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By Root 2102 0

He was sick of homespun and home-made. He had secreted a glass of champagne behind the black lacquer puppet-boxes, and thought it was delicious and complex, cold bubbles bursting on his tongue, the mist on the glass, the transparent gold liquid. Some people had this every day. Some people did not sleep under a leaky roof in an old mansion with a cold wind blowing through it, for the sake of mounds of clay and visions of glazed vessels. Money was freedom. Money was aesthetic. Money was Arab stallions, not rough cobs. Money was not being shouted at. (Even though Humphry was shouting at Basil.) Money was freedom. Money was life. Something like that, Geraint thought. The brothers had always stepped back from the brink of a real rift. They sparred, and grumbled, and spoke of something else. No one supposed, when Humphry provocatively mentioned Barney Barnato, that this time would be different.

Barnato was a genial, smooth-talking East Ender, who had made a fortune in the diamond fields of Kimberley. He was a founding member of a club in Angel Court, off Throgmorton Street, which was jokingly known as the Thieves’ Kitchen. Barnato had moved from diamonds to gold mines, and was in the process of founding his own bank. He generated a fever of greed and excitement and risk. Basil had invested in his enterprises, and was uneasy about it. An article had appeared in a satirical paper, the Domino, over the pseudonym, The March Hare. It represented the Thieves Kitchen as a gambling Hell in which a recognisable Barnato appeared as a demon croupier, raking the stakes into a fiery pit. It compared him also to Bunyan’s “Demas (gentleman-like)” who “stood a little off the road against a little hill called Lucre, and called to the pilgrims Ho! turn aside hither, and I will show you a thing. Here is a silver mine and some digging in it for treasure; if you will come, with a little pains you may richly provide for yourself. Christian asked Demas Is not the place dangerous? Hath it not hindered many in their pilgrimage? Demas said Not very dangerous, except to those that are careless. But withal he blushed as he spake.”

The March Hare had played elegantly with that giveaway blush. Humphry made the mistake of quoting Bunyan in the argument with Basil. This reminded both of them of The March Hare’s accusations. But Humphry quoted further into Pilgrim’s Progress, passages not in the Domino attack. Barnato led people into rashness and loss, said Humphry. “Whether they fell into the pit by looking over the brink thereof, or whether they went down to dig, or whether they were smothered in the bottom by the damps that commonly arrive, of these things I am not certain …” People perish like Mr. By-Ends, said Humphry.

Basil said “You know your text very well.”

“We all know the Pilgrim’s Progress, from childhood. And you must know it is apt.”

“We do not all have it at our fingertips, to quote in libellous articles, to which we dare not put our name.”

The accusation had been made. Humphry could neither bluster, nor deny.

“You cannot deny the argument has weight? That the warnings in it need to be heard?”

“A man should not do one kind of work by day, and stir up mud by night, to stick on his colleagues. And to harm his family,” Basil added.

Humphry sneered. He did not feel like sneering—he felt he was himself on the brink of a pit. But the form of the quarrel required him to sneer.

“You cannot have been so foolish as to implicate yourself—or your family—in any of Barnato’s gambles?”

“You do not know what you are talking about. You purvey malicious chatter which can do real harm—”

“I do what my conscience leads me to do.”

“Your conscience is a will o’ the wisp, leading into a bog,” said Basil, rather cleverly, twisting the metaphor his way.

Violet said “Let us talk about something else. Let us make peace.”

Basil said “I think I cannot stay in this gathering any longer. Come, Katharina. It is time to leave.”

Katharina said “Very well.” She was conscious that it was hard to sweep out when your spare clothes were in your host’s bedroom. She said