House of All Nations (53 page)

‘I say,' said Vanderallee, opening his eyes again, ‘she's a lovely-looking girl; she looked like one of those sixteenth-century paintings—absolutely cinquecento—not the same, doesn't matter—where the Madonna is a queen, on a throne, with a diamond—diadem, that is to say. She looks lovely in that tiara: how much they soak you for it, François? She's lovely woman, your daughter.'

‘Yes, she's an attractive bitch,' bubbled François, ‘should think she would be—she's spent a million guilders a year on her looks since she was ten. She ought to look good. She doesn't give her old father much. She's kindhearted though: very kindhearted. She always appeals for funds for the orphans. Every year. She's kindhearted. But she's not as soft as she looks. Not as—as hard as nails.'

‘I didn't say she looked soft,' amended Willem.

François went in for even worse obscenities. Jules, never obscene, said, ‘Hey, François, she's your daughter: it's her wedding day—give her a break for once, as a wedding present.'

François giggled, ‘Oh, the little devil understands me: we have nothing to thank each other for. You're right though, Jules, you've got nice instincts. Always had the right instincts. Perfect gentleman. Yes, it's my little girl's wedding day. When Duc-Adam asked me, I said, “Take her, my boy, you been sleeping with her two years anyhow. The sooner she marries you the sooner she'll get tired of you.” He looked sick. She's not my daughter: what rot you talking Jules? She's the daughter of seventy million guilders. That's not the same thing at all as being the daughter of Mr. François Legris, perpetual soak, plain citizen. She hasn't got my tastes—she's got the tastes of seventy million guilders. She's too good for me. Not my daughter. I don't care what I say about her.'

‘I'm glad she hasn't got your tastes,' murmured Nanti, from his armchair.

François winked, ‘She gave me her loose change; she'll give Duc-Adam her loose change. Let's have a drink.'

‘I say,' Jules recollected suddenly, ‘you nearly did a lunatic thing, Willem. That marriage contract. You made a contract under Dutch law giving Duc-Adam a million guilders plus living expenses. You ought to know that in a French marriage a French contract for separation of estate has to be made. You nearly landed Lhermite with the whole fortune. Say, François, why don't you fire him? He's a freak lawyer. First, he lets the Scheldt en Dogger Bank know what I'm doing, and they call in my loan and—don't you realize I could sue you and Anthony for breach of contract?'

‘Sue us, sue us,' François waved his hand cheerfully.

About a quarter of an hour later, Willem Vanderallee, rolling, flushed, drunk, spoke boisterously, ‘We're going to put it across, William. Jules is going to give us a letter appointing us his agents.'

The letter gave Messrs. Legris and Maîtres Nanti and Vanderallee power to act for Jules Bertillon in bringing to a satisfactory finality the claim of the Scheldt en Dogger Bank for fifty thousand guilders loaned to Jules Bertillon at the request of Messrs. Legris and Company, Amsterdam.

According to promise, Jules notified his Amsterdam lawyer, Michel's friend, Maître Friesz, to cease his countersuit against the Scheldt en Dogger, because he had fixed the affair in Paris himself with the help of Maître Olympe. The Amsterdam lawyer, in high dudgeon, sent Jules a stiff account at once. He had maneuvered and negotiated for six weeks and considered he had the Scheldt en Dogger in a deep hole and he had argument enough if necessary to sue Legris Brothers also. The next mail brought all the related papers flying back and an insulted and injured letter from the lawyer. This friend of Alphendéry had considered the brilliant double suit which he had prepared a good debut in the interesting and always actively litigating firm of Jules Bertillon. He was more than mortified to have to scrap it all for some chicane on the part of Vanderallee. He wrote a severe letter to Alphendéry saying that Vanderallee would certainly ditch the Bertillons, as he was hand-in-glove with the Legris firm. ‘He's just jealous,' said Jules. ‘Trust a lawyer to prefer to fight a case to settling it.'

Three days later they were notified, by the usual channels, in a brief style, that the Scheldt en Dogger Bank had drawn on Legris and Company, Amsterdam, for fifty thousand guilders for the account of Jules Bertillon, and had been paid; with a letter from Legris and Company, asking for a draft to pay fifty thousand guilders in Bertillon's Amsterdam account, to replace the money legitimately drawn by the Scheldt en Dogger in settlement of their claim settled by François Legris acting for Jules Bertillon. William Bertillon and Alphendéry were too polite to make any comment to Jules.

