"Dear papa!" Grace handsomely concurred. Then with a rapid transition:
"It would be so jolly for all of us--she'd be so nice to us."
"She's that already--in her way," said Lady Agnes conscientiously,
having followed the return, quick as it was. "Much good does it do her!"
And she reproduced the note of her bitterness of a moment before.
"It does her some good that one should look out for her. I do, and I
think she knows it," Grace declared. "One can at any rate keep other
women off."
"Don't meddle--you're very clumsy," was her mother's not particularly
sympathetic rejoinder. "There are other women who are beautiful, and
there are others who are clever and rich."
"Yes, but not all in one: that's what's so nice in Julia. Her fortune
would be thrown in; he wouldn't appear to have married her for it."
"If he does he won't," said Lady Agnes a trifle obscurely.
"Yes, that's what's so charming. And he could do anything then, couldn't
he?"
"Well, your father had no fortune to speak of."
"Yes, but didn't Uncle Percy help him?"
"His wife helped him," said Lady Agnes.
"Dear mamma!"--the girl was prompt. "There's one thing," she added:
"that Mr. Carteret will always help Nick."
"What do you mean by 'always'?"
"Why whether he marries Julia or not."
"Things aren't so easy," Lady Agnes judged. "It will all depend on
Nick's behaviour. He can stop it to-morrow."
Grace Dormer stared; she evidently thought Mr. Carteret's beneficence a
part of the scheme of nature. "How could he stop it?"
"By not being serious. It isn't so hard to prevent people giving you
money."
"Serious?" Grace repeated. "Does he want him to be a prig like Lord
Egbert?"
"Yes--that's exactly what he wants. And what he'll do for him he'll do
for him only if he marries Julia."
"Has he told you?" Grace inquired. And then, before her mother could
answer, "I'm delighted at that!" she cried.
"He hasn't told me, but that's the way things happen." Lady Agnes was
less optimistic than her daughter, and such optimism as she cultivated
was a thin tissue with the sense of things as they are showing through.
"If Nick becomes rich Charles Carteret will make him more so. If he
doesn't he won't give him a shilling."
"Oh mamma!" Grace demurred.
"It's all very well to say that in public life money isn't as necessary
as it used to be," her ladyship went on broodingly. "Those who say so
don't know anything about it. It's always intensely necessary."
Her daughter, visibly affected by the gloom of her manner, felt impelled
to evoke as a corrective a more cheerful idea. "I daresay; but there's
the fact--isn't there?--that poor papa had so little."
"Yes, and there's the fact that it killed him!"
These words came out with a strange, quick, little flare of passion.
They startled Grace Dormer, who jumped in her place and gasped, "Oh
mother!" The next instant, however, she added in a different voice, "Oh
Peter!" for, with an air of eagerness, a gentleman was walking up to
them.
"How d'ye do, Cousin Agnes? How d'ye do, little Grace?" Peter
Sherringham laughed and shook hands with them, and three minutes later
was settled in his chair at their table, on which the first elements of
the meal had been placed. Explanations, on one side and the other, were
demanded and produced; from which it appeared that the two parties had
been in some degree at cross-purposes. The day before Lady Agnes and her
companions travelled to Paris Sherringham had gone to London for
forty-eight hours on private business of the ambassador's, arriving, on
his return by the night-train, only early that morning. There had
accordingly been a delay in his receiving Nick Dormer's two notes. If
Nick had come to the embassy in person--he might have done him the
honour to call--he would have learned that the second secretary was
absent. Lady Agnes was not altogether successful in assigning a motive
to her son's neglect of this courteous form; she could but say: "I
expected him, I wanted him to go; and indeed, not hearing from you, he
would have gone immediately--an hour or two hence, on leaving this
place. But we're here so quietly--not to go out, not to seem to appeal
to the ambassador. Nick put it so--'Oh mother, we'll keep out of it; a
friendly note will do.' I don't know definitely what he wanted to keep
out of, unless anything like gaiety. The embassy isn't gay, I know. But
I'm sure his note was friendly, wasn't it? I daresay you'll see for
yourself. He's different directly he gets abroad; he doesn't seem to
care." Lady Agnes paused a moment, not carrying out this particular
elucidation; then she resumed: "He said you'd have seen Julia and that
you'd understand everything from her. And when I asked how she'd know he
said, 'Oh she knows everything!'"
"He never said a word to me about Julia," Peter Sherringham returned.
