Chapter Twenty-Four
Lord Bushnell was in his office reading the London financial newspaper that had finally arrived in the village, when a headline caused him to choke on his first cigar of the day.
Cargo Ship Lost at Sea. Insurance Questions.
Questions have been raised as to whether the vessel was insured at the time of its leaving port and sinking, since it appears to have left Jamaica earlier than the policy stated.
Unofficial reports are circulating that this is a not uncommon practice, whereby merchants hope to reduce their costs by insuring the vessel once it has already completed part of the journey.
If the information is correct, it will mean serious losses for the investors. Lloyds have so far made no comment.
His lordship bolted out of his chair and left for London within the hour. When he came back some days later, he looked haggard.
“You need to sit down,” he told his wife. “I have some very bad news.”
He explained that back in the winter, he’d heard the Earl of Doncaster in his club talking about how he was going to make a pile investing in sugar.
He had an agent who was familiar with the trade, and who was going to handle it all for him.
You loaded a ship full of sugar in the West indies, and sailed it back to England.
You were sure to more than double your money.
It was easy! Thinking of the cost of Genevieve’s coming out, he’d persuaded Doncaster to let him in on it.
He didn’t want to at first, but, well, they were boys together at Eton, so he finally let him in, to the tune of five thousand.
“So I went to see old Rattisbone,” said his lordship, “and told him to raise the requisite money by selling me out of the funds. He didn’t like it, of course, but those accountants never like anything that means spending any blunt.
I gave it to Doncaster’s man Parsons who drew up a contract, all fair and square.
“All was well, sugar was there, sugar was loaded, sugar was on the way and then a demned storm sank the whole lot — the ship, the sugar, and Doncaster’s agent.
And turns out it ain’t insured. Contract filed with Lloyd’s for the wrong dates, apparently.
We’re fighting it, of course, but I don’t hold out much hope.
Trouble is, the paper Parsons had me sign, well, I didn’t read it all, my fault, of course, but he had it all sewn up: In the case of the loss of all or any part of the ship and its contents due to an Act of God, the lender assumes the loss, blah, blah…
so I get nothing back. Sorry, m’dear. I acted for the best. But, as it is, we’re going to have to pull in our horns for a bit.
No extra blunt around for a year or two.
We’ll come around all right, but I don’t know what old Doncaster’s going to do.
He was in much deeper, and a little bird told me he’d borrowed the money with his estates as collateral.
Oh, and by the way, I finally recalled where I knew the name Andrew Fielding from.
He’s Doncaster’s younger brother. I should have remembered it before.
He was a junior boy when we were upper classmen at school. ”
“So he is a gentleman. I thought so,” said his wife. “I suppose his older brother got the title and the money, and now he’s lost it. But we’ll be all right, won’t we? I mean, we haven’t lost everything, have we?”
“Good God, no! I wasn’t such a fool as that! We’ll come about, but we’ll have to rent out the London house, so no season next year, or the one after, probably.”
“No season?” cried her ladyship. “But what about Genevieve?”
“That’s the one consolation,” replied her husband. “You know she never wanted a coming out. She’ll be happy as a grig.”
And so she was. By the time her father could afford it, Genevieve had turned twenty-one and refused to have anything to do with a London Season.
She took a bequest her grandmother had left her, and she and her friend Bobby bought that little farm she had so long dreamed of.
They implemented the advanced farming methods introduced some years before, and which Bobby had studied, and were able to feed their animals year round from what they grew.
The only problem was that when the time came to sell animals they had raised from birth, Genevieve could not bear to watch them go.
Bobby, made of sterner stuff, had to do all the negotiations.
But the portrait of Genevieve done by Andrew Fielding hung in the family gallery for many years, admired by the generations of Bushnells and all others who saw it.