* * *

Scene Forty-nine: Various Matters

T
he affair of the marriage contract being noised around, people began to consider that Jules was most intimately related to Legris Brothers of Amsterdam and Jules himself for the time being thrust far into the background his idea that business was a mistake and that he ought to fold up the bank before its bright picture was tarnished.

Jules, much entertained, in his empty, amoral life, by some speculations of Alphendéry about Carrière's immorality, said, ‘Ah, Alphendéry, I'm glad to hear you say that about Carrière but I too will be out of the public eye in ten years: I don't care to stay in it as long and then if your argument applies to Carrière, it applies to me, too. I sleep with my own wife, true; but I sleep with other people's money. And raped money gets people much wilder than raped wives.'

He felt much closer to Carrière than to Alphendéry; he admired his rascality while detesting his opposition: Alphendéry was a mystery to Jules. He knew that Michel knew that the business they were all in was (as he put it) ‘pure theft,' and Michel had many a time proved to him that private banking of any sort was a ‘titanic pickpocketing.' But Michel went on working for him at a mediocre salary and did not even filch a few thousand francs each month, which was what Jules fully expected him to do. If Jules had found out that Michel was putting away a little each month in a secret account in another bank, for himself and accounting for it somehow or other, or if Michel had even run up a sizable overdraft, or taken the money and put in I.O.U.'s, or even if Alphendéry had taken a big house and expected Jules to pay for it, or bought a car he couldn't afford and charged it to the bank, or if he had gone (as Jules had requested him to do) to Jules's princely tailors and got himself a wardrobe on Jules's account, or anything of that sort, Jules would have understood it, considered it his right, and thought the better of him. But Michel worked for the agreed stipend like any clerk and Jules quite openly thought it was something petty, limited, and clerkly in his nature which prevented him from providing for himself.

‘Why,' said Jules to William once, in private, ‘we've given him enough warning. He knows we're going to shut up shop one day. Why doesn't he take notice? For a bright man, he's subnormal.'

‘He's honest: there is such a thing,' remarked William. ‘You and I don't know about it.'

Jules mused, ‘The Comtesse said the other day, “The day I found out there were men in France who couldn't be bought, I sent my gold abroad.” Smart girl. She's right. It makes me feel queer. It's a sort of fanaticism.' He felt so queer that when he next saw Alphendéry, he said only half jocularly, ‘I say, Michel, why don't you put your name to a few checks: it's your right. Your signature is good here!'

Michel said, ‘If you don't mind, I was thinking next month I'd ask you for twenty thousand francs overdraft to send to Estelle. I want to give her a hint that she may as well get another husband. I'm not much good to her, and the way to grease these things is with a present, to show there's no ill will. You can put it down on my account. I'll pay you back when I make some money in the market.'

Jules laughed heartily. ‘You're never in the market, are you?'

‘No. But I might take a flier. Just to cover some of my expenses.'

‘That's an old one,' murmured Jules.

Alphendéry ruefully said, ‘I know: it's a sure road to ruin. I won't then. I'll pay you back.'

Jules let out the most exasperated long laugh Michel had ever heard. He got up and walked up and down the room, looking at Michel glumly from time to time. Then he said angrily, ‘Michel, take it for a present. Good God, I don't want it back. Why don't you get yourself some suits, Michel? Why don't you provide for yourself? Who's going to know? I don't give a damn. One of these days, there'll be some sort of a smash, and no one will be better off for your modesty.'

‘It's not in my heart to take money I don't earn, Jules.'

Jules was quite acid. ‘You're a fool, Michel.'

‘Jules, you know what is in my heart? When I leave you, when I've provided for Estelle and my mother, I want to join my friends—I couldn't do that if I'd been helping myself, even to your money.'

Jules sat down and looked at him with interest, ‘I thought you belonged to the communists. I did, honestly. I thought you were working for them.'

‘You thought that and you left me to control your funds the way you do?'

