dubious reliability of his yard manager, Tybalt. Instead they talked about old times, and mutual acquaintances in the cotton world, and Adam was not surprised to see several of his cronies at the graveside, heavy, unsmiling men, watching the committal of Sam as though his coffin contained money as well as a corpse. It was not until the journey home that Adam re-addressed his mind to the hints Sam had dropped, turning them over and over as the train rushed southwards at nearly twice the maximum speed it had attained when he escorted Henrietta, an eighteen-year-old bride, on her first journey out of the north. George was cutting a dash among the quality. George was taking time off to squire a woman, obviously not Gisela, his pretty little Austrian wife. George was leaving too much to his manager and the manager needed watching. It didn’t add up to much and finally he asked of Henrietta, who was deep in the Strand Magazine he had bought her at the bookstall, “Is everything all right between George and Gisela, Hetty?”
She looked up a little irritably. “All right? So far as I know. Whatever made you ask a question like that?”
“Just something Sam said, but he might well have been rambling. George was there a few weeks back and looked in on them. ‘Dressed to the nines an’ smellin’ like a garding’ according to Sam.”
“Is that all he said?”
“More or less. He hinted that George was gadding about and maybe neglecting the business, but I couldn’t make head nor tail of it at the time. Do you see much of Gisela these days?”
“Not as much as I did but that doesn’t signify anything. She’s four children now, and a big house to run.” She prepared to re-address herself to her magazine and he said, with a grin, “Don’t you care that much, Hetty?”
“No,” she admitted, frankly. “I can’t say as I do. They’re all old enough and ugly enough to watch out for themselves, as my nanny Mrs. Worrell would have said. George in particular, for George has always gone his own way. How old is he now?”
“Thirty-three last February.” He had a wonderful memory for trivia but he had a special reason for remembering George’s exact age. The boy had been born on St. Valentine’s Day, 1864, a day when the fortunes of Swann-on-Wheels, near to foundering at that time, had taken a dramatic turn for the better, paving the way for what Adam always thought of as their sortie torrentielle into big business. Because of this, and the boy’s temperament, he had always seen George as a goodluck talisman. They had never looked back from that moment, not even when he was away from the yard for a whole year learning to walk on one sound leg and an ugly contraption made up of cork and aluminium.
“Well,” she said, “there’s your answer. He was always a wild one but Gisela knows how to manage him. You’ve said so yourself many a time.”
“So I have. Go back to that story you’re reading. It must be a good one.”
“It is,” she told him, “it’s a Sherlock Holmes.” The conversation lapsed, but he continued to think about it, trying to make a pattern out of the few stray pieces but not succeeding, no matter how many times he fitted one into the other, so he fell to marshalling his recollections on the boy’s past.
For years now George had been a slave to that yard, devoting even more time to it than had Adam himself in his early, strenuous days. That much was known about George, not only inside the family and firm but all over the City, where men talked shop over their sherry and coffee. It was hard to imagine George as a masher, a gadabout, or even a dandy. He had an eye for the girls, certainly always had, ever since, as an eighteen-year-old, he was all but seduced by one of the manager’s wives up in the Polygon. What was her name again—Lorna? Laura?—Laura Broadbent, that was it, who had a brute of a husband, a man George had ultimately unmasked as a thief. It was on account of that he had
She looked up a little irritably. “All right? So far as I know. Whatever made you ask a question like that?”
“Just something Sam said, but he might well have been rambling. George was there a few weeks back and looked in on them. ‘Dressed to the nines an’ smellin’ like a garding’ according to Sam.”
“Is that all he said?”
“More or less. He hinted that George was gadding about and maybe neglecting the business, but I couldn’t make head nor tail of it at the time. Do you see much of Gisela these days?”
“Not as much as I did but that doesn’t signify anything. She’s four children now, and a big house to run.” She prepared to re-address herself to her magazine and he said, with a grin, “Don’t you care that much, Hetty?”
“No,” she admitted, frankly. “I can’t say as I do. They’re all old enough and ugly enough to watch out for themselves, as my nanny Mrs. Worrell would have said. George in particular, for George has always gone his own way. How old is he now?”
“Thirty-three last February.” He had a wonderful memory for trivia but he had a special reason for remembering George’s exact age. The boy had been born on St. Valentine’s Day, 1864, a day when the fortunes of Swann-on-Wheels, near to foundering at that time, had taken a dramatic turn for the better, paving the way for what Adam always thought of as their sortie torrentielle into big business. Because of this, and the boy’s temperament, he had always seen George as a goodluck talisman. They had never looked back from that moment, not even when he was away from the yard for a whole year learning to walk on one sound leg and an ugly contraption made up of cork and aluminium.
“Well,” she said, “there’s your answer. He was always a wild one but Gisela knows how to manage him. You’ve said so yourself many a time.”
“So I have. Go back to that story you’re reading. It must be a good one.”
“It is,” she told him, “it’s a Sherlock Holmes.” The conversation lapsed, but he continued to think about it, trying to make a pattern out of the few stray pieces but not succeeding, no matter how many times he fitted one into the other, so he fell to marshalling his recollections on the boy’s past.
For years now George had been a slave to that yard, devoting even more time to it than had Adam himself in his early, strenuous days. That much was known about George, not only inside the family and firm but all over the City, where men talked shop over their sherry and coffee. It was hard to imagine George as a masher, a gadabout, or even a dandy. He had an eye for the girls, certainly always had, ever since, as an eighteen-year-old, he was all but seduced by one of the manager’s wives up in the Polygon. What was her name again—Lorna? Laura?—Laura Broadbent, that was it, who had a brute of a husband, a man George had ultimately unmasked as a thief. It was on account of that he had
Similar Books
