitting reading and there was a look of intense excitement on his face.

I looked up and asked what had happened.

He threw himself into a chair and said: ‘The stock is down to eight hundred and fifty.’

‘Eight hundred and fifty!’ I repeated. I had taken little interest in the market and had deliberately refused to listen, but I did know that I had sold out at a thousand.

‘I can’t understand it,’ went on Lance. ‘It’s all happened in a day. It’s because of the spurious companies which have been springing up… trying to get in on the reputation of the South Sea Company. Some of them have been proved to be false and people are panicking. It’ll pass.’

But it did not pass. The next day the shares were down to eight hundred and twenty and within the next two days to seven hundred.

The mood of the streets had changed. There were gloomy faces in the coffee houses; the street merchants were looking anxious and the traders chattered in hushed voices.

‘It’ll pass,’ said Lance. ‘It’s just a momentary panic. Then they’ll shoot up higher than ever. People are beginning to sell. When the shares go up they’ll have to pay higher to get them back.’

By mid-September the shares had tumbled to one hundred and fifty. I marvelled that what I had sold for a thousand would not bring in one hundred and fifty now. I shuddered to think how quickly fortunes could be made and lost.

Even Lance was uneasy now. On the last day of September the shares had dropped below a hundred. I remember that day so well. I had never seen him so downcast before.

I ran to him in consternation when he came in from the city.

‘Why, Lance,’ I cried, ‘what has happened?’

He said: ‘Frank Welling has killed himself.’

I knew Frank Welling. He was one of the first of Lance’s friends I had met after my marriage—a wealthy man with estates in the country and a magnificent town house in St James’s Street. I knew that he had been a gambling friend of Lance’s and they often went to clubs together.

‘He shot himself,’ said Lance. ‘He lost everything.’

‘How dreadful for his family.’

‘I’m afraid there will be others like him.’

I was so passionately angry. Why could they not resist the desire to gamble? They knew the risk involved. How could they be so foolhardy?

I thought of Frank Welling’s wife, and there were three children, I remembered. What tragedy had come to their lives which before had been so comfortable, and all because of an irresistible desire to grow rich quickly and take a gamble on it.

Frank Welling’s case was one of many. Those excited people who had thronged the coffee houses now assembled there to discuss the tragedy which had befallen them. Everyone was talking about what they called the South Sea Bubble.

Very few people had profited from that affair—only people like Robert Walpole and the Prince of Wales who had foreseen disaster, and those like myself who had no desire to gamble.

I was afraid for Lance, for I knew he must have lost heavily. He had. Fortunately the estate in the country was intact. I had been afraid that he might try to raise money on that. I believe he had been contemplating doing so when he realized how things had been going. He still would have the town house but everything else was reduced to a fraction of what it had been before.

For a few days he was very despondent indeed, but after that his spirits rose. I believed he was assuring himself that he would soon win back his losses. After a few days he was saying that it was all part of the gamble. He had lost this time but would win the next.

‘Rather a big gamble and rather a lot to lose,’ I reminded him.

He conceded that. ‘You, dear Clarissa, were the clever one.’

‘If it is clever to know how foolish it is to risk what you have in the hope of getting more, then I am indeed clever.’

‘So severe,’ he said, kissing the tip of my nose.

‘Oh, Lance,’ I answered, ‘how I wish you did not feel this urge to gamble. I wish…’

‘You wish I were different.’

‘Only in this respect.’

He looked at me pensively and said: ‘It is a mistake to try to change people, Clarissa. I learned that long ago. So you have to accept me as I am… and, my dear Clarissa, please don’t let my follies make any difference to that.’

‘I expect I have foibles.’

‘Adorable ones,’ he told me.

Then he held me to him and whispered: ‘One of us came very well out of this sorry business. My own clever Clarissa.’

T
HE EFFECTS OF THE
South Sea Bubble went rumbling on through that year. There were many sad stories and countless suicides. A subdued air fell over the city. Cynical cartoons appeared. There was one, I remember, with Folly as the charioteer of Fortune which depicted a carriage drawn by foxes with the faces of agents for the Company, and the Devil was in the sky, laughing and blowing soap bubbles.

Nobody talked now of getting rich quickly; instead, it was a matter of speedily reaching the reverse state.