Jules threw back his head. ‘Surely. I know you wouldn't give them dirty dough. I would, but you wouldn't. What do I care?' He looked at Alphendéry with a puzzled, half-derisive expression, ‘Michel, why are you in this game?'

‘First,' said Michel, rather desperately, ‘because I like comfort, I suppose, and because I haven't got the manhood, as Jean Frère has, to tell my wife and mother and child (if I ever had one) that they must live in poverty, because I couldn't wear my bones out for them. Second, because I have been in finance ever since I was a boy. My father was a small banker as well as lawyer, my grandfather a small steelmaster. When my father died, I became the secretary of Alphendéry, the Alsatian
rentier
millionaire who had retired and made a hobby of collecting proofs of Dreyfus's innocence. He was also a Marxist and while with him I became a fervent Marxist. You see, I have always been a revolutionary at ease, the shadow of a rich man. It would take a violent effort of will to wrench myself out of that setting, and I suppose I will some day. If I go round much longer with Jean Frère I certainly will. He is practically monosyllabic but when he expresses some vague feeling that I should go and see something or do something, about a month later, I find myself doing it. I have met my match.'

Jules looked at him affectionately. ‘Oh, you are too kind, Michel! That is your only weakness. You have a heart of gold—the only gold you'll ever have.'

The same afternoon Jules telephoned to Alphendéry in his office. ‘Come round to my office, Michel: I believe I've got something on old Legris.' But when Alphendéry got to the office, Jules merely said carelessly, ‘You made a lot of money for me this year, Michel.'

‘Yes, I know.'

Jules pointed to an envelope on the table. ‘You ought to take care of your mother: perhaps that will.'

Michel opened the envelope and found one hundred thousand francs in Treasury bonds.

‘Thanks very much, Jules.'

‘You earned it: you ought to hate me for it, on your theory. I get the lion's share and you made it all yourself!' He laughed kindly. He followed Michel back to his room, saw no one was there, and when Michel sat down, put some more bonds on the table. ‘What difference does it make? You may as well pay off that wife of yours too. And take some advice, Michel. Forget Estelle: join your friends and get used to drinking the two-cent wine of that friend of yours, Frère. When you come back from seeing him, you look ten years younger … Why don't you bring him in? I'd like to see the fellow.' He sauntered out.

Michel, with a heart strangely mute, looked at the other bonds—in all, one hundred seventy-five thousand francs in bonds. He looked at the money. He would assign it some other time. Meanwhile he felt unspeakably melancholy. Jules had recommended him to give up this mad and detested life and join his real friends. But Michel could not contemplate leaving Jules yet. Why? He went to a workers' meeting that evening and gave one hundred francs to the collection, immediately after felt extremely gay and lighthearted, and came back to the bank the next day without a thought of leaving and everything went on as before, except that he brought Jean Frère in to see Jules. Jean seemed to be struck dumb, Jules was in a bad temper, and everything went awry. Jules said angrily, after, ‘What the deuce do you see in that fellow? Don't get sentimental, Michel, or you'll be throwing over a comfortable life for a lot of fellows you don't know and you'll be intensely miserable. I know you, Michel. You couldn't stand it.'

Mlle. Louise Bernard, confidential secretary of the Bertillons and Alphendéry, was called to the great directors' room where Daniel Cambo and Ephraïm Dreyer were installed. Aristide Raccamond, passing at the moment and peering in, saw Dreyer, Alphendéry, and, in a dark-green armchair, a great oxycephalic head but nothing more. All this secrecy annoyed him and gnawed at his tranquillity. William Bertillon passed him, tried the door, found it locked, shrugged, and came back again. Dreyer, though a man of fifty-five, sprang out of his chair and offered Mlle. Bernard a seat. Cambo put on his dancing-partner expression and came and stood at her elbow. After some little parley in Ladino, they agreed, and Dreyer dictated to the young lady in French:

July 15, 1930

Ephraïm Dreyer,Nieuwdoelenstraat, Amsterdam.

Dear Sir,

We regret to inform you that your short sale of Docks du Havre is now undermargined, due to this stock having risen by forty-five points, as you will have seen. Will you kindly remit the necessary amount to us before tomorrow's closing?

Yours truly
,