House of All Nations (116 page)

Jean de Guipatin remained and Campoverde had doubts about this soft aristocrat: true, he was loyal to Jules and had stayed to the very last, after William had fled, had seen the wreck of the bank through its worst batterings, had answered clients and employees and police officials alike; but Jean de Guipatin was the liberal and even radical younger son, not the sort the hard young Campoverde wanted. Campoverde wanted the sportsmen, the heirs apparent, the clubmen, the beaux, and the monarchist-royalist-fascist crowd, men of the new world. His life was going to be built in the new world. He was born during the war and he knew nothing soft or broad-minded: he only knew his own wants, his own age, and his determination to belong to the governors of the future … But he discovered something. After Jean de Guipatin had routed the police, he was away for some time—with his mother, it was thought. But it was now discovered that he had gone to Esthonia to see Jules. To start a new business? To discover the whereabouts of the missing gold? Who knew. Therefore, tentatively, Campoverde wrote a friendly boyish letter to Guipatin and mentioned that he had some plans he would discuss with him, when he returned. Perhaps also Jules had funds he could not use himself, and might secretly back Campoverde. But Campoverde would never allow Jules in his bank as a partner …

The next news was that Cornelis Brouwer was also in Esthonia! And then Jan Witkraan from Amsterdam. And last of all Dick Plowman, the old backer of Jules. What was on foot? Another bank perhaps! Campoverde languished a little at the thought that Jules might become his competitor before he was properly established. Once established, he felt he could beat Jules.

The news about Brouwer and Witkraan was true. But as for Dick Plowman, he only went to Esthonia to see the country. He was found by Brouwer staying in the same hotel as himself. Brouwer naturally asked Jules how he got on with Plowman now and was surprised to find that Jules did not know Plowman was in Esthonia. He exclaimed in shocked surprise, ‘Plowman? Why he's never been near me, never even wrote me a note. I can't understand it,' and it became evident that Jules had the feeling that all members of his class should rather applaud him than otherwise for what he had done, even if they had lost money in the venture.

‘Why,' Jules went on indignantly, ‘he knows I never meant him any harm. He knows that I'll pay him back when I get my affairs in order. It's just in trust. He can trust me. He always did. And I know he's not broke. I know quite well he's rich. Imagine,' he went on with some wrath, ‘Dick used to tell me he kept every cent with me, and now I find he had nearly half a million sterling in various banks of the Big Five in England and two hundred thousand crowns with Dannevig's trust company. That's not honest; he wasn't open with me … Then I've heard of a safety vault, too. It's funny, isn't it? You'd swear a man's your friend for years. Why, he used to live at our house. Then you suddenly find he's been lying to you all along.'

He brooded a little, though, over Plowman's silence. Plowman, after making what inquiries he could about Jules and setting a detective to watch for him, in case Jules went to any bank vaults, or made any move to export gold or bonds, went back to England. He had already entered his name along with the French creditors. This to him unexpected enmity disturbed Jules and made him feel that his star had fallen. He was an unquiet, bad-tempered person; he had lived in a fairy world and thought he would be fate's spoiled darling to the end of time. He began to nourish a stout grudge against Plowman, whom he now thought of as going about telling his tale to people and ruining what little amiability they had for him.

But Plowman went to see Alphendéry, when he returned from Alsace to Amsterdam, in his new employ with Henri Léon. He went out to dinner with the two and, when Léon had gone routing to the telephone, said in a low voice, ‘I was in Esthonia but I didn't see Jules. He rang me up but I didn't speak to him.' He stopped speaking and looked bitter and sad. ‘I always looked on Jules as my own son. Well, a good many sons have given their fathers bad hours.' He tried to laugh. His face was old, almost as if he had had a stroke; it grimaced away, out of his control.

But Rhys of Rotterdam, the next day, lunching with Léon and Alphendéry, had no sympathy. ‘Really I don't think he's entitled to any pity. I don't think the financial district of the world gives a sou for Plowman's hurt feelings or his pocketbook, and Jules Bertillon needn't worry about that. When a man's been in banking in every quarter of the compass, all his life, the way Plowman has, and he allows himself to be stung that way, by a very obvious flimsy promoter like Bertillon—and after how many warnings!—I have no sympathy for him, I assure you. He ought to be ashamed of himself.'

Alphendéry laughed. ‘You never met Jules: he was irresistible. Even if he'd told people the whole story, I believe they would have trusted him.'