When Lance reckoned up his losses, it was a very depressing time. He decided he would have to sell some of the land in the country merely to keep going. I might have offered to help but I did not want to do this. I think I must have had something of the reformer in me at that time because I was determined he should learn his lesson. He must realize the folly of this incessant gambling.

We went down to the country after that. It was a relief to get away from London, but even in the country there were dismal stories of people who were facing ruin. It was impossible to escape from the disaster of the South Sea Bubble.

I think Lance was a little penitent. It was some time since he had been to the London gaming clubs, and when we arrived in the country there were none of those gatherings, the purpose of which was to play cards as quickly as possible. People were just not in the mood for it—nor, now, had most of them the means.

Lance had lost a fortune but he had done so with a certain amount of cheerfulness and quickly began to think of what had happened as the luck of the game. ‘It could have gone the other way,’ he said. ‘Suppose I had sold just before the fall, as I might well have done. Think what I should have now!’

‘But you did not,’ I pointed out in exasperation.

‘No. But I easily might have.’

I knew that he had not learned one little lesson from what had happened.

At the end of October a letter arrived from Aimée. This was a real cry for help.

Dear Sister,

I am writing to you in the hope that, because of the close bond between us, you will lend me a helping hand. I am in desperate straits. My husband has died. It was the shock of the Bubble. We had both invested heavily, with what result you can guess. We lost almost everything. I shall have to sell up and get what I can for what is left to me. Who would have believed this terrible thing could have happened! Everyone was so sure. It has been the most terrible shock. I know I am not the only one to find myself in such a position, but I shall have to decide what I can do. I could go back to France, perhaps, and it may be that this is what I shall have to do. But I am not sure… particularly as… It is no use holding back the facts. I am pregnant, Clarissa. We were so looking forward to having a child. Poor Ralph. He thought it was so wonderful… and now he is dead. It was a heart attack when he heard that we had lost almost everything. I am desperate because I was persuaded to risk what I had from our father in this miserable South Sea Company.

I don’t know what I shall do. I may have to work, though I don’t know how with a baby to care for. But, dear sister, until I can straighten out my affairs, would you be so good—as you once offered—to let me come to you? I promise you I will help in the house. I will try not to be a trouble to you. But do understand I would not ask you if I were not desperate.

If you say yes, I will come to you, say, in three months’ time. It will take me that time to settle here and salvage what I can. If you do say yes you will make me as happy as it is possible for me to be in these circumstances.

I think I shall be ready to travel in January, and the birth would still be three months ahead so I should still be able to make the journey. I shall eagerly await your reply, but I shall begin making preparations now because, knowing you, dear sister, I am sure you will not refuse me in my need.

Your loving sister,

Aimée

I showed the letter to Lance and he immediately said: ‘Poor girl! She must be anxious. Write and tell her at once that she must come to us. She’ll be company for you.’

So I despatched a letter immediately and wondered what difference Aimée’s coming would make to our household.

Once more we spent Christmas at Enderby. Damaris told me that she thought the great-grandparents were getting too old to preside over the festivities and she and Priscilla both thought that Enderby would be a good place to have them.

We did all the traditional things and the days flew past. We returned to London on the sixth of January. Aimée was due at the end of the month.

She was catching the coach from York and travelling to London and we would meet her at the coaching inn and take her to Albemarle Street from there. We had planned that we would stay in London until the birth of the child.

I was excited at the prospect of having my sister to live with us. Looking back, I realized I knew very little about her and what I had discovered at Hessenfield had been submerged beneath the importance of my meeting with Dickon.

We were waiting at the inn when the coach arrived, a lumbering vehicle, leather-covered and studded with nails, windows covered by leather curtains and a rounded roof with an outside seat over the boot.

The guard alighted first, hampered by the blunderbuss which he carried as a protection against any highwayman encountered on the road, and the horn which he would blow on passing through a town or village. Then came the postillion, who had been riding on the foremost of the three horses. He was dressed in a green coat laced with gold and wore a cocked hat.

The passengers finally emerged and among them Aimée. She looked different from the others and even a long and uncomfortable journey on rough and muddy roads could not destroy her innate elegance. She wore a woollen cloak—navy-blue in colour over a dress of the same material and she had one of the latest fashions in cocked hats which was blue and trimmed with touches of red. The garments were plain but in the best of taste. I could never understand whether it was the manner in which her clothes were cut or the way she wore them which gave them distinction. She had made them herself, I discovered later, for she had been apprenticed to a
couturière
in Paris when she was a young girl.