The Drop of the Dice

THE BUBBLE

CHRISTMAS CAME, AND LANCE and I went to Enderby. Jeanne came with us, of course, and it was wonderful to be in the heart of the family again.

Damaris was delighted to see us and I was touched by the earnest way in which she studied me to assure herself, I knew, that my marriage was happy. Jeremy was with her when she greeted us and although his welcome was more restrained than hers I know it was sincere. Sabrina ran headlong at me and embraced my knees.

‘You’ve come home,’ she cried. ‘Clarissa has come home. Are you going to stay now? I want to show you my new pony. He’s called Gipsy because Grandpapa Leigh bought him from the gipsies. He can gallop miles and miles, and never gets tired like other ponies. Come and see him.’

‘Not now, darling,’ said Damaris. ‘There’s plenty of time.’

‘Oh now… please.’

‘Let me wash and change first, Sabrina,’ I said.

The same Sabrina, whose own affairs were of such immediacy that she could not conceive that anything else could be of the same importance.

She ran up to our room with us. It was that one where we had slept on the first night of our marriage, the room which had such memories for Damaris, as, having read her story, I now understood. Dear Damaris, I was closer to her than ever now that I knew how she had suffered and how she had at last come to happiness through Jeremy and myself. It made a special bond between us. I knew I should never forget what we had meant to each other, and although now I had moved out of her care and had a life of my own, the bond was still strong.

‘Can I stay with you here, Clarissa?’ asked Sabrina. ‘It’s a nicer room than mine.’ She laid her cheek lovingly against the damask bedcurtains, and looked pleadingly at me.

Lance said: ‘You can’t sleep with Clarissa now. I’m here.’

“Why not?’

‘Because it is my place.’

‘You can have my bed.’

‘So kind of you,’ said Lance, ‘but do you know, I prefer this.’

She sidled up to him. ‘It’s nice,’ she said. ‘Nanny Curlew comes to tuck you in.’

‘A delight I shall have to forgo,’ said Lance.

She frowned at him, but with no real animosity. She liked him; the only thing she had against him was that he had taken me away.

He picked her up; she kicked a little in remonstration. He put her outside the door and shut it on her. I heard her laughing as she ran along the corridor.

‘There is one who will want her own way in life,’ he said. ‘And get quite a lot of it, I should imagine.’

‘She is a dear creature.’

‘A little spoilt, I fancy, except by the worthy Nanny Curlew.’

Then he held me tightly against him and I knew that he was thinking of the first night we had shared this room.

It was a happy Christmas. There were the relatives to visit, and the celebrations took place mainly at Eversleigh Court in the traditional manner. There were the decorations with holly and ivy and the ceremony of bringing in the Yule log; carols; the midnight service on Christmas Eve; kissing under mistletoe; eating mince pies in the shape of coffins which were supposed to represent the manger at Bethlehem. Sabrina loved giving Christmas boxes on the day after Christmas when everyone who had rendered a service to the household appeared to collect what he or she called ‘the box’—which was in fact a gift of money. Great-Grandfather Carleton grumbled and said that he was the one who did the tradesmen a service by buying their goods and why he should be expected to reward his servants he could not imagine. They should be giving him a Christmas box.

‘Nonsense,’ said Great-Grandmother Arabella. ‘You know you would never stop the Christmas boxes.’

‘Poor Great-Grandpapa,’ put in Sabrina. ‘Nobody gives him a Christmas box.’

Then she came up with a bright new penny and thrust it into his hand; and the old man, who was really very sentimental, said it was the best Christmas box he could ever have had and he would carry it with him for the rest of his days and have it buried with him in his coffin.

This greatly intrigued Sabrina and spoilt her generous gesture, for she was clearly looking forward to seeing the penny placed in Great-Grandfather’s coffin.

‘Don’t grumble so, Carleton,’ said Arabella. ‘I declare you’d be a thorough wet blanket if I let you.’

