"I wasn"t in the least sure--and she has done everything."
"She has been too good--but _we_"ve done something. I hope you don"t leave out your father," Lady Agnes amplified as Nick"s glance appeared for a moment to question her "we."
"Never, never!" Nick uttered these words perhaps a little mechanically, but the next minute he added as if suddenly moved to think what he could say that would give his mother most pleasure: "Of course his name has worked for me. Gone as he is he"s still a living force." He felt a good deal of a hypocrite, but one didn"t win such a seat every day in the year. Probably indeed he should never win another.
"He hears you, he watches you, he rejoices in you," Lady Agnes opined.
This idea was oppressive to Nick--that of the rejoicing almost as much as of the watching. He had made his concession, but, with a certain impulse to divert his mother from following up her advantage, he broke out: "Julia"s a tremendously effective woman."
"Of course she is!" said Lady Agnes knowingly.
"Her charming appearance is half the battle"--Nick explained a little coldly what he meant. But he felt his coldness an inadequate protection to him when he heard his companion observe with something of the same sapience:
"A woman"s always effective when she likes a person so much."
It discomposed him to be described as a person liked, and so much, and by a woman; and he simply said abruptly: "When are you going away?"
"The first moment that"s civil--to-morrow morning. _You_"ll stay on I hope."
"Stay on? What shall I stay on for?"
"Why you might stay to express your appreciation."
Nick considered. "I"ve everything to do."
"I thought everything was done," said Lady Agnes.
"Well, that"s just why," her son replied, not very lucidly. "I want to do other things--quite other things. I should like to take the next train," And he looked at his watch.
"When there are people coming to dinner to meet you?"
"They"ll meet _you_--that"s better."
"I"m sorry any one"s coming," Lady Agnes said in a tone unencouraging to a deviation from the reality of things. "I wish we were alone--just as a family. It would please Julia to-day to feel that we _are_ one. Do stay with her to-morrow."
"How will that do--when she"s alone?"
"She won"t be alone, with Mrs. Gresham."
"Mrs. Gresham doesn"t count."
"That"s precisely why I want you to stop. And her cousin, almost her brother: what an idea that it won"t do! Haven"t you stayed here before when there has been no one?"
"I"ve never stayed much, and there have always been people. At any rate it"s now different."
"It"s just because it"s different. Besides, it isn"t different and it never was," said Lady Agnes, more incoherent in her earnestness than it often happened to her to be. "She always liked you and she likes you now more than ever--if you call _that_ different!" Nick got up at this and, without meeting her eyes, walked to one of the windows, where he stood with his back turned and looked out on the great greenness. She watched him a moment and she might well have been wishing, while he appeared to gaze with intentness, that it would come to him with the same force as it had come to herself--very often before, but during these last days more than ever--that the level lands of Harsh, stretching away before the window, the French garden with its symmetry, its screens and its statues, and a great many more things of which these were the superficial token, were Julia"s very own to do with exactly as she liked. No word of appreciation or envy, however, dropped from the young man"s lips, and his mother presently went on: "What could be more natural than that after your triumphant contest you and she should have lots to settle and to talk about--no end of practical questions, no end of urgent business? Aren"t you her member, and can"t her member pa.s.s a day with her, and she a great proprietor?"
Nick turned round at this with an odd expression. "_Her_ member--am I hers?"
Lady Agnes had a pause--she had need of all her tact. "Well, if the place is hers and you represent the place--!" she began. But she went no further, for Nick had interrupted her with a laugh.
"What a droll thing to "represent," when one thinks of it! And what does _it_ represent, poor stupid little borough with its strong, though I admit clean, smell of meal and its curiously fat-faced inhabitants? Did you ever see such a collection of fat faces turned up at the hustings?
They looked like an enormous sofa, with the cheeks for the gathers and the eyes for the b.u.t.tons."
"Oh well, the next time you shall have a great town," Lady Agnes returned, smiling and feeling that she _was_ tactful.
"It will only be a bigger sofa! I"m joking, of course?" Nick pursued, "and I ought to be ashamed of myself. They"ve done me the honour to elect me and I shall never say a word that"s not civil about them, poor dears. But even a new member may blaspheme to his mother."
"I wish you"d be serious to your mother"--and she went nearer him.
"The difficulty is that I"m two men; it"s the strangest thing that ever was," Nick professed with his bright face on her. "I"m two quite distinct human beings, who have scarcely a point in common; not even the memory, on the part of one, of the achievements or the adventures of the other. One man wins the seat but it"s the other fellow who sits in it."
"Oh Nick, don"t spoil your victory by your perversity!" she cried as she clasped her hands to him.
"I went through it with great glee--I won"t deny that: it excited me, interested me, amused me. When once I was in it I liked it. But now that I"m out of it again----!"
"Out of it?" His mother stared. "Isn"t the whole point that you"re in?"
"Ah _now_ I"m only in the House of Commons."
For an instant she seemed not to understand and to be on the point of laying her finger quickly to her lips with a "Hush!"--as if the late Sir Nicholas might have heard the "only." Then while a comprehension of the young man"s words promptly superseded that impulse she replied with force: "You"ll be in the Lords the day you determine to get there."
This futile remark made Nick laugh afresh, and not only laugh, but kiss her, which was always an intenser form of mystification for poor Lady Agnes and apparently the one he liked best to inflict; after which he said: "The odd thing is, you know, that Harsh has no wants. At least it"s not sharply, not articulately conscious of them. We all pretended to talk them over together, and I promised to carry them in my heart of hearts. But upon my honour I can"t remember one of them. Julia says the wants of Harsh are simply the national wants--rather a pretty phrase for Julia. She means _she_ does everything for the place; _she_"s really their member and this house in which we stand their legislative chamber.
Therefore the _lacunae_ I"ve undertaken to fill out are the national wants. It will be rather a job to rectify some of them, won"t it? I don"t represent the appet.i.tes of Harsh--Harsh is gorged. I represent the ideas of my party. That"s what Julia says."
"Oh never mind what Julia says!" Lady Agnes broke out impatiently. This impatience made it singular that the very next word she uttered should be: "My dearest son, I wish to heaven you"d marry her. It would be so fitting now!" she added.
"Why now?" Nick frowned.
"She has shown you such sympathy, such devotion."
"Is it for that she has shown it?"
"Ah you might _feel_--I can"t tell you!" said Lady Agnes reproachfully.
He blushed at this, as if what he did feel was the reproach. "Must I marry her because you like her?"
"I? Why we"re _all_ as fond of her as we can be."
"Dear mother, I hope that any woman I ever may marry will be a person agreeable not only to you, but also, since you make a point of it, to Grace and Biddy. But I must tell you this--that I shall marry no woman I"m not unmistakably in love with."
"And why are you not in love with Julia--charming, clever, generous as she is?" Lady Agnes laid her hands on him--she held him tight. "Dearest Nick, if you care anything in the world to make me happy you"ll stay over here to-morrow and be nice to her."
He waited an instant. "Do you mean propose to her?"
"With a single word, with the glance of an eye, the movement of your little finger"--and she paused, looking intensely, imploringly up into his face--"in less time than it takes me to say what I say now, you may have it all." As he made no answer, only meeting her eyes, she added insistently: "You know she"s a fine creature--you know she is!"
"Dearest mother, what I seem to know better than anything else in the world is that I love my freedom. I set it far above everything."