Nick's little visit was to terminate immediately after luncheon the
following day: much as the old man enjoyed his being there he wouldn't
have dreamed of asking for more of his time now that it had such great
public uses. He liked infinitely better that his young friend should be
occupied with parliamentary work than only occupied in talking it over
with him. Talking it over, however, was the next best thing, as on the
morrow, after breakfast, Mr. Carteret showed Nick he considered. They
sat in the garden, the morning being warm, and the old man had a table
beside him covered with the letters and newspapers the post had poured
forth. He was proud of his correspondence, which was altogether on
public affairs, and proud in a manner of the fact that he now dictated
almost everything. That had more in it of the statesman in retirement, a
character indeed not consciously assumed by Mr. Carteret, but always
tacitly attributed to him by Nick, who took it rather from the pictorial
point of view--remembering on each occasion only afterwards that though
he was in retirement he had not exactly been a statesman. A young man, a
very sharp, handy young man, came every morning at ten o'clock and wrote
for him till luncheon. The young man had a holiday to-day in honour of
Nick's visit--a fact the mention of which led Nick to make some not
particularly sincere speech about _his_ being ready to write anything
if Mr. Carteret were at all pressed.
"Ah but your own budget--what will become of that?" the old gentleman
objected, glancing at Nick's pockets as if rather surprised not to see
them stuffed out with documents in split envelopes. His visitor had to
confess that he had not directed his letters to meet him at Beauclere:
he should find them in town that afternoon. This led to a little homily
from Mr. Carteret which made him feel quite guilty; there was such an
implication of neglected duty in the way the old man said, "You won't do
them justice--you won't do them justice." He talked for ten minutes, in
his rich, simple, urbane way, about the fatal consequences of getting
behind. It was his favourite doctrine that one should always be a little
before, and his own eminently regular respiration seemed to illustrate
the idea. A man was certainly before who had so much in his rear.
This led to the bestowal of a good deal of general advice on the
mistakes to avoid at the beginning of a parliamentary career--as to
which Mr. Carteret spoke with the experience of one who had sat for
fifty years in the House of Commons. Nick was amused, but also mystified
and even a little irritated, by his talk: it was founded on the idea of
observation and yet our young man couldn't at all regard him as an
observer. "He doesn't observe _me_," he said to himself; "if he did he
would see, he wouldn't think----!" The end of this private cogitation
was a vague impatience of all the things his venerable host took for
granted. He didn't see any of the things Nick saw. Some of these latter
were the light touches the summer morning scattered through the sweet
old garden. The time passed there a good deal as if it were sitting
still with a plaid under its feet while Mr. Carteret distilled a little
more of the wisdom he had laid up in his fifty years. This immense term
had something fabulous and monstrous for Nick, who wondered whether it
were the sort of thing his companion supposed _he_ had gone in for. It
was not strange Mr. Carteret should be different; he might originally
have been more--well, to himself Nick was not obliged to phrase it: what
our young man meant was more of what it was perceptible to him that his
old friend was not. Should even he, Nick, be like that at the end of
fifty years? What Mr. Carteret was so good as to expect for him was that
he should be much more distinguished; and wouldn't this exactly mean
much more like that? Of course Nick heard some things he had heard
before; as for instance the circumstances that had originally led the
old man to settle at Beauclere. He had been returned for that
borough--it was his second seat--in years far remote, and had come to
live there because he then had a conscientious conviction, modified
indeed by later experience, that a member should be constantly resident.
He spoke of this now, smiling rosily, as he might have spoken of some
wild aberration of his youth; yet he called Nick's attention to the fact
that he still so far clung to his conviction as to hold--though of what
might be urged on the other side he was perfectly aware--that a
representative should at least be as resident as possible. This gave
Nick an opening for something that had been on and off his lips all the
morning.
"According to that I ought to take up my abode at Harsh."
"In the measure of the convenient I shouldn't be sorry to see you do
it."
"It ought to be rather convenient," Nick largely smiled. "I've got a
piece of news for you which I've kept, as one keeps that sort of
thing--for it's very good--till the last." He waited a little to see if
Mr. Carteret would guess, and at first thought nothing would come of
this. But after resting his young-looking eyes on him for a moment the
old man said:
"I should indeed be very happy to hear that you've arranged to take a
wife."
"Mrs. Dallow has been so good as to say she'll marry me," Nick returned.
"That's very suitable. I should think it would answer."
"It's very jolly," said Nick. It was well Mr. Carteret was not what his
guest called observant, or he might have found a lower pitch in the
sound of this sentence than in the sense.
"Your dear father would have liked it."
"So my mother says."
"And _she_ must be delighted."
"Mrs. Dallow, do you mean?" Nick asked.
"I was thinking of your mother. But I don't exclude the charming lady. I
remember her as a little girl. I must have seen her at Windrush. Now I
understand the fine spirit with which she threw herself into your
canvass."
"It was her they elected," said Nick.
"I don't know," his host went on, "that I've ever been an enthusiast for
political women, but there's no doubt that in approaching the mass of
electors a graceful, affable manner, the manner of the real English
lady, is a force not to be despised."
"Julia's a real English lady and at the same time a very political
woman," Nick remarked.
"Isn't it rather in the family? I remember once going to see her mother
in town and finding the leaders of both parties sitting with her."
"My principal friend, of the others, is her brother Peter. I don't think
he troubles himself much about that sort of thing," said Nick.
"What does he trouble himself about?" Mr. Carteret asked with a certain
gravity.
"He's in the diplomatic service; he's a secretary in Paris."
"That may be serious," said the old man.
"He takes a great interest in the theatre. I suppose you'll say that may
be serious too," Nick laughed.