Nothing changed at Eversleigh, it seemed. One Christmas was very like another; but of course there was really change taking place all the time. Sabrina was now five years old and Great-Grandfather Carleton was more quickly out of breath when he went walking in the gardens; there was more white in Arabella’s hair and it was beginning to show in Priscilla’s. I was a married woman of some months’ standing. Yes, time was moving on.

When we went back to London, Lance was caught up in the enthusiasm which was sweeping through the City. He came in one day in a fever of excitement.

It was the late afternoon, I remember, of a cold January day. There was a north wind blowing and it had started to snow. In the drawing-room a great fire was burning and I was seated close to it when he burst into the room.

He threw off his heavy coat and came close to the fire. He lifted me up and held me against him, laughing up at me.

‘We’re going to be rich… richer than you’ve dreamed,’ he said. ‘Gad, this is the greatest chance that ever came to anyone.’

Little shivers of alarm went through me. I was always apprehensive about Lance’s gambling; he knew this and kept much of his activity in the field from me. He would occasionally report a fantastic win, but whenever he told me I wondered what enormous losses had gone before.

‘Put me down, Lance,’ I said, ‘and if this is another gamble…’

‘It is the greatest gamble that ever was.’

‘Oh no, Lance!’ He had set me down, and I drew away from him, looking steadily into his face.

‘Oh yes, Clarissa,’ he said, laughing, and his eyes were bright with anticipation. ‘Wait till you hear before you condemn,’ he went on. ‘No… it is not horses… It is not the tables… It’s a government venture, you might say.’

‘I am always suspicious of attempts to make money by gambling.’

‘This is different. Wait till you hear. I’ve gone into it thoroughly. I know exactly what is happening. Let me explain, and you will see how safe it is. The big trading company calling itself the South Sea Company has proposed to the House of Commons that they purchase the irredeemable annuities which had been granted in the reigns of William and Mary and Anne and amalgamate all the public funds together in one stock so as to become the only public creditor. Do you follow me?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Never mind. You will. The Bank of England has entered into the bargaining, and the two began to outbid each other. Now an offer has been accepted on the part of the South Sea Company to provide a sum of seven and a half millions in order to buy up the annuities. The Government annuitants are rushing to exchange their stock for that of the South Sea Company. Already two-thirds of them have done so. There will obviously be enormous dividends. It’s a way of getting rich in the shortest possible time. We have to get into this quickly, Clarissa.’

‘Won’t hundreds of people be saying that?’

‘Of course they will. It’s all so obvious. There will be a rush to get rich quickly. We mustn’t be left out. Already the fifty-pound shares are worth one hundred.’

‘It seems incomprehensible to me. How can they be worth so much?’

‘It’s the prospects, my dear. They are saying there will be a dividend of fifty per cent. The thing is to buy cheaply and sell dear.’

‘Surely everyone will have that idea?’

‘But the thing is to know the right moment to buy and the right one to sell.’

‘And how can anyone be sure of that?’

He put his arms round me and hugged me tightly. ‘My dear, cautious Clarissa you may trust your old Lancelot.’

I was silent—disturbed as I always was by his gambling exploits.

‘But suppose it shouldn’t work out as you think?’

‘My dear, don’t you think I shall know the right time to sell?’

‘I would rather not have anything to do with such ventures.’

‘What! And go on this way all our lives!’

‘It’s a very comfortable way.’

‘And see all those around us making fortunes!’

‘If some are making them you can be sure some are losing them.’

‘Leave it to me, my dearest.’

‘Lance… are you going to invest heavily in this South Sea Company?’

‘Unless one does there seems little point in it. And, Clarissa, I thought you would wish to share in it.’

‘I?’

‘Why not? You’re a woman of substance.’

‘I am not a gambler. I like things as they are. Besides, I couldn’t touch my shares and things which Leigh manages for me.’

‘Perhaps not. But there is the money your father left you.’

‘Oh no. I don’t think I would touch that.’

