"Oh, look, dear, there's that poor Walter Bassett."
Amber Roan looked down from the roof of the drag at the crossing
restless shuttles, weaving with feminine woof and masculine warp
the multi-coloured web of Society in London's cricket Coliseum.
"Where?" she murmured, her eye wandering over the little tract of
sunlit green between the coaches with their rival Eton and Harrow
favours. Before Lady Chelmer had time to bend her pink parasol a
little more definitely, a thunder of applause turned Amber Roan's
face back towards the wickets, with a piqued expression.
"It's real mean," she said. "What have I missed now?"
"Only a good catch," said the Hon. Tolshunt Darcy, whose eyes had
never faltered from her face.
"My, that's just the one thing I've been dying for," she pouted
self-mockingly.
"Poor Walter Bassett," Lady Chelmer repeated. "I knew his mother."
"Where?" Amber asked again.
"In Huntingdonshire, before the property went to Algy--"
"No, no, Lady Chelmer; I mean, where is poor Walter Whatsaname now?"
"Why, right here," said Lady Chelmer, involuntarily borrowing from the
vocabulary of her young American protegee.
"Walter Bassett!" said the Hon. Tolshunt, languidly. "Isn't that the
chap that's always getting chucked out of Parliament?"
"But his name doesn't sound Irish?" queried Amber.
"What are you talking about, Amber!" cried Lady Chelmer. "Why, he
comes of a good old Huntingdon family. If he had been his own elder
brother, he'd have got in long ago."
"Oh, you mean he never gets _into_ Parliament," said Amber.
"Serve him right. I believe he's one of those independent nuisances,"
said the old Marquis of Woodham. "How is one ever to govern the
country, if every man is a party unto himself?" He said "one," but
only out of modesty; for having once accepted a minor post in a
Ministry that the Premier _in posse_ had not succeeded in forming, he
had retained a Cabinet air ever since.
"Well, the beggar will scarcely come up at Highmead for a third
licking," observed the Hon. Tolshunt.
"No, poor Walter," said Lady Chelmer. "He thought he'd be sure to
get in this time, but he's quite crushed now. Wasn't it actually two
thousand votes less than last time?"
"Two thousand and thirty-three," replied Lord Woodham, with
punctilious inaccuracy.
Involuntarily Amber's eyes turned in search of the crushed candidate
whom she almost saw flattened beneath the 2033 votes, and whom it
would scarcely have been a surprise to find asquat under a carriage,
humbly assisting the footmen to pack the dirty plates. But before
she had time to decide which of the unlively men, loitering round
the carriages or helping stout old dowagers up slim iron ladders,
was sufficiently lugubrious to be identified as the martyr of the
ballot-box, she was absorbed by a tall, masterful figure, whose face
had the radiance of easeful success, and whose hands were clapping at
some nuance of style which had escaped the palms of the great circular
mob.
"I can't see any Walter Bassett," she murmured absently.
"Why, you are staring straight at him," said Lady Chelmer.
Miss Roan did not reply, but her face was eloquent of her astonishment,
and when her face spoke, it was with that vivacity which is the American
accent of beauty. What wonder if the Hon. Tolshunt Darcy paid heed to it,
although he liked what it said less than the form of expression! As he
used to put it in after days, "She gave one look, and threw herself away
from the top of that drag." The more literal truth was that she drew
Walter Bassett up to the top of that drag.
Lady Chelmer protested in vain that she could not halloo to the man.
"You knew his mother," Amber replied. "And he's got no seat."
"Quite symbolical! He, he, he!" and the old Marquis chuckled and
cackled in solitary amusement. "Let's offer him one," he went on, half
to enjoy the joke a little longer, half to utilise the opportunity of
bringing his Ministerial wisdom to bear upon this erratic young man.
"I don't see where there's room," said the Hon. Tolshunt Darcy,
sulkily.
"There's room on the front bench," cackled the Marquis, shaking his
sides.
"Oh, I don't want you to roll off for him," said Miss Roan, who
treated Ministerial Marquises with a contempt that bred in them a
delightful sense of familiarity. "Tolshunt can sit opposite me--he's
stared at the cricket long enough."
Tolshunt blushed with apparent irrelevance. But even the prospect
of staring at Amber more comfortably did not reconcile him to
displacement. "It's so awkward meeting a fellow who's had a tumble,"
he grumbled. "It's like having to condole with a man fresh from a
funeral."
"There doesn't seem much black about Walter Bassett," Amber laughed.
And at this moment--the dull end of a "maiden over"--the radiant
personage in question turned his head, and perceiving Lady Chelmer's
massive smile, acknowledged her recognition with respectful superiority,
whereupon her Ladyship beckoned him with her best parasol manner.
"I want to introduce you to my friend, Miss Roan," she said, as he
climbed to her side.
"I've been reading so much about you," said that young lady, with
a sweet smile. "But you shouldn't be so independent, you know, you
really shouldn't."
He smiled back. "I'm only independent till they come to my way of
thinking."