by John Pearson
“You can imagine how I felt when I realised she was talking about you. I suddenly realised how famous you are going to be, and I was so proud of you, my love. Dearest, I’m glad that you’re a politician, really glad, for there’s so much you can do. You can fight those beastly radicals and Liberals and Irish, and defend the things that we believe in.”
But were those things as similar as Marjorie imagined? He wasn’t sure. One thing he did know, though. He was not in Parliament simply to keep the world safe for people like the Southwolds.
Since he and Marjorie moved into 165 there had been an ominous silence from that quarter; not a letter or a word since their return from honeymoon. Richard could hardly have been more delighted, but Marjorie began to worry, particularly when she failed to see her father at the State Opening. She had called twice at Grosvenor Square but the house was closed up and deserted. Richard knew that Marjorie was uneasy and would have liked to help, but by tacit agreement neither said anything about it.
Richard was beginning to wonder if the Southwolds had just vanished or disowned them totally—with somebody like Lady Southwold anything was possible—when a letter turned up in the morning post from one Geoffrey Dillon suggesting that Mr. Bellamy, M.P., might care to call in at his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn. “The Rt. Hon. the Earl of Southwold has suggested that there are certain matters which concern you and the Lady Marjorie and which need to be arranged.”
“Do you know anyone called Dillon?” he asked Marjorie. Since Parliament had started they had begun breakfasting together in the breakfast room. Marjorie was now immersed in toast and Cooper’s marmalade and the personals column of the Times.
“Mmm?” she replied.
“Dillon. Geoffrey Dillon.”
“Of course I do. He’s Mother’s lawyer. I can’t stand him. Does he say anything about the parents?”
“No, not a word, but he wants to see me.”
He handed her the letter and she read it thoughtfully.
“Don’t like the sound of it, dearest. Do you have to go?”
“If there are things that really do concern me, then I suppose I’d better.”
Dillon’s office turned out to be a strange mixture of impressiveness and squalor. “Rather like the Law itself,” said Richard to himself as he waited in the outer office after a skeletal old clerk with rheumy eyes had taken his message that Richard Bellamy, M.P., would like to see Mr. Dillon.
Cobwebs festooned the windows, piles of old law reports rose like strange vegetables from floor to ceiling, a portrait of an anonymous Lord Chancellor leered down at Richard, whilst the office cat picked at a chicken carcass left on a side table littered with dirty plates and porter bottles. There was a small bell with a note beside it saying, “Ring for attention.” After five minutes, Richard took its advice. Nothing happened, except that the cat began choking on a bone and was quietly sick in the middle of the room. Disgusted, Richard watched, and so failed to notice the arrival of the tall, thin individual who entered the office from behind him.
“Bellamy? Dillon’s the name. Extremely kind of you to come at such short notice.”
Richard turned.
Like his voice—dry, high-pitched, faintly inquisitorial—Dillon’s appearance seemed to match that sunless office. There was undoubtedly distinction in the man, yet also something faintly squalid and, yes, a little frightening. One could not be quite sure of what a man like this might do behind one’s back. Perhaps it was simply the way in which he seemed to hide his real thoughts behind his large-lensed spectacles. Even seeing him for the first time, Richard could understand Marjorie’s dislike.
Yet he seemed affability itself—respectful, grateful, almost servile to Richard for coming. It was Richard who had to bring him down to business by asking what Lord Southwold wanted them to settle.
“Ah, certainly, certainly. I am afraid that we must talk about something I’d almost rather not.” He shrugged apologetically.
“And what is that?”
“Money, Bellamy. Money. There is the question of the settlement which Lord Southwold has agreed to make from the estate, to assist Lady Marjorie—uhum, and of course yourself—to continue the way of life to which she, both of you, have naturally become accustomed.”
“I am most grateful to Lord Southwold, naturally, but surely there is no difficulty? Since I was elected, Lord Southwold has very kindly honoured his promise and made me a handsome stipend to allow me to perform my duties. Since my marriage he has, with still greater generosity, made over to us the lease of 165, Eaton Place. The stipend— plus what I earn from my literary work, and Lady Marjorie’s own income—means that we are quite adequately taken care of.”