He shrugged his shoulders and laughed at me. But he said no more about the matter. He went out soon afterwards and I did not see him for the rest of the day. We were dining alone that evening and during the meal he seemed abstracted.

I said: ‘I believe you are still dreaming of the fortune you are going to make out of this South Sea affair.’

‘It’s going to stagger you, Clarissa.’

‘I do hope you have not invested a great deal.’

‘Enough to make me rich, very rich.’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘We have enough of everything. We can have what we want, in reason. I cannot see why we want to clamour so desperately for more.’

‘You wait, Clarissa, you are going to be as thrilled as I am when you see the fortune which will be ours.’

When we were in bed that night I sensed that he was restless. He could not sleep; nor could I.

Suddenly I felt his hand grasping mine.

‘Are you awake, Clarissa?’ he said.

‘Yes. And I know you are. Oh, Lance, I don’t like this thing. I have an uneasy feeling

‘You think it’s a gamble. It is not. It’s a certainty.’

‘It doesn’t make sense to me. Why should something one buys one day be suddenly worth a lot more the next? It hasn’t changed its value, has it?’

‘It is changed in value because so many people want it.’

‘They want it because they believe it will make them rich overnight.’

‘So it will.’

‘But surely they can’t all become so rich?’

‘Oh, the shares will settle in time. That’s what makes it wise to buy now. But it is the dividends the money will bring in which makes it such an excellent venture. Fifty per cent. Just imagine that!’

‘I don’t understand it and I don’t believe it’s true.’

‘You disbeliever!’ He held me tightly and began to caress me. He told me how much he loved me and what a difference I had made to his life; how he had adored me from the time we had journeyed to York together; how jealous he had been of poor Dickon and how happy he was because he was going to spend the rest of his life with me.

Lance would always arouse a response in me. He was tender and gallant and fiercely passionate at the same time. I was happy, I told him. I wanted to please him for as long as we both should live.

I whispered an apology to Dickon as I invariably did at such moments. My encounter with him still stood out in my memory as something especially beautiful, but it was growing more and more like a dream as time passed and it had more than a touch of unreality about it.

At length Lance whispered to me: ‘Clarissa, dearest, I couldn’t leave you out of the excitement. You had to be in it. I wanted you to share…’

My heart started to beat more quickly. ‘What?’ I asked.

‘I have bought for you. You had to be in it. Everyone who can must be in it.’

‘What are you telling me?’

‘That I have arranged for five thousand pounds of your Hessenfield inheritance to be put into the South Sea Company.’

‘You have what?’ I drew away from him but he held me firmly and began kissing my face and throat.

‘I spoke to Grendall about it,’ he said. Grendall was the lawyer who managed the Hessenfield inheritance. ‘He wanted your approval but as I am your husband he accepted mine. I had to do it for you, Clarissa.’

‘Five thousand pounds,’ I stammered. ‘Oh… Lance, how could you!’

‘How could I not? Could I stand by and see everyone else making a fortune and my little Clarissa being left out?’

For a few moments I was speechless. It was half the money which my father had left me. I was furiously angry—first because I hated his gambling, which offered him more excitement than I could. This must be so because he could forget me when the fever was on him. And secondly because he had dared act without consulting me.

He tried to soothe me, holding my quivering body against his, tenderly, passionately. I pulled away from him and sat up.

‘How dared you!’ I cried. ‘You cannot resist the urge to gamble. If you must risk money in future, confine yourself to what is yours to risk.’

‘Clarissa, my darling, you are really angry, aren’t you? Wait until you see what this will bring you.’

‘I have no intention of frittering away my fortune and you have no right to treat me as though you own me and all my possessions.’

‘I love you. I only wanted to do what was best for you.’

I jumped out of bed. I wanted to escape from him. I did not want to be soothed and petted until my emotions were aroused and I was ready to forgive him and forget the matter. I felt it was important that he should understand how I felt and he must realize how deeply I resented his action.

He was leaning on his elbow, looking at me with that indulgence I knew so well, refusing to accept that I was serious in my condemnation of him, trying to shrug off this matter as though it were of no importance. It was very important to me.

