“Marmont! This is Bonaparte!”
“Very true, but I still find it impossible to believe in your rout.” He saw that Mr Chawleigh’s colour was rising, and said: “Don’t let us argue an that head, sir! Tell me why I’m here! Even if your information were correct, I don’t understand why it is of such importance that I should be in London. What the devil can I do to mend matters?”
“You can save your bacon!” replied Mr Chawleigh grimly. “Not all of it, but some, I do trust! Eh, I blame myself! I should have warned you weeks ago — same as I should have pulled out myself, the moment I knew the jobbers had closed their books! I’ve dropped a tidy penny, my lord, and so I tell you!”
“Have you, sir? I’m excessively sorry to hear it,” said Adam, refilling the glasses. “How did you come to do that?”
Mr Chawleigh drew an audible breath, eyeing him much as a choleric schoolmaster might have eyed a doltish pupil. Speaking with determined patience, he said: “Your blunt’s invested in the Funds, ain’t it? Never mind these rents of yours! I’m talking about your private fortune. Well, I know it is — what was left of it! Me and your man Wimmering went into things pretty thoroughly before you was married to my Jenny. Not to wrap it up in clean linen, your pa played wily beguiled with his blunt, so that what was left don’t amount to much, not to my way of thinking. Nor your rents don’t either — and don’t waste your breath telling me what they might bring you in, because it don’t signify, not at this moment! The thing is, I wouldn’t want you to lose your fortune, my lord. I don’t say I ain’t ready to stand the nonsense, but well I know it ’ud fairly choke you if you was forced to be obliged to me for every groat you spent! Proud as an apothecary you are, for all you’ve tried to hide it, which I don’t deny you have, let alone behaving to me as affable and as respectful as if you was my own son!” He paused, observing Adam’s sudden flush with an indulgent eye. “No need to colour up, my lord,” he said kindly. “And no need for any roundaboutation either! They’ll tell you in the City that Jonathan Chawleigh’s a sure card. Maybe I am, maybe I ain’t, but I’m not a nodcock, lad, and well I know why you don’t drive the curricle I gave you, nor wouldn’t let me set up this farm of yours! You don’t choose to be beholden, and I like you the better for it! Which is why I bid you come up to town, for there’s naught to be done without you’re here to give the word. I’ve seen Wimmering: he knows what’s to be done, but he can’t move without he has your authority.”
“Have I any?” Adam interrupted, as pale as he had previously been flushed.
“Don’t talk so silly!” begged Mr Chawleigh. “It stands to reason your man of business can’t act without you tell him to!”
“So I had supposed! But I’m sadly ignorant: I had also supposed that my man of business would have shown the door to anyone — even my father-in-law! — who came to tell him what to do with my affairs!”
“Well, so he did, in a manner of speaking!” said Mr Chawleigh, keeping his temper. “Now, don’t fly into your high ropes, my lord! We ain’t after anything but your good, Wimmering and me, nor he never had any intention of acting arbitrary. But he’s a deep old file, and he knows, if you don’t, what’s the worth of a nudge from Jonathan Chawleigh, and a mighty poor man of business he’d be if he didn’t pay heed to it, and act according! Why, if I’d waited to drum it into your head, without a word spoken to Wimmering, it would have been too late to do anything by the time I’d done it, and you’d told Wimmering — which likely you’d have made a mull of, you having no more understanding of business than a babe unborn!”
Adam’s anger cooled a little. “Very well, and what is it that must be done?”
“Sell, of course! Sell, my lord, and at the best price you can get! If it can be done — if it ain’t too late already — you’ll suffer a loss, same as I have myself, but you’ll save yourself from ruin! It’ll be bad, and I don’t deny it, but see if I don’t put you in the way of making a recover presently! But there’s no time to be lost: once the news is made known there’ll be no selling the stock, not if you was to offer it at a grig! Forty-nine was all I got for mine, and they was standing at fifty-seven and a half when the jobbers closed their books! Eh, it don’t bear thinking of! A bubble-merchant, that’s what they’ll be calling me!”
He sounded so tragic that Adam might have supposed that he was facing ruin had he not had every reason to think that however large a part of his private fortune had been invested in the Funds it represented only a tithe of his enormous wealth. He said: “I’m afraid I don’t perfectly understand, sir. How am I to sell my shares if there’s no dealing being done?”
“You leave that to Wimmering!” said Mr Chawleigh. “He’ll know how to do the thing, never you fear! What’s more, he’s ready and anxious to do it, the moment you say the word. He’ll be here to wait on you first thing tomorrow morning, and you’ll find he’ll advise you the same as I have.”
He glanced shrewdly at Adam. “Well, he did so when that Bonaparte first broke out again, didn’t he?”
Adam nodded. Mr Wimmering had written to him in March, venturing to suggest that in view of the uncertain political situation it might be wise for his lordship to consider the advisability of realizing his holding in Government stock, but he had not considered it either advisable or proper to do so, and had replied quite unequivocally.
“Eh, if you’d only listened to him!” mourned Mr Chawleigh, shaking his head.
Adam looked at him thoughtfully. It was plainly a waste of tune to attempt to persuade him that a strategic withdrawal was not a rout: civilians were always cast into panic by a retreat, just as they were wildly elated by quite minor victories. So he refrained from telling Mr Chawleigh that his own confidence was unshaken, and tried instead to discover the exact nature of the news which had been whispered in his ear. It was not easy to do this, but by the time the neat dinner had been disposed of, and Mr Chawleigh took his leave, Adam had formed his own conclusions. It was certain that hostilities had begun; it seemed fairly certain that Napoleon, so far from being a spent force, had moved with all his former, disconcerting rapidity. It was possible that Wellington had been taken by surprise, and had been obliged to oppose the enemy with only his advance troops: it sounded like that; and it sounded too as if the action had been fought on ground not of his choosing. In which case, he would certainly retreat; and no doubt the flocks of pleasure-seeking visitors to Brussels would take fright immediately, and make for the coast. It was more difficult to assess the probable extent of the Prussian reverse. Adam had never seen the Prussians in action, but he knew the Hanoverian troops well, and he thought that if the Prussians were at all like the men of the King’s German Legion there would be little fear that they would run away, even if they had suffered a repulse. Mr Chawleigh talked as though Napoleon had smashed that army; Adam thought this unlikely, because the Allied Army had also been engaged, which meant that Napoleon must have been fighting on two fronts.
He allowed Mr Chawleigh to leave him in the belief that he meant to follow his advice. It was useless to argue with him; that would only lead to a quarrel. Besides, the poor man was already in a stew of anxiety: probably some of his many trading ventures would be badly affected by a French victory.
Thinking about it, weighing it in his mind, Adam knew that he was not going to try to sell his stock. Mr Chawleigh had done so at a loss, and he seemed to think that the price was rapidly sinking. To sell would be wantonly to diminish his principal, and he would certainly do no such thing: running shy merely because the Allied Army had clashed disadvantageously with the enemy, and had fallen back, perhaps to better ground, almost certainly to maintain communications with the Prussians.