"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 pass 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 buttons."
"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 appetites 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."