‘You must not think that you are going to placate me with a few soft words,’ I said.

‘Come back to bed and talk reasonably. You’ll catch cold standing there.’

‘I shall not come back to bed,’ I said. ‘I want to think what I shall do. I want to be alone.’

I went towards the powder closet, which was roomy enough to hold a small couch.

‘You’re surely not going to sleep in there?’ cried Lance.

‘I told you I want to be alone.’

‘It’s very cold on that couch, and desperately uncomfortable.’

I ignored him and went into the powder closet. I was trembling, but not with cold.

Almost immediately he was there beside me. He put his arms about me. ‘If you insist on sleeping alone,’ he said, ‘there is only one course open to me… or two, rather. I must either offer you the bed and take the couch myself, or use the rights of a husband and carry you back to bed. Which shall it be, Clarissa? Please choose the second alternative, for I shall have a very uncomfortable night on that couch.’

He began to laugh and in spite of everything I found myself laughing also. It was typical of him to introduce a ridiculous note into a serious situation.

He had picked me up and carried me to the bed. I was momentarily reminded of that first night of our wedding when he had carried me thus. Then I had shivered with apprehension; now it was with resentful anger.

We lay in the bed together. He put his arm about me. I knew that he was trying to arouse desire in me; the act of love would make everything right between us. He always thought that was so. It was the same when he came home after a night of gambling. But I was not so easily to be won over at this time.

‘Don’t try your blandishments, Lance,’ I said.

‘All right,’ he answered. ‘I promise no blandishments. But just tell me you are not angry with me any more.’

‘But I am,’ I said. ‘I am very angry. I want to think about it.’

I moved away from him to the edge of the bed.

‘Good night,’ I said firmly.

He sighed. ‘Good night, my dearest,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow it will seem so different.’

I did not answer. He respected my desire to be left alone and we lay on either side of the bed.

I was trying to decide what I should do. That he had dared touch my money angered me; he would not be able to play such tricks with the fortune my mother had left because he would have to deal with Leigh first and I was sure Leigh would never allow it.

I knew that many husbands would have seized their wives’ fortunes. Lance had always behaved as though my money was of no importance to him. He had never shown a great interest in it—so I had thought. Yet he had dared go to Grendall’s and use it to buy stock in my name in the South Sea Company.

I pretended to be asleep as I lay there planning what I would do. It was the first time I had been really angry with Lance. True, I had resented those occasions when he disappeared for hours at the gaming tables, deserting me, so I told myself in hurt pride, for the love of the game; but I had always forgotten that resentment when he had come back and charmed me as he knew so well how to do. This was quite different.

I began to wonder whether he had married me for my money. He must have been fond of Elvira Vernon; but he had not intended to marry her. Why not? Presumably she did not have a fortune. This was not fair. He had explained to me about Elvira and I was not now the simpleton I had been at the time of that discovery. I knew that men had love-affairs before they settled down; and at least I had no cause to suspect Lance of infidelity… as yet.

Finally I dozed, and slept so late that he was gone from beside me when I awakened.

I had made up my mind. I was going to show him that I was an individual and had no intention of allowing anyone to manage my affairs—not even the most charming of husbands.

I took a sedan to Grendall’s in Cornhill, where I was shown into Mr Grendall’s office immediately.

He greeted me warmly and I told him the purpose of my visit. My husband had wrongly assumed that I wanted to invest in the South Sea Company. This was not the case. I wished to cancel the order he had given.

Mr Grendall looked dismayed. ‘But, Lady Clavering,’ he said, ‘the shares have already been bought. In these transactions it is always necessary to act with the maximum speed. They were bought two days ago.’

Two days ago! So he had not told me immediately. I felt my anger rising.

‘Then I wish them to be sold without delay.’ I said. ‘You look astonished. Is that impossible?’

‘By no means. People are clamouring for these shares. But Lady Clavering, the prospects are excellent.’

