Sons of Fortune

by Malcolm Macdonald

  This secret knowledge bound them in a private glee they could share with no other children—not even the Thorntons, for Walter had not John’s gifts as a storyteller. It gave them great power in their play, too, this knowledge of the real engineering world. For instance, when they made miniature canal systems down by the river, where other children would say, “We must line them with clay,” a Stevenson would say, “We’ll puddle it with best Leicester blue daub,” and immediately the canal was somehow more real—even if what they actually used was a rather leaky Hertfordshire glacial clay.

  By the end of the day, nervous energy, buoyed up by the delight of his children, was all that kept John on his feet. Nora could see the exhaustion closing in upon him. But he would not be warned. Every time she suggested he should finish, or at least rest a while, he would brush her words aside and encourage a general chorus of boos at this spoiling of the sport.

  Next day, of course, he paid the price of it. He was so weak he could hardly stand. His fingers trembled and could not hold knife or fork. Nora had to take Boy and Caspar to the station without him for their return to Fiennes. It was a week before he regained the strength his one day had cost him. By then all the delight at being home had faded and his dark mood had asserted itself once more.

  Nora did her best to keep out of his way, since she more than anyone seemed to have a worsening effect on him; but she could hardly absent herself from their table and their bed. At the end of one especially dour day, when he fretted from sunup onward to be back in their London office, planning a tour of all the current Stevenson contracts to bring himself up to date, he asked her to come to bed early. She hoped she knew why; but she was wrong.

  “You ought to be told,” he said when she lay beside him. “I don’t know whether I should have told you before—or whether I should be telling you at all.” He thought for a while. “That man—the officer in the Fourth Dragoons who intervened to stop the…” He cleared his throat.

  “Duel?” she said.

  He nodded. “Captain Proudfoot. Keith Proudfoot by name. He and I became quite close friends. And he had connections with the general staff. Anyway…from what he said, there may be a peerage for me in the offing. A barony probably.”

  “John!” She was thrilled. She wanted him to tell her again, a dozen different ways. “How marvellous!”

  “Of course, it’s far from certain.” He began to back away from the idea now it was out.

  “You deserve it.”

  “I don’t suppose the army can do anything but advise in the case of civilian honours. Not like a medal.”

  “When you look at some of the people who get these honours!”

  “So it’s only a recommendation from—I don’t know—Raglan, I imagine.”

  “I’d say it’s an honour that’s long overdue.” She hugged him, glad not only at the news but also at the chance to show her love. The Right Honourable Lord Stevenson! First Baron—what? “Baron what, have you thought? Eay, John, I’m that glad!”

  He barely responded. He lay there, smiling faintly at the middle distance.

  “And the children will all be Honourables, too. The Honourable Winifred Stevenson. The Honourable John Stevenson…Oh, John—aren’t you pleased? Why are you just sitting like that?”

  He came out of his reverie and looked at her; he looked at the arm she had laid across his chest as if he might be a little more comfortable without it there. “Of course you won’t breathe a word?”

  “Of course not! I’m surprised you feel the need to ask.”

  “Not even Nanette.”

  “John!”

  She pulled her arm away. Silence fell. “If you’re in such doubt you shouldn’t have told me,” she said, hurt.

  “I told you for a reason.” For a long while he added nothing more.

  “I suppose I may hear it this side of dawn,” she said at last.

  He breathed in and closed his eyes. This implication that he knew she was going to be angry was, in itself, enough to make her so.

  “These honours,” he began. “They aren’t handed out like prizes. It isn’t a…a sum of money that you’re free to spend or save or gamble. It isn’t just a royal pat on the head.”

  “It’s a recognition,” she said.

  He looked at her speculatively. “Recognition of what?”

  “Services done. Service to the nation. And if that doesn’t describe the Crimean railway, then…”

  But John was shaking his head. “More,” he said. “It’s more than that. For services they just hand out orders and decorations—Member of This, Companion of That. When they give a barony it’s a recognition of more than services. It’s a recognition that we are fit people for other Englishmen to look up to.” His gaze turned into an open challenge.

  “So?” she asked uncomfortably.

  “Not just to look up to, but to admit into good society,” he went on.

  She grinned then. “Yes! They won’t snub us now. Even Lord Middleton’s hunt won’t dare blackball us any longer—it would be like a slur on the queen’s judgement.” She giggled with suppressed delight.

  “Not just to look up to,” he went on relentlessly. “Not just to admit into good society. But to emulate—to use as an example.”

  “They’ve far to go to catch us up!” Nora sneered. “There’s no man in the realm could follow you—do what you’ve done, get where you’ve gotten.” She spoke in this way because she now had more than an inkling of where this particular homily of John’s was going.

  His annoyance was like a reward—he, who had expected her anger. “I’m not talking about example in that sense. I mean behaviour.”

  “Morally, you mean? I hope you’re not implying that I need…”

  “No!” he said vehemently. “I do not mean morally either—as I suspect you know. I am talking about behaviour acceptable to Society. I am talking about conforming, Nora.”

  There was another silence.

  “Very well—talk away!” Nora said at length. “I shall be interested to hear what Lady Stevenson may not do that plain Mrs. Stevenson achieved.”

