"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."
"Your freedom? What freedom is there in being poor?" Lady Agnes fiercely
demanded. "Talk of that when Julia puts everything she possesses at your
feet!"
"I can't talk of it, mother--it's too terrible an idea. And I can't talk
of _her_, nor of what I think of her. You must leave that to me. I do
her perfect justice."
"You don't or you'd marry her to-morrow," she passionately argued.
"You'd feel the opportunity so beautifully rare, with everything in the
world to make it perfect. Your father would have valued it for you
beyond everything. Think a little what would have given _him_ pleasure.
That's what I meant when I spoke just now of us all. It wasn't of Grace
and Biddy I was thinking--fancy!--it was of him. He's with you always;
he takes with you, at your side, every step you take yourself. He'd
bless devoutly your marriage to Julia; he'd feel what it would be for
you and for us all. I ask for no sacrifice and he'd ask for none. We
only ask that you don't commit the crime----!"
Nick Dormer stopped her with another kiss; he murmured "Mother, mother,
mother!" as he bent over her. He wished her not to go on, to let him
off; but the deep deprecation in his voice didn't prevent her saying:
"You know it--you know it perfectly. All and more than all that I can
tell you you know." He drew her closer, kissed her again, held her as he
would have held a child in a paroxysm, soothing her silently till it
could abate. Her vehemence had brought with it tears; she dried them as
she disengaged herself. The next moment, however, she resumed, attacking
him again: "For a public man she'd be the perfect companion. She's made
for public life--she's made to shine, to be concerned in great things,
to occupy a high position and to help him on. She'd back you up in
everything as she has backed you in this. Together there's nothing you
couldn't do. You can have the first house in England--yes, the very
first! What freedom _is_ there in being poor? How can you do anything
without money, and what money can you make for yourself--what money will
ever come to you? That's the crime--to throw away such an instrument of
power, such a blessed instrument of good."
"It isn't everything to be rich, mother," said Nick, looking at the
floor with a particular patience--that is with a provisional docility
and his hands in his pockets. "And it isn't so fearful to be poor."
"It's vile--it's abject. Don't I know?"
"Are you in such acute want?" he smiled.
"Ah don't make me explain what you've only to look at to see!" his
mother returned as if with a richness of allusion to dark elements in
her fate.
"Besides," he easily went on, "there's other money in the world than
Julia's. I might come by some of that."
"Do you mean Mr. Carteret's?" The question made him laugh as her feeble
reference five minutes before to the House of Lords had done. But she
pursued, too full of her idea to take account of such a poor substitute
for an answer: "Let me tell you one thing, for I've known Charles
Carteret much longer than you and I understand him better. There's
nothing you could do that would do you more good with him than to marry
Julia. I know the way he looks at things and I know exactly how that
would strike him. It would please him, it would charm him; it would be
the thing that would most prove to him that you're in earnest. You need,
you know, to do something of that sort," she said as for plain speaking.
"Haven't I come in for Harsh?" asked Nick.
"Oh he's very canny. He likes to see people rich. _Then_ he believes in
them--then he's likely to believe more. He's kind to you because you're
your father's son; but I'm sure your being poor takes just so much off."
"He can remedy that so easily," said Nick, smiling still. "Is my being
kept by Julia what you call my making an effort for myself?"
Lady Agnes hesitated; then "You needn't insult Julia!" she replied.
"Moreover, if I've _her_ money I shan't want his," Nick unheedingly
remarked.
Again his mother waited before answering; after which she produced: "And
pray wouldn't you wish to be independent?"
"You're delightful, dear mother--you're very delightful! I particularly
like your conception of independence. Doesn't it occur to you that at a
pinch I might improve my fortune by some other means than by making a
mercenary marriage or by currying favour with a rich old gentleman?
Doesn't it occur to you that I might work?"
"Work at politics? How does that make money, honourably?"
"I don't mean at politics."
"What do you mean then?"--and she seemed to challenge him to phrase it
if he dared. This demonstration of her face and voice might have
affected him, for he remained silent and she continued: "Are you elected
or not?"
"It seems a dream," he rather flatly returned.
"If you are, act accordingly and don't mix up things that are as wide
asunder as the poles!" She spoke with sternness and his silence appeared
again to represent an admission that her sternness counted for him.
Possibly she was touched by it; after a few moments, at any rate, during
which nothing more passed between them, she appealed to him in a gentler
and more anxious key, which had this virtue to touch him that he knew it
was absolutely the first time in her life she had really begged for
anything. She had never been obliged to beg; she had got on without it
and most things had come to her. He might judge therefore in what a
light she regarded this boon for which in her bereft old age she humbled
herself to be a suitor. There was such a pride in her that he could feel
what it cost her to go on her knees even to her son. He did judge how it
was in his power to gratify her; and as he was generous and imaginative
he was stirred and shaken as it came over him in a wave of figurative
suggestion that he might make up to her for many things. He scarcely
needed to hear her ask with a pleading wail that was almost tragic:
"Don't you see how things have turned out for us? Don't you know how
unhappy I am, don't you know what a bitterness----?" She stopped with a
sob in her voice and he recognised vividly this last tribulation, the
unhealed wound of her change of life and her lapse from eminence to
flatness. "You know what Percival is and the comfort I have of him. You
know the property and what he's doing with it and what comfort I get
from _that_! Everything's dreary but what you can do for us.