‘So I have heard, and there will be immense dividends. I am not interested. I want these shares sold at once.’

‘At whatever the market price?’

‘At whatever the market price,’ I repeated.

‘Your orders shall be carried out. I will let you know what price we obtained as soon as the transaction is through.’

‘Thank you, Mr Grendall,’ I said. ‘And I should be glad in future if you will take orders for such transactions from me in person. That is what Sir Lance and I both wish.’

‘I understand, Lady Clavering.’

I was bowed out to my chair.

Lance was in when I returned. He was clearly waiting for me.

‘Clarissa, I was worried about you. Where have you been?’

‘I have been to Cornhill to see Mr Grendall,’ I said.

‘Ah.’ He was smiling at me.

‘I have told him to sell the shares you bought with my money.’

‘To sell! But the market is rising.’

‘I have told him to sell, and that all such transactions will in future come through me and me only.’

I suppose any other man but Lance would have been furious with me. Not so Lance. He looked at me in astonishment for a moment and then laughed. There was no doubting the admiration in his eyes.

‘Clarissa,’ he said, ‘my splendid Clarissa. I am forgiven, am I not?’

I could not resist him, so I said I supposed he was.

‘It was arrogant of me. It was wrong. It was foolish. But, believe me, I was only thinking of the pleasure I should have in confronting you with the fact that you had become a richer woman.’

‘I am quite content with what I have.’

‘The world’s phenomenon,’ he said. ‘A contented woman!’

‘Oh Lance,’ I pleaded, ‘give up all this gambling. What is the purpose of it? We have enough. Why take risks in the hope of getting more?’

‘It’s not exactly money,’ he said seriously. ‘It’s the fun of it… the excitement. I’ll never get you to understand. However, my sweet Clarissa, you have taught me a lesson. I promise I will never be so foolish again. But I am forgiven my sins now. That’s so, isn’t it?’

‘Of course, and I know you were trying to do what you thought was best for me.’

We were lovers again.

It was the following day when Mr Grendall sent a messenger to me. He had sold my shares in the South Sea Company. They had been bought at a hundred pounds and sold for a thousand. Thus my five thousand had become fifty thousand.

I had become a very rich woman overnight.

I shall never forget the months that followed. There was tension and excitement in the streets of London as the price of South Sea stock rose. Lance never exactly said, I told you so, but he did point out how wealthy I might have been if I had not sold out.

He himself had put all the money he could raise into the company; sometimes he was on the verge of selling but he could never bring himself to do so. He always felt there would be another rise the following day.

Everyone was talking about the South Sea wonder. Sir Robert Walpole condemned the scheme from the start and warned the public about over-investing. It turned out, however, that he himself had bought a number of shares but, as I had, had sold out at a big profit. The Prince of Wales had also invested and sold advantageously. There was euphoria throughout the country and everyone who could scrape together a few pounds was clamouring for shares.

‘Think how much you would have to pay for those shares which you bought at a hundred,’ Lance reminded me.

‘I don’t need to think as I have no intention of buying more.’

‘You’re throwing away a fortune.’

‘On the contrary, I have made one.’

‘But, my dear Clarissa, think how much richer you would have been if you had left the shares in.’

‘On paper,’ I reminded him. ‘I have really done very well.’

‘Thanks to what you thought of as my wickedness in the first place.’

I agreed that this was so. ‘But,’ I said firmly, ‘my money remains where it is.’

‘Is that final?’ asked Lance pleadingly. He himself had nothing left with which to gamble and was itching to get his hands on my money, I knew.

‘Final,’ I replied with emphasis.

He would take me to the coffee houses, which were full of people talking of the wonder of the South Sea Company; they discussed their plans for spending their newly acquired wealth. Even the sellers of spiced gingerbread and watercress talked of the wonders of the times to come when everybody would be rich.

All through the summer the fervour persisted, and always I refused to be drawn into it.