“Ah, yes,” said Dillon, staring vacantly towards the anonymous Lord Chancellor.
“Yes, indeed. That will naturally continue.”
He paused as if searching for the words he needed. Richard tried to fix his eye, but he evaded him.
“Well, man,” said Richard, suddenly impatient, “what’s all the fuss about?”
“Now, now Bellamy, a little patience. Just a little patience. This isn’t particularly agreeable for me.”
He leaned back in his chair and continued staring at the portrait, so that when he spoke his words took on a cold impersonality, as if he were delivering an opinion to the old gentleman in the full-bottom wig.
“Bellamy, you talked about your ‘stipend.’ There is no stipend. That was a purely temporary ex gratia payment made by his lordship to assist you at the time.”
Richard exploded. “Rubbish! It was nothing of the kind. Lord Southwold gave me his explicit word that as long as I was in the House of Commons, I could count on the support of the Southwolds. He …”
“Please!” Dillon raised a long grey hand as if to halt a flow of hostile traffic through the room.
“Support. You talk about support. You can count on that—and not merely for your time in Parliament.”
Richard was puzzled. “So?”
“Since you have married Lady Marjorie it has been decided that the right and proper means of continuing this support is through the whole marriage settlement.”
“That sounds quite reasonable,” said Richard.
Dillon nodded. He had now turned his gaze from the Lord Chancellor to his shirt cuffs. “But I must, with respect, point out that the marriage settlement is naturally in your wife’s name, not yours. A year or two ago this would have made no difference. A wife’s property and chattels automatically belonged to the man she was married to. But since the Married Women’s Property Act—of which as an M.P., you, I take it, are not unaware—money vested in the wife remains her private property.”
Dillon stopped, and returned his gaze to the Lord Chancellor. For a moment there was silence, save for the sound of the office cat who was now scratching herself.
“There must be some mistake,” said Richard finally. “I must speak to Lord Southwold.”
“There is no mistake. And Lord Southwold is not available, now or at any other time, to discuss this matter.”
“But it is monstrous!”
“Monstrous, Bellamy? Come, come! You have the woman that you love, a seat in Parliament, a house most men would envy—and you call it ‘monstrous.’”
“But I was promised.”
“Can you prove it?”
“There are certain things no gentleman should have to prove.”
“Unfortunately, an income of eight thousand pounds a year isn’t one of them.”
“Then I suddenly find that I am placed in the position of being my wife’s pensioner for life.”
“Oh, come, come, Bellamy! That’s no way to talk about what is by any standards a piece of great generosity. Besides, it’s scarcely flattering to Lady Marjorie.”
“I’ll ask you not to be impertinent about my wife.”
“Impertinent, Bellamy?” For the first time Geoffrey Dillon faced him, but the big magnifying lenses of his spectacles had made his eyes vanish into a sort of el
usive nothingness.
Richard rose, mastering his desire to strike the man. “You’ll be hearing from me later. For the present there is nothing else to talk about.”
“Evidently not,” said Dillon.
Richard missed lunch. He was so angry and upset that he could not bring himself to eat. At two the House was due to continue the debate on the Ecclesiastical Causes Bill. This concerned the power of the government to regulate church livings in the interests of greater fairness and equality among the clergy. Consciences including Mr. Gladstone’s, but not including Richard’s, were much aroused. Should the Church of England be established or disestablished? Should it remain a branch of the state or continue freely on its own? As a rector’s son and one-time potential candidate for ordination, Richard intuitively felt that the whole system, which had worked in its own strange way for more than 350 years, should be permitted to continue. But as with most things in the House, where the lawyers felt their right to have their say, the whole subject seemed to lose touch with all reality. And how tedious, how infinitely, wearyingly dull the speakers seemed. He tried to concentrate on the debate in an attempt to take his mind off Geoffrey Dillon. But instead, the House suddenly seemed full of Dillons with their “with respect” and “on a point of order.”
