Read Online The Rich Are with You Always by Malcolm Macdonald - Free Book Online Page B

carriage, he opened the window and leaned out. She reached up and squeezed his hand, the greatest intimacy they dared in public. He squeezed back and smiled, looking at her grey-brown eyes, eager in her smiling face, framed in dark ringlets that strayed from the edge of her bonnet; he had to remember that face over the next fortnight. "Throw away any bad pennies," he said.
      She smiled and blinked.
      The train backed out of the station, switched to the down rails, and set off northward. As the last carriage slid from view beyond the broad arch, she turned and made at once for Hudson's office.
      Hudson had two styles of greeting. The one for insiders was warm and almost conspiratorial; the one for strangers, outsiders, gulls, sheep for shearing, was majestic. It struck at the pit of the stomach; it awed important stockholders and silenced querulous directors. His greeting to Nora was an odd mixture of the two. "Hide the books!" he said in a stage whisper to Noakes, his clerk, while he came around to help Nora into her seat. "Give us a conundrum, lad," he added just before Noakes left.
      "Uh…eleven per cent of one thousand two hundred and forty-seven pounds," Noakes said as he closed the door; it was a long-established ritual.
      Nora and Hudson faced each other, smiling grimly, cat-and-cat. It was Nora's day to be Distressed Lady Seeks Help so she let Hudson say, "One three seven pounds three and fivepence," a little ahead of her. Then lamely, with all the pedantry of a born loser, she added, "Three shillings and four and four-fifths pence, if you want a base figure."
      He laughed magnanimously, pretending to accept second place. Good. He was slipping into the right mood.
      "It was pleasant to see Mr. Stevenson again," Hudson began.
      Nora displayed confusion. "This morning?" she asked, unbelieving. Hudson frowned. "No, no. Yesterday." His grey eyes watched her. "We met near Leavening. I out for a trot. He on his way to repair my great blunder." He pulled a sudden wry, naughty-boy face.
      "Great blunder!" Nora rose to his challenge. "Indeed. A chain's-length of wet ground, Stevenson says." Then, as an unimportant afterthought, she added: "Odd he never told me you met."
      Hudson wet his lips, uncertain of her.
      "But then," she added brightly, burying the topic, "I fancy you spoke nothing of moment."
       He's uncertain whether to believe me, she thought. It would take an indiscretion to prick his ears and drop that guard. "Stevenson and I were a little out of sorts," she confided, laughing to show it wasn't important. "I want a hand in the management of my trust fund. He and Chambers are that cautious. It saddens me to think of so many tens of thousands…" She halted, made herself blush, and stammered. "Well…thousands anyway—all lying as good as dead in Treasury stock."
      Hudson smiled, a touch greedily. "I don't know how he resists the idea," he said.
      She composed herself again. "Oh, I shall win," she told him. "I shall have the control of part of it at least."
       And that's a notion, she thought, that will come back to him over the months. And no harm to me.
      "It won't please your banker, that," Hudson said, pretending this was all idle chatter.
      "I'm out of concert with him and all," she answered glumly, and then, as if appealing to his judgement, added, "I feel as we've a right to a great deal more intelligence than he ferrets out for us. We've put contracts for over two million pounds through him these five years past. I think we're very poorly served in that department."
      Oblique though the appeal was, she made it plain enough to be irresistible to Hudson. "If it's railway intelligence, and ye think I could help…"
      Nora showed the right mixture of dwindling caution and mounting relief. "You're quick, Mr. Hudson. Quick and kindly. For you know full well I came here of express purpose to ask. But I wanted to avoid a direct request you might have been