London - Edward Rutherfurd [500]
“Who’s that?” she asked her mother.
“That?” Her mother made a face. “That’s Silas. I don’t know how he discovered about your dad. I never asked him to come here.”
“He said he will come again.”
“I hope not.”
“What does he do?” the girl asked curiously.
“You don’t want to know,” her mother replied.
So what was he worth? As Penny walked across from Meredith’s Bank that October afternoon, it had suddenly started to matter. It mattered because of a pair of wonderful brown eyes and a kindly voice with a soft Scottish brogue, belonging to the person of Miss Mary Forsyth. It mattered rather urgently because he was about to encounter her father for the first time.
In the last eighteen months, Eugene had done rather well. He had managed to put a little money by and started to make some promising investments. A new level of confidence had been growing in the City during the previous two years, led by the swelling market for foreign loans. Meredith’s had already done very well out of Buenos Aires and Brazil and had just joined a huge syndicate for Mexico, though the bank had prudently declined opportunities to lend to Colombia and Peru. Encouraged by these vast and profitable shiploads of money passing through the City, the stockjobbers had been busy selling lesser bond issues and even joined stock companies like a flotilla in the great loans’ wake. A great bull market, in short, was gathering itself together and surging ahead. All investors, since all prices were rising, looked wise. And Eugene Penny, playing steadily as was his nature, had already made himself more than a thousand pounds. But would it, he wondered, as he entered the Royal Exchange, be enough to satisfy the redoubtable Hamish Forsyth?
The Royal Exchange had always been a busy place, but nowadays it was full to bursting. Every few yards of the world trade emporium seemed to be dedicated to some special trade. There was the Jamaica Walk, the Spanish Walk, the Norway Walk, where gaggles of jobbers sold stocks to buyers from every land. Eugene passed through a group of Dutchmen, then some Armenians, before he passed from the noisy and colourful scene to the quieter regions of the mezzanine floor above. There, in a large and impressive hall, Mr Forsyth’s place of business was to be found.
Lloyd’s of London was not to be taken lightly. The old business of Lloyd’s coffee shop had long since evolved into a carefully regulated partnership of the highest repute. Some of the smaller insurance brokers in town, Eugene knew, were little more than dressed-up barrow boys and card-sharps, but the men of Lloyd’s were of a very different stamp. In this solemn hall, which they leased from the Exchange, was kept the Lloyd’s Register of Shipping. Here, through syndicates rather like those used by banks for the greatest loans, the largest ships, no matter how valuable their cargo, were safely insured by the underwriters sitting at their desks. And of all the hundred or so underwriters, none was more solid or more awesomely principled than the dour figure who now, though he did not rise, granted Eugene a nod.
It was said of Mr Hamish Forsyth that he looked like a Scottish judge who had just passed sentence. His Presbyterian ancestors had been bleak as granite. But, though as stern as they, Hamish had preferred to transfer those feelings from the Kirk of God to the London insurance market. His brow, crowned with a few strands of grey hair, was noble; his nose, beak-like. From time to time he took large pinches of snuff, so that his conversation was punctuated by a series of huge sniffs – which gave to his utterances an air of finality which suggested that no ship he had insured would ever dare to sink.
“We’ll go across the