"Jamie!" Malcolm said sharply, and would have told him to leave but for yesterday. Yesterday's debt was vast and forever so he just said as to the real friend that Jamie was, "This isn't your problem, and I know how you feel." He looked back at Gornt. "He is right you know, Norbert has been personally very difficult." Gornt did not reply. Malcolm shrugged and smiled. "Joss.
It's not your problem either, Mr. Gornt. So, you were once a principal and twice a second.
Clearly you won. The other man?"
"I didn't kill him, suh, wasn't trying to kill him. I just wounded him."
Both men watched each other, weighing the other.
Jamie said nervously, "Then everything's settled."
"Yes, except weapons. Mr. Greyforth chooses swords." Malcolm gasped and Jamie blanched.
"Duelling pistols were agreed," Jamie said.
"Agreed."
"So sorry, suh, it wasn't agreed. Mr.Greyforth as the challenged party has the right to choose weapons."
"But it was ag--"
"Jamie, let me deal with this," Malcolm said, astonished with his own detachment, expecting trickery from Norbert. "It was always presumed we were gentlemen and would use pistols."
"I'm sorry but those aren't my instructions, suh. As to gentlemen, my principal considers himself one, and chooses to defend his honor with a sword, which is quite customary."
"Obviously that's not possible."
"Mr. Greyforth also said--I must tell you I do not approve of this and told him so--he also said if you wanted, he would agree to knives, swords or fighting irons." Jamie began to get up but Malcolm stopped him.
"In my present state, that's impossible,"
Malcolm said, then gathered himself and said firmly, "If this is a ploy for Norbert to gain face, to humiliate me and call off the duel, then I spit in his eye and will continue to do so."
Jamie flushed at the bravado, admired it and hated it, then suddenly realized this could be a perfect face-saver for both men. "Tai-pan, don't you think--"
"No. Mr. Gornt, obviously I can't, now, even use a sword. Please ask Norbert to accept pistols."
"Well, suh, I will certainly ask, certainly the first duty of a second is to try to bring about a reconciliation and it seems to me there's room enough for both you gentlemen in Asia.
I'll ask."
Jamie said, "Mr. Gornt, I'll be here.
Anything I can do to help stop this insanity, just say the word."
Gornt nodded, began to rise but stopped as Malcolm said, "Perhaps I could have a private word, Mr. Gornt? You don't mind, do you, Jamie?"
"Not at all." Jamie shook hands with Gornt, then said to Malcolm, "There's a meeting of all traders to discuss Sir William's bombshell at noon in the Club."
"I'll be there, Jamie, though there won't be much discussion, just a lot of shrieking and foul temper."
"I agree. See you later, Tai-pan."
Jamie left.
In the fine office once more the two men watched each other. "You're aware of our Parliament's stupidity?"
"Yes, suh, I am. All governments are stupid."
"Would you join me in a glass of champagne?"
"A celebration?"
"Yes. I don't know why but I'm pleased to meet you."
"Ah, then you felt the same? Not right, is it?"
Malcolm shook his head and rang the bell.
Chen appeared and when the champagne was opened and poured he went away, his little eyes darting from silent man to silent man. "Health!"
"Health." Gornt replied, savoring the chilled wine.
"I got the impression you wanted to speak privately."
Gornt laughed. "I did indeed. Dangerous for an enemy to be able to read your mind, eh?"
"Very, but we needn't be enemies.
Rothwell's is a good client, the hatred and blood feud between the Struans and the Brocks needn't touch you, whatever Tyler or Morgan say."
Gornt put his eyes on the cut-glass crystal and the bubbles, asking them if he was correct in thinking that the time was now or if he should wait. The tawny eyes considered Struan. He decided to dismiss the danger. "You are reputed to like secrets, to be trustworthy."
"Are you?"
"In matters of honor, yes. Your reputation... do you like stories, legends?"
Malcolm concentrated, the unreality of the meeting and this man disorienting him. "Some better than others."
"I'm here under false pretenses."
Gornt's sudden smile lit up the room.
"Christ Jesus I don't believe I'm truly here with the future tai-pan of the Noble House. I've waited and planned so long for this meeting and now it's arrived, before I came here I had no intention of saying anything now, other than what Mr. Greyforth asked me to say. But now?"
He raised his glass. "To revenge."
Malcolm thought about that, unafraid and spellbound, then drank and poured again. "It's a good toast in Asia."
"Anywhere. First: I need your word of honor, the honor of the tai-pan of the Noble House, before God, that what I tell you will remain secret between us, until I release you."
Malcolm hesitated. "So long as it's a story." Then he swore the oath.
"Thank you. A story then. Are we safe here? Can anyone overhear us?"
"In Asia, usually. We're aware doors have ears as well as walls, but I can fix that.
Chen!" he called out. The door opened at once. In Cantonese he said, "Stay away from the door, keep everyone else away, even Ah Tok!"
"Yes Tai-pan." The door closed.
"Now you're safe, Mr. Gornt. I've known Chen all my life and he doesn't speak English, I think. You speak Shanghainese?"
"A little, the same with Ning poh dialect."
"You were saying?"
"This is the first time I have ever told this story,"
Gornt said and Malcolm believed him. "Once upon a time," he began, no lightness now, "a family went to England from Montgomery, Alabama--their home for generations--father, mother, and two children, a boy, and girl. She was fifteen, her name Alexandra and her father was the youngest of five brothers, Wilf Tillman was the oldest."
"The co-founder of Cooper-Tillman?"
Struan said, jarred.
"The same. Alexandra's father was a minor tea and cotton broker, an investor with brother Wilf in Cooper-Tillman, and he went to London to work with Rothwell's on a three-year contract to advise on cotton-- Cooper-Tillman was their major supplier.
They stayed just under a year. Unfortunately both parents had gotten very ill, no wonder, eh, with the fogs and that weather, I nearly died myself while I was there--I spent two years in London training with Brock's, one with Rothwell's.
Anyway, the Tillmans decided to go home.
Halfway across the Atlantic Alexandra discovered she was pregnant."
"Ayeeyah," Malcolm muttered.
"Yes. The shock, on top of her adored father's illness, killed him. He was thirty-seven. They buried him at sea. The Captain's death certificate just said "brainstorm" but both she and her mother knew the real cause was the bad news. Alexandra was just sixteen, as pretty as a picture. That was in '35, twenty-seven years ago. Alexandra had a son, me. For an unmarried girl to have a child out of wedlock, to be a fallen woman... well, Mr. Struan, no need to tell you what a stigma and disaster that is, and Alabama's Bible country, our part, and the Tillmans gentry.
Earlier we talked about honor, it's true what I said, that we take honor seriously, and dishonor. May I?" Gornt motioned to the champagne.
"Please." Malcolm did not know what else to say. The voice was lilting, pleasant, uninvolved, just a storyteller relating a history. For the moment, he thought grimly.
Gornt poured for Struan, then for himself. "My mother and her mother were ostracized by society, and the Tillman family, even her brother turned against her. When I was three my mother met a Virginian, a transplanted Englishman-- Robert Gornt, gentleman, tobacco and cotton exporter, card-playing enthusiast from Richmond--who fell in love with Mother and she with him. They left Montgomery and were married in Richmond. The story they fabricated was that she was a widow, married at sixteen to a Yankee cavalry officer who had been killed in the Sioux Indian wars. She was nineteen then.