“Yes,” I said. “Uncle, I cannot endure that this continues, yet I hardly know how to offer you relief other than by giving my full efforts to Cobb.”
“You must for all the world make him believe you do, but you must never cease looking for advantage.”
“I fear what happened today is but the beginning,” I said. “Can we afford to play games with this man?”
“Can we afford to let him turn you into his puppet?” he asked.
“Both of us,” my aunt said. “Both of us want you to fight him.”
“But so that he suspects nothing,” my uncle added.
I nodded. Heartened by his spirit, I told him I would do no less, and so I was determined, but I could not help but wonder how we would feel when my uncle was turned to a destitute man, homeless, broken, and without health. He was no fool and knew what bargain he made. I, however, was not certain I could endure it.
I SPENT WHAT TIME I could with my family, but at last I made to excuse myself, to return to my rooms, and change for the evening. Once I looked presentable, I hired a chair to take me across town and arrived with a satisfying promptness.
I could pretend to no surprise that Mr. Ellershaw’s house on New North Street, not far from the Conduit Fields, was a fine one—a director of the East India Company ought to have a fine house, after all—but I could not recall that I had ever been invited in the capacity of a guest to a finer, and I admit I felt an unexpected apprehension. I had no Indian calicoes to wear, so I put on my finest suit of black and gold silk, woven, I could not but reflect, in the cramped garrets of Spitalfields or the dark hall of a workhouse. And though I knew I wore upon my back the labor of the cheated and the oppressed, I could not but reflect that I cut a fine figure in these fine clothes. We are all of us Adam’s children, the saying goes, but silk makes the difference.
A polite if somewhat grave servant met me at the door and guided me inside and to a receiving room, where I was met shortly by Mr. Ellershaw, resplendent in his full-bottom wig and dressed in the height of imported finery. His waistcoat had quite obviously, even to my ignorant eyes, been woven in India, and was magnificent in its red and blue and black floral designs of indescribable intricacy.
“Ah, this is a very important evening, Mr. Weaver. Of the utmost importance, you know. Mr. Samuel Thurmond is here tonight, a Member of Parliament for Cotswold. He has been one of the great champions of the wool interest, and it is our role to convince him to back our proposal in the House.”
“The repealing of the 1721 legislation?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
“And how shall we do that?”
“You need not worry on that score for the moment. You need only follow my lead, and all shall be well. Now, as you are the last guest to arrive, you must follow me to the sitting room. I trust you will do nothing to embarrass me before my guests?”
“I will attempt to acquit myself to your liking,” I assured him.
“Ah, good. Good.”
Mr. Ellershaw led me through a maze of closely wrought corridors and into an expansive parlor where a number of guests were sitting upon sofas and chairs, sipping at glasses of wine. The only person in the room I knew was Mr. Forester, who did remarkably well at paying me no mind.
I was quickly introduced to Mrs. Ellershaw, a beautiful woman at least twenty years younger than her husband, though no doubt at least in her middle thirties. “This is my new man, Weaver,” Ellershaw said. “He’s a Hebrew, you know.”
Mrs. Ellershaw had hair so pale it was nearly white, her skin was the color of porcelain, and her pale gray eyes were remarkably bright and lively. She took my hand and curtsied and told me she was delighted to meet me, but I could see that she was not. It took no great interpretive skills to see she was displeased by my presence.
Ellershaw appeared to have no recollection of having introduced me to Forester, and Forester showed no sign that he had previously met me. He too introduced his wife, but if Mr. Ellershaw held a winning ticket in the matrimonial lottery, Mr. Forester had drawn a blank. Though he was still a young man, and of a fine and manly appearance too, his wife was a great deal older than he was. Indeed, to call her elderly would not exaggerate matters. Her skin was leathery and hard, her muddy brown eyes sunken, her teeth yellowed and broken. And yet, unlike Mrs. Ellershaw, Mrs. Forester was of a jolly disposition. She told me she was glad to meet me and appeared to mean it.
I was then introduced to Mr. Thurmond and his good lady. The Member of Parliament himself was far older than Ellershaw, perhaps even a septuagenarian, and his movements were frail and uneasy. He walked heavily on his cane and shook slightly when he took my hand, but he appeared in no way lacking in his capacities. He made easy and intelligent conversation, and of all the men in the room it was he to whom I took the greatest liking. His wife, a handsome older woman dressed entirely in woolens, smiled kindly but said little.
Because the British dinner party cannot function without equity of the sexes, a fourth woman had to be presented to balance out my presence. To this end, Mr. Ellershaw had invited his sister, another older woman, who made it clear that she had been forced to abandon tickets to the opera in order to dine with us and was not at all happy about it.
I shan’t bombard my reader with the tedium of the dinner itself. It was hard enough for me to endure, and I therefore have no desire either to relive the event or force my reader into a sympathetic misery. Much of the talk, as is the usual for talk at these sorts of events, revolved around the theater or the popular amusements about town. I thought to participate in these exchanges, but I observed that every time I opened my mouth, Mrs. Ellershaw eyed me with such evident disgust that I found it more agreeable to remain mute.
“You may eat freely,” Ellershaw told me loudly, after he had helped himself to innumerable glasses of wine. “I have asked Cook not to present any pork. Weaver’s a Jew, you know,” he told the rest of the group.
“I daresay we do know,” answered Mr. Thurmond of the wool interest, “as you have noted that point several times. And while our Hebrew friends are certainly in the minority on this island, I hardly think them so rare that they must be remarked on in such a way.”
“Oh, but it is a remarkable thing for us. My wife does not think it proper to have Jews at the dinner table. Is that not right, my dear?”
I attempted to say something distracting, something that would change the subject away from this awkward business. Mr. Thurmond, however, decided that it was he who would rescue me. “Tell me,” he said, too loudly, so that his voice would crush the discomfort of Ellershaw’s comments, “Where is that charming daughter of yours, Mr. Ellershaw?”
Mrs. Ellershaw took on a high color, and Mr. Ellershaw coughed awkwardly into his fist. “Well, yes. As for that, she isn’t my daughter. Bridget came with my marriage to Mrs. Ellershaw. A rather fair bargain, I think. But the girl’s not about these days.”
There was clearly more information regarding the daughter, and none was forthcoming. Thurmond could not have appeared more mortified to have stumbled upon so delicate a topic. He had attempted to distract from an awkward moment but had only succeeded in making the moment worse. His wife, fortunately, launched into an encomium of the pheasant on our plates, and in the end that did the business well enough.
After the meal had been completed and the ladies retired to the next room, the true business of the evening was at hand. Now that we were men only, the conversation turned at once to the East India trade and the legislation against it.
“I must ask of you, Mr. Thurmond,” Ellershaw began, “that when Mr. Summers, a true patriot, introduces an act to repeal the 1721 legislation, as I believe he will do in the near future, you might consider lending your support to the effort.”