Lady Agnes and her daughter exchanged a glance at this: the latter had
already asked three times where Julia was, and her ladyship dropped that
they had been hoping she would be able to come with Peter. The young man
set forth that she was at the moment at an hotel in the Rue de la Paix,
but had only been there since that morning; he had seen her before
proceeding to the Champs Elysees. She had come up to Paris by an early
train--- she had been staying at Versailles, of all places in the world.
She had been a week in Paris on her return from Cannes--her stay there
had been of nearly a month: fancy!--and then had gone out to Versailles
to see Mrs. Billinghurst. Perhaps they'd remember her, poor Dallow's
sister. She was staying there to teach her daughters French--she had a
dozen or two!--and Julia had spent three days with her. She was to
return to England about the twenty-fifth. It would make seven weeks she
must have been away from town--a rare thing for her; she usually stuck
to it so in summer.
"Three days with Mrs. Billinghurst--how very good-natured of her!" Lady
Agnes commented.
"Oh they're very nice to her," Sherringham said.
"Well, I hope so!" Grace Dormer exhaled. "Why didn't you make her come
here?"
"I proposed it, but she wouldn't." Another eye-beam, at this, passed
between the two ladies and Peter went on: "She said you must come and
see her at the Hotel de Hollande."
"Of course we'll do that," Lady Agnes declared. "Nick went to ask about
her at the Westminster."
"She gave that up; they wouldn't give her the rooms she wanted, her
usual set."
"She's delightfully particular!" Grace said complacently. Then she
added: "She _does_ like pictures, doesn't she?"
Peter Sherringham stared. "Oh I daresay. But that's not what she has in
her head this morning. She has some news from London--she's immensely
excited."
"What has she in her head?" Lady Agnes asked.
"What's her news from London?" Grace added.
"She wants Nick to stand."
"Nick to stand?" both ladies cried.
"She undertakes to bring him in for Harsh. Mr. Pinks is dead--the
fellow, you know, who got the seat at the general election. He dropped
down in London--disease of the heart or something of that sort. Julia
has her telegram, but I see it was in last night's papers."
"Imagine--Nick never mentioned it!" said Lady Agnes.
"Don't you know, mother?--abroad he only reads foreign papers."
"Oh I know. I've no patience with him," her ladyship continued. "Dear
Julia!"
"It's a nasty little place, and Pinks had a tight squeeze--107 or
something of that sort; but if it returned a Liberal a year ago very
likely it will do so again. Julia at any rate believes it can be made
to--if the man's Nick--and is ready to take the order to put him in."
"I'm sure if she can do it she will," Grace pronounced.
"Dear, dear Julia! And Nick can do something for himself," said the
mother of this candidate.
"I've no doubt he can do anything," Peter Sherringham returned
good-naturedly. Then, "Do you mean in expenses?" he inquired.
"Ah I'm afraid he can't do much in expenses, poor dear boy! And it's
dreadful how little we can look to Percy."
"Well, I daresay you may look to Julia. I think that's her idea."
"Delightful Julia!" Lady Agnes broke out. "If poor Sir Nicholas could
have known! Of course he must go straight home," she added.
"He won't like that," said Grace.
"Then he'll have to go without liking it."
"It will rather spoil _your_ little excursion, if you've only just
come," Peter suggested; "to say nothing of the great Biddy's, if she's
enjoying Paris."
"We may stay perhaps--with Julia to protect us," said Lady Agnes.
"Ah she won't stay; she'll go over for her man."
"Her man----?"
"The fellow who stands, whoever he is--especially if he's Nick." These
last words caused the eyes of Peter Sherringham's companions to meet
again, and he went on: "She'll go straight down to Harsh."
"Wonderful Julia!" Lady Agnes panted. "Of course Nick must go straight
there too."
"Well, I suppose he must see first if they'll have him."
"If they'll have him? Why how can he tell till he tries?"
"I mean the people at headquarters, the fellows who arrange it."
Lady Agnes coloured a little. "My dear Peter, do you suppose there will
be the least doubt of their 'having' the son of his father?"
"Of course it's a great name, Cousin Agnes--a very great name."
"One of the greatest, simply," Lady Agnes smiled.
"It's the best name in the world!" said Grace more emphatically.
"All the same it didn't prevent his losing his seat."
"By half-a-dozen votes: it was too odious!" her ladyship cried.
"I remember--I remember. And in such a case as that why didn't they
immediately put him in somewhere else?"
"How one sees you live abroad, dear Peter! There happens to have been
the most extraordinary lack of openings--I never saw anything like
it--for a year. They've had their hand on him, keeping him all ready. I
daresay they've telegraphed him."
"And he hasn't told you?"