Then, as suddenly as dreams of prosperity had come, they began to disappear. It was a hot August, I remember. We should have been in the country, but Lance could not tear himself away from the excitement of London. Each day he studied the prices and calculated how rich his shares in the South Sea Company had made him.

He came into the drawing-room where I was sitting reading and there was a look of intense excitement on his face.

I looked up and asked what had happened.

He threw himself into a chair and said: ‘The stock is down to eight hundred and fifty.’

‘Eight hundred and fifty!’ I repeated. I had taken little interest in the market and had deliberately refused to listen, but I did know that I had sold out at a thousand.

‘I can’t understand it,’ went on Lance. ‘It’s all happened in a day. It’s because of the spurious companies which have been springing up… trying to get in on the reputation of the South Sea Company. Some of them have been proved to be false and people are panicking. It’ll pass.’

But it did not pass. The next day the shares were down to eight hundred and twenty and within the next two days to seven hundred.

The mood of the streets had changed. There were gloomy faces in the coffee houses; the street merchants were looking anxious and the traders chattered in hushed voices.

‘It’ll pass,’ said Lance. ‘It’s just a momentary panic. Then they’ll shoot up higher than ever. People are beginning to sell. When the shares go up they’ll have to pay higher to get them back.’

By mid-September the shares had tumbled to one hundred and fifty. I marvelled that what I had sold for a thousand would not bring in one hundred and fifty now. I shuddered to think how quickly fortunes could be made and lost.

Even Lance was uneasy now. On the last day of September the shares had dropped below a hundred. I remember that day so well. I had never seen him so downcast before.

I ran to him in consternation when he came in from the city.

‘Why, Lance,’ I cried, ‘what has happened?’

He said: ‘Frank Welling has killed himself.’

I knew Frank Welling. He was one of the first of Lance’s friends I had met after my marriage—a wealthy man with estates in the country and a magnificent town house in St James’s Street. I knew that he had been a gambling friend of Lance’s and they often went to clubs together.

‘He shot himself,’ said Lance. ‘He lost everything.’

‘How dreadful for his family.’

‘I’m afraid there will be others like him.’

I was so passionately angry. Why could they not resist the desire to gamble? They knew the risk involved. How could they be so foolhardy?

I thought of Frank Welling’s wife, and there were three children, I remembered. What tragedy had come to their lives which before had been so comfortable, and all because of an irresistible desire to grow rich quickly and take a gamble on it.

Frank Welling’s case was one of many. Those excited people who had thronged the coffee houses now assembled there to discuss the tragedy which had befallen them. Everyone was talking about what they called the South Sea Bubble.

Very few people had profited from that affair—only people like Robert Walpole and the Prince of Wales who had foreseen disaster, and those like myself who had no desire to gamble.

I was afraid for Lance, for I knew he must have lost heavily. He had. Fortunately the estate in the country was intact. I had been afraid that he might try to raise money on that. I believe he had been contemplating doing so when he realized how things had been going. He still would have the town house but everything else was reduced to a fraction of what it had been before.

For a few days he was very despondent indeed, but after that his spirits rose. I believed he was assuring himself that he would soon win back his losses. After a few days he was saying that it was all part of the gamble. He had lost this time but would win the next.

‘Rather a big gamble and rather a lot to lose,’ I reminded him.

He conceded that. ‘You, dear Clarissa, were the clever one.’

‘If it is clever to know how foolish it is to risk what you have in the hope of getting more, then I am indeed clever.’

‘So severe,’ he said, kissing the tip of my nose.

‘Oh, Lance,’ I answered, ‘how I wish you did not feel this urge to gamble. I wish…’

‘You wish I were different.’

‘Only in this respect.’

He looked at me pensively and said: ‘It is a mistake to try to change people, Clarissa. I learned that long ago. So you have to accept me as I am… and, my dear Clarissa, please don’t let my follies make any difference to that.’

‘I expect I have foibles.’

‘Adorable ones,’ he told me.

Then he held me to him and whispered: ‘One of us came very well out of this sorry business. My own clever Clarissa.’