"Oh!"--and Mr. Carteret looked as if he scarcely understood. Then he
continued; "Well, it can't hurt you."
"It can't hurt me?"
"If Mrs. Dallow takes an interest in your interests."
"When a man's in my situation he feels as if nothing could hurt him."
"I'm very glad you're happy," said Mr. Carteret. He rested his mild eyes
on our young man, who had a sense of seeing in them for a moment the
faint ghost of an old story, the last strange flicker, as from cold
ashes, of a flame that had become the memory of a memory. This glimmer
of wonder and envy, the revelation of a life intensely celibate, was for
an instant infinitely touching. Nick had harboured a theory, suggested
by a vague allusion from his father, who had been discreet, that their
benevolent friend had had in his youth an unhappy love-affair which had
led him to forswear for ever the commerce of woman. What remained in him
of conscious renunciation gave a throb as he looked at his bright
companion, who proposed to take the matter so much the other way. "It's
good to marry and I think it's right. I've not done right, I know that.
If she's a good woman it's the best thing," Mr. Carteret went on. "It's
what I've been hoping for you. Sometimes I've thought of speaking to
you."
"She's a very good woman," said Nick.
"And I hope she's not poor." Mr. Carteret spoke exactly with the same
blandness.
"No indeed, she's rich. Her husband, whom I knew and liked, left her a
large fortune."
"And on what terms does she enjoy it?"
"I haven't the least idea," said Nick.
Mr. Carteret considered. "I see. It doesn't concern you. It needn't
concern you," he added in a moment.
Nick thought of his mother at this, but he returned: "I daresay she can
do what she likes with her money."
"So can I, my dear young friend," said Mr. Carteret.
Nick tried not to look conscious, for he felt a significance in the old
man's face. He turned his own everywhere but toward it, thinking again
of his mother. "That must be very pleasant, if one has any."
"I wish you had a little more."
"I don't particularly care," said Nick.
"Your marriage will assist you; you can't help that," Mr. Carteret
declared. "But I should like you to be under obligations not quite so
heavy."
"Oh I'm so obliged to her for caring for me----!"
"That the rest doesn't count? Certainly it's nice of her to like you.
But why shouldn't she? Other people do."
"Some of them make me feel as if I abused it," said Nick, looking at his
host. "That is, they don't make me, but I feel it," he corrected.
"I've no son "--and Mr. Carteret spoke as if his companion mightn't have
been sure. "Shan't you be very kind to her?" he pursued. "You'll gratify
her ambition."
"Oh she thinks me cleverer than I am."
"That's because she's in love," the old gentleman hinted as if this were
very subtle. "However, you must be as clever as we think you. If you
don't prove so----!" And he paused with his folded hands.
"Well, if I don't?" asked Nick.
"Oh it won't do--it won't do," said Mr. Carteret in a tone his companion
was destined to remember afterwards. "I say I've no son," he continued;
"but if I had had one he should have risen high."
"It's well for me such a person doesn't exist. I shouldn't easily have
found a wife."
"He would have gone to the altar with a little money in his pocket."
"That would have been the least of his advantages, sir," Nick declared.
"When are you to be married?" Mr. Carteret asked.
"Ah that's the question. Julia won't yet say."
"Well," said the old man without the least flourish, "you may consider
that when it comes off I'll make you a settlement."
"I feel your kindness more than I can express," Nick replied; "but that
will probably be the moment when I shall be least conscious of wanting
anything."
"You'll appreciate it later--you'll appreciate it very soon. I shall
like you to appreciate it," Mr. Carteret went on as if he had a just
vision of the way a young man of a proper spirit should feel. Then he
added; "Your father would have liked you to appreciate it."
"Poor father!" Nick exclaimed vaguely, rather embarrassed, reflecting on
the oddity of a position in which the ground for holding up his head as
the husband of a rich woman would be that he had accepted a present of
money from another source. It was plain he was not fated to go in for
independence; the most that he could treat himself to would be
dependence that was duly grateful "How much do you expect of me?" he
inquired with a grave face.
"Well, Nicholas, only what your father did. He so often spoke of you, I
remember, at the last, just after you had been with him alone--you know
I saw him then. He was greatly moved by his interview with you, and so
was I by what he told me of it. He said he should live on in you--he
should work in you. It has always given me a special feeling, if I may
use the expression, about you."
"The feelings are indeed not usual, dear Mr. Carteret, which take so
munificent a form. But you do--oh you do--expect too much," Nick brought
himself to say.
"I expect you to repay me!" the old man returned gaily. "As for the
form, I have it in my mind."
"The form of repayment?"
"The form of repayment!"
"Ah don't talk of that now," said Nick, "for, you see, nothing else is
settled. No one has been told except my mother. She has only consented
to my telling you."
"Lady Agnes, do you mean?"
"Ah no; dear mother would like to publish it on the house-tops. She's so
glad--she wants us to have it over to-morrow. But Julia herself," Nick
explained, "wishes to wait. Therefore kindly mention it for the present
to no one."
"My dear boy, there's at this rate nothing to mention! What does Julia
want to wait for?"
"Till I like her better--that's what she says."
"It's the way to make you like her worse," Mr. Carteret knowingly
declared. "Hasn't she your affection?"
"So much so that her delay makes me exceedingly unhappy."
Mr. Carteret looked at his young friend as if he didn't strike him as
quite wretched; but he put the question: "Then what more does she want?"
Nick laughed out at this, though perceiving his host hadn't meant it as
an epigram; while the latter resumed: "I don't understand. You're
engaged or you're not engaged."
"She is, but I'm not. That's what she says about it. The trouble is she
doesn't believe in me."