A Dangerous Fortune

He put down the phone., Staring at the bookshelves of his library, he saw instead the grand facade of Pilasters Bank, and imagined the closing of the ornate iron doors. He saw passersby stop and look. Before long a crowd would gather, pointing at the closed doors and chattering excitedly. The word would go around the City faster than a fire in an oil store: Pilasters has crashed.

Pilasters has crashed.

Hugh buried his face in his hands.

2

“WE ARE ALL absolutely penniless,” said Hugh.

They did not understand, at first. He could tell by their faces.

They gathered in the drawing room of his house. It was a cluttered room, decorated by his wife, Nora, who loved to drape every stick of furniture with flowered fabrics and crowd every surface with ornaments. The guests had gone, at last — Hugh had not told anyone the bad news until the party was over — but the family were still in their wedding finery. Augusta sat with Edward, both of them wearing scornful, disbelieving expressions. Uncle Samuel sat next to Hugh. The other partners, Young William, Major Hartshorn and Sir Harry, stood behind a sofa on which sat their wives Beatrice, Madeleine and Clementine. Nora, flushed from lunch and champagne, sat in her usual chair beside the fire. The bride and groom, Nick and Dotty, held hands, looking frightened.

Hugh felt most sorry for the newlyweds. “Dotty’s dowry is gone, Nick. I’m afraid all our plans have come to nothing.”

Aunt Madeleine said shrilly: “You’re the Senior Partner — it must be your fault!”

She was being stupid and malicious. It was a predictable reaction, yet all the same Hugh was wounded. It was so unfair that she should blame him after he had fought so hard to prevent this.

However, William, her younger brother, corrected her with surprising sharpness. “Don’t talk rot, Madeleine,” he said. “Edward deceived us all and burdened the bank with huge amounts of Cordova bonds which are now worthless.” Hugh was grateful to him for being honest. William went on: “The blame lies with those of us who let him become Senior Partner.” He looked at Augusta.

Nora looked bewildered. “We can’t be penniless,” she said.

“But we are,” Hugh said patiently. “All our money is in the bank and the bank has failed.” There was some excuse for his wife’s not understanding: she had not been born into a banking family.

Augusta stood up and went to the fireplace. Hugh wondered whether she would try to defend her son, but she was not that foolish. “Never mind whose fault it is,” she said. “We must salvage what we can. There must be quite a lot of cash in the bank still, gold and bank notes. We must get it out and hide it somewhere safe before the creditors move in. Then—”

Hugh interrupted her. “We’ll do no such thing,” he said sharply. “It’s not our money.”

“Of course it’s our money!” she cried.

“Be quiet and sit down, Augusta, or I’ll have the footmen throw you out.”

She was sufficiently surprised to shut up, but she did not sit down.

Hugh said: “There is cash at the bank, and as we have not officially been declared bankrupt, we can choose to pay some of our creditors. You’ll all have to dismiss your servants; and if you send them to the side door of the bank with a note of how much they are owed I will pay them off. You should ask all tradesmen with whom you have accounts to give you a statement, and I will see that they are paid too — but only up to today’s date: I will not pay any debts you incur from now on.”

“Who are you to tell me to dismiss my servants?” Augusta said indignantly.

Hugh was prepared to feel sympathy for their plight, even though they had brought it on themselves; but this deliberate obtuseness was very wearying, and Hugh snapped at her: “If you don’t dismiss them they will leave anyway, because they won’t get paid. Aunt Augusta, try to understand that you haven’t got any money.”

“Ridiculous,” she muttered.

Nora spoke again. “I can’t dismiss our servants. It’s not possible to live in a house like this with no servants.”

“That need not trouble you,” Hugh said. “You won’t be living in a house like this. I will have to sell it. We will all have to sell our houses, furniture, works of art, wine cellars and jewelry.”

“This is absurd!” Augusta cried.

“It’s the law,” Hugh retorted. “Each partner is personally liable for all the debts of the business.”

“I’m not a partner,” said Augusta.

“But Edward is. He resigned as Senior Partner but he remained a partner, on paper. And he owns your house — Joseph left it to him.”

Nora said: “We have to live somewhere.”

“First thing tomorrow we must all look for small, cheap houses to rent. If you pick something modest our creditors will sanction it. If not you will have to choose again.”

Augusta said: “I have absolutely no intention of moving house, and that’s final. And I imagine the rest of the family feel the same.” She looked at her sister-in-law. “Madeleine?”

“Quite right, Augusta,” said Madeleine. “George and I will stay where we are. All this is foolishness. We can’t possibly be destitute.”

Hugh despised them. Even now, when their arrogance and foolishness had ruined them, they still refused to listen to reason. In the end they would have to give up their illusions. But if they tried to cling to wealth that was no longer theirs, they would destroy the family’s reputation as well as its fortune. He was determined to make them behave with scrupulous honesty, in poverty as in wealth. It was going to be an uphill struggle but he would not give in.

Augusta turned to her daughter. “Clementine, I’m sure you and Harry will take the same view as Madeleine and George.”

Clementine said: “No, Mother.”

Augusta gasped. Hugh was equally startled. It was not like his cousin Clementine to go against her mother. At least one family member had some common sense, he thought.

Clementine said: “It was listening to you that got us all into this trouble. If we had made Hugh Senior Partner, instead of Edward, we would all still be as rich as Croesus.”

Hugh began to feel better. Some of the family understood what he had tried to do.

Clementine went on: “You were wrong, Mother, and you’ve ruined us. I’m never going to heed your advice again. Hugh was right, and we had better let him do all he can to guide us through this dreadful disaster.”

William said: “Quite right, Clementine. We should do whatever Hugh advises.”

The battle lines were drawn. On Hugh’s side were William, Samuel, and Clementine, who ruled her husband Sir Harry. They would try to behave decently and honestly. Against him were Augusta, Edward, and Madeleine, who spoke for Major Hartshorn: they would try to snatch what they could and let the family’s reputation go to hell.

Then Nora said defiantly: “You’ll have to carry me out of this house.”

There was a bitter taste in Hugh’s mouth. His own wife was joining the enemy. “You’re the only person in the room who has gone against their husband or wife,” he said sadly. “Don’t you owe me any loyalty at all?”

She tossed her head. “I didn’t marry you to live in poverty.”

“All the same you will leave this house,” he said grimly. He looked at the other diehards: Augusta, Edward, Madeleine and Major Hartshorn. “You will all have to give in, eventually,” he said. “If you don’t do it now, with dignity, you’ll do it later, in disgrace, with bailiffs and policemen and newspaper reporters in attendance, vilified by the gutter press and slighted by your unpaid servants.”

“We shall see about that,” said Augusta.

When they had all gone Hugh sat staring into the fire, racking his brains for some way to pay the bank’s creditors.

He was determined not to let Pilasters go into formal bankruptcy. The idea was almost too painful to contemplate. All his life he had lived under the shadow of his father’s bankruptcy. His whole career had been an attempt to prove he was not tainted. In his heart of hearts he feared that if he suffered the same fate as his father, he too might be driven to take his own life.

Pilasters was finished as a bank. It had closed its doors on its depositors, and that was the end. But in the