A Dangerous Fortune(149)
He took a sip of Chateau Margaux, his favorite red wine. It was a lavish wedding breakfast for a special couple, and Hugh was glad he could afford it. But he also felt a twinge of guilt about spending all that money when Pilasters Bank was so weak. They still had one million four hundred thousand pounds’ worth of Santamaria harbor bonds, plus other Cordova bonds valued at almost a million pounds; and they could not sell them without causing a drop in the price, which was the very thing Hugh feared. It was going to take him at least a year to strengthen the balance sheet. However, he had steered the bank through the immediate crisis, and they now had enough cash to meet normal withdrawals for the foreseeable future. Edward no longer came to the bank at all, although technically he would remain a partner until the end of the financial year. They were safe from everything except some unexpected catastrophe such as war, earthquake or plague. On balance he felt he was entitled to give his only sister an expensive wedding.
And it was good for Pilasters Bank. Everyone in the financial community knew that the bank was down more than a million on Santamaria harbor. This big party boosted confidence by assuring people that the Pilasters were still unimaginably rich. A cheap wedding would have aroused suspicion.
Dotty’s dowry of a hundred thousand pounds had been made over to her husband, but it remained invested in the bank, earning five percent. Nick could withdraw it, but he did not need it all at once. He would draw money gradually as he paid off his father’s mortgages and reorganized the estate. Hugh was glad he did not want all the cash right away, for large withdrawals put a strain on the bank at present.
Everyone knew about Dotty’s huge dowry. Hugh and Nick had not been able to keep it completely secret, and it was the kind of thing that got around very quickly. Now it was the talk of London. Hugh guessed it was being discussed this very moment at half the tables at least.
Looking around, he caught the eye of one guest who was not happy—indeed, she wore a miserable, cheated look, like a eunuch at an orgy: Aunt Augusta.
“London society has degenerated completely,” Augusta said to Colonel Mudeford.
“I fear you may be right, Lady Whitehaven,” he murmured politely.
“Breeding counts for nothing anymore,” she went on. “Jews are admitted everywhere.”
“Quite so.”
“I was the first countess of Whitehaven, but the Pilasters were a distinguished family for a century before being honored with a title; whereas today a man whose father was a navvy can get a peerage simply because he made a fortune selling sausages.”
“Indeed.” Colonel Mudeford turned to the woman on his other side and said: “Mrs. Telston, may I hand you some more red-currant sauce?”
Augusta lost interest in him. She was seething at the spectacle she had been forced to attend. Hugh Pilaster, son of bankrupt Tobias, giving Chateau Margaux to three hundred guests; Lydia Pilaster, widow of Tobias, sitting next to the duke of Norwich; Dorothy Pilaster, daughter of Tobias, married to Viscount Ipswich with the biggest dowry anyone had ever heard of. Whereas her son, dear Teddy, the offspring of the great Joseph Pilaster, had been summarily dismissed as Senior Partner and was soon to have his marriage annulled.
There were no rules anymore! Anyone could enter society. As if to prove the point she caught sight of the greatest parvenu of them all: Mrs. Solly Greenbourne, formerly Maisie Robinson. It was amazing that Hugh had the gall to invite her, a woman whose whole life had been scandal. First she had been practically a prostitute, then she had married the richest Jew in London, and now she ran a hospital where women who were no better than herself could give birth to their bastards. But there she was, sitting at the next table in a dress the color of a new copper penny, chatting earnestly to the governor of the Bank of England. She was probably talking about unmarried mothers. And he was listening!
“Put yourself in the position of an unmarried servant girl,” Maisie said to the governor. He looked startled, and she suppressed a grin. “Think of the consequences if you become a mother: you will lose your job and your home, you will have no means of support, and your child will have no father. Would you then think to yourself: ‘Oh, but I can be delivered at Mrs. Greenbourne’s nice hospital in Southwark, so I may as well go ahead and do it?’ Of course not. My hospital does nothing to encourage girls into immorality. I just save them from giving birth in the gutter.”
Dan Robinson, sitting on his sister’s other side, joined in. “It’s rather like the banking bill I’m proposing in Parliament, which would oblige banks to take out insurance for the benefit of small depositors.”
“I know of it,” the governor said.
Dan went on: “Some critics say it would encourage bankruptcy by making it less painful. But that’s nonsense. No banker would want to fail, under any circumstances.”
“Indeed not.”
“When a banker is making a deal he does not think that he may make a widow in Bournemouth penniless by his rashness—he worries about his own wealth. Similarly, making illegitimate children suffer does nothing to discourage unscrupulous men from seducing servant girls.”
“I do see your point,” the governor said with a pained expression. “A most … ah … original parallel.”
Maisie decided they had tormented him enough, and turned away, letting him concentrate on his grouse.
Dan said to her: “Have you ever noticed how peerages always go to the wrong people? Look at Hugh and his cousin Edward. Hugh is honest, talented and hardworking, where Edward is foolish, lazy and worthless—yet Edward is the earl of Whitehaven and Hugh is just plain Mr. Pilaster.”