By three o’clock he’d had enough. But as he strolled through the main lobby someone stopped him.
“Bellamy, isn’t it?”
“Quite right, and you are …?”
“Dangerfield. Dick Dangerfield. I was at Balliol when you were at Magdalen. Huddersfield North.”
“Oh?” said Richard.
“My constituency. I got in three years ago with the swing to the Liberals. I must say you were confounded lucky to take Sutton as you did. I meant to write congratulating you at the time.”
“From a Liberal that’s very generous.”
Dangerfield smiled. It was a winning, conspiratorial sort of smile, and Richard now remembered him as one of the wildest undergraduates of his day.
“Come, come. You don’t honestly believe all that old nonsense about Liberals and bloody revolution? Some of us really are quite human. Come and have a drink.”
Perhaps it was the contrast with Geoffrey Dillon and the ecclesiastical lawyers, but Richard rather took to Dangerfield from the beginning. He was a short, vital man with black curly hair, dark eyes, and a spectacularly broken nose. He had a habit of putting his head on one side and watching you so quizzically as you talked that in the end it was always hard not to burst out laughing. He told Richard that since he left Oxford he had married a rich wife, left her, and was now working at the Bar.
“Another lawyer!” Richard said and groaned.
“What’s wrong with lawyers?” asked Dangerfield, and Richard told him the whole story of his marriage, of Lord Southwold’s promise, and finally of that morning’s interview with Dillon. It was good to find someone intelligent to talk to and to get the whole thing off his chest. When he had finished, Dangerfield whistled—rather commonly—between his teeth.
“Tricky position, Dick my boy!” (He had called Richard “Dick” automatically. Normally Richard resented it.)
“Pity you didn’t see me, or someone else in my disreputable profession, before you plunged. Not a leg to stand on now, I’d say. I may be wrong. It may just be worth a learned counsel’s fee to make sure how you stand. But I don’t think there’s much chance, and Dillon’s quite well known as the sort of tricky lawyer who doesn’t make mistakes.”
“So what advice can you give me?” said Richard miserably.
“Advice? You laymen always want advice. Well, speaking as something of a man of the world, I’d say, ‘Hold tight to Marjorie.’”
The Southwold settlement hung over Richard, as it presumably was meant to. It was designed to cause him days of agony and nights of sleeplessness, to make him moody and morose. It also upset things seriously between him and Marjorie. He could think of no honest way of telling her that her parents had, as he saw it, tricked him. And she for her part could think of no way of discovering what was on Richard’s mind.
She suspected, with a woman’s intuition, that it had something to do with Geoffrey Dillon. But when she asked Richard what Dillon had wanted he replied, “Nothing serious, my love. Just a few details on the lease here that required seeing to. Nothing important.”
Marjorie knew he was lying, but there was not a great deal she could do.
Since Parliament had reassembled Marjorie had reluctantly begun to do what she knew to be her social duty as a rising M.P.’s wife. In fact she was good at it, and really enjoyed the role of political hostess on the minor scale of a back-bencher’s wife. She told herself that it was “good for Richard’s career” and as if this weren’t enough, added that “the servants so enjoy having a few celebrities to dinner,” which wasn’t strictly true.
But Mrs. Bridges did excel on these occasions; already, in certain knowing, not uninfluential quarters of the Commons, 165, Eaton Place was becoming known as “the sort of place where you can always be sure of the food—if not of the conversation.”
This particular evening, Mrs. B. surpassed herself, with her cucumber soup and a splendid cassoulet made to a complicated recipe of Baron Brisse. (Richard had recently been trying to introduce a more cosmopolitan note into the menu at 165, and surprisingly Mrs. Bridges quite took to it.)
