London - Edward Rutherfurd [497]
Chancing to pass Mendoza’s with Meredith one day, Eugene saw a curious sight. The young fellow was on the short side but very compact. Stripped to the waist he had a boxing stance like a professional. He had a white flash in his hair and, for some reason, kept a red kerchief round his neck. He had just knocked down a broker and cheerfully asked if anyone else wanted a fight when Meredith hailed him.
“Hello, George! What brings you here?”
“Hello, Meredith!” He grinned. “Fight?”
“No thanks. George, this is Eugene Penny.” He introduced them. “Penny, this is Mr George de Quette.” And Eugene realized that he was looking at the Earl of St James’s grandson.
Everybody had heard of George de Quette. Taking after his sporting grandfather rather than the sour Lord Bocton, he was renowned as the wildest, and jolliest young buck in England. He could ride like a jockey, fight like a turkey-cock and took no account of social rank. As for women, his exploits were legendary. He had been away for two years, sent by his father on a tour of the Continent, from which he had returned quite unchanged. Pulling on a shirt now he stepped out of the ring and chatted with them very pleasantly for several minutes.
It was typical of him that, seeing Penny in the street the following week, George remembered him at once and invited him into a coffee house. They had a delightful conversation, discussing the latest sporting events, but Penny discovered that the young aristocrat’s interests were wider than he had supposed. He had a considerable knowledge of France and Italy and had read quite widely. He even liked poetry.
“Everyone reads Lord Byron, of course. It’s the fashion,” he declared. “But I like Keats as well. People laugh at him because he’s not a gentleman, but did you read his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ last year? It’s beautiful.”
He seemed interested in the bank too, and asked Eugene all about his life there. Eugene even told him about his own trading in futures.
“I suppose banking’s like racing, really,” the young aristocrat remarked. “Study the form. Hedge your bets. I learned all I know from my grandfather. He’s a shrewd old devil, you know.” He smiled. “‘You’ve got to be ruthless.’ That’s what he’d tell me. ‘If something doesn’t work, get out, cut your losses, move on.’ That’s the art of all dealing, isn’t it?”
He was right, of course, Eugene thought. But if Meredith’s Bank got into trouble, he asked himself, would his lordship cut his losses? Just how ruthless, he wondered, would the sporting old Earl of St James turn out to be?
“I think,” said Lord Bocton to Silversleeves, towards the end of that year, “that my father shows promising signs.”
“Of seeing reason, my lord?”
“No, of madness. Indeed,” Lord Bocton continued, “he could go to prison.”
“You would wish that?”
“Certainly not. But we could save him from prison if you declared he was mad.”
“Might not prison serve your purpose, though?”
“Bedlam’s better,” Lord Bocton snapped.
“What exactly,” Silversleeves enquired, “has he done?”
It had disappointed Lord Bocton that his father had given him no great cause for complaint in the last two years. The development of villas in Regent’s Park had been slow and so Lord St James, who could not bear to be still, had instead purchased one of the stately, but far less ruinous terraced houses now lining the park’s eastern side. As for the earl’s dangerous politics, the situation had been calmer recently and with two forward-looking Tories, Canning and Robert Peel, joining the government, there was even a whisper that some modest reform might be desirable. If the earl was going mad, one had to admit that the present circumstances did not let it show to best advantage.
Help had come from St Pancras. In 1822 the select and aristocratic vestry of St Pancras had decided to build