Everything's odious, down to living in a hole with one's girls who don't
marry. Grace is impossible--I don't know what's the matter with her; no
one will look at her, and she's so conceited with it--sometimes I feel
as if I could beat her! And Biddy will never marry, and we're three
dismal women in a filthy house, and what are three dismal women, more or
less, in London?"
So with an unexpected rage of self-exposure she poured out her
disappointments and troubles, tore away the veil from her sadness and
soreness. It almost scared him to see how she hated her life, though at
another time it might have been amusing to note how she despised her
gardenless house. Of course it wasn't a country-house, and she couldn't
get used to that. Better than he could do--for it was the sort of thing
into which in any case a woman enters more than a man--she felt what a
lift into brighter air, what a regilding of his sisters' possibilities,
his marriage to Julia would effect for them. He couldn't trace the
difference, but his mother saw it all as a shining picture. She hung the
bright vision before him now--she stood there like a poor woman crying
for a kindness. What was filial in him, all the piety he owed,
especially to the revived spirit of his father, more than ever present
on a day of such public pledges, became from one moment to the other as
the very handle to the door of the chamber of concessions. He had the
impulse, so embarrassing when it is a question of consistent action, to
see in a touching, an interesting light any forcibly presented side of
the life of another: such things effected a union with something in
_his_ life, and in the recognition of them was no soreness of sacrifice
and no consciousness of merit.
Rapidly, at present, this change of scene took place before his
spiritual eye. He found himself believing, because his mother
communicated the belief, that it depended but on his own conduct richly
to alter the social outlook of the three women who clung to him and who
declared themselves forlorn. This was not the highest kind of motive,
but it contained a spring, it touched into life again old injunctions
and appeals. Julia's wide kingdom opened out round him and seemed
somehow to wear the face of his own possible future. His mother and
sisters floated in the rosy element as if he had breathed it about them.
"The first house in England" she had called it; but it might be the
first house in Europe, the first in the world, by the fine air and the
high humanities that should fill it. Everything beautiful in his actual,
his material view seemed to proclaim its value as never before; the
house rose over his head as a museum of exquisite rewards, and the image
of poor George Dallow hovered there obsequious, expressing that he had
only been the modest, tasteful organiser, or even upholsterer, appointed
to set it all in order and punctually retire. Lady Agnes's tone in fine
penetrated further than it had done yet when she brought out with
intensity: "Don't desert us--don't desert us."
"Don't desert you----?"
"Be great--be great. I'm old, I've lived, I've seen. Go in for a great
material position. That will simplify everything else."
"I'll do what I can for you--anything, everything I can. Trust me--leave
me alone," Nick went on.
"And you'll stay over--you'll spend the day with her?"
"I'll stay till she turns me out!"
His mother had hold of his hand again now: she raised it to her lips
and kissed it. "My dearest son, my only joy!" Then: "I don't see how you
can resist her," she added.
"No more do I!"
She looked about--there was so much to look at--with a deep exhalation.
"If you're so fond of art, what art is equal to all this? The joy of
living in the midst of it--of seeing the finest works every day! You'll
have everything the world can give."
"That's exactly what was just passing in my own mind. It's too much,"
Nick reasoned.
"Don't be selfish!"
"Selfish?" he echoed.
"Unselfish then. You'll share it with us."
"And with Julia a little, I hope," he said.
"God bless you!" cried his mother, looking up at him. Her eyes were
detained by the sudden sense of something in his own that was not clear
to her; but before she could challenge it he asked abruptly:
"Why do you talk so of poor Biddy? Why won't she marry?"
"You had better ask Peter Sherringham," said Lady Agnes.
"What has he to do with it?"
"How odd of you not to know--when it's so plain how she thinks of him
that it's a matter of common gossip."
"Yes, if you will--we've made it so, and she takes it as an angel. But
Peter likes her."
"Does he? Then it's the more shame to him to behave as he does. He had
better leave his wretched actresses alone. That's the love of art too!"
mocked Lady Agnes.
But Nick glossed it all over. "Biddy's so charming she'll easily marry
some one else."
"Never, if she loves him. However, Julia will bring it about--Julia
will help her," his mother pursued more cheerfully. "That's what you'll
do for us--that _she'll_ do everything!"
"Why then more than now?" he asked.
"Because we shall be yours."
"You're mine already."
"Yes, but she isn't. However, she's as good!" Lady Agnes exulted.
"She'll turn me out of the house," said Nick.
"Come and tell me when she does! But there she is--go to her!" And she
gave him a push toward one of the windows that stood open to the
terrace. Their hostess had become visible outside; she passed slowly
along the terrace with her long shadow. "Go to her," his mother
repeated--"she's waiting for you."
Nick went out with the air of a man as ready to pass that way as
another, and at the same moment his two sisters, still flushed with
participation, appeared in a different quarter.
"We go home to-morrow, but Nick will stay a day or two," Lady Agnes said
to them.
"Dear old Nick!" Grace ejaculated looking at her with intensity.
"He's going to speak," she went on. "But don't mention it."
"Don't mention it?" Biddy asked with a milder stare. "Hasn't he spoken
enough, poor fellow?"
"I mean to Julia," Lady Agnes replied.
"Don't you understand, you goose?"--and Grace turned on her sister.