  “Lady Stevenson will have to be At Home more often. Lady Stevenson will have to take a more prominent place in local Society, pay more morning calls, help determine the shape of Society—or that part of it in which she moves. Lady Stevenson will not be able to hang about the fringes of the City, dining alone with her banker…”

  “Are you implying that Nathaniel and I are anything more to each other than…”

  “Of course not. I know. And you know—and so, I hope, does Nathaniel Chambers. But Society does not know. Society will draw a different inference.”

  “So Lady Stevenson will have to wash Society’s mind for it, too. It won’t be the first washing I’ve taken in.”

  “Lady Stevenson will have to stop glorying in her past poverty and her noble climb out of its depths. Lady Stevenson cannot entertain portrait painters at her table—nor doctors nor clergymen either.”

  “Not Sir Edwin Landseer?” she asked innocently.

  For a moment he was deceived; his mouth fell open. “You mean he’s now in your magic circle, too?”

  “I only use him as an example. I’m surprised that no lady could seat Sir Edwin, whom the queen…”

  “Of course there are exceptions. Don’t be so deliberately obstructive. What I’m saying is that Mr. Llewellyn Roxby and his kind would not be fit acquaintances for a baroness. They are not, in fact, fit for Mrs. Stevenson either—but the queen did not select Mrs. Stevenson as a suitable person for other members of Society to take example from.”

  “The queen won’t select Lady Stevenson, either. It will be John Stevenson she’ll select. I’ll be there by accident—if at all.”

  He looked at her then and nodded as if she had said something quite shrewd. “Exactly! ‘If at all.’ If we don’t get
this peerage, Nora, do you think it will be because the Crimea railway wasn’t good enough—deserving enough—or because Mrs. Stevenson’s eccentricities make the honour impossible?”

  Nora felt her guts drop from inside her. What John was implying was monstrous, yet there was a clever little nugget of truth at the heart of it. Her individualism and neglect of middle-class society (and for Nora the queen herself was the very essence of all that she meant by “middle” class) might not please any of these drab, grey, mid-century administrations who told the queen whom to honour, whom to shun.

  “I’m sure all this would have been news to Lady Henshaw,” she said, rallying, “who kept that flock of goats to pull her carriage. You’ve been reading too many books on etiquette—that’s your trouble.”

  “Lady Henshaw was an old eccentric. She did not move in Society. And books on etiquette don’t come into it.”

  “All right. What’s the name of that fellow Chambers was telling us about last year? Very rich but can’t get into…Richard! Mr. Richards. When I’m the Lady Stevenson, I’ll behave so properly you won’t see me for the ice. And I’ll hire my title out to Mr. Richards, be his hostess, greet his guests at the door. Thousand pounds at a time! You know me—I have to make money at something.”

  John sighed and raked the ceiling with his eyes.

  “Why not!” Nora challenged him. “Is that not exactly what Lady Parke used to do for poor George Hudson at Palace Gate? And didn’t Society look up to Lady Parke? They certainly flocked to her entertainments, even the Duke of Wellington—that’s where you met him.”

  John rearranged the bedclothes in his exasperation. “This is all nonsense, Nora. It doesn’t come near answering the question I asked.”

  She didn’t want to answer that question, for the only answer she could make would be as wounding to him as he had been to her. So she tried a different tack: “Can you honestly see me at morning calls four afternoons a week! Can you imagine me cutting someone who interests or pleases me merely because Society—a lot of frightened old hens…”

  John exploded one fist in the other. “That’s just it, Nora. That’s exactly what you will have to do. Or would have to do—we mustn’t talk as if the honour were certain. Would have to do. If Society decides that Mr. X is beyond the pale, no one cares if that strange Stevenson woman acknowledges him. But if Lady Stevenson accepts him, they cannot ignore it. And you will embarrass them. Mrs. Tomnoddy cannot cut Mr. X, because Mr. X enjoys the patronage of a peeress. So your thoughtless act—some whim to please your own notions of who’s interesting and who’s dull—could force local Society to tolerate and admit some rank outsider, an out-and-out cad.”

  “John! Do you actually believe this rubbish?”

  “How dare you!” He began to tremble with anger.

  But she was not going to be cowed now; it had all got too deep. “Equally, how dare you assume I would befriend the sort of person you’re…that I would befriend an out-and-outer!”

  “George Hudson!” he crowed. “Since you’ve brought his name up.”

  “What about George Hudson?”

  “You’ve gone on entertaining him.”

  “But he’s a friend!”

  “He’s been cut out of Society since his bankruptcy.”

  “Well, I haven’t exactly seen you turning the cold shoulder on him.”

  John was pointedly silent. Nora now stared at him in disbelief. “You mean if you get a barony, you’d start cutting Hudson?”

  “I’d have to. Of course I would. That’s my point, Nora. A peerage conveys difficult responsibilities.”

  “Then I say the market in peerages is suddenly looking very bullish from this side of the bed!”

  He rocked himself furiously, letting the momentum carry him upright and onto the floor. “I thought you’d say that! You think only of yourself. You’d do anything except answer my question.”

