Julia’s smile, and the conviction that there was no other alternative, served to resign William to delaying his marriage for a few weeks. He was on the point of bidding his future bride to pack her trunk when his aunt, clutching the back of a chair to support her—for she was indeed in danger of collapsing from shock—exclaimed, “What, Julia, are you going to travel unescorted? Can you possibly be willing to compromise yourself in this way?” And to William: “Young man, have you no care for the reputation of Julia and all her family?”
There was a moment’s silence. William looked at Julia, and she at him, as the awful realization dawned upon them both. Julia could not accompany William to Portsmouth unless Mrs. Norris came with them. All the comfort and intimacy of their journey would be destroyed entirely. Their love had already endured so many tests—could it survive this latest hardship, as well?
“Julia,” Edmund interposed calmly. “Perhaps you’d like to show William around your garden? And Aunt Norris, could you please go and ask Mrs. Peckover to lay another place for breakfast?”
* * * * * * *
“Imogen! I am waiting.” Lord Delingpole’s voice echoed in the cavernous lobby of their London mansion. He paced back and forth by the front door where two impassive footmen stood at attention. “The carriage has come ‘round. It is time to depart.”
Lady Delingpole’s head appeared over the railing two floors up.
“You may recall, my dear, that I have spent the last hour helping you to arrange your papers and find that missing memorandum. And now I am writing a brief note to our son, and I have not finished dressing. I shall be ready to leave shortly.”
Lady Delingpole returned to her dressing room to complete her note and her toilette. The Delingpoles were to spend a few days at Coombe House, the country seat of the new prime minister. Lord Liverpool had reluctantly agreed to take up Spencer Perceval’s fallen mantle, but had come close to resigning several times since then. The tumult of the past fortnight had tried even the energy and resources of Lord Delingpole—fears of insurrection, rumours of a new French army massing in Europe, and the deterioration of relations with the United States, meant that the Tory government faced nothing but crises, at home and abroad.
“I have brought the letter from our son, do you wish to hear it?” his lady asked him, after she joined him in the lobby in her travelling outfit, and he gave her his arm to escort her to their carriage. “I think it will take your mind off your worries over Lord Liverpool.”
Lord Delingpole sighed wearily, which his wife took as consent. He leaned back in his seat in the carriage and closed his eyes while she read him the latest hastily-scrawled note from Viscount Lynnon, from Oxford.
“I must apply to you for more funds this quarter—” she began.
Lord Delingpole groaned.
“Wait a moment, David. Just listen. But I give you my solemn assurance it will be the last time I ask for additional monies—or at least, it will be the last time I will plead the situation of my former friend Shelley as the cause of my impoverishment.”
“What’s that? ‘Former friend’?”
“Just listen! I have paid off some of Shelley’s creditors in Keswick and in London—he spent all his money on books and he ordered a pianoforte and a new carriage, which he cannot pay for, and has nothing to live upon!”
“So I am the indirect patron of this scribbling fool, am I? My spirits are not improved by this news, Imogen.”
“Just listen, dear! When we last met, I asked him, ‘you are always prating on about the hardships of the common man, so why do you run up bills with all the tradesmen and will not pay them? Are the tradesmen not common men? Why do you hide from your own landlady and abuse her as a stupid witch?’ Shelley grew quite angry with me when I challenged him on this matter, and he called me a witless ass and a dwarf.”
“Damn his impudence. We Delingpoles may not be towering oaks, but in point of intellect—”
“Just listen, dear. Shelley was always wont to abuse you, father, and the Tories, in the most execrable terms, which I had always disregarded—”
An angry splutter from his Lordship interrupted the reading, but his wife persisted.
“—but on this occasion, I said to him, ‘at least my father doesn’t suffer common men to be beggared and bankrupted, but always pays his accounts like an honourable man.’ And he flew into a fury. I now suspect that he did not esteem me as a friend at all, and was only interested in my purse.”
“What’s this? What’s this? Is our boy finally undeceived?” Lord Delingpole opened his eyes and sat up.
“Yes, dear. He has broken with his former idol, and has, I trust, learnt a valuable lesson.”
“Well then, Imogen, you may release some more funds to him—just this once.”
“I already have, dear. I thought you might want to know of this, even as preoccupied as you are,” said Lady Delingpole briskly, folding up the letter and turning from domestic cares to national ones. “Tell me, David, how is Lord Liverpool? Will he stick?”
“Yes, Imogen, I persuaded him to withdraw his resignation—for now. This government is being held together with straw and twine. Thank g-d the Prince Regent is standing by us, and is holding the Whigs at bay.