‘I've heard that said. That's what damned him. It all came too easily. He must have been a knockout of a young fellow, though. I can easily see how poor old Plowman might get soft that way. His own sons are such hunting-and-shooting gawks. His own fault. Our sons are our wives' revenge on us …' Rhys turned his healthy little face to Alphendéry seriously. ‘Mr. Alphendéry, a personal question … no need to answer it. Will you ever have any idea of going to Esthonia for a visit?'

Alphendéry laughed. ‘No, I'm through with finance for ever and a day. I'm in tangible goods now. You are afraid I will go in again with Bertillon?'

Rhys's beryl eyes glinted pleasantly. ‘Yes, I
am
afraid. You see, you are too fond of him.'

‘I have other dreams now: I'm getting older. I've given my whole youth to this sterile business. I'm not a boy any longer. I never thought the day would come when I would feel as independent and—cold as I feel today … Myself first, the rest nowhere; that's not blatant—that's what finance has brought me down to … Maybe I'll get out of it some day.'

Rhys nodded, then grew serious. ‘Mr. Alphendéry, I must ask you: is there any truth in the statement in some French papers that you are a communist, a Soviet agent?'

‘Fairy tales have nine lives. No. And I never was.'

‘I'm glad of that,' said Rhys portentously. ‘I should have felt very differently about the whole thing. Yes, indeed …'

At the end of a year, the creditors' case for the opening of the bank vaults, refused by the banks, was fought to the highest courts in Holland and, despite the assurances of Mme. Quiero, when they were opened, nothing was found there … Campoverde who to the very last had depended on his family's money being there, and who had ridden the storm very well, was greatly dashed by this news and began to consider suits against everyone in general, including Jacques Manray, Richard Plowman, and Alphendéry. But Maître Lemaître, become his lawyer, drew a piece of paper to him and figured for a while on it, then pushed the paper to Campoverde. He read:

Banque Mercure S.A. Creditors are paying at this moment:

Eighty-five Belgian lawyers,

Sixty Dutch lawyers,

Ten English lawyers,

Thirty French lawyers,

Twelve North American lawyers,

One South American lawyer:

Grand total: two hundred and eight fat oxen on the Bertillon pastures.

‘How much of the totals aimed at (not of those accessible) will be paid over to the members of my profession, before one red living centime is returned to them?' asked Lemaître. ‘Prince, I counsel you to take no counsel. Go into business yourself, and make money that way. Do not attempt to get it back. You will only lose your health, time, and money. Bertillon might go into business again, make another coup; then you would have a chance of getting your money back. Now it is pure fantasy. Drop it. It would be better, in fact, to go into business with Bertillon. That is a better play for you. You have the funds, you have the capacity, that is your ambition. Bertillon yielded up all his secrets to you. Go ahead, consider yourself paid, and try to get back your family's money one of these days, as interest …'

And after some slow thoughts and sleepless hours, Campoverde decided to take this cheap advice.

When Campoverde opened his bank in Amsterdam in the very offices once occupied by Jules, with Jan Witkraan as his manager and Mouradzian as his Paris customers' man, Henri Léon and Alphendéry went to wish him good luck and make the usual fuss. Alphendéry had a telegram which he smoothed out on Campoverde's desk, when the visitors had left him for a moment:

ALPHENDÉRY, AMSTRAMGRAM, AMSTERDAM. JULES LEFT HERE WITHOUT WORD: HAVE YOU SEEN HIM? PLEASE TRY TO TRACE HIM.

WILLIAM

But Jules did not turn up and although everyone made extensive inquiries in every quarter of the financial universe, he was not seen. This was strange, contrary to Jules's usual glorious, Hollywood way, and those who loved him began to hope that he had really been able to renew himself and start a new life elsewhere in a new name, without the shadow of the old. Who knows? Adventurers are flying every day and rising again under new governments and speaking new languages. His old friends, and even the most pertinacious of the creditors, hoped that he went and made immediately a shining new fortune with which he would come home presently to flash in their eyes. For he had by now benefited by the immorality as well as by the mythomania of the financial world and had begun to be relacquered in the minds of the rich. For others, though, it is true, he still remained a rankle and a hurt, the charmer who deceived.

Montpellier, France, 1937

 

 

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First published in 1938 by Simon & Schuster

Text © Christina Stead, 1938; estate of Christina Stead, 2013

Introduction © Alan Kohler 2013

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