Philippa Carr - The Drop of the Dice

‘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.’

THE EFFECTS OF THE South Sea Bubble went rumbling on through that year. There were many sad stories and countless suicides. A subdued air fell over the city. Cynical cartoons appeared. There was one, I remember, with Folly as the charioteer of Fortune which depicted a carriage drawn by foxes with the faces of agents for the Company, and the Devil was in the sky, laughing and blowing soap bubbles.

Nobody talked now of getting rich quickly; instead, it was a matter of speedily reaching the reverse state.

When Lance reckoned up his losses, it was a very depressing time. He decided he would have to sell some of the land in the country merely to keep going. I might have offered to help but I did not want to do this. I think I must have had something of the reformer in me at that time because I was determined he should learn his lesson. He must realize the folly of this incessant gambling.

We went down to the country after that. It was a relief to get away from London, but even in the country there were dismal stories of people who were facing ruin. It was impossible to escape from the disaster of the South Sea Bubble.

I think Lance was a little penitent. It was some time since he had been to the London gaming clubs, and when we arrived in the country there were none of those gatherings, the purpose of which was to play cards as quickly as possible. People were just not in the mood for it—nor, now, had most of them the means.

Lance had lost a fortune but he had done so with a certain amount of cheerfulness and quickly began to think of what had happened as the luck of the game. ‘It could have gone the other way,’ he said. ‘Suppose I had sold just before the fall, as I might well have done. Think what I should have now!’

‘But you did not,’ I pointed out in exasperation.

‘No. But I easily might have.’

I knew that he had not learned one little lesson from what had happened.

At the end of October a letter arrived from Aimée. This was a real cry for help.

Dear Sister,

I am writing to you in the hope that, because of the close bond between us, you will lend me a helping hand. I am in desperate straits. My husband has died. It was the shock of the Bubble. We had both invested heavily, with what result you can guess. We lost almost everything. I shall have to sell up and get what I can for what is left to me. Who would have believed this terrible thing could have happened! Everyone was so sure. It has been the most terrible shock. I know I am not the only one to find myself in such a position, but I shall have to decide what I can do. I could go back to France, perhaps, and it may be that this is what I shall have to do. But I am not sure… particularly as… It is no use holding back the facts. I am pregnant, Clarissa. We were so looking forward to having a child. Poor Ralph. He thought it was so wonderful… and now he is dead. It was a heart attack when he heard that we had lost almost everything. I am desperate because I was persuaded to risk what I had from our father in this miserable South Sea Company.

I don’t know what I shall do. I may have to work, though I don’t know how with a baby to care for. But, dear sister, until I can straighten out my affairs, would you be so good—as you once offered—to let me come to you? I promise you I will help in the house. I will try not to be a trouble to you. But do understand I would not ask you if I were not desperate.

If you say yes, I will come to you, say, in three months’ time. It will take me that time to settle here and salvage what I can. If you do say yes you will make me as happy as it is possible for me to be in these circumstances.

I think I shall be ready to travel in January, and the birth would still be three months ahead so I should still be able to make the journey. I shall eagerly await your reply, but I shall begin making preparations now because, knowing you, dear sister, I am sure you will not refuse me in my need.

Your loving sister,

Aimée

I showed the letter to Lance and he immediately said: ‘Poor girl! She must be anxious. Write and tell her at once that she must come to us. She’ll be company for you.’

So I despatched a letter immediately and wondered what difference Aimée’s coming would make to our household.

Once more we spent Christmas at Enderby. Damaris told me that she thought the great-grandparents were getting too old to preside over the festivities and she and Priscilla both thought that Enderby would be a good place to have them.

We did all the traditional things and the days flew past. We returned to London on the sixth of January. Aimée was due at the end of the month.

She was catching the coach from York and travelling to London and we would meet her at the coaching inn and take her to Albemarle Street from there. We had planned that we would stay in London until the birth of the child.

I was excited at the prospect of having my sister to live with us. Looking back, I realized I knew very little about her and what I had discovered at Hessenfield had been submerged beneath the importance of my meeting with Dickon.

We were waiting at the inn when the coach arrived, a lumbering vehicle, leather-covered and studded with nails, windows covered by leather curtains and a rounded roof with an outside seat over the boot.

The guard alighted first, hampered by the blunderbuss which he carried as a protection against any highwayman encountered on the road, and the horn which he would blow on passing through a town or village. Then came the postillion, who had been riding on the foremost of the three horses. He was dressed in a green coat laced with gold and wore a cocked hat.