This was as well, for Richard had invited Dangerfield, and young George Wyndham and another young Conservative M.P. named Brooking were guests. Brooking had brought his wife, a frilly little thing related to the Macclesfields, but as Dangerfield was currently without a presentable lady he could bring to dinner, Marjorie had asked Prudence Fairfax to make up the numbers. Marjorie was none too pleased at the idea of having a Liberal M.P. to dinner in her house.
“You’d better tell Hudson to count the silver,” Richard said, laughing. “With Liberals you can never be too careful!”
But from the moment he appeared, Dangerfield’s rather rakish charm won Marjorie over, and that evening the after-dinner talk was far more animated than was usually the case at 165. As it was a small party, the gentlemen soon joined the ladies and the talk got onto the subject which was obsessing London—the fate of General Gordon, who had exceeded the admittedly extremely vague instructions given him by Gladstone’s government and who was now face to face with the forces of the Mahdi at Khartoum.
When the talk got onto the subject of Gladstone’s slowness in despatching a relief expedition, Marjorie became extremely heated.
“How can that criminal old man hesitate a moment when the fate of that gallant soldier hangs in the balance?”
But Richard, who had the politician’s inborn mistrust of generals who attempt to force their views, however justified, upon a government, refused to let this pass.
“Majorie, dearest, you’ve simply no idea,” he said irritably. “And I won’t allow you to call a great man like Gladstone criminal. You can disagree with him, but that’s another matter. Besides, the General from the start has known the risks that he’s been taking.”
Marjorie controlled her temper at this show of male superiority, although she was tempted to tell her husband that she would call old Gladstone whatever she felt like. Instead she said softly, “Richard, darling, why aren’t you a Liberal yourself?”
“I’m not a Liberal—but I should hope I’m fair,” replied Richard somewhat pompously.
“Fiddlesticks!” said. Marjorie. “And what do you think, Mr. Dangerfield?”
Until this point Dangerfield had prudently abstained from the discussion.
“I think that General Gordon is a great hero who now wants to become an even greater martyr. And I believe he’s going to succeed.”
“You mean you think he’ll die in Khartoum?”
“Certainly.”
“And what will happen then?”
“I think that the country will rise and rend the Old Man limb from limb.”
The whole discussion had ups
et Richard. Apart from the question of General Gordon, this was the first time he and Marjorie had clashed on a point of politics. Until this moment he had not thought it possible. Also, the way that Marjorie had flared at him revealed a facet of her personality he had not suspected. Marjorie for her part was quite contrite, realising that just for once she had gone too far.
“I’m sorry, darling,” she said as they were getting into bed. “I’m sure that I was wrong about General Gordon and you were right. I’m just an ignorant young woman. You know best.”
But this apology, which normally would have brought Richard straight into her arms, failed completely. Instead he sat gloomily beside her on the bed, his face a study in male misery. Marjorie was alarmed.
“Dearest, what is it?”
“Nothing,” said Richard, gloomier than ever.
“But I know it’s something. Ever since you saw that wretched Geoffrey Dillon you’ve been different.”
And so the whole story finally came out—Lord Southwold’s promise, Dillon’s attempt to change the arrangement, and the new settlement that placed all their money in Marjorie’s name.
“And that’s all it was?” said Marjorie tenderly. “All that upset and worry over something so simple and so unimportant? Shame on you, Richard Bellamy. When the money arrives each month I’ll simply have it transferred straight into your account. Then we’ll have nothing at all to worry about.”
“But that’s not the point,” said Richard lamely, reluctant as he was to abandon a matter of principle.
“Oh, darling, I’m so sleepy. Come to bed,” said Marjorie softly and turned out the light.
But Richard knew that much more was at stake now than mere names in a bank account. For one thing, his pride was much involved: something within his puritan soul made him hate the idea of being, as he bitterly described it to himself, “the kept man of a rich wife.” And there was something else. Previously, when he had received his stipend straight from Lord Southwold, there had been no strings attached. Southwold was far too big a man—and far too vague—to have tried to use the money to bring any sort of pressure on him. But now that Dillon was involved he wasn’t sure. Nothing had been said, but he had an uneasy feeling about that gentleman.