  “Listen…it doesn’t matter now. It’s too late. If my behaviour is in question, if my behaviour it going to deny you the barony, it’s too late now.”

  “What d’you mean, ‘too late’?”

  He was not really going to listen; already he was reaching for his dressing gown.

  “I mean I’d have to conform for the next ten years, without one slip-up.”

  “You would. And you could. If you thought of anyone but yourself. What a feeble answer to my question!”

  Seeing now that she had nothing to lose she decided to speak her mind quite openly: “What question? Are you interested in possible reasons for denying you a peerage?”

  He was making for the door to his dressing room, apparently not heeding her.

  “What about the law of scandalum magnatum then?” she asked.

  He paused a moment, shrugged, and went into his dressing room. Before he could shut the door she raised her voice: “I intend you to hear this, John, since you’ve goaded me four times to tell you. It can be for your ears alone or for the whole household to hear. Shut that door and you’ll be making the choice.”

  Angry still, but now with a certain wariness, he came back and stood in the doorway. “More blether?” he asked.

  “That law says anyone who spreads scandal about a peer can be fined and imprisoned, even if the scandal proves true.”

  “Very interesting.”

  “So they don’t hand out peerages these days to anyone who might force them to dust off such an embarrassment to modern democrats.”

  He yawned ostentatiously.

  “What I’m saying, John, is that they investigate the origins and background and character and behaviour of all potential peers long before they make any direct approach to the men in question.”

  He leaned against the doorjamb.

  “You,” she went on, “began our business with the benefit of a forged letter. You forged it yourself…and Dr. Prendergast, who’s now Bishop of Manchester, spotted it. They are almost certainly going to be asking him about you.”

  “He wouldn’t dare! We covered all those traces. He tried it once, remember.”

  “It may be just the revenge he’s waited for. You’d never prove he spoke. Nothing would ever be written down. You’d simply never hear of your barony again.”

  She could see the thought worried him.

  “But it needn’t be Prendergast,” she went on. “When Charley Eade tried to set two mob men onto me in Manchester that time, they only needed one look at you and they turned into walking apologies for dancing masters—two of the hardest criminals in Manchester!”

  He was now looking at her very uncertainly.

  “Where did you get five thousand pounds from, John? The five thousand you had when we started this business? I’ve never asked, but I’m surely not the only one who’s wondered. And if there’s any serious notion of giving you a peerage, I’ll wager there’s half a dozen men in Whitehall have already begun to wonder, too—or are about to start.”

  “Have you finished?” he asked, biting his lip.

  “So if you don’t get the call to St. James’s, love, the reason may just be something other than that your wife has the odd portrait painter to dinner or takes luncheon with her banker once a month. Why play a low card if they hold the ace of trumps, eh?”

  He did not even say good night but slammed the door hard enough to rattle the windows. She sighed and lay down. It saddened her deeply to have to do what she had just done. It almost made her cry. But life would become intolerable if the idea were allowed to take root that her behaviour had cost John his peerage.

  Besides, if getting a barony really entailed giving up all the pleasant things in life and putting on that dreadful straitjacket of Society, she’d stay plain Mrs. “Mistress” it meant, mistress of your own life. She’d go on having painters and doctors and professors at her table, even if Society frowned at the depravity of it. Such people could often be perfectl
y respectable—and were a sight more interesting than most of the nincompoops who were in.

  Chapter 12

  Stevenson’s new London office was in a modest pair of terrace houses in Nottingham Place, just off the New Road from Paddington to the City— a mere hundred yards from Regent’s Park. It had not been intended as their headquarters. They had acquired the buildings, and several others on that side of London, in settlement of a debt. In the normal way they would have put the properties up for sale at once, but last year they had been forced to modify their old premises in Dowgate rather extensively and had moved all except their financial office, which had to stay in the City of course, out to these houses in Nottingham Place. To prevent total divorce between these parts of the firm, the senior people in every department, and anybody with some especial contribution to make on that particular occasion, assembled at banqueting rooms in Holborn every Saturday for a teetotal buffet luncheon.

  John’s first day back in the saddle had been on such a Saturday. It had seemed sensible to return at the end of the week, with the sabbath break immediately following; and also the luncheon would give him the best chance to meet and talk with all his senior people. The teetotal rule had been broken to allow everyone a glass of champagne cup to toast his recovery and the latest news about the operation of the Crimea railway, which was excellent.

  It had been a heartening return to work, yet the very elements that made it so heartening had, for him, a certain amount of chagrin. In short, he had hardly been missed.

  At the most abstract level that was a high compliment. In his navvying days and during his rise he had seen many contemporaries who insisted on being one-man bands, who would even sack a man for doing this or that aspect of the work better than they themselves could. Five of his own senior men owed their careers (and often a considerable fortune—for half a dozen Stevenson deputies had country estates above a hundred acres) to such dismissals by others. Inevitably the one-man bands fell into the pit of financial disaster. Not, John maintained, because of any great error on the part of the man himself but because he could assemble around him nothing but yes-sirs and no-riskers, people who were by their very natures made incompetent when competence mattered most.