The passengers finally emerged and among them Aimée. She looked different from the others and even a long and uncomfortable journey on rough and muddy roads could not destroy her innate elegance. She wore a woollen cloak—navy-blue in colour over a dress of the same material and she had one of the latest fashions in cocked hats which was blue and trimmed with touches of red. The garments were plain but in the best of taste. I could never understand whether it was the manner in which her clothes were cut or the way she wore them which gave them distinction. She had made them herself, I discovered later, for she had been apprenticed to a couturière in Paris when she was a young girl.

She embraced me with great affection and gratitude. She treated Lance with reserved respect and thanked him warmly in that accent with its foreign touch, and I was delighted to see that they immediately liked each other.

Our coach was waiting to take us the short distance through London to Albemarle Street and during the journey Aimée talked a little of the impossibility of her life in the North and her losses in the South Sea Company.

‘Here you have a fellow sufferer,’ I said.

‘You too, Clarissa?’ she said in some alarm.

I shook my head. ‘Poor Lance,’ I replied. ‘As a matter of fact, I did rather well out of it unwittingly.’

I told her what had happened.

She leaned towards me and pressed my hand. ‘I am so glad for you. How ironical that this South Sea business should profit you who are not in the least interested in taking a chance.’

‘It did, precisely because I was not interested.’

‘How perverse of fate! And there were we,’ she glanced at Lance ‘trying so hard to make the most of what we thought was a God-given opportunity… and we came to grief.’

‘The fate of most gamblers,’ I said.

‘You see,’ said Lance, ‘I am an inveterate gambler. Clarissa deplores it.’

‘My husband was the same… with what dire results. But for the South Sea Bubble I should not be in these straits now.’

‘We’ll forget the Bubble,’ I said. ‘We have plenty of room, haven’t we, Lance, and we are delighted to have you stay as long as you wish. I am thrilled about the baby. What do you want, a boy or a girl? We shall have to see about engaging a midwife. We thought it would be better to stay in London until after the birth.’

Aimée turned to me with misty eyes. ‘You are making me feel very welcome,’ she said gratefully.

Aimée’s coming wrought a subtle change in the household. I suppose the birth of a child is such an important event that it must dominate all else. We engaged a midwife who was recommended by a friend of Lance’s and eventually she came to stay in the house. Aimée and I—before she became too large—shopped to buy clothes for the baby. We visited the mercers in Cheapside, Ludgate Hill and Gracechurch Street; we took great delight in ribbons and laces, and I was determined that my little nephew or niece should have the best of everything.

Jeanne was good with her needle but we hired a seamstress to come to the house and those three months before the birth were taken up with plans for the baby.

I had thought Jeanne and Aimée would get on well together, being of the same nationality, able to prattle away in French. What could be better? I spoke French tolerably well and now that Aimée was with us I spoke it more frequently than I had with Jeanne, but I was not as good as the two Frenchwomen, of course. Oddly enough, there was hostility between them.

‘Jeanne is inclined to be insolent,’ said Aimée.

‘No… no… never,’ I replied. ‘She was been with me so long, and she came in rather exceptional circumstances. Jeanne was a good friend to me when I needed a friend. She could not be insolent… just aware that there is a rather special bond between us.’

Jeanne said: ‘The baby will come and it is good to have a dear little baby in the house. But she is not the mistress here. Oh no, that is you, milady Clarissa, and no one is going to forget that if I can help it!’

‘I am sure Aimée doesn’t forget it.’

‘She is deep, that one,’ was Jeanne’s comment.

But of course she was delighted with the prospect of the baby.

Aimée and I would talk of it for hours and little scraps of information came out about her past. I gathered her mother had been a dominating character and Aimée had had to obey her in all things. She described the bookshop on the Left Bank and how her mother had worked hard to give her a good education. She talked about the streets of Paris, of sitting by the river and watching the boats go down the Seine; she made me, as she had before, feel the atmosphere of those streets, see the crowds of gesticulating people, the traders, the ladies going by in their coaches, and the perpetual mud.

At last, with the coming of April Aimée’s pains started and after a few anxious hours her child was born.

It was a son. I went in almost as soon as he was born to see that red, wrinkled little creature, and I was overjoyed to learn that he was sound in every way, with a pair of lungs which he liked to air.

Aimée herself made a quick recovery and we had a lot of fun selecting names. Eventually she settled on Jean-Louis. Now we had two additional members of the household.

It is amazing how quickly people’s lives become changed by a baby: The entire household was devoted to Jean-Louis. He only had to appear and he was the centre of attention. When his first tooth came we were all excited and I sent messengers over to Eversleigh to tell them of this astounding event.

We vied with each other for the privilege of holding him and when he smiled at us we were in transports of delight. Even the male members of the household were not immune to the baby’s charm, and Jeffers the coachman, who had been with Lance’s family for the last fifty years—since he was a stableboy of eight—and was as sour as vinegar, would try hard not to smile when he saw the baby, and could not prevent himself from doing so.